True Detective

"Then we've just got two events to deal with. The Biltmore dinner for Farley. Saturday; and Bayfront Park, Wednesday."

"What?"

Cermak pointed off to his left. "Bayfront Park. That's where Roosevelt is speaking."

"You really ought to take a rain check on that one, Mayor."

For the first time, the cold eyes softened a bit, and the smile seemed genuine. "I undere^ didn't I. Heller?"

"Maybe not. Maybe I'm just coming into my own."

"Maybe."

"Where are you headed next?"

"To the toilet," he said, standing, grimacing, holding his gut.

This time I followed him, and he motioned Miller to stay put.

His Honor was washing his hands when I said, "You got to tighten your security up on the home front, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I told your gardener I was with the Herald and he told me everything but your date of birth."

Cermak dried his hands on a paper towel; he shrugged with his face. "We don't have a gardener."

"What?"

"Not really. Some neighbor kid does it: when my son-in-law's down, he does it himself. Relaxes him."

"Your neighbor's kid isn't Cuban, is he?"

"Not hardly. Why?"

"Some Cuban was trimming your shrubs the other day."

Cermak shrugged again, this time with his shoulders. "My son-in-law probably hired somebody else to do the yard, to get it ready for when I got here."

"Yeah. You're probably right."

Anyway, it wasn't a Cuban I was looking for. Not unless it was a blond Cuban. But my blond could have a Cuban backup man, couldn't he?

"We'll call long distance and check on it," Cermak said, "if it'll make you feel better."

"Please," I said.

"Now," Cermak said, "let's go break the news to Miller and Lang that you're pals."

A Goodyear blimp glided overhead. Out on a strip of land opposite the park, pelicans and gulls came in for flapping landings, then took off again. It was late Wednesday afternoon and sultry, and couples of varying ages strolled around Bayfront Park, sometimes stopping for a game of shuffleboard or to sit on a bench and watch the blue bay and the white boats.

I about tripped over one of the nearly invisible guy wires anchoring a big palm against the wind; those wires were a danger you could overlook, in this peaceful, lushly landscaped park. The main promenade, from the foot of East Flagler to the bay. was lined with flower beds, clipped pine hedges, royal palms, and couples on benches. It made me wonder what Mary Ann Beame was doing; it made me wonder if she was thinking about me at all, while I was down here trying to keep Chicago's mayor alive.

Other than the guy wires, the park seemed free from hidden danger. I strolled all forty acres of it, forty acres that had been pumped from the bay less than a decade ago and turned into a tropical paradise. I didn't see the blond anywhere; the automatic was under my shoulder, and the Police Special was nudging my middle, and if he came early, to look over what might be the scene of his crime, I might still get to plant the.38 on him and get this over with, before it started.

With the sun still sharing the sky with the blimp and a few lazily soaring planes, I took a seat in the front row of the amphitheater. Green benches that would seat eight thousand sloped down in a wide semicircle to face the band shell. The central dome of the stage was painted a garish red, orange, yellow, and green design, vaguely oriental, and on either side of it were two towers with acorn domes decorated in bands of silver, green, yellow, orange, and red. It looked like a Shriner's idea of Egypt, right down to the yellow stucco stage with its blue platform, red-fringed brown curtain, and paintings of Cairo street scenes on either side of the proscenium. On the stage, a makeshift wooden reviewing stand had been assembled, six rows high, with room for maybe twenty-five or thirty dignitaries, of which Cermak would be one. He was, in fact, to be in the front row.

Fortunately, the public wouldn't be able to get close enough to the stage for anybody to take a shot at His Honor, not unless it was with a rifle, and short of climbing one of the royal and coconut palms separating the amphitheater from the Miami skyline, Cermak should, even in the first row, be safe. Because the area in front of the bandstand, a semicircular paved area, was where the president-elect would be speaking, from his car.

I sat there studying the situation, and began hearing muffled conversation behind me; I turned and looked and, though it was barely five o'clock, the green benches were starting to fill up. I got up and had a walk around, but didn't see the face I was looking for. By five-thirty, I realized I needed to stay put, if I wanted to hold onto my ringside seat.

A little after six some Secret Service guys began having a look around. I identified myself to one of them as one of Mayor Cermak's bodyguards, showed some identification, and another of them checked a list on a clipboard, found my name there, nodded, and let me be. As twilight settled in, there wasn't a seat to be had in the joint- and FDR wasn't set to talk till nine-thirty.

Of course, if this mixture of Miamians and tourists had read the paper, like I had, they'd known downtown traffic was going to be stopped at eight-thirty, and had decided to get down here while some parking- for their cars and their backsides-- was still available. A parade would be leaving the pier where Astor's yacht. Nourmahal would dock, around nine, and hundreds of local cops, by foot, motorcycle, and motorcar, would accompany Roosevelt and his people and some local dignitaries along Biscayne Boulevard to the band shell. They'd be preceded by various drum-and-bugle corps, and the press would bring up the rear.

I was nervous about Cermak making this public an appearance. But the blond killer was a pro, and he'd have to know this was a suicidal situation- with FDR here, the place would be swarming with security: cops and Secret Service and bodyguards. And here it was barely seven, and the areas to either side of the sloping benches were already filling with people. The crowd might give him a certain anonymity, but it would be impossible to move through quickly. Of course, if he used a silencer, his slug could take Cermak down before anyone knew what happened; and he might be able to disappear into the throng. The street was close by; Miami was close by. It could be done. But it was hardly ideal.

I was beginning to think either Capone's information was wrong, and the blond had never come at all; or my efforts to have Cermak lie low had paid off. His only public excursion had been the Farley banquet, which I attended in black tie and shoulder holster, and I'd stood by the doorway within the Biltmore Country Club and watched every dignitary and his lady enter, and there was no ringer; nor was any of the Biltmore help a blond hired killer posing as a busboy or waiter. I sat in the front, facing the head table, and Cermak's four bodyguards were variously placed- one on either side of the banquet room, standing, and the other two outside, one in front of the building, one in back. I'd given Lang, Miller, and crew a description of the blond and figured them competent enough to spot him, should he try to party-crash.

But he didn't, and I suffered through a night in a monkey suit, swallowing cigar smoke and dull speeches and tough beef, for nothing.

The rest of the time Cermak stayed at home; I kept a watch from outside, sitting in my forty-buck Ford, stopping in a couple times a day to report to the mayor, and keep track of his itinerary. He entertained various Demos, and an alderman from Chicago, James B. Bowler, showed up, and various millionaire Chicagoans who kept winter homes in Greater Miami called on him; but he made no public appearances. It turned out his son-in-law had hired a gardener to get the place beautiful for the mayor, so the bushy-haired bowlegged guy, while not the neighbor's kid, was apparently legit.

I had hoped for a cool night: the wind was swaying the palms gently, but it was muggy, and I wished I could take my coat off; the guns prevented that. Around eight- the crowd having swelled to at least twice the arena's capacity, many of them sitting on the sides of the grassy bowl Miller and the thin bodyguard, Mulaney, showed up.

"Too many people," Miller said.

"Could be a blessing," I said.

"Only a goddamn crazy man would try something here."

"Yeah, I agree with you. But keep your eyes open anyway."

"I know how to do my job. Heller."

"I know you do."

Miller looked at me. searching for sarcasm; there wasn't any to find, and he figured that out, and took a position over toward the left of the stage. The other bodyguard moved over right. A few uniformed cops were on hand, by now; they were keeping people off the paved area, except for occasional children playing, who the cops tolerated good-naturedly. Vendors were moving through the crowd, as best they could, selling peanuts and lemonade. I had some.

Floodlights- red, white, and blue- swept the palms that fringed the amphitheater. A silver-helmeted drum-and-bugle corps from the Miami American Legion, preparing to march down the pier to greet FDR, assembled in the paved area in front of me and blared out half a dozen "tunes." They apparently didn't know I was armed.

The aisles were filled now; the areas to either side of the band shell and, I imagined, behind were clogged with people: men in shirt sleeves, women in thin summery frocks, a man's white shirt alternating with a woman's colorful dress, a flower bed of a crowd, a smiling crowd, despite the balmy night. The air hummed with conversation, as the crowd anticipated the presence of the man who, in just two weeks, would be inaugurated our thirty-second president, the crippled aristocrat who promised to lead us out of hard times. What the hell I voted for him myself, and nobody paid me to, which in Chicago speaks well for both voter and candidate.

Once the band had gone, limos bearing dignitaries swung around through the paved area, and the crowd, getting waved at, waved back and applauded, occasionally cheered; the limos went back behind the band shell, the dignitaries were unloaded, and they walked around front and up the steps at the center of the stage, and climbed the makeshift reviewing stand. Cermak. escorted by Lang and the other bodyguard, the chief of detectives' son, was one of the last to take his place, in the front row of the stands.

Lang came over to me. "Anything?" he asked.

"Nothing so far," I said

"Nothing's going to happen."

"It might. Stay on top of it."

He smirked and wandered off, toward Miller.

The chief of detective's son, whose name was Bill, said, "You think something's going to happen?"

"I don't know. I don't like the mayor sitting in the front row of those stands. I don't think anybody in this crowd could hit him, with a revolver, where he is. But he'd be better off on one of the back rows."

"Impossible. He's got to be able to get down quickly to Roosevelt before that car pulls out of here."

"What do you mean?"

"We got word Roosevelt isn't staying the night. He's catching the ten-fifteen train out of here."

"That means Cermak's got to make his move, where FDR's concerned, here and now."

"That's right."

I heard myself sighing. "He'll make a nice target," I said.

Bill shrugged; but he seemed a little uneasy, even frightened. I was glad somebody else was taking this seriously: Miller and Lang were talking, over at the left, smiling, smoking. The dopes.

Me, I was still watching the crowd, looking for that blond head, seeking that face that had been seared into my memory the afternoon Jake Lingle died in a subway tunnel. I didn't find the face I was looking for; but there were twenty or twenty-five thousand faces here by now, I figured. It was just possible I'd missed one or two.

The crowd was getting excited now, and a little loud, but off in the distance the sound of a Jolin Philip Sousa march could be heard. That really got 'em whipped up; that meant the parade was making its way here, and as the march got louder, the crowd did too, and they were cheering by the time the drum-and-bugle corps marched through the paved area in front of the band shell, blaring the president-elect's imminent arrival.

The band filed back around the band shell and a motorcycle escort rumbled across the paved area, and, just behind them, a light green touring car, its top lowered, rolled in to a stop in front of the steps leading to the stage. In the front seat was a uniformed police chauffeur and a plainclothes bodyguard. Half a dozen Secret Service men ran alongside the car or rode the running boards. In the back seat was the mayor of Miami- a heavyset balding man- and, in a dark suit with bow tie. hatless, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The crowd was on its feet, now, cheering; Roosevelt's smile was infectious, and when he waved, the sound of cheering swelled even louder, and Miami waved back at him. On the stage, the dignitaries were on their feet, too, applauding, and I could see Cermak anxiously trying to catch Roosevelt's eye. When Roosevelt turned to acknowledge those on the reviewing stand, he immediately recognized Cermak and registered surprise- as Cermak had known, the other big-shot Demos had all headed home or to Havana by now, and this made him the ranking national figure on the stage- and FDR waved at Cermak, called out to him. I couldn't hear over the crowd's roar, but he seemed to be inviting Cermak to come join him; surprisingly Cermak shook his head no, smiling as he did, and shouted something down to the president-elect, which I also couldn't make out. but assumed was something on the order of, "After you've finished speaking, sir."

Behind the light green touring car was a blue convertible of Secret Service men; several carloads of press had emptied out behind the band shell, and reporters with flashbulbs popping were moving around the edges of the paved area. A newsreel crew was hastily setting up at right. There had been a press conference on Astor's yacht, which this same batch of newshounds had just covered, so there'd been no opportunity to set up in advance.

From the touring car, the mayor was speaking into a hand mike. He was saying,"… We welcome him to Miami, we wish him success, and we are promising him cooperation and support, and bid him Godspeed."

The crowd began applauding again, and the applause really built as Roosevelt raised himself up. using his aims to push up into a sitting position on the lowered top at the rear of the car. The microphone was passed to him: he looked tanned, relaxed, after his twelve days of fishing. Loudspeakers sent his voice out to the eager crowd, most of whom were on their feet.

"Mr. Mayor, friends." Roosevelt began, with a smile like a half-circle, adding, "and enemies…"

He paused, so the crowd could laugh, and they did.

"I certainly appreciate the welcome of my many friends in Miami," Roosevelt said. "But I am not a stranger here…"

Looking at him perched there, a perfect target. I was glad it was Cermak I was here to protect and not Roosevelt; the crowd was milling a bit, reporters moving about, the newsreel cameras grinding, people pushing through the throng to try to get a closer look. Meanwhile, the president-elect continued his chatty, regular-folks monologue.

"I have had a wonderful rest and caught a great many fish," he was saying. "However, I will not attempt to tell you a fish story."

That's when I saw him.

He wasn't a blond anymore; that's part of why I'd missed him. He was to my left and stage right, off to the side, just where the green benches stopped and the standing-room-only started; he must've been back behind a layer of people, but had squeezed out in front, now. He wore a white suit; hatless, his hair was now dyed brown or had it been dyed blond? He was pale; that was the tip-off: among the tans of the Miamians and even most of the tourists, his pale countenance glowed like neon.

"I put on ten pounds during the trip," Roosevelt was saying, "and one of my first official duties will be taking the ten pounds off."

I moved away from the bench and the wall of flesh behind me closed tight as I edged alone the front of the first row; no one bothered me, or noticed me, because reporters and Secret Service men were stirring around, anyway. Miller and Lang were closer to the ex-blond than me, but their eyes were on Roosevelt, caught up in his charisma instead of watching the people like they were being paid to.

"I hope that I am able to come down next winter," Roosevelt said, finishing up, "see you all and have another ten days or two weeks in Florida waters."

Roosevelt smiled wide and nodded and waved and the roar of applause would have led you to believe the Gettysburg Address had just been spoken for the first time. Everybody was on their feet, some of them jumping up and down, whooping, hollering, and the people began moving forward, to get near him, right onto the paved area- the cops and Secret Service men didn't bother to try to stop the mass of humanity, perhaps realizing it wouldn't do any good. I could still see the ex-blond, moving in himself, unbuttoning his coat, but his eyes weren't on Roosevelt: his eyes were on the stage.

The newsreel boys were climbing up on the back of the green car, hollering at Roosevelt to go through the speech again, because one of their cameras had got fouled up; he said, "Sony, boys," and slid down onto the back seat, motioning to Cermak up on the stage.

As I did my best to plow through, moving against the tide. I could see Cermak, beaming, come down the steps off the platform toward Roosevelt. I even heard Roosevelt raising his voice above the din: "Hello there, Tony!"

Then Cermak was shaking hands with Roosevelt, talking to him, on the side of the car next to the stage, away from the crush of people.

And the ex-blond was reaching under his coat- but I was there. I grabbed the arm and pulled it away from the coat, and the hand came out with no gun in it, he hadn't got that far, but I saw the gun under his arm as his coat flapped, and he looked at me amazed and I buried a fist in his belly, and he doubled over. The people around us didn't seem to notice, as they continued to press forward.

I yanked the automatic out from under my shoulder and grabbed him by one arm and put the barrel in his face. He didn't look at it, though: he looked at me.

And the damnedest thing happened: he recognized me.

"You," he said. Eyes wide.

It had never occurred to me that the blond would recognize me; he'd only seen me that once, in the street, but the same was true for me, and I remembered him, didn't I? And he had no doubt followed the Lingle case, having a vested interest in its outcome, and my picture turned up in the papers in regard to that, so I

was a part of his life, just as he was part of mine. My image was as seared into his brain as his was in mine, and I said. "I got you this time, fucker."

Firecrackers went off.

That's what it sounded like, but I knew better. I whirled, without releasing my grip on him. and saw Cermak, well away from Roosevelt (who was being presented with a gigantic mock-telegram from the city of Miami), double over.

Shot.

And the firecrackers continued to so off.

I looked to where they were coming from, over to the right, stage left, and a bushy-haired head on a stumpy body was floating oddly above the mass of people around him, about five rows back, and then I realized the man had stood on one of the benches to do his shooting. The muzzle flashes from his long-barreled revolver made fireworks above the crowd.

And more people were going down.

The blond pulled away, and I swung at him, hard as I could, putting every fucking thing I had into it, right in the side of his face, and he crumpled, unconscious, and I moved toward Cermak, pushing, shoving, almost throwing people out of the way to get there.

Miller and Lang were crouching near him. and lanky, white-haired Alderman Bowler was kneeling, too, as if praying.

Cermak looked up at Miller and Lang; his glasses had been lost in the shuffle. He said, "Where were the goddamn bodyguards?"

I pushed my way past Bowler. "I had the blond, Your Honor. He didn't fire the shots."

Cermak smiled wanly. Sort of shrugged. "What the hell. They got me, Heller."

Roosevelt's touring car was still in place; the air was filled with screams, men and women both, and over toward where the shots had been fired, the crowd had turned into a mob.

"Kill him!"

"Lynch him!"

Roosevelt, momentarily shielded by his bodyguard, a sea of Secret Service men around him waving their aims, urging him to get out but getting a repeated curt "No!" from him, climbed out from under and pushed himself up in the back of the car and waved and smiled at the crowd, and yelled, "I am all right!"

A Secret Service man shouted, "Get out of here!" to Roosevelt's cop chauffeur. "Get the president out of here!" The cop moved forward and a couple motorcycle cops hit their sirens and began clearing a path.

I yelled to the moving car. "For Christ's sake. Cermak's shot! Take him out of here!"

Roosevelt must've heard me. because he turned and looked and leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur and stopped the car. Cermak had caught it in the front, under his right armpit, along his rib cage, and he was bleeding, but able to get to his feet. Bowler and a couple Miami politicos helped me walk Cermak to the waiting car. We helped him in back with Roosevelt, who looked at me and smiled and nodded. Cermak looked at Roosevelt and smiled- he finally had his private audience with the president-elect; then he passed out, and the car shot away.

A white-haired man holding his head, blood seeping between his fingers, staggered by; over on the steps to the band shell, a woman in her thirties in an evening gown crouched in pain, a hand on her stomach cupping red. The blue convertible that had followed Roosevelt into the paved area was still there, and a confused-looking young uniformed cop was still behind the wheel: I went over to him and said, "Get another man and load these wounded people up and get 'em the hell to a hospital."

"I'm supposed to stay with the car," he said.

I grabbed him by the shirtfront and some shiny buttons popped off. "Fuck the car!"

He swallowed, said, "Yes, sir," and got out of the car and started rounding up the wounded.

Off toward the left, people were piled on top of each other like a couple football teams all in on the tackle. Some uniformed cops and Secret Service men were trying to pull the people off.

Over the loudspeaker came: "Please leave the park! Please leave immediately!"

I went over and started pulling people off the pile and one of the cops used his nightstick judiciously, and we got the assassin out from under the onslaught, and it was a small man. little more than five feet tall, naked but for a few shreds of his khaki clothes, which had been ripped from his body by the mob.

The cop I'd got tough with was helping the white-haired bleeding man into the blue convertible; the woman in the evening gown was already in the back seat. So was another man bleeding at the head. I pointed at the car. and two uniformed officers who had the small, barely conscious figure by either arm, and another who held the assassin's nickel-plated revolver, nodded at me and we made our way toward it, and tossed him on the trunk rack of the car. The cops climbed on top of the little man, sat right on him, and the car moved away. As it did, the groggy little assassin looked at me and managed a little smile and blurted something; the cops sat on him harder. It wasn't the gentlest way to treat him, but it probably saved his life: the crowd wanted blood.

If they wanted it, all they had to do was look on the paved area where Roosevelt's car had been: pools of blood were scattered here and there, like color in one of the paintings in Mary Ann Beame's Tower Town flat. The people were still milling around, but the crowd was thinning.

I sat on the steps to the band shell. Next to me was some of the wounded woman's blood.

Miller and Lang wandered up to me. They stood and looked at me and shrugged.

Lang said, "What now?"

"If you want to stay employed." I said, "I'd find out what hospital Cermak was rushed to. and be on hand"

Miller and Lang exchanged glances, shrugged again, and wandered off.

One of the other two bodyguards. Bill, had overheard this; he came slowly up. He looked haggard.

■

"We should have stopped it." he said.

"Right," I said.

"Do you think it was an accident?"

"What?"

"Maybe the guy was after Roosevelt."

"Go away."

He went away.

The blond, who was now brown-haired, was long gone. I'd had him. and he was gone. Cermak was shot, possibly dying; and a little bushy-haired man had pulled the trigger.

The gardener I'd seen at the son-in-law's.

Well. I knew where they'd taken him: the county courthouse. That was where the jail was. I wanted to get in and talk to that Cuban or whatever the hell he was. Maybe the fools would believe Roosevelt was the target.

But they hadn't heard what the bushy-haired assassin had muttered to me. as the three cops sat on him and drove him away.

'Well." he'd said, looking right at me, with brown shiny eyes. "I got Cermak!"

The towering Gothic Dade County- Courthouse was starkly white against the night, lit up so you could see it for miles. Or anyway for blocks: it was only a matter of eight or so from Bayfront Park to the courthouse, which I walked, since traffic was still blocked off. Cops and sheriffs deputies swarmed the two flights of steps that rose to the entryway, where a row of two-story fluted columns loomed, like a reminder of more civilized times.

A cop, his hand on the butt of the revolver at his side, was pacing nervously at the curb.

I approached him. "I was at Bayfront Park," I said, showing him my identification. "A Cermak bodyguard."

"You did a swell job," he said.

"You're telling me. I take it they aren't here with the gunman yet."

"No. I don't know what the hell's keeping 'em; it ain't that far from the park."

"The car they threw the guy on the back of had some of the wounded in it. They probably went to the hospital first."

The cop nodded. "That must be it."

When the blue limo rolled up a few minutes later, the assassin was off the luggage rack and in the back seat with two cops sitting next to him. not on him; the chauffeur cop and the other cop were in front. They ushered the dark, bushy-haired little man out of the limo and up the steps- he was completely naked, even the khaki shreds I'd seen hanging on him at the park were gone now. and no one seemed concerned about providing him with something to cover up with, not that he seemed particularly concerned about it: he seemed calm, and had the faintest of smiles on his face. The swarm of cops parted like the red sea and moved in waves up the steps. I dove in.

That was when I noticed a guy at my side, in plainclothes; he definitely wasn't a deputy. He was wearing a gray snap-brim fedora, a black suit, a dark blue shirt, and a yellow tie. He was in his mid-thirties, but his brown hair was grayed, and he had a nervous, ferretlike manner.

We were in the midst of the crush of cops and inside the high courthouse lobby, when I turned to him and said, "Can I have your autograph, Mr. Winchell?"

He had a smile about two inches wide- tight, no teeth- and beady blue eyes that were cold as the marble around us. He pressed something in my hand. I looked at it: a five-dollar bill.

"Keep your trap shut, kid," he said, "and let me tag along with you."

"Be my guest," I said.

"Atta boy," he said. "There's another fin in it for you, you play your cards right."

I managed to pocket the five as. across the lobby from us. the elevator was opening and the assassin and a few of the cops squeezed in. apparently. Anyway, as soon as the elevator went up. the crowd of cops and deputies began to thin a bit. and they began milling about, and going their separate ways.

"Shit," Winchell said.

"How'd you get here so fast? You're the only reporter around."

"The rest of those jerks are probably at the hospitals and tagging after Roosevelt."

"I didn't see you with the press at the park."

"I was at the Western Union office, sending my column off to the Mirror, when I heard two guys arguing about how many shots the nut got off at Roosevelt. That's all I had to hear: I got over here so fast my ass won't catch up till Tuesday."

"The rest of the newboys'll catch up with you before it does."

"I know. Can you get me upstairs? The jail's on the twenty-eighth floor. I hear."

"I can try."

We moved over to the elevator, where two cops were stationed to keep the likes of Winchell away, I supposed. We wouldn't have got any farther than that, but one of the cops had been at the park and had seen me helping load the assassin on the back of the limo. So when I said I was Mayor Cermak's personal bodyguard and wanted to question the assassin and flashed my ID. he let me on the elevator.

"What about him?" the cop said, pointing at Winchell. He didn't seem to recognize the columnist; normally that would've hurt Winchell's feelings. I supposed. But he didn't seem to mind, under the circumstances.

"He's with me," I said.

The cop shrugged and said, "Okay. It's the nineteenth floor. That's where the isolation cells are."

We got on the elevator.

Winchell rocked on his heels, looking up at the floor indicator.

"I didn't think this sort of thing was your line." I said.

"My by-line's my line." he said, "and anytime I can pin it on a story that's more than just entertaining the poor slobs on Hard Times Square with how some chorus girl got a diamond bracelet for laying some millionaire, I will."

The door opened on the nineteenth floor, and the sheriff, a big, lumpy man in dark suitcoat, white pants, colorful tie, and misshapen hat, was standing talking to a uniformed cop, who had a nickel-plated.32 long-barreled revolver in the palm of his hand, like something he was offering the sheriff. The sheriff turned a glowering gaze upon us, his dark eyebrows knitting, but before he could say anything. Winchell stepped forward with a smile as confident as it was insincere.

"I'm Walter Winchell," he said, extending his hand, which the sheriff, whose mouth had dropped open, took. "Let me in there for five minutes with that lunatic and I'll put your name in every paper in the world."

The sheriffs expression had shifted from foul to awestruck and, now that fame was pumping his hand, to a fawning, simpering grin.

"Glad to have you in my jail, Mr. Winchell."

"As a temporary visitor, I hope," Winchell said, spitting words like seeds. "What can you tell me about the guest you just checked in?"

"He says his name's Zangara. Giuseppe Zangara. That's about all we got so far. His English is pretty bad. But I'm something of a linguist myself… speak a little Italian. I can translate for you, if you can't make out what he's trying to say in American."

"You're a gentleman. Sheriff. Lead the way."

"Wait a minute," the sheriff said, and turned to me. I was standing just behind Winchell, trying to be inconspicuous. "Who are you?"

I told him; the cop standing nearby, who had been one of the three I'd helped in wrestling the assassin onto the limo luggage rack, confirmed what I said.

"No Chicago people." the sheriff said, waving his hands. "We don't want any of you Chicago cops in here. We'll handle this our own way."

Winchell said. "Sheriff, he's with me."

The sheriff thought about that, said, "Well, okay, then. Come along."

We followed the sheriff, and I said to Winchell, "Thanks."

"Now we're even," he said. "Or we will be when you cough up that fin I gave you."

I gave him his five back.

The sheriff and the cop, the gun the assassin had used stuck in his belt, led us down a cellblock lit only by the lights coming from the corridor behind us. The individual cells stood empty, for the most part; we walked past one where a Negro squatted on his cot, watching us, mumbling. He was the only other prisoner on the floor.

At the end of the cellblock corridor, standing naked in the middle of his cell, was the man named, apparently, Giuseppe Zangara. He stood erect, unashamed. But not exactly defiant. As we joined two cops standing staring at their prisoner, I got a good look at him: about five feet six inches tall, weighing perhaps 115. with a wide scar across his stomach; his face long, narrow, square-jawed; his hair jet-black: his eyes bulging, dark, intense. That faint smile was still on his face; when he saw me- recognized me- that smile, momentarily, disappeared.

The sheriff looked through the bars at the calm, detached prisoner. He said, "I'm going to put you in the electric chair, friend."

Zangara shrugged. "That's okay. Put me in chair. I no afraid."

The sheriff turned to Winchell and said, "That's what you're up against, Mr. Winchell."

Winchell moved in, stood as close to the bars as he could get. "You know who I am?"

"No," Zangara said.

"My name's Walter Winchell. Ever hear of me?"

Zangara thought about that. "Maybe."

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea…'"

Zangara grinned. "Radio. Sure. I know you. Famous man."

"You want to be famous, Giuseppe?"

"Joe. Call me Joe. I'm American citizen."

"You want to be famous. Joe?"

"I want to kill president."

"To be famous?"

He thought about it.

"You talk to me." Winchell went on, "and you'll be famous. Talk. Joe."

Zangara looked at me. Waiting for me to spill the beans, I guess. I wasn't talking.

He was: "I try kill president. I try kill him because I no like government. Capitalists all crooks. Everything just for money. Take all president- kings, capitalists- kill. Take all money burn. That's my idea. That's why I want to kill president."

"But you didn't kill the president, Joe."

Zangara didn't seem too broken up about that. "I failure," he shrugged.

"You shot a lot of other people. They may die."

Another shrug. "Too bad."

"Then you're sorry?"

"Yeah. sure, sorry like when bird, horse, cow die. Not my fault. Bench was shaky."

"What do you mean?"

"Bench I stand on to kill president, it shaky."

"It wobbled, you mean? That's why you missed?"

"Sure." He looked at me again, puzzled this time. He wondered why I wasn't asking him about seeing him at Cermak's son-in-law's place; he wondered why he was getting away with his "Kill-the-president" routine. I let him wonder.

Winchell got out a notebook, finally, said, "Let's start from the beginning, Joe."

"Fine."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-three."

"Where were you bora?"

"Italy."

"How long have you been in America?"

"Been here, 1923_; September."

"Ever been married, Joe?"

"No."

"Your parents living?"

"My father living. My mother die when I was stepmother. Six sisters."

"Where is your family now?"

"Calabria."

"In Italy?"

"Yeah." wo years old. I no remember my mother. I have

"What have you been doing since you got to America, Joe?"

"Oh, work. Bricklayer." He glanced at me. smiled briefly, nervously, rubbed his small hand over his stubbly chin and cheek with tapering fingers, added, "Sometimes gardener."

Winchell kept shooting questions, taking the answers down with the fastest pencil I ever saw. "Where have you lived in America?"

"Lot of time in New Jersey. Sometime Miami, sometime New York. I suffer with stomach"- he pointed to the six-inch scar across his belly- "when cold, so I come Miami."

"What have you been doing since you've been down here?"

"Nothing. I have little money."

The sheriff touched Winchell's arm. He said, "He had forty dollars on him, in what was left of his trousers."

Winchell nodded, filing that away, went on. "Ever been in trouble before, Joe?"

"No, no trouble, no, no. I not been in any jail. This is first time."

"Did you ever try to hurt anybody before?"

"No, no. no."

"How long did you plan this shooting? When did it first come into your mind?"

"All the time my stomach is in my mind." He held two hands like claws in front of his scarred stomach and frowned; this much he seemed to be telling the truth about.

"Tell me about your stomach, Joe."

"When I work in brick factory, I burn my stomach. Then I become bricklayer."

"Your stomach still bothers you?"

"Sometimes I get big pain in my stomach. I suffer too much. Fire in my stomach. Make fire in my head and I turn 'round like I am drunk man and I feel like I want shoot myself, and I figure, why I shoot myself? I am going to shoot president. If I was well, I no bother nobody."

"Don't you want to live, Joe? Don't you enjoy living?"

"No, because I sick all time."

"Don't you want to live?"

"I don't care whether I live or die. I don't care for that."

"Joe. there's something I gotta ask."

"You famous man. Ask what you like."

"Is there any insanity in your family. Joe?"

"No."

"Nobody crazy?"

"Nobody in crazy house."

"Are you a drinking man, Joe?"

"I can't drink. I can't drink. If I drink. I die. because my stomach is fire. I can't drink nothing."

"Can you eat?"

"I can't eat. Eat just a little bit, hurt me. Burn me. I come Miami for specialists but nobody can help the trouble."

"You said you're a citizen, Joe?"

"Yeah. Bricklayer union make me."

"Anybody in this country ever harm you?"

"No. nobody, no."

"You made a living here, didn't you? What kind of trouble did you have here?"

Zangara grimaced, impatient with Winchell for the first time; he pointed a finger at the scar. "Trouble is here. What is use of living? I better dead, suffer all the time, suffer all the time."

That stopped Winchell; amazing that anything could stop him. but it did, momentarily, and I stepped in and said, "Are you dying, Joe? Did you come here to Miami to die?"

His teeth flashed in the whitest grin I ever saw. "My job done," he said.

Winchell glanced at me, irritably, probably wishing he hadn't allowed me along, and started back in. "Why did you wait till Mr. Roosevelt had finished speaking? He was a better target when he was sitting up on the car."

That threw Zangara, just a bit, and he almost stuttered as he said, "No have chance because of people in front. Standing up."

"They were standing up when you shot at him. You had to stand on a bench to do it, right?"

"I do best I can. Not my fault. Bench shaky."

"That's where I came in." Winchell said to himself, glancing at his notes so far.

I said. "Did you know Mayor Cermak?"

The hand nervously stroked the rough chin and cheek again; the dark eyes avoided mine. "No. I didn't know him. I just want to kill the president."

"You don't know who Mayor Cermak is?"

"No, no, no. I want just the president. Just know president because I see picture in paper."

"Cermak had his picture in the paper lately. A couple of times."

Winchell butted back in, but picked up my thread. "Are you worried that Cermak might die?"

"Never hear of him."

"Joe, what's the Mafia?"

"Never hear of him, either."

Winchell looked at me; I smiled at him blandly.

He said, "You didn't shoot at Mayor Cermak? The Mafia didn't hire you to shoot at Mayor Cermak?"

Cocky now, almost laughing, Zangara said, "That's a baloney story."

"Why didn't you try to get away in the park, Joe?"

"Couldn't get away there. Too many peoples."

"Wasn't that suicidal, Joe?"

Zangara blinked.

"Risky, Joe," Winchell said. "Wasn't that risky?"

The naked little man shrugged again. "You can't see presidents alone. Always peoples."

"Are you an anarchist, Joe? A Communist?"

"Republican," he said.

That stopped Winchell, too.

Then he said, "So you wouldn't try to kill President Hoover, I suppose."

"Sure. If I see him first, I kill him first. All same, it makes no difference."

The sheriff interrupted. "Zangara, if Mr. Roosevelt came in this jail and you had your pistol back in your hand, would you kill him now?"

"Sure."

"Do you want to kill me? Or the policemen who caught you?"

"I no care to kill police. They work for living. I am for workingman, against rich and powerful. As a man. I like Mr. Roosevelt. As a president. I want to kill him."

Winchell jumped back in. "Do you believe in God. Joe? Do you belong to a church?"

"No! No. I belong to nothing. I belong only to myself, and I suffer."

"You don't believe there is any God. heaven or hell or anything like that?"

"No. Everything on this earth like weed. All on this earth. There no God. It's all below."

Winchell had run out of questions.

Zangara turned and walked toward the window in his cell. He could see Biscayne Bay out of it. A gentle breeze was coming through: I could feel it from where I stood.

The sheriff said. "We'll get you a lawyer tomorrow, Zangara."

His bare back still to us. he said, "No lawyer. I don't want nobody to help me."

The sheriff asked Winchell if he was done, and Winchell nodded, and we walked back out through the cellblock, our footsteps echoing, the black man still sitting on his haunches on his cot; he was laughing, now. to himself. Rocking back and forth.

At the elevator the sheriff shook Winchell's hand and spelled his name for Winchell three times; and we went down.

Winchell was silent in the elevator, but outside, in the Miami night air. he put a hand on my arm and said. "What's your name, kid?"

"Heller."

He smiled; showed some teeth for a change. "Aren't you going to spell it?"

"I don't want to be in your story."

"Good, 'cause you're not. You're Chicago, right?"

"Born and bred."

"What do you make of that back there?"

"You're New York. What do you make of it?"

"Hogwash."

"Is that what they call it in New York?"

"It's one of the things you can call it in print. Bullshit by any name would smell as sweet."

"That scar on his stomach isn't bullshit."

"No. It's real enough. Ever hear of Owney Madden?"

Raft's gangster friend.

"Sure," I said.

"He's a pal of mine," Winchell said. "He saved my life when Dutch Schultz got mad at me. I got a little fresh in my column, where Schultz and Vince Coll were concerned. Predicted Coil's murder the day before it happened."

"And Schultz didn't like that."

"No, and I was on the spot. I lived under the threat of a gangland execution for months; I had a goddamn nervous breakdown from it, kid. I ain't ashamed to say."

"Your point being?"

"I'm a public figure. They shouldn't have been able to bump me off without a major stink. I pointed this out to Owney. You know what he said?"

"What?"

"They could find a way, he said. They could find a way and nobody would even know it was them who bumped me off."

We stood halfway down the steps of the courthouse, the balmy breeze fanning us like a lazy eunuch.

"I think that little bastard hit Cermak," Winchell said. "I think he thinks he's dying from that stomach of his anyway, and they probably promised to support that family of his back in Italy in return for him taking Tony out. and for his silence. What do you think?"

"I think you're right on the money." I said. "But if you print it, nobody'll ever believe it."

"What's a guy to do?" Winchell asked. "The bullshit they'll believe."

And he walked off. looking for a taxi, now that traffic was moving again.

The next morning around seven. I read the Herald over breakfast in the Biltmore coffee shop: peeking out between the eyewitness accounts of last night's shooting at the park was an item about General Dawes. He was finally testifying to that Senate committee about the Insull case. Yes, it was true that he had loaned Insull eleven million dollars of the twenty-four-million-dollar capital and surplus of the Dawes bank; and he copped to "putting too many eggs in one basket." Puffing his pipe and nodding ruefully, he admitted, "The bankers of this country in retrospect look pretty sad." When asked for suggestions for new banking laws, he said, "I don't want to give any half-baked views on new laws- though that is a habit not unknown in Washington." The latter apparently got the General a laugh from the gallery. But not from me.

Then I went up to my room and packed my white suit and my two guns, and checked out and drove the forty-buck Ford to the northwest section of Miami. Up a winding lane lined with hibiscus, oleanders, jasmine, and crocus bushes was Jackson Memorial Hospital, a two-story building with any number of long rambling white stucco wings with red tile roofs and awnings on the windows, set amid lush palms.

I parked in the adjacent lot and walked to the entrance, where twenty or so beautiful young nurses were standing around chattering, all smiles and excitement, apparently awaiting the arrival of someone special; that someone did not seem to be me.

Within the reception area in the main wing were most of the reporters from the park last night, and then some. No Winchell. however. He'd filed his big story? and was leaving the pickings for lesser lights. Over against one wall Western Union had set up wires and typewriters for the press.

Two Secret Service men stopped me as I entered and asked who I was; I told them, showed them ID, and asked if there was any possibility of seeing Cermak. Without answering, one of them took me by the arm and walked me through the wall-to-wall reporters to a corridor just past the reception desk.

Still holding onto my arm. the Secret Service man said, to two more of his ilk guarding this corridor, "This is the guy Cermak's been asking to see."

Everybody except me nodded gravely, and I was escorted by the same guy down the corridor- which was bordered on either side by more pretty nurses. It was like a hospital scene in the latest production of Earl Carroll's Vanities: the cuties were all smiles and giggles as if about to break out into a song and tap dance.

The Secret Service man saw me falling over my feet, trying to look at both sides of the nurse-lined corridor at once, and said, "There's a nurses' training school here. The reporters have been taking a lot of pictures this morning."

"I bet."

Between clusters of nurses, doorways to hospital rooms stood open, and patients in bed were sitting up, leaning over in some cases, to get a look at me. Or who they hoped I'd be.

"When are you expecting Roosevelt, anyway?" I said.

The Secret Service man frowned at me, like I'd just let something big out of the bag. "He's due any time now."

Like any good parade, this one had pretty girls and flowers: floral displays lined the walls, stretching to the end of the corridor, where some people were grouped, among them Alderman Bowler, some more Secret Service men. a couple Miami detectives, and several white-coated doctors. Standing on either side of the door to the nearby hospital room were Lang and Miller.

"Doctor," the Secret Service man said. "This is Mr. Heller. The gentleman Mayor Cermak has been requesting."

Lang and Miller exchanged smirks at the word "gentleman."

White-haired Alderman Bowler gave me a weary smile and extended his hand. I took it, and Bowler said, "You kept your wits about you last night, young man. Thank you for that."

"That's more thanks than I deserve," I said. "How is the mayor doing?"

One of the doctors, a middle-aged man who, prematurely, was as gray as Bowler, said, "We're hopeful."

The other doctor, a younger man with glasses and a parchment tan, said, "There's no use deluding ourselves. The mayor's life's in danger. The bullet- which is still in him, just over his right kidney pierced his right lung, and he's been coughing up some blood. There's a strain on his heart. And there's always danger of pneumonia developing, and/or infection."

The other doctor shot a withering glance at the younger one. who didn't seem to notice, or anyway care.

"I suppose." the older doctor said, "my colleague's reason for telling you all this is to give you a sense of the caution you need to take."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just that the mayor insists on seeing you; he's a stubborn man. and arguing with him on the subject will cause the very sort of excitement that we would like to avoid. So we're acquiescing to his wishes, where you're concerned."

"I'll take it easy with him. Doc. How are the other victims?"

"Only Mrs. Gill was seriously wounded," the younger one said. "She's in critical condition. The other four sustained only minor wounds."

The older doctor said, "Why don't you go on in."

I put my hand on the door to push it open and, just before I went in, said to Miller, as if noticing him for the first time, "Oh? Do you still work here?"

Cermak, propped up in bed- an older, nontrainee nurse hovering at his side- looked at me and managed a lopsided smile. His skin was gray, his eyes half-closed, his lips pallid. His hands were folded over his belly. All around the room, and in an adjoining sunroom where the other two bodyguards sat.

were flowers.

"I haven't seen so many flowers since Dion O'Bannion got killed," I said.

He laughed at that, just a little, and the nurse frowned at me, then at him.

I was at his bedside now. "How you feeling. Mayor?"

He shrugged with his face. "I wouldn't buy me if I was for sale," he said. His voice was breathy. "We need to talk."

"Fine."

He turned his head toward the nurse; it was an effort, but he did it. "Get out," he said.

She didn't think that was at all friendly, but she didn't bother arguing the point. She'd already spent some time with His Honor, apparently, and knew the futility of fighting him.

When she had gone, he said, "Shut the sunroom door for me, Heller."

I did that.

"And the window," he said.

I did that, too: two uniformed cops were standing outside the first-floor room, and they turned and danced at me as I brought the window down.

Then I went to his bedside; on the stand next to the bed was a stack of telegrams, thick as a book. The one on top was from the mayor of Prague.

"You know, Heller," he said, "I didn't know I'd been shot. I felt something stun me, like a jolt of electricity. But I didn't hear the shots, what with the noise of the crowd. Then my chest felt like the center of it was on fire."

"He got away, Your Honor."

"I was told they got him."

"I mean the blond."

"Oh."

"Assassins work in teams, usually. One of them shoots, the other is simply backup. The blond was the backup. Only if the assassin had missed you would the backup have started shooting, and probably would've got away with it, too, since the crowd's attention was on the little man emptying his gun at the president's car. The blond probably had a silenced gun, or was planning to pass himself off as a cop or Secret Service man in the confusion. He's worked a crowd before. Anyway, I made the mistake, because I knew he'd pulled a trigger in the past, of assuming he'd pull the trigger this time. I was wrong."

"You did what you could. If the other people working for me had done as good as you… well. They didn't, did they?"

"You'll get no argument from me on that score."

"I guess ultimately I got myself to blame."

I wouldn't have argued with him on that score, either, but didn't say so. Instead I said. "Have you seen the papers?"

"They haven't shown them to me." Cermak said. "I've been told the basics. Zangara? Is that the name?"

"That's the name."

"Italian, they say."

"That's right."

"What do the papers say exactly?"

"That this guy Zangara was trying to shoot Roosevelt."

He smiled a little. "Good."

"I thought maybe you'd feel that way. That's one of the reasons why I've been keeping my trap shut."

"About what?"

"Remember that gardener I was suspicious about? I had you check with your son-in-law to see if he'd hired any yardwork done?"

Cermak nodded.

"Well. I didn't check that out thoroughly enough. Another mistake I made. Your son-in-law undoubtedly did hire a gardener; but the guy I saw? trimming the hedges around that house wasn't who he hired. It was Zangara. Checking out the lay of the land."

Cermak said nothing.

"I got into the jail last night. I heard Zangara's story. It isn't much of a story, but it's probably going to hold up. He'll stick by it, anyway. I can see it in his eyes."

"You think Nitti sent him."

"Yeah. And so do you."

Cermak said nothing. His breathing was slow, heavy.

"I was hired to stop this." I said, "and I didn't. But one of the reasons I was lured to stop it was to avoid bad publicity. My client's business interests would not be served by having it widely known that you were shot by a Syndicate torpedo."

Cermak said. "Nor would mine."

I shrugged. "Fine. Then I'll keep your gardener's identity a deep dark secret, and you'll be a hero to all concerned- despite the fact that half the eyewitnesses say Zangara was shooting directly at you. By the way. did you really say that to the president?"

He looked puzzled. "Did I really say what?"

"The papers have you saying. 'I'm glad it was me instead of you.'"

Cermak laughed. "That's a crock of shit."

"Good for your public image, though."

He thought about it. Then he said, "I was elected to clean up Chicago's reputation, Heller. I was elected to be the goddamn world's fair mayor. And that's what I'm gonna be."

"Take it easy, Your Honor."

"It'll take more than one fucking bullet to pull this tough old hunky down. You go back and tell Chicago

I'm gonna pull through."

"But don't tell 'em anything else." I said.

"Right," he said.

The door opened and Bowler stuck his gray head in. "FDR's coming up the drive. Mr. Heller, would you mind…?"

I started to go, but Cermak said, "Why don't you stay."

"Okay," I said.

Bowler found that curious, but said nothing and went out.

Cermak said, "I could use a steak right now."

"What with that stomach trouble of yours?"

"Yeah, and I can feel it acting up. But I could still use a steak."

"Or some liver and dumplings?"

"Yeah, that's an idea. That'd plug up this goddamn hole."

There was scattered applause out in the corridor: the nurses were finally getting to greet who they'd been waiting for. No singing or tap-dancing, though.

Bowler stepped in and held the door open and President-elect Roosevelt, in a wheelchair, rolled in with a big smile and a number of people following him, among them the two doctors and the Secret Service man who'd earlier taken my arm. Roosevelt, in a cream-color suit, looked tan and fit. but, despite that patented smile, the eyes behind his glasses were red, worried.

"You look fine, Tony!" Roosevelt said, wheeling over to the bedside and extending his hand, which Cermak managed to take. "The first thing you know you'll be back on your feet."

"I hope so," Cermak said, his voice sounding suspiciously fainter than it had when we had spoken moments before. "I hope that'll be in time for your inauguration."

"Well, if you can't make it by then, you'll come and see me at the White House a little later."

"It's a date, Mr. President."

Roosevelt glanced at me. "I know you," he said.

"Not really, sir," I said.

"You called out to me last night, and asked me to wait for Tony, here."

"I suess I did."

"I'd like to shake your hand."

I went over and shook his hand; it was a firm handshake.

"It's your quick thinking that has saved Tony's life." he said. "What's your name, son?"

I told him.

"Are you with the Chicago police?"

"Formerly. I'm a private operative. A bodyguard, last night. I'm reluctant to admit."

"I had good people all around me, Mr. Heller. There's not much you can do about a madman with a gun. Bob Clark, with the Secret Service and one of my best people, was right there, and he couldn't do anything about it- except get wounded himself. Just a graze, I'm pleased to say. You know, he's the man who accompanied one of your fellow Chicagoans to Atlanta Penitentiary a while back. A Mr. Al Capone. Of course I don't imagine either of you would run in the same circles as that fellow."

Roosevelt smiled at each of us, one at a time; Cermak and I returned his smile, but I was wondering if Roosevelt was just making a little joke or, if he knew of Cermak's reported Capone connections, a veiled reference indicating he suspected last night's gunplay was Chicago-bred.

In any event. Cermak changed the subject immediately. "Before you got to town," he said to Roosevelt. "I had a nice visit with Jim Farley."

Roosevelt looked at Cermak with surprise. "Yes, Jim has mentioned that to me. I spoke with him long distance today- he sends his best."

"We talked about the schoolteacher's salaries in Chicago, that have gone unpaid so long."

Roosevelt nodded.

"We've had difficulty collecting taxes in Chicago for two years. Big Bill left us a real mess; you know that. Mr. President. I am hoping you will be able to help us obtain a loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation sufficient to pay the teachers' back salaries."

Roosevelt was smiling, just a little; I thought I could see amazement in his expression. Amazement at Cermak's shamelessness in making political hay out of his situation. Cermak had him over a barrel: once the press got wind of the selfless requests from the hospital bed of the man who'd taken a bullet for him, Roosevelt would have little choice but to do his best to honor those requests.

"I'll see what I can do, Tony," Roosevelt nodded.

"Frank…"

"Yes, Tony?"

"I'm glad it was me instead of you."

And Cermak winked at the president-elect.

In the background. Bowler's eyes went wide.

Roosevelt smiled slyly; he'd seen the papers, too. For a moment I thought he might agree with Cermak: I'm glad it was you, too, Tony.

But instead he said, "I'll see you at the world's fair. Tony."

And wheeled out of the room, the entourage following- all but one doctor, the older one, who said to me, "Mr. Heller? Please?"

"Okay," I said, and moved toward the door.

As I did, Cermak began to cough; the doctor rushed past me. There was blood on Cermak's chin.

"Get the nurse," the doctor said to me.

I went out in the corridor and got her.

The doctor was wiping the blood off Cermak's face when I got back, but Cermak was grasping his stomach, his fingers like claws.

"How much pain are you in?" he asked.

"Terrible pain," Cermak said. "It's the… old trouble of mine. The stomach. Causing me terrible pain. Stomach hurts. It hurts."

I slipped out of the room; I didn't say good-bye to Lang and Miller.

I drove my forty-buck Ford back to the guy I bought it from and he informed me it was now a twenty-five-buck Ford, and I sold it to him for that and caught my 2:30 P.M. train back to Chicago.

Mayor Cermak's funeral was held in Chicago Stadium, where, the summer before. Franklin Roosevelt had been nominated for president. The floor of the stadium was elaborately landscaped into a huge cross of lawn and flowers. About twenty-five thousand people filled the stadium- approximately the same number who'd filled the bowl at Bayfront Park. Eulogies were presented by a priest, minister, and rabbi- a "balanced ticket," as one cynic said, reflecting Cermak's only true religion: politics.

And many politicians were on hand, of course; but President Roosevelt wasn't one of them. Just a few days before had been his inauguration. And today he was still in the midst of the banking crisis that had him declaring bank holidays and pushing an emergency banking act through a special session of Congress, among the many other bold moves that marked the opening days of his administration. He did send a representative to the funeral, though: Jim Farley, whose attention Cermak now, finally, commanded.

Governor Horner gave the political eulogy. He said, among other things, "The mayor met his public foes in battle array and attacked with such force and rapidity that the well-organized army of the underworld was soon confused and scattered."

The greatest public funeral in Chicago's history, they called it; and no matter where you were in Chicago on the bitterly cold morning of March 10, 1933, you couldn't miss it. I was in my office, trying out the radio that I'd finally bought- and found the two-and-a-half-hour ceremony being broadcast on most of the stations. I also found myself drawn to listening to it, dull as it was. I was fascinated by Chicago's efforts to turn Cermak into the "martyr mayor," and a little surprised at how little trouble Chicago was having swallowing it.

A few newspaper articles suggesting the mob connection appeared in the days following the shooting; but the chief of detectives- whose son was one of Cermak's bodyguards, remember- had publicly dismissed the theory, and it hadn't reared its head since.

And then the papers had been full of the up-and-down battle Cermak was waging for his life; that, more than anything, had turned him into a hero. The doctors issued statement after statement citing Cermak's "indomitable courage and will to live"; from the start he was given at least a fifty-fifty chance to pull through.

As for Zangara, he was tried for attempted murder, four counts: Roosevelt, Cermak, and two of the other victims. His story remained for the most part the same as the one he related to Winchell. Occasionally details would shift, but usually it was the same- often word for word the same, delivered with the quiet smile of somebody who knows something you don't know. The psychiatrists examined him and termed him sane; and the judge gave him eighty years. Zangara laughed and said, "Oh, Judge, don't be stingy. Give me a hundred years." And was taken back to his skyscraper jail cell.

A few things came out at the trial that nobody- including the defense- seemed very interested in. One was the testimony of several Miami Beach hotel clerks who said that Zangara was constantly receiving mail and packages postmarked Chicago, and always seemed to have plenty of money. The manager of the pawnshop Zangara bought his.32 revolver from said that he'd done business with Zangara for nearly two years and that "… he was supposed to be a bricklayer, but he didn't work at that trade- he always seemed to have money."

Zangara had money, all right: he admitted losing two hundred dollars at the dog track a day or so before the shooting, and in addition to the money he'd had on him- fort)' bucks- he had two hundred and fifty dollars in a postal savings account. His bankbook showed that the account had. not long ago, contained twenty-five hundred dollars. No one asked Zangara what became of the money, whether he'd sent it home to his father and stepmother and six sisters in Italy, with whom even now he was corresponding. The prosecution did ask Zangara where the money came from, and he had no explanation, other than insisting that he'd earned it as a bricklayer- even though he'd been out of work three years.

Other stories circulated that had no apparent basis in fact: some of the papers reported that Zangara had a drawerful of clippings about Roosevelt's visit to Miami, as well as others about the assassinations of Lincoln and McKinley. Testimony on the witness stand by investigators made no mention of any such clippings.

But Zangara's litany- "kill the president, kill any president, kill all president"- drowned everything else out. Nobody seemed to notice that Zangara's raving usually was accompanied by a nervous smile, like a child actor who knows the lines but doesn't really have the maturity to give a convincing performance.

I didn't see any of this in person, of course; but it made the newsreels. That sheriff whose shorts Winchell had dropped the fame bug down appeared with Zangara in most of the reels; and Zangara seemed to have been bitten by the bug, too, as he was pictured more than once sitting in his cell surrounded by newspapers with his name in headlines. The judge at Zangara's trial also made the newsreels, giving interviews about the special summation he'd made before pronouncing sentence, in which he'd made an urgent plea for control of handguns: several civic groups took the judge's lead but went another step with it. urging handguns be outright banned.

On hearing of Zangara's eighty-year sentence, Cermak, in the midst of a rally (a political rally, by the time Cermak got through with it), said, "They certainly mete out justice pretty fast in this state." He went on to wistfully wonder why other states didn't learn from Florida's example, and stamp out crime via speedier trials.

And when, after the daily reports of improvement alternating with crisis came to an end, Cermak died in a coma on the morning of March 6, the state of Florida didn't disappoint him. Zangara was retried within three days, and sentenced to die at Raiford Penitentiary on March 20. The papers said the electric chair sat in the midst of a little cubicle at the end of a long corridor; when Zangara sat in it, he must've looked like a kid in a grotesque high chair.

He'd taken that seat of his own accord, shaking free from the grasp of two guards who meant to lead him to it; he sat and said, smiling, "See? I no scared of electric chair." But then he looked about and saw no cameramen among the handful of reporters present in the visitors' gallery. And he said, "No camera? No movie to take a picture of Zangara?"

The warden said, "No. That isn't allowed."

"Lousy capitalists!"

Guards placed a black hood over his head and he said, "Good-bye- adios to all the world, lousy world." And then: "Push the button."

And Zangara got his way.

Of course it came out. within days of the execution, that the real cause of Cermak's death was colitis, despite an autopsy report attributing the primary cause of death to the gunshot wound, enabling Florida to rush Zangara to judgment. The nine physicians who signed the report, with colitis listed only as a contributing factor, later admitted that the wound was at best "indirectly" responsible; that, as earlier reports indicated, the wound had in fact healed; that Cermak had indeed died of ulcerative colitis, that "old problem" of his.

Of course the way I saw it, fair was fair: Zangara's bellyache had killed Cermak, in a way; why shouldn't Cermak's bellyache return Zangara the favor?

The morning the state of Florida was frying Joe Zangara, the state of Illinois was attempting to try Frank Nitti for shooting police Sgt. Harry Lang in the hand while resisting arrest. I hadn't been called to the grand jury indictment hearing in January, due no doubt to Cermak's string-pulling and the general assumption that the case was cut-and-dried; but for the trial I was present, sitting next to Lang with Miller on the other side of him, as we all waited to see if we'd get to speak our pieces today. Lang and Miller had been very friendly to me, so far; just three pals getting their day in court.

Nitti and his counsel approached the bench. Nitti, looking tan and healthy but a trifle thin, was wearing a blue serge suit with a blue tie; he looked like a business executive, except perhaps for the barber-slick hair.

I heard Lang whisper to Miller, "Jesus, look at Nitti. He's brown as a berry. Where'd the wop get the tan?"

I said, in less of a whisper than Lang, "Haven't you guys heard? Nitti's been in Miami vacationing, and looking after his business interests."

They turned and looked at me blankly.

Then Lang whispered, "No kidding?"

"No kidding. He went down the day after Cermak got shot. Probably a show of support for the people who work for him, down Miami way. Sort of a busman's holiday, while he healed up from your police-work."

Lang thought about that and swallowed; behind the Coke-bottle lenses, Miller seemed to be putting two plus two together, too.

Then, forgetting to be nice, Lang sneered and said, "What makes you so well-informed?"

"Ever hear of a guy named Ness?" I said.

They thought about that awhile, too, as up at the bench Nitti's lawyer- a well-dressed Italian shorter than his client- was filing a motion for a continuance.

"I want to question the three officers in the case," the attorney said. "I just got into this case last Friday, and need time to prepare thoroughly."

The judge asked Nitti to step forward and approach the bench, and asked him to plead.

"Not guilty," Nitti said. "And I want a jury trial."

Lang was shifting nervously in his seat.

Nitti's attorney asked for a ruling on the continuance, and, despite the prosecutor's demand for an immediate trial, the case was held over till April 6.

I had the end seat, and got up and started to leave.

Lang stopped me in the aisle, smiled. "I guess I'll be seeing you in April."

Miller was standing behind him like a fat shadow.

"I guess so," I said.

Then, in a stage whisper, Lang said, "A deal's a deal, Heller."

I smiled at him. "That deal's with a dead man. You're on your own, jackass."

Lang sputtered. "Listen, Heller, Cermak"

"Is dead. See you in court."

And I left. Behind me. Lang and Miller huddled like a football team that wondered where the hell their quarterback went to.

I wasn't sure yet whether I was just giving them a bad time, or if I really meant something by all that; but the prosecutor, a feisty little guy who didn't dress as good as Nitti's lawyer, was waiting for me out in the hall.

"Got a minute, Heller?" he asked.

"I got to get back to my office."

"I just want to say one thing: You didn't give testimony at the inquest. And you weren't called at the grand jury hearing."

"That's two things."

"No it isn't." he said. "It's one thing: you haven't perjured yourself yet." Like any good trial lawyer, he knew when to pause dramatically; he paused dramatically, and said, "Now. Got a minute?"

We went to his office.

It was Thursday, April 6, and I was sitting in a speakeasy with Eliot Ness.

"I don't usually have a beer for breakfast," Eliot was saying, raising the mug to his wry smile.

It was Barney's speak, of course, and it was closed. We were the only ones in the joint, except for Barney himself, who was sitting in the booth next to me and across from Eliot, saying, "Might be your last chance to break the law this way, Mr. Ness."

Despite the fact they were both my friends, Barney and Eliot barely knew each other; and on the few occasions I did get them together, they insisted on calling each other "mister." I tried to stop 'em, but it didn't do any good: they respected each other, and I just couldn't seem to talk 'em out of it.

"So it's all over, tonight at midnight," I said.

Eliot shrugged. "It's been over for months. But, technically, just because beer's legal again doesn't mean the dry agents'll dry up, not right away anyway." He gestured over toward Barney's bar, behind which bottles lined the mirror. "That stuffs still a crime, you know."

Barney said, "I just haven't crated that up, yet. We're only serving setups, till Repeal comes in a hundred percent."

"It's only in three point two percent, at the moment," Eliot said. "Can I have another one of these?"

"Sure. HI get it…"

"I can get it. It'll be a change of pace, drawing a beer without using an ax."

Eliot went over behind the bar and got himself a beer.

"No kidding, Barney," I said, "you're really packing the hard stuff up and sticking with beer and setups?"

He nodded. "Winch and Pian have been on my case about a nice respectable Jewish contender like me running a speakeasy, so now that I can open up legal, I'm gonna. You'll be able to buy your rum here aboveboard and over-the-counter, 'fore too long. Roosevelt'll come through for us, wait and see."

Eliot was back; sat down. Sipped his beer and said to Barney, "When are they going to give you your shot at Canzoneri? After you put Billy Petrole away at the stadium last month, I don't see how they can deny you."

"You spoiled my surprise, Mr. Ness," Barney grinned, "I haven't told Nate yet, 'cause we won't get the contracts back signed and sealed till this afternoon. But I put my John Henry down a couple days ago. I'm getting my title shot."

I said, "Barney, that's great. When's it set for?"

"June. Gonna take advantage of those world's fair crowds."

"That's just great, Barney."

"I'll have tickets for you guys if you want 'em. I hope you both'll be there."

Eliot said. "Try and stop us." and raised his mug of beer in a toast.

Barney turned to me. "Can I get you a beer or something? Help me celebrate a little?"

"No thanks, champ. I got to testify in half an hour."

Eliot looked at his watch. "That's right." He drained the beer. "Let's 20."

Near the Bismarck there was a parking lot. where Eliot left his government Ford, and we walked over to City Hall, half of which was the County Building, where the courtroom was. The day was cloudy and in the lower forties, windy enough to be chilly; a light rain fell. We walked with our heads lowered and our hands dug in our raincoat pockets.

"Eliot," I said.

"Yeah?"

"This prosecutor."

"Charley, you mean?"

"You just answered my question."

"What question?"

"I've just been wondering if the prosecutor was a friend of yours, that's all."

He pretended not to get my drift.

But before we went in the building, I stopped him, put a hand on his arm and we stood in the rain, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath.

"I know you got my best interests at heart," I said.

"Yeah,'but'..."

I grinned. "No 'buts' about it. I know you got my best interests at heart. Thanks, Eliot."

He grinned back. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Eliot sat next to me in the courtroom, and that made Lang, a couple rows up, nervous. He kept craning his neck around to look at us, a vaguely desperate look on his face. He'd brought some of the nervousness along with him, apparently, as he'd also brought his lawyer, who sat next to him- the same dapper little fat attorney who'd come to that ditch in the Indiana dunes to identify the body of Ted Newberry, back in January- and who noticed Lang turning to look at me and stopped him doing it.

But Miller, sitting on the other side of Lang, wondering what his partner was looking at. turned and looked at us, too, and seemed similarly disturbed.

I hadn't had any contact with either of them since Nitti got his continuance, in this same courtroom, a few weeks before. No threatening phone calls or bribes or confrontations. Not that I had expected them to try anything. They probably wouldn't have risked doing anything to me themselves, at this point; and as far as I knew the only gang affiliation they had was with the Newberry/Moran group, who weren't much of a threat to anybody these days, many of their various members having defected to sign up with other factions, primarily the major one: Nitti's. But I'd been sleeping with my gun under my pillow just the same.

Besides, for all they knew I might get on the stand and tell the story they wanted me to.

The judge came in, and we all rose, and, despite his lawyer's admonitions, Lang turned and looked at me again, and I winked at him, like Cermak did at Roosevelt.

And Lang was the first witness called.

He walked to the stand and as he passed Nitti, Nitti muttered something, presumably nasty. It wasn't loud enough for the judge to rap his gavel and reprimand Nitti- but it was plenty to unnerve Lang another notch. He took the stand and, after the prosecutor had asked a few perfunctory questions to establish the legality of entering the office at the Wacker-LaSalle without a warrant. Nitti's lawyer rose from the defense table and approached the bald cop.

"Who shot you?"

Lang looked at me.

"Who shot you. Sergeant Lang?"

The answer to that question, of course, was supposed to be. "Frank Nitti."

But Lana said. "I don't know who shot me."

Over at the prosecution table, the prosecutor jumped to his feet, as did several associates of his. and a wave of surprise- noisy surprise rolled over the courtroom. Several people stood; one of them was Miller. His fists were clenched, and he said, "Dirty son of a bitch."

The judge rapped his gavel, and everybody shut up, or anyway kept it down; the jury sat looking at each other, wondering if all trials were like this.

Nitti's lawyer leaned against the rail in front of the witness stand and, calmly, asked, "Can you say under oath that the defendant, Frank Nitti, shot you?"

"No."

A group of surprised prosecutors and police officials were on their feet and moving forward, and the chief prosecutor pushed his way to the forefront.

His face was red as he thrust a finger at Lana.

"Do you see the man who shot you?" he shouted. "Is he in the courtroom, sergeant?"

"No," Lang said. A calm had settled over him: with his bald head, and his folded hands, he looked damn near cherubic.

Nitti's lawyer stood next to the prosecutor but turned to the judge, who seemed to be having as much trouble believing his eyes and ears as the jury, and said, "I object, Your Honor! The prosecution is impeaching its own witness!"

The prosecutor turned to Nitti's lawyer and said, with contempt, "Yeah, he's my witness. But he turned out to be yours."

That left Nitti's lawyer momentarily at a loss for words.

The prosecutor jumped back in. "I want to ask him if he committed perjury just now. Or did he commit perjury when he testified before the grand jury, when this indictment was voted? Because before the grand jury, he said Nitti shot him."

I could see Nitti, sitting in his chair sideways; he was amused by all this. He was leaning back, a smile turning the downward V of his thin mustache into an upward one.

I leaned toward Eliot and said, "Your friend the prosecutor is getting pretty worked up about this."

We both knew that the prosecutor wasn't finding anything out about Lang he didn't know already.

"I don't know what he's so steamed about," Eliot said "You're the one Lang's upstaging."

I was supposed to climb the stand and contradict Lang's Nitti-shot-me story; who could've guessed the pressure of the possibility of my doing that would be enough to make Lang contradict the story on his own?

Well, one person might have predicted it: Lang's lawyer, who was rising from the gallery to go toward the bench, saying as he went, "Your Honor! Your Honor! I am appealing here as this policeman's lawyer. As his counsel I advise him not to answer any more questions."

"Your Honor." the prosecutor said. "This man has no part in this proceeding. A witness has no right to a lawyer."

The judge agreed, but Lang's lawyer did not retire to the gallery; he stood beside the defense table, where Nitti and his lawyer were sitting, just two more spectators fascinated by a trial straight out of Lewis Carroll.

"Either you lied before the grand jury," the prosecutor said to Lang, "or you're lying now. I am giving you the chance to straighten yourself out here."

Lang's lawyer called out, "I advise my client not to answer"

The judge's gavel interrupted him.

Lang said. "Right after I was shot, my memory wasn't as good as it is now. Because of shock."

"You weren't suffering from shock in January, when you testified before the grand jury." the prosecutor said. "You were out of the hospital and cured by that time!"

Lang said. "I was suffering from shock. I can bring doctors to prove it."

The prosecutor let out a short laugh and turned his back on the witness, walking away saying. "You'll probably have that chance- in a trial of your own."

And sat down.

The judge sat behind his big wooden box wondering why the room got so silent all of a sudden; and then, remembering he was in charge, called a recess, instructing the prosecutor to meet with him in chambers.

People stood in little groups out in the corridor; reporters mingled with the various groups, not getting anywhere particularly. Lang and his lawyer stood talking solemnly; Miller and some plainclothes dicks stood well away from Lang, but Miller was bad-mouthing his partner loud enough that the echoey corridor carried it to anyone who cared to listen.

"I think Miller feels double-crossed." Eliot said.

I shrugged. "The minute Lang recanted, it made Miller look dirty. He's been supporting Lang's story all along, remember."

"He looks dirty because he is dirty," Eliot said.

"Good point," I said. "But this is Chicago. I wouldn't go looking under any cop's nails, if I were you."

Frank Nitti and his lawyer were standing down the corridor from us. talking; Nitti was all smiles. I saw him look my way a couple of times, but perhaps because I was standing with Eliot, he didn't come over right away. But eventually he did, and he looked at Eliot and nodded and said, "Mr. Ness."

"Mr. Nitti," Eliot said, nodding.

It occurred to me that Eliot and Nitti, like Eliot and Barney, shared a certain respect; and if my suspicions were correct about Eliot working on his pal the prosecutor to help see I didn't perjure myself, then Eliot had, in a roundabout way, been working to help Nitti here. The irony wasn't lost on Nitti, either.

"You're not here to root for me, are you, Mr. Ness?" Nitti asked.

Eliot shrugged. "If somebody tried to assassinate you, I am."

Nitti shrugged. "There's a lot of that soma around."

Eliot's expression turned cold "Yeah. So I hear."

Nitti had overstepped his bounds, and knew it. He turned to me and said, "I get the feeling you're behind this."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I don't figure Lang's conscience is why he suddenly don't remember who shot him."

"You don't huh."

"If I'm indebted to you, and it looks like maybe I am… well. I pay my debts, that's all."

He shrugged again, smiled almost nervously, and turned to rejoin his lawyer, only his lawyer was right behind him; it made Nitti look a little awkward, and Nitti snapped at the man in Sicilian. The lawyer took it stoically, and they walked back down the corridor a ways, and Nitti was smiling again by the time they came to a stop.

"If you don't believe him," Eliot said, "just ask Cermak."

"What?"

"Whether Nitti pays his debts or not."

When court resumed, the prosecutor had a perjury warrant ready for Lang, and Lang was placed under arrest.

"I'd like a ten-thousand-dollar bond. Your Honor." the prosecutor said.

The judge said. "Bail will be two thousand dollars. That seems large enough. He is a policeman, after all. with a policeman's pay which as a city employee has been infrequent of late."

"You mean he was a policeman," the prosecutor said.

Eliot leaned my way and whispered, "His policeman's pay seems up to hiring a high-priced attorney."

The prosecutor said. "The State calls Nathan Heller."

And I took the stand.

Lang and his attorney were sitting in the front row of the gallery; one deputy sat next to Lang, several others hovered. Lang was looking off to one side, not terribly interested in what I had to say.

Why should he be? It was nothing he didn't already know: I told what had really happened in the office at the Wacker-LaSalle.

Despite Lang's upstaging me, all eyes (except his) were on me; the reporters were scribbling fast and furious. Miller was glaring, fat and furious.

At one point I was asked to step down and show how I had held Nitti by both wrists just before Lang came in and shot him.

"How was Lang shot?" the prosecutor asked.

"Nitti was unconscious," I said. "Lang must've shot himself."

A murmur passed across the courtroom, and Lang's eyes finally turned my way; he looked sad.

I stepped down; I had expected at least a few questions about or references to the guy I'd shot, in the window. But neither the defense nor the prosecution brought it up. I think Lang's lawyer would've got into it if he could, but Lang wasn't on trial. Technically.

Miller was called.

"Lang came in and said. 'He shot me.' " Miller told the prosecutor. "I went into the room where the shooting happened and picked up a revolver with one shot fired."

Nitti's lawyer had some questions for Miller.

"Why was Nitti put in that room before he was shot?" he wanted to know. "Was it to murder him, away from witnesses?"

"You'd have to ask Lang."

"Where did you go between four o'clock and five-thirty?"

"The mayor's office."

"With whom did you talk there?"

The prosecutor rose and objected. "Irrelevant and immaterial, Your Honor."

The objection was sustained.

Eliot shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

I said, "Cermak still has a few friends. I see."

Eliot said nothing.

Nitti's attorney tried again. "Did Lang have a conversation with anyone just before the shooting?"

"Yes," Miller said. "Ted Newberry."

And yet another wave of surprise rushed across the courtroom.

The judge rapped his gavel, and Nitti's attorney said, "You refer to the reputed gangland leader, Ted Newberry?"

"Yeah." Miller said. "The dead one. He offered Lang fifteen thousand to kill Nitti."

The judge had to bang his gavel again to quiet the courtroom, but the excitement was winding down: Miller was getting into an area that Nitti's lawyer obviously felt was best left unplumbed, and he said he had no further questions. The prosecutor seemed content to leave Miller and his Ted Newberry story to the grand jury. The Nitti case, however you figured it. was coming to a close.

The prosecutor asked for, and got. a directed verdict of not guilty for Nitti.

The next day, at the grand jury indictment for Lang, I was questioned again, this time by State's Attorney Courtney. The same ground was gone over. Nitti testified, corroborating my story, of course. He told reporters he would prefer to forget the whole thing, however; he didn't want to prosecute anybody for anything- he just wanted to get back to Florida and "regain his health."

Whether Nitti wanted to participate in the prosecution of an assault charge against Lang or not, Lang's perjury charge would go through.

And Lang's pal Miller tried, in the grand jury hearing, to desert a sinking ship. He was, the papers said, as helpful as could be, and repeated the Newberry story in detail. Cermak was one detail, however, that got left out.

Lana took the Fifth.

A John Doe warrant was used on Nitti, to keep him in town.

Outside the grand jury room, as I was coming out. Nitti and his lawyer were standing waiting to be called.

He stopped me and said. "Heller- something I want to ask you. now that your pal Ness ain't around."

"All right, Frank. Shoot. If you'll pardon the expression."

■

"What were you doing in Miami? What were you doing in the park, when that crazy anarchist bastard tried to kill the president?"

So I was right: the blond had recognized me, and reported back to his chief.

I said. "I was playing bodyguard for Cermak. Some job I did. huh?"

"About changed the course of history, didn't you, pal?"

" 'About' doesn't count for much, Frank."

"Why'd Cermak hire you on, an ex-cop, when he had Lang and all the other cops in town at his fingertips, and for free?"

"Cermak didn't hire me."

"Oh, yeah? Who did?"

"One of his longtime backers."

Nitti considered that, or pretended to: there wasn't a flicker of a reaction to indicate he suspected Capone's role in this; but that didn't mean he didn't.

"Well." he said. Smiling. "No harm done." His lawyer was wanting him to move along; it was their turn at bat. Nitti put a hand on my arm. "About what you did for me. in this Lang thing…"

"I didn't do it for you, Frank. I just told the truth."

"Sure. I know. But I appreciate it. I owe you one. kid."

And he winked at me, and went in to testify.

I had a talk with some reporters, who I'd managed to duck the day before; they wanted to know about my quitting the force, and what my future plans were and so on.

And suddenly I knew what a part of my future plans would be; Nitti had reminded me of a debt somebody else owed me.

"I'm going to be working at the world's fair, boys," I told the newsmen. "I used to be with the pickpocket detail, you know, and General Dawes himself has contracted me to work with the fair's special security⁷ force in that regard"

They put that in their stories, and the next morning the phone rang.

"Hello. Uncle Louis." I said into it. without waiting to hear the voice on the other end. "When does the General want to see me?"

My appointment with General Dawes was at ten. and I figured I'd be out of there by noon, easy, for my luncheon date with Mary Ann Beame at the Seven Ails, a joint in Tower Town on the second floor of an old stable that made the Dill Pickle seem like Henrici's. I'd been seeing her a couple times a week since I got back from Miami, and by seeing her. I mean sleeping with her, and she was still driving me crazy with her small-town-girl-goes-bohemian ways, and one minute I wanted her out of my life and the next I was thinking about asking her to marry me, though with all her talk of a career I wasn't sure where I fit in.

Today I was going to tell her I'd pursued every avenue I could think of to find her brother- in Chicago at least- and the only idea I could think of, to pursue it further, was to start at the source: to go back to their hometown and try to track him from that end. Whether she'd go for that, since it would involve telling her father, who she'd kept out of this so far, I didn't know. But it was about all I had left. I'd checked with every newspaper in the suburbs and small towns around Chicago, and nobody recognized Jimmy's picture, and I hit the employment bureaus and the relief agencies and a hundred other places- and I'd run through that retainer of hers (which I'd initially thought was overly generous) weeks ago, with no intention of asking for anything else from her- except the right to keep seeing her. I was definitely going soft in the head department: that radio I bought I'd been using to listen to her on that silly soap opera- though I never admitted that to her.

At nine-thirty, after "Just Plain Bill," just as I was getting ready to walk over to the bank, a messenger delivered an envelope to me with a thousand-dollar bill in it.

There was also a note- "For services rendered"- typed on a sheet of Louis Piquett's law firm's stationery.

I called Piquett up; his secretary, after checking with him, put me through.

"I trust you've received my message. Mr. Heller. I hope it was satisfactory."

"Best message I've had in some time. But why? I didn't deliver on what your client hired me for. The man I was sent to protect isn't with us anymore, you know."

"Correct. And you haven't received the full ten thousand dollars promised, either. But my client does recognize you performed your services as best as circumstances would allow, and felt services rendered should be compensated."

"Thank your client for me."

"I will. And we're sorry for the delay in getting this message to you. My client's business transactions don't move as swiftly as they did before his confinement."

"I understand. Thanks. Mr. Piquett."

"My pleasure."

I got up from the desk and folded the thousand and put it in my pocket; too bad I didn't bank with

Dawes- it would've saved me a trip. Of course the only banking I did with anybody these days was keep a safe-deposit box. Maybe happy days were here again; but bankings days weren't, as far as I was concerned.

The Dawes bank was on the comer of LaSalle and Adams, in the shadow of the Board of Trade Building and across from the Rookery, and was as pompous as the General himself: a massive graystone edifice with stone lion heads lording it over eight three-story pillars cut out of its face, little stone lions lurking above like regal gargoyles. A corridor ran the length of the building clear over to Wells Street, through a promenade of shops; the bank was on the second floor. Dawes had his office on the third. Just off the street entrance were rows of elevators on either side, and my uncle Louis- wearing a gray suit the price of which would feed a family of four for as many months- was pacing between them, getting in people's way.

"You're late." he said, barely opening his mouth, which was like a gash under his salt-and-pepper mustache.

"My limo stalled," I said.

He glared at me and we got on an elevator empty but for the operator; we had it all to ourselves. There's nothing like a family reunion.

"I hope you realize the position you've put me in." Uncle Louis said.

"What position is that?"

He glared at me again, and for the rest of the ride stood fuming silently, possibly searching for the words to put me in my place, but not finding them before the elevator operator opened the door for us at the third floor.

My uncle led me to a door without any lettering on it; inside was a male secretary at a desk in a large wood-paneled anteroom. The secretary nodded at us and buzzed us through, into a big bleak office that was more dark paneling with one of the walls covered by photos of the General and notables.

Dawes was sitting behind a big mahogany desk on which the stacks of papers were so neat it looked posed; so did the General, in a blue pinstripe, his hand touching his pipe. He didn't rise; his stern expression apparently meant he wasn't pleased with me. either.

"Sit down, gentlemen," he said.

There were chairs waiting for us; we filled them.

"Mr. Heller," the General said, then clarified: "Young Mr. Heller. What was the idea behind giving that story to the press?"

I pretended to be surprised. "Was I meant to keep our business arrangement a secret?"

Dawes sucked on the pipe; his brow was knit. "What business arrangement is that?"

"We spoke in December, at Saint Hubert's. You suggested that I let the chips fall where they may and tell the true story at the Nitti trial. In return, as a token of gratitude for performing this possibly dangerous civic duty, I was to be paid three thousand dollars for working with your security people at the fair, to help control the anticipated pickpocket problem there."

Dawes relit his pipe. It was an elaborate operation. He said, "I believe you're quite aware that the situation has changed since we spoke."

"The truth is still the truth. And a bargain is still a bargain."

"And Mayor Cermak is deceased."

"Yes. But what does that have to do with our contract?"

"I don't remember signing a contract with you, Mr. Heller."

"We had a verbal contract. My uncle here was witness to that."

Uncle Louis went pale as death.

I said, "I'm sure my uncle will attest to that."

My uncle said, "Nathan, please, you're being most rude- "

Dawes interrupted with a wave of the hand. "Louis, I quite understand your position." He turned his gaze on me and it was like one of those stone lions was looking at me. "You should not have spoken to the papers about this. It was quite a breach of confidence."

I shrugged. "You said nothing about our agreement being a confidential one. Besides which. I didn't tell the reporters why you offered me the job at the fair- that might have been a breach of confidence. My testimony at the trial made news, you know; my views are of interest to the press at the moment. And they asked me my future plans."

Dawes leaned his head back and quite literally looked down his nose at me and. as if lecturing, said, "Once a reporter asked me if I were going to take my knickers with me to London- black silk knee breeches are usual court dress, over there- and I asked him if he wanted a diplomatic answer, or the kind the question deserved? And then I told him to go plumb to hell. You might in future take that example to heart."

"But if you void our deal. General, I'm going to be placed in an embarrassing light; I'll have to let the press know the circumstances. You've already had some unfortunate publicity of late, General- if you'll pardon my adding Insull to injury."

He looked at me solemnly. "This reeks of blackmail, young man."

"This reeks of business. And business is about money, and three thousand dollars to a private detective just starting out is good business indeed."

Uncle Louis was breathing hard.

The General said, "In my very young days, I had a burning ardor for money, Mr. Heller. But since then I have been interested in it only intermittently. One of the Rothschilds once said he made his fortune because he discovered there are times when one should not try to make money. It strikes me that money is something you are unduly interested in."

"The Rothschilds can afford that attitude. The Hellers- this Heller, anyway- can't. Now, I apologize for my bad etiquette with the press. But our agreement is binding, as far as I'm concerned, and if you feel differently, I'm going to be noisy about it. I'm not a big wheel, like you, General. But us little wheels can get awful goddamn squeaky when we don't get our grease."

Uncle Louis sat shaking Iris head, staring blankly at the wall of photos of the famous: Coolidge and Dawes; Hoover and Dawes; Pershing and Dawes; Mellon and Dawes.

The General lowered his gaze and began shuffling papers. He said. "My secretary will have contracts ready for you to sign this afternoon at four. Please return then, and sign them, Mr. Heller. Good afternoon, gentlemen."

I rose and went out; Uncle Louis stayed behind, speaking to the General, but the General didn't seem to be having any. Uncle Louis caught up with me at the elevators.

"Let's you and me talk, Nate," he said, pointing down the hall. "I have an office, too."

That he did- and his own secretary, an attractive if bookish woman in her early thirties- but the interior office was perhaps a quarter the size of the General's, albeit bigger than my own. And Uncle

Louis didn't seem to have a Murphy bed.

He did have a desk, and he sat behind it and tried to look as authoritarian and stem as the General. He damn near pulled it off; but I didn't help matters by refusing to take a chair.

He fairly spit the words at me. "You know damn good and well that the General's offer was made at a point in time when besmirching Mayor Cermak's name was a desirable thing. Now that Cermak is dead, and a martyr, your testimony at the Nitti trial has only caused the very sort of bad Chicago publicity? the General wishes to avoid. You know all that, don't you? You knew that all along."

"Sure."

"And yet you take advantage of the General, and of me. and hold us to a bargain that was made under vastly different circumstances. Where do you get your damn nerve?"

"I think it's called chatzpa, Uncle Louis."

"You're an embarrassment to me. You must know all I have to do is tell the General that I'm willing to deny being a witness where that verbal contract is concerned, and your windfall at his- and my- ■ expense will be forfeit."

"Maybe. Maybe not. The General has old-world notions about keeping his word; part of the way he sees himself includes keeping promises, pretentious old fart that he is."

He stood and. his face redder than a Communist, thrust an arm out and pointed a finger as close to my face as he could get without hurtling the desk. "Consider yourself disinherited, disowned, you smart-ass, you gonif... you just traded three thousand dollars for more money than you could ever dream of. You're disinherited!"

"I don't want your money."

He suddenly seemed embarrassed for his outburst. Whether it was a pose or not, I can't say; but he sat down and folded his hands and, nervously, said, "I have no sons, Nathan. I have two daughters I love very much. But I always thought of you as… the son I never had."

"Horseshit."

Maybe it had been a pose: the hands flattened on the desk, fingers spread out but arched, like spiders, and his face turned hard. "You stood to inherit a lot of money, you ridiculous, ridiculous fool. And you threw that money away. Just threw it away. And nothing you can ever say will change it."

"Fine. So long."

I started to go.

"Get out! You're no nephew of mine. As far as I'm concerned, you're dead. As dead as Cermak."

"As dead as my father?"

Uncle Louis blanched. "What does your father have to do with it?"

"Maybe plenty. Maybe he's why I put you on the spot with Dawes. You don't dare not back me up, do you. or Dawes will lose respect for you. He doesn't like outright liars, and he has an overriding sense of family. He idolizes that dead son of his, building fancy flophouses in his memory, and he wouldn't take kindly to the sort of man who would turn on his family, for mere monetary or business concerns."

"Nate. Nathan Why- why this bitterness? What have I done to you?"

"You haven't done anything. You've done me favors."

"Yes I have. I got you on the force. Could your father have done that?"

"No, and he wouldn't if he could. He hated the cops, and it was the saddest day of his life when I joined up. And you knew that; that's why you helped me get on. You didn't do it for me. You didn't give a damn about me, one way or the other. It was to get back at Pa. Because him you hated."

Silence hung between us like a curtain.

Finally he said, "I didn't hate him, Nathan."

"Then why did you kill him, Uncle Louis?"

"Kill him? What obscenity are you speaking…"

"You kept your eye on me. didn't you, Uncle Louis? Kept track of your nephew on the force. You were thick with Cermak, way back when, and you've always been thick with the politicians and all the boys behind the scenes."

He shrugged, not following me. exactly. "I- I suppose that's right."

"Well, somebody in the know told my father where the money came from that I gave him for his shop. Somebody told him it was blood money. Somebody told him his son Nathan was a crooked cop."

Uncle Louis, looking more than ever like a thin version of my father, a shadow of the man my father had been, said nothing; his eyes were wet and his bottom lip trembled.

"You told him, Uncle Louis. You told him. And he killed himself."

Uncle Louis said nothing.

My eyes were wet, too. I pointed my finger at him. "I disinherit you, fucker. I disown you."

And I left the guilt there with him.

Tower Town April 9-June 25,

Winter was over, but it was still cold. Mary Ann Beame and I set out for a Sunday drive under overcast skies that didn't let the sun peek through once in six hours- which is how long a Sunday drive we took, starting out around noon and heading across the state toward the Mississippi River and the Tri-Cities, where Mary Ann and her lost brother Jimmy had been bora and raised.

This was my first cross-country trip, and even with paved roads. I was a little uneasy about it. The '29 Chevy had been getting me around the city well enough, but clear across the state? That suddenly seemed overly ambitious, particularly under a sky this nasty.

But soon I was going a confident 40 mph down U.S. 30, farm country whizzing by us on either side- though I did slow down for the dozen or so little towns along the way. Eviction notices in the farmyards, and out-of-business signs in store windows, said that hard times wasn't something Chicago had cornered the market on. All that farmland, stretching out flat to the horizon, looking wasteland-barren this time of year, broken only by the occasional farmhouse/silo,^/barn, came as a shock to a city kid. I knew this rural world surrounded Chicago, but I'd never really seen it before, and when we pulled up to a gas station outside of DeKalb, a farmer in coveralls and floppy straw hat, his face as barren as the land, leaned against his pickup truck, which was getting filled at the next pump, and regarded us like visitors from another planet. So did a couple more farmers sitting leaned back in chairs in front of the station, chewing tobacco, apparently not minding the somewhat chilly day.

Mary Ann didn't seem to notice these folks as anything special; she'd come from a rather rural community herself, and in fact she sat with her nose in the air, ignoring the riffraff, going high-hat like so many expatriates do when they finally condescend to come home.

She sat in the Chevy in her white hat and black-and-white-checked dress and waited for me to get her a grape Nehi from inside, where I found more farmers playing rummy at a table, drinking bottles of Zollers beer. I got two bottles of pop from the cooler and paid the attendant, a kid about twenty with red cheeks and bright eyes who asked me where I was from. I told him Chicago.

"Are those Cubs gonna take it this year?" he asked me.

He meant the pennant; first nonexhibition game of the season was this coming week.

"Wouldn't be surprised," I said. They'd won it last year and were favored to again.

"I been to a same in Chicago." he said, grinning. "More'n once."

I grinned back at him. "Me. too."

I went out and stood by the car and handed Mary Ann in her bottle of grape pop; mine was orange. Over to one side of the station, some farm kids were pitching horseshoes.

"It's a whole different world." I said.

"What is?" Mary Ann asked flatly, doing her best to drink from the pop bottle with dignity.

"This is." I said, pointing to two barefoot farm kids about eleven who were going in the station. A minute or so later, they came out. a kid clutching a half-pint of Hey Brothers Ice Cream and another with two small wooden spoons in one fist, fishing a jackknife out of a pocket with his other hand. They sat over by the slightly older kids playing horseshoes, and the kid with the knife cut the carton of ice cream in half and handed one half to the other kid. and they both dug in with the wooden spoons.

"Doesn't that look good?" I said.

"What?" Mary Ann said.

I pointed the kids out to her again.

She made a face. said. "Too cold for ice cream." and handed me back the empty Nehi bottle.

I finished my Nehi off. put the bottles in a wooden carton up by the door near the tobacco-chewing farmers, and gave the red-cheeked kid a buck for the gas and told him to keep the change. His face lit up like nobody had ever done that to him before, and maybe they hadn't.

We rumbled down the road, sitting silently for maybe a hundred miles. I was irritated with Mary Ann. All day so far she had chattered about herself and her ambitions (Hollywood was figuring in her fantasies now), but when I had tried to point out the simple rustic charms of the countryside along the way. like that gas station back there, she had nothing to say- except perhaps. "They're just a bunch of hicks, Nathan," or something similar.

We ate supper at a roadside cafe called Twin Oaks, just the other side of Sterling-Rock Falls, where we would catch Illinois highway 3. The place was busy, and we had to sit at the counter, and Mary Ann didn't like that; she also didn't like the looks of the greasy Greek who served us, and she didn't like the way I looked at the young woman doing the cooking, who came out to ask me how I'd liked her pie.

"Little tramp," Mary Ann said as we drove away.

I shrugged. "She was cute. And the cherry pie was good, too."

"She was common."

"What's wrong with common?"

"Nothing, in your eyes."

Now she was irritated with me, and didn't speak till we hit the Tri-Cities, cutting through Moline to Rock Island, where a government bridge crossed over to Davenpoit, connecting also to the nearby Rock Island Arsenal. The riverfront, on the Illinois side anyway, was given over to railroad tracks and factories; what residential sections we saw seemed to be nothing special these were workingman's towns, or had been before times got bad. As we crossed the black steel bridge, the lock and dam on either side, the Mississippi below looked dark and choppy. A lot like the sky.

We turned left into Davenport, through a warehouse district and into the downtown. It seemed puny to me, like a scale-model of Chicago that might be displayed at the fair next month. The tallest building, which was maybe twenty stories, of which a good portion was a clock tower, had a beacon light, sort of a pocketwatch version of the Lindbergh Beacon atop the Palmolive Building. But to somebody not Chicago-bred, the Tri-Cities might have seemed like a metropolis Davenport's population alone was sixty thousand, Mary Ann said, third largest city- in Iowa- and the five or six blocks of shops and restaurants probably seemed like the big city to the farmers and small-town folks of the surrounding area.

Mary Ann directed me up a hill, which was Harrison Street, and had me turn to the left, up into an area where Gothic mansions perched on the bluff to look down upon the Tri-Cities; some of the mansions were starting to look a bit down at the mouth and long in the tooth- some seemed to have been turned into apartment houses. The house Mary Ann guided me toward was not one of the Gothic ones, however, but something more modern, a Frank Lloyd Wright-style two-story brown-brick affair that might best be described as a modernistic castle, right down to the art-deco turrets. Sitting at the end of the block, mansions of an earlier day all around, it perched on the edge of the steep hill that fell sharply to a side street below. I pulled into a paved driveway that curved around to the left to a double garage and left the car there. I got my overnight bag and Mary Ann's suitcase out of the rumble seat and a light went on over a side door, near the garage.

He was thin and distinguished-looking, gray-haired with a dark mustache, wearing a pale gray suit and darker gray tie and, most significantly, gray gloves. He stood in the doorway and waited for us to come to him, but his manner, as he swung open the screen door, was friendly he had a reserved but unfeigned smile going.

We stepped into a white, modern kitchen, with a nook off to the left, and I put the bags down as Mary

Ann hugged her father and gestured toward me. almost offhandedly, saying. "This is Nathan Heller. Daddy." and left us there in the kitchen alone.

His reserved smile turned into a more open, if embarrassed one. and he said. "You'll have to excuse my daughter. Mr. Heller. If you've traveled all the way here from Chicago with her. I suppose you know by now that she has a mind of her own. Unfortunately, that mind at times seems in no way connected to the real world."

This was said with obvious affection for his daughter, but I did appreciate this immediate honesty from a man whose bearing suggested reticence.

"Good to meet you, sir," I said, and extended my hand without thinking, even though Mary Ann had told me about her father.

He extended a gray-gloved hand, which had only two fingers in it, the thumb and forefinger, and we shook hands. Despite his having only a fraction of a hand to do it with, the grip was as firm as you'd expect a chiropractor's grip to be. I noticed his other, similarly gloved hand appeared to have all its fingers.

My face must've revealed my indecision as to whether or not I should apologize for my faux pas, because he smiled compassionately and said, "Think nothing of it, Mr. Heller. Shaking hands with people is something I have never given up, despite a shortage of digits."

I smiled back at him. "Is that coffee I smell?"

It was perking over on the stove.

"It certainly is," he said, going over to a cupboard. "Have you eaten?"

"Yes. we stopped at Sterling-Rock Falls."

"Good. My cook has Sunday off. and while I've been a bachelor for twenty-some years now, coffee is as yet my only culinary achievement. I'm afraid you'd have been in for cold cuts, had you needed a meal. The coffee, however, I can guarantee. Care to try a cup?"

"Love to," I said.

He gestured toward the nook, and I went over and sat down. He brought two steaming cups over and we sat and drank in silence. He was, I believe, trying to figure out where to begin with me; I was just enjoying the coffee and not being in the Chevy, though the nook was a little reminiscent of a cramped car, at that. A bath and bed sounded good to me.

But Mary Ann's father wanted to talk, and, since I was here to gather information about Jimmy Beame, I wasn't about to discourage him.

"My daughter called me a few days ago, Mr. Heller," he said, "and told me who you are, and why you've made this journey."

"Make it Nate, please."

"Fine. And my name is John."

"All right, John. Do you disapprove of my trying to locate your son?"

"I would've. six months ago. Now… well, I'm inclined to support your efforts. In fact, if my daughter hasn't paid you sufficiently, I would be glad to underwrite your efforts myself."

"That isn't necessary," I said.

Somebody cleared her throat.

We turned and looked over where, in the doorless doorway of the kitchen, Mary Ann, in a baby-blue bathrobe that covered her from neck to slippers, stood, arms folded, rather cross. Pouty.

"I just wanted to say good night," she said.

"Good night, darling," her father said.

She came over and hugged him again, remembering, I guess, that it was me she was irritated with, not him; and she kissed him on the cheek and smiled at him, then glanced over at me and put the smile away and went over and got her suitcase and turned her back and padded out with it.

I called out to her: "Good night, Mary Ann."

"Good night," she said, like a child, her back to me. already through the doorway and halfway down the hall.

John Beame studied me. like he might a difficult patient.

"That's something she didn't inform me of," he said.

"What's that, sir?"

"That she's in love with you."

"Well, uh…"

"Are you in love with her?"

"Sir, I…"

"She's a wonderful girl. Difficult. Childish. Self-centered. But quite unique, and loving, in her way."

"Yeah. Wonderful."

"You do love her, don't you?"

"I guess I do. Damned if I know why, if you'll excuse me for saying so, sir."

"John." he said, smiling wryly. "I love her because she's my daughter. Nate. What's your excuse?"

I laughed. "I just never met anybody like her before."

"Yes. And she's attractive, isn't she?"

"No argument there, sir… John."

"Spitting image of her mother, rest her soul. More coffee?"

"Please."

He brought the pot over and filled my cup; his gloved hands seemed able to cope pretty well. I tried not to look at them.

"Oh. these hands of mine function well enough, Nate," he said. "I can even give chiropractic adjustments with them, though I haven't practiced for years, in terms of hanging a shingle out. I was afraid, with some justification I might say, that my patients would be repulsed by my hands being disfigured. Of course I could've worn gloves. but even then- with only two fingers on my right hand and considerable pain in those early years- it didn't seem worth the trouble. My friend and mentor, B. J. Palmer, offered me a position teaching at his college, which evolved into my managing his radio station. WOC was the second licensed radio station in the United States, you know. At any rate, it's been, and continues to be, an interesting life. And certain of my friends still come to me privately, gratis, for chiropractic care. I have a room with an adjusting table upstairs."

"Mary Ann said you injured your hands in an automobile accident."

He looked into his cup of coffee; stared in. "Yes. Years ago. when she and Jimmy were very small."

"They were in the accident, too?"

He nodded. "I often took them on house calls. I had one out in the country, one evening, a farmer who'd twisted his back in a hayloft fall. A lot of my patients were rural I come from rural stock myself. It was my father's greatest disappointment that I didn't follow in his footsteps as a farmer, but I had a brother who made him happier, by staying in that field, if you will pardon a pun. But you asked about the accident. It was dark, and the road was narrow, unlit… a dirt road with deep ditches. Some drunken fool, driving without lights, ran into us, and… I was not entirely blameless. Like him, I was driving rather more fast than would seem in retrospect prudent… anxious to get my children home, wondering why I'd used such bad judgment in bringing them along on an evening call… but then, widower that I was and am, I had no one to stay with them, so I often took them along…"

He stopped. Sipped the coffee. The cup in the thumb and forefinger of the gloved hand looked like an affectation, and added to the peculiarly formal tone of our conversation.

"Mr. Beame. John, I was just curious- it's my nature as a detective, I guess. If this is something you'd rather not discuss…"

"Nate, there's not much left to tell. The collision was head on; both cars ended in the ditch, and there was a fire. I burned my hands pulling my children from the wreckage; burned them worse pulling the drunken fool from his wreckage but he died anyway. His head had hit the windscreen with such force the glass cracked."

"Mary Ann and Jimmy, were they injured?"

"Minorly. Cuts. Scrapes. They needed considerable chiropractic care. They'd always been close, being twins, but with a boy and a girl, you might expect them to be less close than if they'd been of the same gender. But this experience- this brush with death, if you'll allow an old man his melodrama- brought them even closer together than before."

"I see."

"They were, if I recall correctly, seven years old at the time. I believe the experience may have also encouraged their flights of fancy. The world of make-believe was always a better place than the world of reality. for them."

"That's true for all children."

He nodded, sadly. "But most children grow out of it. Jimmy- and, as you can see, Mary Ann- never abandoned their romantic fancies. A boy reads Treasure Island and wants to be a pirate when he grows up; but then he grows up and he is an accountant or a lawyer or a teacher. A girl reads Alice in Wonderland and wants to dress up and chase mythical white rabbits down holes; but then she grows up and is wife and a mother to her own little girls and boys."

"Sounds like you don't believe in Peter Pan."

He smiled sadly again. "Unfortunately, it would seem, my children do."

"Aren't you being a little unfair, sir? Your daughter is an actress, and that's a recognized profession, in which she seems to be doing rather well."

-

He shrugged. "With some help from me."

"Let me tell you some facts of life about the big city. You can get strings pulled for you, to get into a job; you can have a relative with money or position buy or clout your way in for you. But once you're in. if you don't cut the mustard, you get cut, but fast. If Mary Ann wasn't doing a good job for those radio people, she'd've had her pretty- rear end fired by now, if you'll excuse the crudity."

He folded his gloved hands, the fingers of his left hand resting over the knuckles of his right, where fingers had been. His smile was gentle. "I'll excuse it gladly, Nate. Because you're right. I suppose I have been unfair, where my children are concerned. Mary Ann is doing quite well. I only hope Jimmy is."

"Tell me about him."

"You have to understand something. During the years Jimmy was growing up, the Tri-Cities was a wild place… in the Chicago, gangster sense, that is. And it still is, to a degree. At any rate, the papers then were full of gunplay and sensationalism, as events admittedly warranted. A gangster named Looney trained his own son as a gunman, and when the son was shot down by rival gangsters, Looney ran on the front of the scandal sheet he published- which he used for purposes of extortion- a photograph of his dead son in his coffin. He accused the other, legitimate newspapers in town of hiring the murder."

"Your son was a little boy when this was going on?"

"Yes. And I would sit at this very table and, I must say, rant and rave about this deplorable situation; and my wide-eyed son would sit and take it all in, impressionable lad that he was. I would tell my son that this Looney gangster, by publishing his scandal sheet, was disgracing one of America's most honorable institutions: the press. That he was making a laughingstock of one of our greatest freedoms: freedom of the press."

"And that's when Jimmy caught the newspaper bug?"

"I suspect so. That, and the lurid stories that even our respectable papers were printing, because those things were indeed going on- bootlegging, wide-open gambling houses, houses of ill repute, riots in which innocent bystanders were slain, gangland slayings, all of it. It captured his imagination."

"That seems normal enough."

"Then, when he was older, I introduced him to Paul Traynor, a police reporter with the Democrat."

"When was this?"

"His high school days. Paul liked Jimmy; endured the boy's questions, let him accompany him to trials.

took him home and he and Jimmy would talk for hours. I admit to feeling jealous of Paul, a bit. But I saw nothing unhealthy about it. though Jimmy's fascination with gangsters- he often brought home Chicago papers, and kept a scrapbook of bloody clippings- disturbed me greatly. And Looney's gang had by this time been replaced by another, equally vicious bunch, some of whom are still around."

"What about Paul Traynor? Is he still around?"

"Oh yes. I can arrange for you to talk with him. if you like."

"That might be helpful. Did your son live here with you while he was going to college?"

"Yes. He attended Augustana. which is just over in Rock Island. I thought I had him convinced to switch to Palmer, when he left."

"Rather unceremoniously, I take it."

"I'm afraid so. My initial bitterness over his going came from Jimmy's manipulation of me. You see, for several years- since his last years in high school, in fact- we had quarreled on the subject of his future. But that last week he had changed his mind, he said. I know now he was only pretending to agree with me, to avoid conflict, to be able to slip away quietly. And, in fact, I had given him several hundred dollars, for his Palmer tuition. He was very convincing. Mary Ann is not the only person in this family with acting ability, it would seem."

"I see. What were his personal habits, those last few years he lived here?"

"He was out nights, often. We quarreled about that, as well, for what good it did. All the Sen Sen in the world could not disguise the fact that he had often been drinking, which he knew was anathema to me."

"So for a while after he left. then, you felt, 'good riddance.'"

"That's harsh, Nate. But I suppose it does sum up the way I felt, yes. But that was well over a year ago. I had thought surely he'd get in touch with us by now- perhaps not me, but his sister, as close as they were…"

"She hasn't heard from him."

"Nor have I, and I am concerned. Now I am concerned."

"Well, I'm going to do my best to track him down. But it's a big country, and a young guy like him could be most anywhere and up to most anything."

"I understand that. But I do appreciate your efforts, Nate, and I appreciate Mary Ann's concern for her brother's welfare."

"I need to talk to some people. Besides Traynor, was anyone else close to Jimmy?"

"There was a fellow named Hoffmann at the radio station, a boy in his early twenties who was an announcer and did a bit of sportscasting. But he's not with WOC any longer- he moved on with no forwarding address. He broke in our new boy before he left, however, and perhaps it would be worth talking to him- the new boy. I mean."

"Would he have known Jimmy?"

"No. Dutch has only been with us a few months. But he and Hoffmann were socially active, and Jimmy may have come up in conversation. He's worth talking to."

"Anyone else?"

"I can't think of anyone. Jimmy's high school and college chums have graduated and scattered to the four corners of the earth, for all I know. And outside of journalism, he wasn't very active and had few friends. Mary Ann was probably his best friend in that period, and I'm sure you've questioned her thoroughly about those days."

"Yeah. Well, the two names you've given me are a start. This sportscaster, when could I meet him?"

"Tomorrow morning. I'll put it in motion. And I'll arrange an appointment with Traynor in the late morning or early afternoon."

"Good."

"Let me show you where you'll be sleeping, then. It's Jimmy's room, upstairs."

The house was as modern inside as out: pale plaster walls and wood floors, wood beam ceilings, a minimum of wall decoration. Only Beame's study, a large book-lined room with several comfortable-looking leather chairs and a matching couch, looked lived in. This I glimpsed as we walked down a hallway and around to the stairs. I took my overnight bag up with me.

It was a corner room, not terribly large, with a double bed and little else; there were some shelves on two of the walls., but they were empty. Any traces of Jimmy's presence were missing from the room; this must have registered on my face, because John Beame picked up on it.

"I'm not one for maintaining shrines. Nate." he said, with his sad smile. "I'm sure Mary Ann will be unhappy with me. for removing the model planes and pirate ships and the antique crossbow and the rest of Jimmy's paraphernalia."

"Well, the way he took a powder, who can blame you for tossing the junk out."

I'd used the word "junk" to test the old boy, and he passed: he flinched as I said it.

"I didn't throw his things out, Nate," he said. "They're crated away in the basement. Except those damn scrapbooks of his. Those I burned"

He touched his face, for a moment, with a gray-gloved hand; he wasn't as strong as he liked to think. Then he excused himself, saying he'd let me get settled and come back later, and I stripped down to my drawers and got into bed. I looked over toward the window, where the moonlight was coming in. though I couldn't see the moon itself.

I thought about Mary Ann, in a room nearby: next door maybe. Part of me wanted to go looking for her: part of me wanted her to come looking for me.

And part of me didn't want anything to do with her. not tonight, anyway. Not here. Not in her brother's room. His bed. That would've bothered me, though for the life of me I didn't know why.

Thunder woke me.

I sat up in bed; rain was at the windows, rattling them, pelting them. I checked my wristwatch on the small table by the bed: just after three. I tried to go back to sleep, but the insistent tattoo of rain, and the ground-shaking thundercracks. worked against me. I got up and went to a window and looked out. That nasty sky we'd driven here under had finally kept its promise, and I was glad I was inside and not driving across Illinois in a Chevy. Then, while I was still there at the window, the sky burst open, showering hailstones; it was like a dozen Dizzy Deans were up there hurling baseballs at the house. It made an incredible racket.

"Nathan?"

I looked back and Mary Ann, still in the baby-blue robe, arms folded to herself protectively, was rushing across the room to me. She hugged me. She was trembling.

"Just a hailstorm, baby," I said.

"Please. Get away from the window."

Down on the lawn, the hailstones were gathering. Christ if they weren't the size of baseballs. One of them careened off the window, and I took Mary Ann's advice.

We stood by the bed and I held her.

"Let me get in under the covers with you." she said.

She sounded like a kid; there was no ulterior motive here: she was really scared.

"Sure." I said, and went over and shut the door.

She curled up against me in bed, clinging to me. and. gradually, her shaking stopped, though the hailstones kept up for a good twenty minutes.

"I'm sorry about today," she said; I could barely hear her over the hailstones.

"We were both a little childish," I said.

"I suppose maybe I am sort of a snob," she said.

"Who isn't?"

"I do love you, Nathan."

"You do, huh?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure. Do you know why you love me?"

"Besides the physical? I'm not sure, either."

"I feel safe with you, Nathan."

"That's nice," I said, meaning it.

"You're stronger than me. You see the world as it is."

"In my trade, you see it any other way, you don't last long."

"I guess I've always seen it through rose-colored glasses."

"Well, at least you know that. That means you're more of a realist than you think."

"Everybody who sees the world through rose-colored glasses is a realist. That's why they put the rose-colored glasses on."

"Come on now, Mary Ann. You've had a nice life so far, haven't you? I mean, you don't exactly seem to've had it tough. Your father appeal's to be a terrific guy."

"He is. He's wonderful."

"And you obviously got along well with your brother, or you wouldn't be going to all the trouble of hiring me to track him down."

"Yes. Jimmy and I were very close- I- would crawl in bed with him sometimes, like this. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't like- like that. I suppose we played doctor and kissed and did the silly things kids will do growing up. But I wasn't in love with my brother, Nathan. We didn't do anything wrong."

"I know."

"I know you know, because you're the only man I've ever been with. And you know that's true."

"I know."

"But Jimmy and I… we banded together. Daddy is wonderful, but he can be- distant. He's sort of formal. It's the doctor side of him, I guess; or the professor side, maybe. I'm not sure, exactly. I grew up aware of not having a mother. I grew up aware of her having died giving birth to me. And Jimmy, I used to cry about it, at night, sometimes. Not often- don't get me wrong- I'm not neurotic or anything. The psychiatrist I go to is simply for understanding myself better- that's only healthy for an actress, don't you agree?"

Sure.

"Did my father tell you about the accident? When he burned his hands?"

"Yes."

"It was my fault. Did he tell you that?"

"No…"

"I saw the other car. I saw the other car coming at us. and I got kind of- hysterical, I guess, and I grabbed Daddy's arm, and I think- I've never said this out loud to anybody but Jimmy- I think that's why Daddy couldn't avoid the other car."

"Mary Ann, have you ever talked to your father about this?"

"No. Not really."

"Look. The other car was driven by a drunk driver. Without any lights on, is what your father told me. Isn't that true?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"So if it was anybody's fault it was that guy's. And even if it had been in some way your fault, you were a little kid. You got scared, and so what? You should let 20 of this."

"That's what my psychiatrist says."

The hailstones were trailing off; the rain kept at it.

"Well, he's right," I said.

"I just wanted to tell you about it. I don't know why I wanted to. It's just something I wanted to share with you… if 'share' is the right word."

"I'm glad you did. I don't like secrets."

"I don't either. Nathan?"

"Yes?"

"I know another reason why I love you."

"Really?"

"You're honest."

I laughed out loud at that. "Nobody ever accused me of that before."

"I read about you in the papers. I said I came to your office because you were first in the phone book.

Well, that was partially true. I also- I recognized your name. too. I remembered reading about you quitting the police, after that shooting. I asked some of my friends in Tower Town about it. and they said they heard you quit because you didn't want to be a party to the corruption."

"That sounds like the kind of high-flown horseflop that might pass for thinking in Tower Town."

"It's true, isn't it? And you told the truth at that trial, last week. Because you're honest."

I took her by the small of the arm; not hurting her. but firm enough to engage her attention. "Look. Mary Ann. Don't build me into something I'm not. Don't put your rose-colored glasses on when you look at me. I'm more honest than some people I know, but the soul of honesty, I'm not. Are you listening?"

She just smiled at me. like the child she was- or chose to be.

"Is that why you love me?" I asked. "Because I'm a detective? A private eye? Don't build me into a romantic figure, Mary Ann. I'm just a man."

She picked my hand off her arm like a flower and gave me that impish grin of hers, which she really had down pat by now. Then she hugged me and said, "I know you're a man. I've been paying attention."

"Have you, Mary Ann?"

"Maybe I am naive, Nathan. But I know you're a man, and an honest one- for Chicago, anyway."

"Mary Ann.."

"Just be honest with me. Don't lie to me. Nathan. No secrets. No deceptions."

"That's good, coming from an actress."

She sat up in bed; the blue robe hung open and I could see the start of the gentle curves of the cups of either breast. "Promise me." she said. "No lies. And I'll promise you the same."

"Okay," I said. "That's fair."

She grinned, and not impishly- not in any way contrived or calculated- a good, honest grin, and a beautiful one.

"Now," she said, suddenly serious, slipping the robe off, "make love to me."

I didn't argue with her, even if this was her brother's bed. But I did reach for my billfold, to get a Sheik, and she stopped me.

"Don't use anything," she said.

"That can lead to little Mary Anns and Nathans, you know."

"I know. You can pull out if you want, but I want to feel you in me. And I want you to feel me…"

The intensity of the rain kept pace with us. and the reflection of the rain on her ghostly pale flesh as I arched over her, driving steadily but sweetly into her, was ever-shifting, creating streaky, elusive patterns on her, and her mouth was open in a smile, in her passion, and her eyes gazed at me with an adoration that I'd never seen in any woman's eyes before; and when I withdrew from her, she had a momentary' look of pain and then she grabbed that part of me in her hands so that I would spill into them, and she cupped my seed in her hands, then clasped her hands together and held the warm seed there and looked up at me with a closemouthed smile that I will take to my grave.

Finally, back to reality, she took some tissues from the pocket of the robe and, with droll reluctance, wiped her hands, putting the robe on, kissing me, touching my face, leaving me there, as the storm dissipated.

In the morning her father had grapefruit and coffee ready for us. He wore gray again- a different suit, a different gray tone in the tie, but gray again- perhaps that was because gray seemed the least conspicuous color for the ever-present gloves.

Mary Ann and I sat on one side of the nook, her father on the other; I stayed out of the breakfast conversation, for the most part, while father and daughter filled each other in on what they'd been up to lately. John Beame dutifully reported that he had indeed been listening to his daughter's radio programs- he even took a morning break for "Just Plain Bill," in his little office at the college; and he particularly liked an adaptation of "East Lynne" that he'd heard her in on "Mr. First-Nighter."

That seemed to please Mary Ann, who was wearing this morning a feminine yellow-and-white print dress that I could not picture her wearing in Tower Town.

I took a quick look at the morning Democrat: hailstorm damage locally amounted to one hundred thousand dollars; one of the Scotsboro boys had been found guilty in that rape case; Roosevelt was asking Congress to approve of something he called the Tennessee Valley Authority.

"Can I give you a ride over to the college, sir?" I asked him, as the conversation between father and daughter seemed to have wound down.

"I usually walk." he smiled, "but I'm willing to be a loafer this once."

"Hope you don't mind the rumble seat." I said.

"I've put up with worse indignities." he allowed.

"That must mean I'm invited along," Mary Ann said.

"Sure," I said. "For right now."

She went mock-snooty. "Well, I like that" she said, getting out of the nook, going after her purse. Her father and I let her lead us out to the car, where the drive and lawn were strewn with melting hailstones; it was cloudy and a little cold. Somebody somewhere in town was burning garbage: the smell hung in the dank air like rotten fruit. Soon we were going down Harrison, cutting left on Seventh Street, and heading up the steep hill of Brady.

At the crest of Brady, across from a mortuary, was Palmer College, a collection of long rambling brown-brick buildings crowded together, taking up two square blocks. In front of what seemed to be the central building was a round deco clock on a skinny pole and a neon sign that said:

RADIO STATION

W

O C

VISITORS WELCOME

and, beneath that. CAFETERIA, inside a neon pointing arrow. From atop adjacent buildings, twin black antenna towers rose like derricks.

I found a place on the street to park and followed Beame and his daughter into the building the neon hung from. There were students in their twenties all about, mostly male, but a few female. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any college, with one strange exception: epigrams were painted in black on the cream-color plaster walls, just about everywhere you looked: over doors, on the ceiling, on the wall going up the stairs, everywhere. Their wisdom seemed a bit obscure to me, at best: "Use Your Friends/By Being of Use to Them"; "Early to Bed, Early to Rise/Work Like Hell and Advertise"; "The More You Tell/The Quicker You Sell." Was this a medical school for bonesetters, or a training school for Burma Shave salesmen? Mary Ann must've caught me making a face, and shook her head no. letting me know this was not a subject to get into with her father.

We went up an elevator to the top floor of the school, the doors opening onto the reception room of the radio station, which was even stranger than the motto-strewn floors below: it resembled, more than anything, a den in a hunting lodge. A heavy chunk of wood with wavy letters spelling RECEPTION ROOM carved out of it hung by chains from a ceiling that was crossed by several varnished tree trunks; the rustic wood-and-brick room was wall to wall with photos of celebrities, both local and national, in misshapen roughhewn frames. Visitors were apparently expected to sit on benches made of varnished tree limbs and branches; amid this rustic nonsense was an electric sign with lit-up red letters that demanded SILENCE and reminded you, vaguely, that this was the twentieth century.

This time Beame noticed me smirking, I guess, because he seemed a little embarrassed, as he gestured to the area and said, "B.J. does have his eccentricities." He meant B. J. Palmer, of course, head of the school and the station, and judging from the sotto voce Beame used, which wasn't just because of the SILENCE sign, B.J.'s being eccentric wasn't a thought you expressed openly, at least not loudly.

There was no receptionist, but we hadn't been there long when, through a rectangular window that seemed at first to be just another (if oversize) photo on the wall, a face peered, belonging to a handsome collegiate-type with crew cut and glasses, wearing a brown suit and green tie.

He came into the reception room, moving with an athlete's assurance, and Mary Ann smiled at him and he smiled shyly back at her and then the smile turned almost brash as he held his hand out to me, saying, "I understand you're from Chicago."

"That's right," I said.

"I tried to get work there," he said "They said I should try a station in the sticks." He grinned and nodded up at the wood overhead. "So I took 'em at their word."

Beame put a hand on the kid's shoulder and said, "Nate Heller, this young man is Dutch Reagan. He's our top sportscaster. In fact we're losing him to our sister station WHO in Des Moines, in a few weeks."

"Glad to meet you, Dutch," I said, and we shook hands: Yes, he was an athlete all right. "Hope we're not interrupting you."

"I don't go on the air for another fifteen minutes yet," he said.

Beame introduced Reagan to Mary Ann, who was obviously impressed by the handsome kid.

"Mr. Beame said you're here to talk to me about his son," Reagan said, adjusting his glasses, "but I never knew Jimmy. I've only been at WOC four months."

"But you were a close friend of another announcer here who aft/know Jimmy."

"Jack Hoffmann. Sure."

"Mr. Beame thought Jimmy might have come up in conversation with Hoffmann."

Beame said, "It's a long shot. Dutch. But Jimmy had so few friends…"

Reagan thought about it; his face was so earnest it hurt. "Can't think of anything, sir. I'm really sorry."

I shrugged. "Like the man said, it was a long shot. Thanks, anyway."

"Sure. Oh, Mr. Heller. Could I have a word with you? Could you step in the studio for a second?"

"Fine," I said.

Beame looked curious, and Reagan said, "I want to ask Mr. Heller to look up a friend of mine in Chicago. No big deal."

Beame nodded, and Reagan and I went into the studio, a room hung with dark blue velvet drapes, for soundproofing purposes, though the ceiling was crossed by more trees, bark and all, attached to which were various stuffed birds, poised as if in flight, though they weren't going anywhere.

"I didn't want to talk in front of Mr. Beame," Reagan said. "I do know some things about his son, but they aren't very flattering."

"Oh?"

Beame was watching us through the window; stuffed birds watched us from tree beams above.

"Yeah. He was in with a rough crowd. Hanging around in speakeasies. Drinking. Fooling around with the ladies, using that term loosely, if you get my drift."

"I get it. You know what joints he might've been frequenting?"

Reagan smiled on one side of his face. "I'm no teetotaler. I'm Irish."

"That means you might know where some of those places are."

"Yeah. Jack Hoffmann and I used to hit some of 'em, occasionally. And those I haven't been in. I know about. Why?"

"You working tonight?"

"No."

"Busy?"

"Are you buyin'?"

"That's right."

"I live at the Perry Apartments, corner of East Fourth and Perry. I'll be waiting out front at eight tonight. Swing by."

"I'll do that." I said, and we shook hands, and he smiled at me. and it was an infectious smile.

"Irish, huh?" I said.

"That's what they tell me." he said, and went back in his announcer's booth, which was visible through a window in the left draped wall, where a bulky WOC microphone could also be glimpsed.

In the rustic reception room, Mary Ann's father said, "What was that all about?"

"Old girl friend of Iris he wants me to check up on."

"Oh."

"Nice guy."

"Yes. Yes, he is. Now, then. I've made an appointment with Paul Traynor, for ten o'clock, at the newspaper. In the meantime, I've got to stay up here and get to work. I'll leave you at my daughter's mercy."

"Come along," Mary Ann said, taking my arm as we got on the elevator. "That appointment's at ten and it's only half past eight now. I'm going to take you on a tour of my favorite place in the world. Or anyway, the Tri-Cities."

"Really? And what's that?"

" 'A Little Bit O' Heaven.' Ever hear of it?"

"Can't say I have. Where is it?"

"Next door."

Soon I was walking with Mary Ann across an oriental courtyard, past a thirty-foot-long writhing rock-and-tile and chipped-stone snake, by two idols with human heads and monkey bodies, under shell-and-stone umbrellas, through a four-ton revolving door inlaid with thousands of pearl chips and semiprecious stones, into a big pagoda of a building in which ancient hindu idols coexisted with Italian marble pieces that luxuriated in lushly lit waterfalls; where rock gardens and pools and ponds and fish and fauna and petrified wood and growing plants and shells and agates came together to form a place I and no one- had ever seen the like of before. Trouble was, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I said little as she led me around; she was enthralled- I wasn't. The money that had been sunk into this combination rock garden and museum seemed excessive, considering the times. This was not a curator's notion of a museum, it was a collector's conceit, a conglomeration whose sum was considerably less than its parts.

"This is B. J. Palmer's personal collection, you know," Mary Ann said, as we stood in front of an immense black idol, a sign telling us this "Wishing Buddha" was over a thousand years old. "I think it's wonderful of him to open it up to the public like this."

"We paid a dime."

"What's a dime?"

"Two cups of coffee. A sandwich."

"Don't get serious on me. Nathan. Can't you see the benefit of a place like this?"

"You mean a world that isn't the real world? Sure. It's nice to go someplace unreal once in a while."

"You're damn right." she said, and tugged at me, and said. "This is my favorite part," and soon we were in a tiny wedding chapel, formed of pebbles and stones and mortar, with a rock altar eight feet wide, eight feet deep, ten feet high.

"The smallest Christian church in the world," she said in a hushed tone.

"No kiddin'."

We were holding hands; she squeezed mine.

"Hundreds of couples are married here every year," she said.

That she could be warmed by a cool, stone closet like this was a testament to her imagination and sense of the romantic.

"Isn't it splendid?" she said.

Well.

She put her arms around me. looked up at me with that innocent look that I had come to know was only partly artifice.

"When we get married." she said, "let's get married here."

"Are you asking for my hand, madam?"

"Among other things."

"Okay. If we get married, we'll do it here."

"If?"

"If and when."

"When."

"All right," I said. "When."

She pulled me out of there, almost running, like a schoolgirl. When we were out in the oriental court, with a little brook babbling nearby, she babbled, too: "This was our favorite place."

'What?

"Jimmy's and mine. When we were kids. We came here every week. We'd make up stories, run around till the guides'd get cross and stop us. Even when we were teenagers, we'd come here now and then."

I said nothing.

She sat on a stone bench. "The day before Jimmy left, we came here. Walked around and took it all in. There's a greenhouse we've yet to see. Nate." She stood. "Come on."

"Just a second."

"Yes?"

"Your brother. I don't mind looking for him. It's my job. You're paying me to do that. Or you were. I'm not inclined to take any of your money, from here on out. But. anyway, your brother…"

"Yes?"

"I don't want to hear about him anymore."

Her face crinkled into an amused mask. "You're jealous!"

"You're goddamn right." I said. "Come on. Let's get the hell out of heaven."

She kissed me. "Okay," she said.

"Jimmy's a good kid." Paul Traynor said, "just a little on the wild side."

Traynor was only a few years older than me, but his hair was already mostly gray, his lanky frame giving over to a potbelly, his nose starting to go vein-shot, the sad gray eyes looking just a shade rheumy. He was sitting at his typewriter at a desk on the first floor of the newspaper building, in a room full of desks, about half of which were occupied, primarily by cigar-puffing men who sat typing through a self-created haze.

"He grew up during the Looney years," Traynor said, "and developed this fascination for gangsters. And, you know, we always have run a lot of Chicago news in the Democrat. We cover the gangland stuff pretty good, 'cause it has reader appeal, and 'cause the Tri-Cities liquor ring is tied to the Capone mob. So a kid around here could easily grow up equatin' that stuff with the wild west or whatever."

"His father said you and Jimmy were pretty friendly. You let him tag along to trials now and then."

"Yeah. Since he was maybe thirteen. He read the true detective magazines, and Black Mask, and that sort of thing. Kept scrapbooks about Capone and that crowd and so on. It seemed harmless to me. Till he got out of high school, anyway, and started feelin' his oats."

"Drinking, carousing, you mean? Lots of kids do that, when they hit eighteen or so."

"Sure. A kid out of high school wants to get laid, wants to go out with his pals and get blotto. Flamin'

youth. And so what? No. I wish that was the way Jimmy'd gone: hip flasks and raccoon coats. Oh yass."

"You mean instead of hanging around speakeasies."

He had a smile like a fold in cloth. "Yeah. But it's more than even that. He got thick with the local bootleggers themselves. It's possible- just possible- he did some work for 'em. But don't tell his old man; it'd kill his old man."

"Don't worry. Did the kid actually want to be a gangster?"

"Did Jimmy want to be Al Capone when he grew up? Naw. That wasn't it. It was a combination of a couple of things. First, he was just taken with that crowd, road-show Capones that they were. It was the Nick Coin bunch, and Talarico's crowd, that he was hanging around with."

"Those names don't mean anything to me."

"Well. Coin and Mike Talarico were sometimes rivals, sometimes partners. You know how that business goes. Coin was shot down in front of his house last summer. Shotgun. Never found the killers, though they held a guy from Muscatine for it. then released him. Somebody brought in from Chicago did it, was the rumor, of course. Probably hired by Talarico, 'cause Coin had reportedly squealed to the feds. Anyway, Jimmy knew Coin and his crowd. And… well."

Go on.

"Look- John Beanie's a good man; if he's trying to find his son. I'd like to help. But there's something that I can only tell you if you swear to secrecy. Absolute goddamn secrecy."

"All right."

"You gotta understand Jimmy's second reason for hanging around with those lowlifes: he wanted to be a writer, a reporter. He wanted to go to Chicago and write about gangsters for the Trib. He didn't want to get in the game, see; he wanted to sit on the fifty-yard line and do the play-by-play, if you get me."

"I get you."

"And this is the part you got to keep to yourself. Jesus, keep it to yourself." He lowered his voice, leaned toward me. "Jimmy was feeding me stuff. He was hanging around with the Coin crowd, and even doing some minor things for 'em- driving a truck, here and there, no guns or anything, just bootlegging. But he'd keep his ears open, and he'd tell me tilings. Pass along the scuttlebutt, get it? If something big was up- and we've had our share of Chicago-style shootings and bombings and kidnappings and what-have-you- Jimmy'd pass along what he heard. To me."

"Did you encourage this?"

He looked at me hard, the gray eyes looking like smoky glass; his cigar was out, but he didn't seem to have noticed.

"I paid him." he said.

'I see.

"No you don't. You gotta understand the kid was doin' this on his own. And I told him he'd get his damn head blown off if he kept it up. but dammit if he didn't start feeding me some good tips. I couldn't help myself; I'm a reporter. And he was eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old when this was goin' on. He was old enough to be held responsible for his own actions."

"You wouldn't happen to know some of the places he hung out, would you? And who his 'friends' were?"

"Are you nuts? I never went with him: he couldn't be seen around with me. if he was gonna do this half-assed undercover work. But I can tell you where some of the speaks in town are. if you like."

He started rattling 'em off, and I stopped him till I could get my notepad out. When he'd finished, he said, "I can't really give you any names of the wharf rats he was hanging around with, 'cause he never really said. He wasn't close to the big boys, so talking to Talarico or Lucchesi wouldn't do any good. They probably wouldn't know Jimmy from Adam. Coin knew Jimmy, but Coin's dead."

"Anything else you can tell me?"

"Well. I do know he made some trips to Chicago. This was while he was in college, but during the summers. As early as the summer of'30. That always bothered me. See, his friend Coin was tight with the Chicago boys. Ever hear of a guy named Ted Newberry?"

The body was in a ditch near a telephone pole.

"Yeah," I said. "I heard of him."

"He was the Chicago big shot the Tri-Cities liquor ring was tight with. I covered a trial in the fall of '31, where Newberry and Coin. Talarico and Lucchesi were codefendants. Anyway. Jimmy went to Chicago a couple times, and I always wondered if he was running an errand or something for Coin. I grilled him about it. but he always claimed it was just pleasure trips. Still. I always had the queasy feeling that Jimmy was getting in over his head. All I could think of were those scrapbooks he put together in junior high and high school, full of Chicago and Capone. and couldn't help but wonder about those 'pleasure trips.'"

"Did you talk to him about his plans to go to Chicago and try to get a job there?"

"Yeah. I told him his expectations were unrealistic. That they'd toss him out on his butt. But he had to try, he said. And I guess every kid does have to try. So I didn't try to stop him. I even wrote him a letter of recommendation, in case he did get in for a real interview by some miracle. And I told him if he flopped, he could come back and I'd try to get him on the Democrat here, as a copyboy if nothing else. And he said- what was it he said? He seemed confident they'd give him a shot. Almost cocky, the little snotnose. 'Oh, they'll print my stuff,' he said. Something like that. Ever heard anything so ridiculous?"

I hadn't, and I said as much to Mary Ann, in the Palmer cafeteria over lunch. The cafeteria was in a narrow one-story building with a half-roof slanting up against the side of one of the main school buildings; above the archway going in was a motto: "Is Life Worth Living? That Depends On the Liver!"

Well. I wasn't having liver, though it had been one of the selections; I was having a go at the meat loaf, and it wasn't a Little Bite O' Heaven.

"I knew Jimmy had some rough friends." Maty Ann said, "and knew he went out drinking and all. But I didn't know about any… gangsters or bootleggers or anything."

"Maybe you weren't as close to him as you thought."

Her eyes stung me. "We were very close." Then, offhandedly, she said, "I knew he had an interest in criminology."

"He had an interest in criminals."

"It's the same thing."

"No it isn't. Ever hear of a guy named Reinhardt Schwimmer?"

She was having liver. She swallowed a bite of it and then said, "Why of course. Rudolph Schwimmer's name is on the tip of every tongue," and stuck hers out at me, just a bit. Some college boys who were watching her from a nearby table about fell over when she did that; they'd fallen deeply in love with her back in the cafeteria line.

"Reinhardt Schwimmer," I said. "He was an optometrist. He had a fascination for gangsters. And since his practice was in Chicago, he had access to some. He took to hanging around with them, at the speakeasies they frequented, even at some of their places of business, including a garage where trucks of hooch got loaded and unloaded. One day Doc Schwimmer dropped by the garage to talk to the boys, who were waiting for their boss Bugs Moran and his second-in-command, a fella named Newberry, to show, when some cops came barging in and told everybody to put their hands in the air."

"And the innocent doctor got arrested right along with the bad guys," she said.

"Not exactly. This was Saint Valentine's, 1929."

Mary Ann didn't play naive; she knew what I meant.

"They killed him, Mary Ann," I said. "He probably told the men with machine guns he wasn't one of the gangsters; that he was just an optometrist. But they killed him anyway. He was there, and he got killed."

Her eyes were damp. "Why are you saying these things, Nathan?"

We were on the verse of a scene.

"Hey," I said, trying to shift gears, "I shouldn't have got into this here. I'm sorry. I didn't intend to upset you, it just came out… but a picture's starting to form, Mary Ann. A picture of your brother. And he isn't looking too very smart."

"For your information, my brother was an A student."

"Mary Ann. There's school, and there's school. Like the hard-knocks kind. Your brother is a kid from Davenport, Iowa. He may have hung around with some bootleggers"- I'd been a little vague with her on this point not wanting to betray Traynor's confidence- "but he was still a kid from the sticks."

"What's your point?"

"I don't know. I'm starting to have a sick feeling, that's all. Maybe it's the meat loaf."

"You've said all along you think Jimmy's off somewhere… riding the rails, seeing the country."

"I think he probably is. But he's not seeing Chicago, or I'd probably turned him up by now. Some things bother me, Mary Ann. Like his hanging around with hoods, here in Davenport. And did you know your father gave him two hundred dollars for tuition to Parmer, which he pocketed and took with him to Chicago?"

She turned pale. "No. Jimmy didn't tell me that."

"He told you he was going to hop a freight, though, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"If he did, and if he had two hundred dollars on him, well… that worries me."

"What are you saying?"

"Nothing. But if he made it to Chicago with his two hundred, I'll eat another serving of this meat loaf."

Her lower lip was trembling; I reached across and touched her hand.

"I'm sorry if I seem a bastard" I said. "It's just… I want you to be prepared, incase."

"In case what?"

"In case you have to look at something without the rose-colored glasses on."

She thought about that; she pushed the plate of liver away.

"Find him, Nathan," she said. "Please."

"I'm going to try."

"Don't try. Do it. Find him for me."

"I can't promise that."

"You have to."

"Okay. I promise. All right? Are you all right?"

She managed a smile. "Yes."

"How about helping me find this brother of yours?"

"Sure," she said.

She had arranged for me to talk to her brother's journalism instructor at Augustana, across the river in Rock Island; it was a beautiful campus on a rolling green bluff and the building we entered didn't have a single motto on its walls. But the matronly Enslish literature instructor who also taught journalism had nothing illuminating to say about Jimmy, except that he was a fine writer and showed a lot of promise; that his marks in everything from literature to math were top-drawer. Nothing about Jimmy's personal life; nothing in the subject matter of his stories for the school paper that reflected the interest in crime that Traynor had told me about.

Back in Davenport, we stopped at a market, then went back to her father's modernistic castle, where I helped her in the kitchen, and she surprised her father with a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings, and she and I surprised each other by both being good cooks. I'd done a lot of cooking at home, growing up; and she'd been the only woman in this house for many a year. So we agreed to alternate days in the kitchen when we got married, though I silently promised myself to let her handle it, except for special occasions.

After dinner Mary Ann and her father, his arm around her, a gray-gloved hand gentle on her shoulder, went into his study. They asked me to join them, but I declined: this was a family moment, and I wasn't family yet. Besides, I had an appointment.

Dutch Reagan was waiting for me in front of the Perry Apartments, wearing a sweater over a shirt and tie. and brown slacks. His hands were in his pockets and he was leaning back against the building; with his glasses and crew cut. he didn't look like somebody who could get in a speakeasy, let alone give me a city-wide tour of 'em. I pulled up and he got in.

"Right on time," he said, with a ready smile.

"Take a look at this." I said, and handed him my notepad, folded back to the page where I'd jotted down Traynor's list of speaks. I pulled away from the curb.

"This is most of'em." Reagan said. "Where'd you get this?"

"A reporter. Anything significant left out?"

"These are all mostly right downtown here. I'd suggest hitting the roadhouses. too."

"How many of them are there?"

"Just a couple. But we better stick to drinking beer tonight, and one per place, or we're not going to make it through the list. At least I won't."

Anyway he was honest about it.

"We'll take it easy," I assured him. "Are you a regular at any of these places?"

"I've been in most of'em. once or twice."

"Just once or twice, huh?"

"I didn't say I was a drinking man. just Irish."

"Is there a difference?"

"You got red hair, you tell me."

I grinned at him. "I'm only half-Gaelic- you look like the full ticket."

"Well, my dad puts it away pretty good- too good, actually. Most of my drinking's been done on the fraternity back porch or in a parked car. Look, you may want to avoid the food in these joints. Most of 'em have to advertise they serve food, to stay open, you know."

"That's par for the course."

"Well, I just thought I should warn you. You seem to be heading toward Mary Hooch's, and I know a guy who ordered a sandwich there and when he took a bite, it bit him back."

We hit the speaks downtown first, starting with the one on West Second Street run by the heavyset old lady known as Marry Hooch, a friendly old gal who looked like she could go a couple rounds with Barney. Her place, like most we went to, was a narrow hole in the wall with no sign out front, but otherwise running wide open. Legal sale of beer hadn't hurt her business any- the dozen or so workingmen at the bar were putting away the specialty of the house: near beer spiked with alcohol, exceeding the legal 3.2 limit and then some.

"I know Jimmy." Mary Hooch said. She had a puffy face with two beady eyes hiding in it and hair as frizzy as Joe Zangara's. "Good kid. But I hear he took off for Chicago, long time ago."

"Do you know any of his friends? Did anybody he hung out with hang out here?"

"Not to speak of."

"If you know Jimmy, you ought to know his friends."

"Everybody was his friend. All the fellas and gals."

"Anybody here tonight, for instance?"

She looked around the room. "Not really. These guys are working stiffs, or out-of-work stiffs. Jimmy hung around with a different type."

"If I offered you a fin would you get more specific?"

"I don't think so. You're a friendly fella, but you're from out of town, right? I think I told you all I'm going to."

It went like that everyplace: a joint on East Fourth, where the shrimp and oysters looked edible, and Reagan forgot his advice to me and had a basket of the former; another over a garage at West River Drive and Ripley, where sandwiches apparently more legitimate than Mary Hooch's were being served; a place up on Washington Street that actually had a small sign out front (Yellow Dog) and sold German food. Bartenders remembered Jimmy, knew he hung around with some "locals." but wouldn't set specific about who. With one exception: Jack Wall, the manager of that place over the garage, a smooth, well-dressed guy with a Nitti-style pencil mustache and a shovel-jaw. The impression I got was that he was up high enough in the Tri-Cities liquor ring to talk more freely than the others, if he felt like it. which he did, when I explained I was a private op from Chicago working a missing persons case.

"Jimmy hung around with some of Nick Coin's boys," Wall said, "in particular Vince Loga."

"Know where I could find Loga?"

"A speak. Not this one."

"Oh?"

"He ain't here. Trust me."

It seemed prudent to do so. I had left Reagan at the bar, where he sat nursing a beer, studying some of the sad faces around him. In the car, he said, "Lot of those guys are out of work. Mighty sad situation."

"They found dough for a drink, though, didn't they?"

"You're awful cynical. Mr. Heller. Doesn't it make you feel a little sick inside, when you see out-of-work men on street corners?"

"On street corners, yes. In bars, no."

"Well, somebody's got to do something about it."

"Oh yeah? Like what? Like who?"

"I can tell you what / do. Every day when I walk up the hill to the station. I give ten cents to the first guy who asks for it."

"If it's the same guy every day. you're getting taken."

"Very funny. I vox plenty of guys to choose from, believe me. Well, the president'll straighten this out."

"Voted for him, did you, Dutch?"

"I'll say I did. And so did my father. He's even working for the government."

"Your father? Doing what?"

"Giving out scrip to the unemployed to exchange for food."

We hit a couple of roadhouses on the outskirts of Davenport, both of them on the rough side: chicken-wire ceilings and sawdust on the floor and factory and foundry workers who liked to fight when they got drunk; I was glad I was with a husky former football player, even if he was wearing glasses and a sweater. Then we headed for a place Reagan had heard of but never been in, on highway 6, a route that took us along the Mississippi and through several little towns. The night was clear, the full moon reflecting off the smooth surface of the river, turning it an eerie gray.

Reagan asked me about Jimmy, and I filled him in. He said he could sympathize with the frustration Jimmy mustVe felt, going from newspaper to newspaper looking for work.

"I had swollen feet from pounding the Chicago sidewalks," he said. "And I got all the reception-room fast shuffles you'd expect. It was a woman at NBC in Chicago who told me to head for the sticks. Even then, I was damn lucky, landing that WOC spot."

"How'd you manage it?"

"The station had been advertising for an announcer, but I showed up the day after they filled the slot. It was Mr. Beame who gave me this news, after I'd driven seventy-five miles in my father's car. Instead of staying cool, I kind of lost my temper, and asked him how the hell a guy can get to be a sportscaster if he can't get inside a station? And mentioning sports did it- they needed somebody to help announce some Iowa games, and that's how I started. Five bucks per. And that's where I met Jack Hoffmann, who was Jimmy Beame's drinking buddy."

"And you ended up taking Hoffmann's place at the station."

"More or less. Oh, he was a capable man. and he could ad-lib and all that, but he didn't know football. Still. I learned a lot from him. and he went off to find something in radio that wasn't sports."

"You like your work?"

"Sure. I wouldn't mind being the next Quin Ryan or Pat Flangan. Of course, my dream's to get into acting, not that this job isn't acting 'A chill wind is blowing through the stadium and the long blue shadows are settling over the field.'"

"Not bad," I admitted.

The roadhouse was up ahead, a white two-story building on the right, with a gravel lot full of cars and a small blue neon out front that said FIVE O'CLOCK CLUB. I pulled in.

This was not a workingman's joint, at least not the men who worked in the area's factories and foundries. The men at the bar were in suits and ties and hats, as were the ones at tables with women in low-cut and/or tight-fitting dresses who might have been working girls, but didn't, I thought, work here; this seemed to be a place you brought a moll. It was modern-looking: black and white and chrome with subdued lighting, a nightclub atmosphere. A five-piece band was doing some Dixieland jazz on a small platform over in the far left corner; they sounded like the reason Bix left the area.

The bartender was heavyset and pockmarked, but his apron was clean, which was a first for the evening. I asked him if he knew Jimmy Beame, and he said no. I asked him if he knew Vince Loga and he said no. I gave him a fin and asked again. He still didn't know Jimmy Beame, but Vince was in back playing cards.

He pointed to a door at the rear and I headed there, Reagan next to me. the eyes behind the dark-rimmed glasses blinking as he tried not to look down the pretty necklines at the tables we passed, and considering the size of some of the guys sitting at the same tables as those necklines, that was a wise decision. As I reached to open the door, a bouncer the size of a Buick drove over and advised me the game was closed. I gave him a buck, opened my coat to show him I wasn't armed, and he opened the door for me. and I went in.

■

He stopped Reagan. Said to me, "You gave me one buck. If he goes in. I want another."

I didn't feel like giving him another, so I told Reagan to stay out there.

The room was smoky and the low-hanging shaded lamp cast its pyramid of light across the green-felt, money-strewn table. Six people were playing; the game was poker. Five of the men had their coats off. ties loosened, hats on. except a hatless. dark-haired dude who had his back to me. and had kept his fancy pinstripe on. I waited till the end of the current hand and said, "Who's Vince Loga?"

A guy about twenty-two with the sort of bland, baby-faced looks that could, in company like this, mean somebody with something to prove, was right across from me.

"I'm Loga," he said, not looking at me, looking instead at the cards being shuffled to his left. "I'm also busy. I also don't know you. Beat it."

The dude with his back to me turned and it was George Raft.

He stood and smiled at me. extended a hand, which I took. "Heller." he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"You're asking me?" I said. "I'm on business. What are you doing? Making a movie? Sequel to State Fair, maybe?"

"I been in the Tri-Cities for three days." he said. "Makin' stage appearances at the Capitol with Pick Up. That's the new movie. You know, I came here from Chicago Saturday; stopped in with Max Baer and saw Barney while I was in town- didn't he mention it?"

"No, but I was kind of busy last week."

"Yeah, I know. I saw the papers."

"Can I have a word with you, George? In the other room?"

"Sure."

We stepped out into the other room, where Reagan was waiting at the bar. I introduced Raft to him and the kid was grinning ear to ear; he'd apparently never met a big Hollywood star before.

"Look, George. I could use a favor."

"Name it."

"Tell that guy Loga I'm okay. Tell him he can level with me."

"Okay. You mind telling me what it's about, first? I don't want the whole story, mind you. Just an idea of what kind of limb I'm out on."

"It's just a missing persons case. It doesn't connect with anything big that I know of."

"Fair enough." He turned to Reagan. "You like that announcing racket?"

"Sure," Reagan said. "But I'd like to be an actor, like you, Mr. Raft."

Raft's smile, as usual, was barely there. "Well, be an actor if you like; but don't be one like me. Listen, if you do go out to Hollywood…"

"Yes?"

"Lose the glasses."

Reagan nodded, thinking about it, and Raft took me back in and said to Loga, "This guy's a friend of Al Brown's."

Loga swallowed hard; he was in the middle of a hand, but he put his cards down and went out with me. Raft nodded at me and smiled and sat back down and played cards.

"You're a friend of the Big Fellow?" Loga said, like I was a movie star.

"Never mind that. The question is, are you a friend of Jimmy Beame's?"

Loga shrugged, but not insolently, which was an effort for him. "Yeah. So what?"

"Heard from him lately?"

"Not since he left here, year and a half ago or so. Why?"

"You know where he is?"

"Chicago, I guess. That's where he said he was going."

"To do what?"

"Just look for work."

"What kind?"

Loga smirked. "Whatever pays the right money, what else?"

"Did he have a contact or anything in Chicago? Anyplace lined up to stay?"

"Not that he said."

"I hear he hopped a freight to get there."

"Where'd you hear that? That's the bunk. He had a ride."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, Dipper Cooney. He's a"

"Pickpocket. Yeah. I know him."

Loga shrugged again. "He worked the Tri-Cities for a few weeks; he's been all over Wisconsin and Illinois and around. The pickpocket dicks in Chicago put the collar on him once too often, he said, so he started floating city to city."

"But he was heading back?"

"Yeah, he was going back. And Jimmy hitched a ride with him."

I chewed on that awhile.

"That's all I know, pal," Loga said. His being impressed with my knowing Capone was wearing off, possibly because I was making noises that sounded like a cop. "It was a while ago, and you're damn lucky I got a good memory. Y'mind I go back and play some cards?"

"Sure. Tell Georgie I said thanks."

"Will do."

He went back in the smoky room, and, just as the Dixieland combo was starting up again, Reagan said, "Did you get something?"

"Maybe," I said. "We better cash it in for the night. You look like you're about one beer over your limit. And I got to get some sleep- I got a long drive back to Chicago tomorrow."

Saturday. May 27. a beautiful sunny day. A Goodyear blimp glides overhead. The oblong bowl of Soldier Field, where Mary Ann and I sit well back in the bleachers, is packed with people- now and then sections of the crowd begin singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." apparently believing it. Outside, crowds swarm either side of Michigan Avenue to watch the parade, as if expecting the president of the United States to be grand marshal.

But the president hasn't been able to get away from Washington to open Chicago's big fair; he's sent instead his postmaster general. Jim Farley. The only president on hand is Rufus C. Dawes, the General's brother, the president of the Century of Progress Exposition.

The crowd is noisy, festive, as the parade pours into the amphitheater, the motorcycle police, sirens blaring, leading the way for band after band, horse troop upon horse troop, the stadium awash in waving flags, flashing sabers, gleaming helmets. Then touring cars bearing dignitaries: big, bald, genial Jim Farley; Rufus Dawes, whose pince-nez seems designed as a means for the rest of us to tell him apart from his brother; the recently appointed mayor, Edward J. Kelly, a big man with a full head of hair and glasses that lend a needed dignity; Governor Horner, smaller, slightly rotund, bespectacled, bald; moving past the reviewing stand where high-hatted officials sit, beaming, movie cameras grinding nearby, as the procession moves around the arena. And the cheering crowd gobbles it all up; or most of the crowd, anyway. A few, like Mary Ann, don't like being part of a crowd: starring roles only, no mob scenes, please- though the show business aspect of the event clearly excites her. Others, like me, have seen parades before.

At the platform in front of the reviewing stand, the speeches begin; Dawes. Kelly, and Horner make the expected grandiose claims for the fair and Chicago. Farley is the keynote speaker, and not a bad one.

His bald head reflecting the noon sunlight, Farley first solemnly explains the president's absence. Loudspeakers fill the stadium with Farley's tale of the president's regret at not being able to attend: "It was here in your Chicago stadium that his party nominated him for the presidency… moreover, there is the tie of friendship…"

And the uninvited guest, the last man Rufus and General Dawes want to see here, sneaks in: the man Mayor Kelly has replaced through party machinations devious even for Chicago, with legislation rushed through Springfield to authorize the city council to select the new mayor (to "save the public the expense of an election"), turning scandal-ridden Park Board Chairman Edward Kelly into a world's fair mayor ("A man of vision!"), a mayor who represents the Irish faction of the Demos ("Fuck the Irish!" having been the previous mayor's war cry), backed by Jewish Governor Homer, who owes his election to that uncouth, patronage-minded hunky whose departure from this vale of tears has been a blessing disguised by a period of several weeks of public mourning, weeks ago, months ago, history now, dimly remembered if at all; but Farley, possibly not fully understanding the twisted nature of Illinois politics, has brought the uninvited guest up onto the reviewing stand.

"… the tie of friendship with your martyred mayor, a friendship the warmth of which rose above political affiliation and typified the mutual admiration of two outstanding public men, each of whom recognized the sincerity of the other."

Mayor Kelly, Rufus Dawes, and Governor Homer shift in their seats, in perfect unison, like dancers in

The Gold Diggers of1933.

Farley continues: "The most intense moment in our president's career was when he held in his arms the friend who had stopped the deadly bullet aimed at his own heart."

There are few dry eyes in the bleachers; I wonder how Cermak's family is taking all this. A small article in yesterday's Trib told of the family's disappointment at not being invited to be on the reviewing stand; the city council responded by assuring the Cermaks reserved seats in the bleachers nearby.

General Dawes is among the dignitaries on the reviewing stand, but he does not speak. He is content to allow the public to think his brother Rufus the sole guiding force of the exposition- Rufus and the visionary Mayor Kelly- though Dawes must certainly be somewhat disappointed having another Democrat take Tony's place, and a scandal-tinged one at that. The extent of General Dawes' public activities at the Century of Progress, this sunny day. will be to take the first two-wheeled carriage ride of the fair, sitting in his stovepipe hat. puffing his pipe, his back-seat chauffeur a college kid. The papers will take pictures of this earth-shattering event, saying "Who says Dawes can't be pushed around?"

We have aisle seats, and Mary Ann doesn't argue when I suggest we leave early, while speakers are still having at it, and get over to the fair, which has been open for business since nine this morning.

Even leaving that stadiumful of people behind, it's crowded getting in, partially because there are so few turnstiles for everybody to push through. In the background the dignified, imposing Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium look on, as if jealous of the crowds their new neighbor is attracting. I pay Mary Ann's fifty cents, and offer my pass in its little leather billfold to the attendant, who checks my picture and punches the card.

And, then, spread out before us is General Dawes' and Cermak's- dream city, a city of futuristic towers, geometrically shaped buildings, flat angular planes of white, blue, orange, black, yellow, red, gray, green, windowless bold splashes of color. Before us is an avenue overseen by flapping red flags angling in from overhead at either side, an avenue filled with people and an occasional tour bus, the buses getting out of the way of people, for a change, and at its far end, the Hall of Science, Camelot out of Buck Rogers, fluted white pylons alternating with sheets of cobalt blue. To our left is the Administration Building, an ultramarine box with a silver facade; at the left a lagoon shimmers- across it the long, low, green-and-black Agricultural Building, and the three white towers of the Federal Building, which loom over its triangular Hall of States like the prongs of a big upturned electrical plug.

And it goes on like that: the Sears Roebuck Building, an off-white, blue-trimmed tower rising from a sprawl of modernistic wings; the Swedish, Czechoslovakian, and Italian pavilions, looking just as futuristic as the next guy, with little old-world flavor in evidence; then up a ramp to the Hall of Science, the "capitol" of the fair, with its U-shaped front facing the lagoon. Inside, a ten-foot transparent robot human says to us (and others gathered around him), "Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall swallow. You can see this mouthful of food passing down my esophagus. Now you see the swallow entering the top door of my stomach. Watch my stomach contract to churn up food."

I had been hungry, before that, and when the memory had faded a bit we did partake of a couple of red hots from a futuristic white stand by the Sky Ride; Mary Ann was anxious to take this ride- with its six-hundred-some-foot towers standing a couple thousand feet apart. At about two hundred feet up, so-called "rocket" cars traveled back and forth on steel cables, above the lagoon. It was not something I

wanted to do after having a hot dog-Once you got past the assault upon your senses by geometry and color gone berserk, the fair turned out to be a fair: we wandered anions plaster dinosaurs; saw Admiral Byrd's City of New York, the ship he used to explore Antarctic seas; hit the two-block stretch of midway, and rode the roller coaster, the Bozo, and the Cyclone, but. hoping to keep the red hot down. I begged off the Lindy Loop, passing up, too, the Pantheon de la Guerre, where the world's largest war paintings were on display, and doing without the flea circus and the Florida alligator show. We crossed the lagoon and had a look at the Enchanted Island, where parents could dump kids (after a doctor inspected each tyke) and gigantic cutouts of Oz characters and a two-story boy riding in his red wagon ruled the five-acre roost.

The whole fair was big on giantism, despite a midget village on the midway the Time and Life Building had, on its either side, towering huge mock covers: a Fortune cover depicting planets in space; a Time cover featuring the man of the year- FDR- whose face loomed over the fair, even if he hadn't been able to make it there. The Haviland thermometer was just this big goddamn thermometer, several stories high, with a red neon stem; no wonder that kid at Enchanted Island was trying to get away on his wagon.

We walked hand in hand. Mary Ann wasn't saying much, but was trying to maintain a cynically bohemian attitude- she wore a black beret with a black slit dress, and heels that must've killed her, while everybody else in sight wore colorful, holidaylike apparel; but while her look was Tower Town, her eyes were full of Iowa. This place made Little Bit O'Heaven look sick. This was the most unreal unreal place on earth, and Mary Ann, whether she would admit it or not, loved it here.

So did the rest of the people, and it was a swell place to hide from the depression, even if a lot of families did have to pass up the many food concessions and find a bench to eat the lunch in brown bags they'd brought with 'em. Most of the tourists were staying in private homes, usually at fifty cents per person, meals included; and many a frugal head of the family- whether in trousers or skirts- insisted on getting the full fifty cents worth by bringing their lunch.

Of course a lot of people were buying their lunch here, in which case it was likely their money- at least some of it- would go into Syndicate coffers. Capone might have been in Atlanta, and Cermak in the ground, and Chicago superficially a cleaner city, but Nitti's boys were cleaning up at the fair. Quite literally, since they controlled the fair's street-sweepers union, and the union the college-boy rickshaw pullers/carriage pushers formed, and half a dozen others. The San Carlo Italian Village restaurant was run by Nitti people; they had the popcorn concession, hatcheck, parking, towel/soap/disinfectant concessions; every hot dog and hamburger sold at the fair was theirs, and Ralph "Bottles" Capone, Al's brother, had seen to it that, with the exception of Coca-Cola, no soft drinks sold on the grounds came from any other bottling works than his own. Most of the beer here was Nitti's, too, of course. And why shouldn't Nitti make money off the fair? He built it.

Word from the street, confirmed by Eliot, seconded by the private police I'd been working with on pickpocket prevention, was that Nitti-dominated unions and employers' associations had controlled the trucking and much of the construction work in the clearing of Northerly Island and the turning of the lakeshore into a futuristic landscape of geometry and giantism. And all contractors accepting construction jobs on Northerly Island had added an extra 10 percent on top of their bids- because Nitti had decried 10 percent off the top for the mob.

Nobody was talking about this, really: not the papers; not the Dawes boys, certainly. You had to look the other way in certain matters, after all. For example, with all these tourists coming in, prostitution was bound to go through the roof, so the city fathers had required prostitutes to register as "masseuses." and to submit to weekly examinations by a city-appointed doctor who would look for. well, "skin diseases." And now all around town neon signs had sprung up saying MASSAGE PARLOR, and so what? Hadn't the General admitted to me once that he only wanted to clean the town up "within reason"? The world wasn't going to end because some bird from Duluth got laid- and if we wanted him to brine his business back to Chicago again sometime, better to send him home without the clap.

This fair that Mary Ann was wandering through so gaga-eyed was not the City of Tomorrow, it was just another never-never land; harmless, but transitory. In a few months the brightly colored plywood and glass would come crashing down. These tourists from Iowa and every other hick state were all aglow, thinking their future was all around them; some poor souls even imagined they were in Chicago.

They weren't, of course; they were in Chicago only in the sense that the fair was what Chicago- which is to say, Dawes and Cermak and Nitti- had planned it to be. In that sense, they were in Chicago, all right.

In every other sense, they were in Tower Town, with Mary Ann.

"I haven't mentioned you looking for my brother." Mary Ann said, "for ages."

We were seated at a small round table in the open-air gardens at the Pabst Blue Ribbon Casino, overlooking the fair's south lagoon, just to the rear of the Hollywood pavilion. There was a lake breeze.

"Actually," I said, pouring a legal Pabst from its bottle into a glass, "it's been two weeks. But you have been good about it, I must say."

Ben Bernie and his Lads were taking a break; they'd been playing on a circular revolving platform right out in the open, next to a canopy-covered dance floor that extended into the garden. We'd had to wait half an hour for our table, even though it was only around three-thirty in the afternoon, well away from either lunch or supper crowds. But this was opening day at the Century of Progress, and the Pabst Casino (casino in the cabaret sense only- no gambling was going on) was the largest, swankiest joint on the exposition grounds; it was, quite legitimately, touting itself as the place "to dine and dance with the famous," and the three round white-red-and-blue interlocking buildings, one of them twice the size of the other two, were jammed to capacity.

She poked at her Hawaiian salad. "It's been over a month since you told me you 'finally had something.' Remember?"

"You're right. And what else did I say?"

" 'Just don't hound me about it.'"

"Right."

She poked at her salad some more. Then she looked up and her eyes got wide. She leaned forward. "Glance back over your shoulder."

I did.

"Now what?" I said.

"Don't you see who that is, walking toward us?"

"Oh. yeah. It's Walter Winchell. He and Damon Runyon and all the big-shot New York newshounds are in town. So what?"

"Didn't you say you met him in Florida?"

"That's true."

"Here he comes! Introduce me. Nathan! If I had a mention in his column, well, it could mean- " She shut up. Winchell was nearing us.

As he went by, I said, "Hello."

He glanced at me, smiled without smiling. "Hiya," he said, not recognizing me, and was gone.

The smirk settled on the left side of Mary Ann's face. "I thought you said you knew Walter Winchell."

"I said I met him," I said "I didn't say I knew him."

"Well, you know who this pickpocket is that Jimmy hitched a ride with, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, why don't you/?«rfhim, already?"

"Jimmy or the pickpocket?"

"Nathan!"

The people at the next table looked at us and Mary Ann, uneasy about center stage all of a sudden, said, "You know who I meant."

"Mary Ann, this pickpocket is a guy we used to bust all the time. He was good, one of the best, but he had a bad habit of hitting the same few places over and over again. The train stations. The Aragon. The College Inn. And he ended up getting busted so often, he left the area."

"But he came back here with Jimmy."

"Apparently, but that doesn't mean he stayed. In fact, according to my old working buddies on the pickpocket detail, he was run in by 'em shortly after the time he would've brought Jimmy into town."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I didn't want to get your hopes up. They also told me they haven't seen hide nor hair of Dipper Cooney since. Word is he's stayed in the Midwest, but is floating city to city."

"Oh. Then why did you tell me you thought he would turn up, eventually?"

I gestured toward the fair, spread out across the lagoon before us like Frank Lloyd Wright's scattered toys.

"That," I said. "The fair. It's pickpocket heaven. He won't be able to resist it."

"You think you'll find him here, at the exposition?"

"Of course. I got two hundred helpers, don't I?"

The two hundred helpers were the fair's private police, the men I'd been training the better part of the month and a half since the Tri-Cities trip. The General was paying me good money, so I was giving him value for the dollar. I had taken the two hundred men- many of them ex-cops and out-of-work security people, but none of whom were pickpocket detail veterans, like yours truly- and handled them in classes of twelve in the fancy trustee's room in the blue box that was the Administration Building, using three of them who I'd known before, when they worked for the department, to act out some standard pickpocket techniques.

"There's one hard-and-fast rule on the pickpocket detail." I'd start out. " 'Look for people who seem inconsistent with their surroundings.'"

That meant, in a department store, you looked for people walking around looking not at the items displayed for sale, but other shoppers. At a prizefight, you looked for people studying not the action in the ring, but the crowd. At the El stations, you looked for people not looking in the direction of their train, but at the guy standing next to 'em.

And at the world's fair, you looked for people not looking at the futuristic towering pavilions or the exhibits therein; you looked for people on the midway whose attention was not drawn to the Fort Dearborn Massacre show, or Carter's Temple of Mystery; you looked for people in the Streets of Paris show whose eyes weren't on Sally Rand: you looked for people looking at people. And a lot of em would turn out to be pickpockets.

I trained the three ex-cops- pickpockets usually work in teams of three- to demonstrate some of the typical routines. For instance, a whiz mob- pickpocket team- will spot a wealthy-looking dame walking along with an expensive shoulder-strap bag hanging like it's fruit and she's the tree, and guess who's harvesting? The whiz mob, who decide to "beat her on the stride," as it's called. Two fairer-sexed members of the mob- moll buzzers, in the dip's own vernacular will walk in front of the mark, then suddenly stop or maybe back up a step, as if avoiding stepping in something. The mark will unavoidably bump into them, and as the mark is being jostled, and being profusely apologized to, the third member of the mob- the hook- will have come up from behind to open the mark's bag and have at.