True Detective

There are a lot of variations on this, and I taught as many of 'em as I could to my pupils. Common ones at the fair would include action at the refreshment-stand counter, with the buzzer reaching across for some mustard and jostling the mark as the hook works the mark from behind.

Of course there would be the occasional solo artist, and redheaded, freckle-faced Dipper Cooney. a man of thirty-five or forty who unless you looked close looked twenty, was one of the best. A real live cannon, a dip deft enough to take a wallet from the back pocket of a prosperous, alert mark- without benefit of buzzers to jostle said mark's attention.

A live cannon like Cooney would never be able to pass up the fair; he would see it as duck soup, and he'd be right… normally.

Of course he wouldn't know that each and every one of the two hundred boys in white pith helmets, red jackets, blue trousers, and bolstered sidearms would have seen his police file photo; that each was instructed, if catching the Dipper in the act, to hold him for me personally.

This was about as far as I'd gone in putting word out I was looking for Cooney. The boys on the pickpocket detail were among the few on the Chicago department who had not come to view me as persona non grata for having talked against Lang and Miller in court; but I still didn't trust the boys so far as to let them know how urgently I was looking for Cooney. One of the reasons Cooney had left Chicago was that my superior on the detail had demanded a percentage of the cannon's take to allow him to have free reign at the train stations; Cooney had unwisely turned the offer down, and had been collared so many times by the detail thereafter that Chicago became a place he didn't want to be anymore. I let the guys on the detail know only that Cooney was a guy I needed to talk to, regarding an insurance matter I was tracking, and that if they caught him and called me, it was worth a fin. If I'd made more out of it than that, well, Cooney might get told I was after him: the pickpocket detail knew very well that a live cannon like Cooney was worth more than a private cop like me, and he or Billy Skidmore would pay well for the information.

And of course I avoided talking to Skidmore himself, the portly, bowler-wearing junk dealer/ward heeler/bail bondsman with whom most serious pickpockets, gamblers, and shoplifters did their bonding business.

I had to keep it low key if I wanted to reel my fish in; the boldest move I made was to ask one of the pickpocket detail boys to lift Cooney's file photo for me, so I could borrow it and get some copies made. But I just made a couple; I wasn't going to go handing them out. If word got out on the streets I was after him, Cooney'd spook, sure as hell.

I considered calling Nitti and using up that favor he said he owed me. It was pretty well known that Cooney, through Skidmore, had done occasional work for the Capone/Nitti crowd; he was that good a dip, the kind you could send on a specific assignment, to pick a key out of somebody's vest pocket, or slip something incriminating into somebody's wallet.

But I couldn't risk it: Nitti seemed a dangerous last resort, as his loyalty to Cooney might outweigh any sense of obligation he felt to me; and besides, he was in Florida, on his estate, resting up, still recuperating.

I did go to two of Cooney's favorite hunting grounds: the Aragon Ballroom on the North Side, where Wayne King the Waltz King foisted watered-down Chicago jazz on his public between rounds of Viennese schmaltz in a mock Moorish setting; and the College Inn. where the Old Maestro Ben Bemie and his Lads performed in front of a dance floor that resembled a big backgammon board, while couples danced in the dimmed lights of a room where radium-painted fish glowed off pastel walls, turning the room into a sort of aquarium. But my fish hadn't shown, the bouncers told me, when I showed them his picture, promising anybody a fin who called me if Cooney swam in.

And now it was weeks later, and Ben Bernie was playing at the Pabst Casino- which was run by the College Inn management- and none of my efforts to turn Cooney up had done a bit of good. Still, the fair had opened today; he'd show. He'd show.

Or so I thought. May turned into June, and I found myself several days a week, supposedly as a function of my role as pickpocket adviser, haunting the fair. My pith-helmeted pupils would nod to me as I'd pass, and whenever I'd remind them about that specific pickpocket I was looking for, I'd get a shrug, and a "Can I see that picture again?"

At the same time, my relationship with Mary Ann was getting a little strained; I was on the verge of telling her to hire another detective- but the part of me that wanted to stay with her, to sleep with her, to maybe God-help-me marry her, was afraid to say so.

She didn't go to Barney's big fight, June 23.1 wanted her to, but she pretended she didn't want to see my friend Barney get hurt, which was horseshit, because she didn't give a damn about Barney. I'd introduced them months ago, and Barney had loved her on first sight ("What a terrific girl you lucked on to, Nate!" he'd told me, later); but Mary Ann, I'm afraid, was jealous of Barney, not so much because he and I were close- but because he was somebody I knew who was more famous than she was.

So Eliot and I went, and sat in the third-row seats Barney had provided us, in the same Chicago Stadium where FDR got nominated and Cermak got eulogized. We were watching the second prelim, in which one light heavyweight was knocking the stuffing out of another. I was watching, but I wasn't really seeing. This was Barney's big night, his big fight, and I was nervous for him. Somebody had to be- the cock)' little bastard was cool as a cuke at his speak this afternoon, or pretending to be, and the butterflies in my stomach were in full flight.

Barney couldn't have had a better, more beautiful starry summer night for it, and the turnout should have been terrific- Barney was, as the sports page put it, "the most popular fistic figure to develop in these parts in years" but the stadium was only half-full. The massive floor of the arena was spectator-covered, but only the first few rows of stands were filled, and I wondered if the fair had hurt tonight's attendance, or maybe it was just the price of a ticket in times like these, for a fight you could hear on the radio free.

Whatever the reason, it wasn't because Barney was a shoo-in. In fact, it was almost the opposite: the odds favored the champ, Canzoneri, to hold on to his title. But by no means was Canzoneri a shoo-in, either (the odds were 6 to 5 in his favor), and the mostly male crowd here tonight, the stadium air turned into a hazy fog of cigarette and cigar smoke caught in bright white lights, seemed confident the fighters would fan the smoke to flames. Christ, I was nervous. Eliot picked up on it.

"How much dough you got on this fight?" he grinned.

"A C-note," I said.

"On Barney?"

"On Seabiscuit, you jerk. What do you think?"

"I think you're going to take some money home. Relax."

"Does it show?"

"You're damn near shaking, son. Ease up."

"I just want this for him, that's all. He deserves this one."

Eliot shook his head, smiled. "That isn't the way it works. He's going to have to earn that title, in that ring, in just a few minutes… but I think he can do it."

"Is that who I think it is?" I said, pointing discreetly.

"Your old buddy Nitti? Sure. Who else? Canzoneri's got a big following in the Italian community."

"Nitti's Sicilian."

"Don't set technical. The mob guys are big Canzoneri boosters."

"Do they own him?"

Eliot shrugged. "Not that I know of. Just ethnic pride."

"I thought Nitti was in Florida."

-

"He's pretty much living down there right now, yeah. But he had another matter in court to attend to, so he's back for a few weeks."

"That's Dr. Ronga, his father-in-law, next to him, you know."

"He's staying with Ronga, I hear. It's nice to have a doctor around the house, when you're recovering from bullet wounds. Did you see who's over on the other side?"

"Who?"

"Mayor Kelly and his boss Nash and bunch of other big political muckety-mucks."

"I'm so impressed I could shit."

"Well, they're here rooting for Barney, no doubt. Kelly called him 'Chicago's pride and joy' the other day."

"Yeah, well, I guess it's all right for 'em to stick around, then."

The bell sounded and the last of the prelims was over; there had been no knockout, but one of the fighters was battered and bloodied. From the way my stomach was jumping, you'd think I was the one climbing in that ring next.

And a few minutes later the ring announcer was yelling into his microphone: "In this corner, ladies and gentlemen. Tony Canzoneri, world's lightweight champion."

Canzoneri, dark, moonfaced, neck and shoulder muscles bull-like, grinned at the audience, clasping his hands over his head in a prediction of victory; he got a good hand. Nitti, Ronga, and a brace of bodyguards did their share.

"In that corner, Barney Ross, his worthy opponent- "

And the thousands of friends Barney had in the arena- myself included- went berserk. Maybe the house was only half-full, but it sounded packed when Barney's cheer went up; he waved at the crowd, grinning shyly, looking almost embarrassed. He caught my eye and grinned a little more naturally and nodded at me. I smiled, nodded back.

"Barney's faster than Canzoneri," Eliot said. "That's going to make the difference."

"Could," I said. "But pound for pound, Canzoneri's the hardest-hitting puncher in boxing. I hope Barney can take it."

Eliot nodded; we both knew that Barney, despite a hard-fought, impressive record, which had earned him this shot, had never had an opponent in the champ's league.

When the bell sounded. Canzoneri, wanting to get it over with quick, rushed out to meet the cool, cautious Barney midring, and swung a wild right, then another one, both of which Barney ducked so easily it was as if Canzoneri had done it on purpose, to prove Barney was, as reputed, one of the hardest fighters to land a glove on in the business.

Then Barney tore into him, not playing it at all safe, as if to prove he didn't believe Canzoneri's reputation as a killer-puncher; suddenly it was like Barney was champ, and wanted to put this pretender away as fast as possible.

And by the end of the third round, Barney had a nice early lead. Canzoneri landed some, including a series of lefts and rights to the head that made Barney's cheering section groan and wince en masse; but Barney was landing more often, and usually staying out of harm's way.

Maybe a little bit too much.

"Barney's too careful tonight," I told Eliot, having to push it to be heard over the crowd noise. "He's missed a couple perfect opportunities to really put that guy away."

Eliot nodded, leaned toward me, and said, "Yeah, but he's taken the hardest stuff Canzoneri's got to give, and it isn't slowing him up any."

But Canzoneri was a champ, no doubt about it; and in the next round, he took command, and started working on Barney around the eyes. By the fifth round. Barney was bleeding. And slowing down.

So was Canzoneri. The two of them boxed, trying to outpoint each other, clinching often; they'd been trading blows like flyweights, but hitting like heavyweights, and they were getting tired- and saving up for the final rounds.

Then in the ninth round, and I don't know if he'd been playing possum or not, Barney came alive, turned into a left-hook machine. Canzoneri didn't know what the hell to think; he did his best to dodge the onslaught, barely retaliating at all. Barney backed him into the New Yorker's own comer and whaled away at him and the bell rang.

Round ten; final round. The crowd on its feet, yelling, cheering.

Barney landed a light left to the face and a hard right, rocking Canzoneri's jaw, and followed quick to the face, jab, jab, jab. But Canzoneri found a hard right hand somewhere and sent it to Barney's cocky face and the two fell into a lover's clinch. When they came out of the clinch, they went into a brutal slugfest; the killer side of Canzoneri was clear, now, but Barney's left, bless it, kept the champ off-balance, and the damage to a minimum. When the flurry ended, it was Barney who'd landed the more, the better, blows. Canzoneri looked tired, but angry, and he swung a stiff right to Barney's midsection; Barney started in slugging with both hands, and suddenly Canzoneri found himself on the other side of the ring. In the midst of backing away, though, Canzoneri lashed out with a hard right to the head, which looked like it had knockout written all over it, from where I stood.

Then again, Barney wasn't standing where I was; but he was standing, and he was coming back with,

Jesus! A great fucking right to the head and the bell rang.

They kept fighting and the ref had to pry 'em apart.

Barney trudged over to his corner- the southwest comer, his lucky comer, the one he worked out of to beat Bat Battalino and Billy Petrolle, in his climb to this night.

We. the crowd, were still on our feet, but we weren't cheering; there was a hush over the stadium like somebody died.

"Who the hell won?" Eliot said, almost in a whisper.

"Damned if I know," I said.

"I think Barney."

"I don't know. Maybe a draw."

"In which case the championship stays with Canzoneri."

"Yep."

"He's got it in points, Nate."

Who?"

"Barney. Just wait. He's got it on points."

We waited; the fighters waited. Forever.

After a while the ring announcer went to the mike, but instead of announcing the winner, begged the crowd's indulgence for the time this was taking; this was, after all, a championship fight…

I didn't hear the rest because we booed the son of a bitch out of there.

Finally he came back and did what he was paid for.

He said: "The new lightweight champion of the"

And that's all anybody heard, because that meant Barney had won. and the stadium went stark staring nuts, cheering. From ringside, the photogs started flashing, and Barney grinned down at them, tears and sweat streaking his face. I'd never seen him look so happy. Or so tired. He'd given it every ounce he had, and I was proud of him.

Besides, I'd won twenty bucks on the deal.

While the windup fight was under way, a six-rounder between a couple middleweights, Eliot took his leave, as he had to work tomorrow and it was getting late; so I made my way down to Barney's dressing room alone.

Barney was sitting on the training table, fielding questions from reporters, and not terribly well: yes. he would give Canzoneri a return bout; no. he didn't know who he'd take on next. His trainer was working on the cuts over his eyes as the reporters fired their questions, and Barney, bushed, dazed, could barely answer, doing little more than flash his shy grin, which was enough to win the press guys over.

The two managers, Winch and Pian, a couple deadpan, stocky guys, cleared the room of the reporters. Winch going out with them. Balding Art Winch was an Italian guy who looked Jewish, and dark-haired "Pi" Pian was a Jewish guy everybody took for Italian. Both of them were so businesslike vou wanted to hit 'em with pies- Pi particularly.

Pi was enthusiastic tonight, however; with a mug that made Buster Keaton look like Santa Claus, he allotted Barney a pat on the back and said, "Well done, fella, well done."

Haifa dozen or so of Barney's old West Side pals were let in the dressing room, and they were bubbling; they had a big party planned for him at the Morrison, which I knew about and had been looking forward to. Barney promised to drop by.

"Drop by?" blurted a guy of twenty-eight, with the acne of a thirteen-year-old. "Don't you even wanna celebrate your champeenship?"

And then Barney's face lit up; the door had opened and Winch was there, escorting a plump, beatifically smiling late-middle-aged woman in a blue dress; behind wire-frame glasses her eyes were Barney's.

"Ma!" Barney shouted.

He ran to her. hugged her. tears running down both their faces.

Then he held her at arm's length and looked at her. "It's Shabbes, Ma! How'd you set here?"

Solemnly, she said, "It's Shabbes, Beryl," which was Barney's real name, making with an elaborate, Jewish-mother shrug. "I walked. What else?"

"It's five miles!"

"I had to come. You see, I knew if I come to see you fight, you win."

"But you hate fighting. Ma."

"Sitting home waiting, I hate. Besides, I figure if you can take the punishment, I can take it."

"Anything you say, Ma. Nate, come over here!"

I went over. "Hello, Mrs. Ross. Why don't you let me drive you home? You can make an exception on riding on the Shabbes. Sick people do it."

"Aren't you the smart Shabbes goy? Do I look sick?"

Barney said, "Nate's right. Ma. You'll collapse or something, and then you will be sick. Let me drive you."

"No."

"All right." Barney said. "I'll walk home with you."

Barney's West Side pals, listening to all this, protested: what about the party?"

"I'll be there later." Barney promised them. "First I got to walk my girl home."

And he did; all five miles, with his Ma on his arm.

Or so he said; I didn't walk along with 'em. I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't near as Jewish.

I went upstairs and the windup fight was over and folks were wandering up the ramps out into the lobby. They were all wound up. still caught up in the Ross-Canzoneri bout, some of them arguing the decision, most of them saying it was a fight they'd tell their grandkids about, and as I was going down the ramp into the gray cement lobby. I saw him.

Dipper Cooney.

He was dressed like a college kid: sweater, slacks- that was his game. That was how he turned looking twenty when he was nearly twice that into a living; red-haired, freckle-faced, friendly, he did not look like a pickpocket.

But brother, was he.

I moved through the crowd as quickly as I could without attracting attention or getting swung at; Dipper was following a guy and studying him to make the hook, and I had time.

Then about ten feet from him I got overanxious, and pushed past a guy, who pushed back and said. "Hey! Watch it, bub!"

And Dipper turned, and saw me.

And recognized me.

To him, I supposed, I was still just a pickpocket detail cop. And he could see I was moving toward him, fast enough, furious enough, to have caused a commotion (goddamnit!), and he started pushing through the crowd himself, and was out the door and into the starry night.

I followed him, and he left an angry trail of people, as the fans in front of the stadium, lingering, chatting about the great fight, were in both our ways, and got pushed out of it, and we had to be well away from the stadium and into the residential district surrounding it before either of us could really run.

And one thing a pickpocket can do is run.

Cooney, who'd kept his weight down to help with the college kid pose, was light, small, wiry, and he had half a block on me.

But I wanted him bad.

I ran full throttle after him. feeling like a track star, and I shouted, "Cooney! I'm not the cops anymore!"

He kept running.

So did I.

"Cooney!" I yelled. "I just want to talk, goddamnit," and that last was just to myself; my side was starting to ache. I never ran this fast, this far, before.

The neighborhood was mostly two-flats and row houses, and it was almost midnight, so we were alone on our sidewalk track, nothing, nobody in our way, and I began to cut the distance, and then he was just out in front of me and I threw myself at him, tackled the son of a bitch, and we skidded, skinned ourselves on the sidewalk and landed in a pile.

I didn't have a gun on me, but that was okay: pickpockets rarely cany guns, as it takes up stash space and weights 'em down. And I was bigger than this forty-year-old college kid, and I crawled on top of him like a rapist and grabbed the front of his shirt and the two green eyes in the midst of that freckle-face looked up at me round as the colored kid's in Our Gang.

"What the fuck you want. Heller?" he managed. He was panting. So was 1.1 hoped my breath was better than his. "You ain't no goddamn cop no more."

"You know about that?"

"I can read. I seen the papers."

"Then why'd you run?"

He thought about it. "Force of habit. Let me up."

"No."

"I won't run. I'm winded. Heller. Let me up."

Cautiously, I did. But I kept the front of his shirt wadded in one fist.

"I just want some answers," I said.

"You still sound like a cop."

"I'm private."

That stirred a memory. "Oh. Okay. Yeah, maybe I remember reading that. You're a private dick now."

"Right. And this isn't police business."

We were on a side street; a car angled down it somebody leaving the stadium, probably. I let go of his shirt, so it wouldn't attract the driver's attention. Cooney thought about running. Just thought.

"In fact," I said, "there's a double sawbuck in it for you."

His attitude changed; running was now out of the question. "You're kiddin'? What do I know that's worth a double sawbuck to you, Heller?"

"It's just a case I'm working, a missing persons case."

"Yeah?"

"Kid named Jimmy Beame. His sister and father are looking for him."

He rubbed his chin. "I think I know a Jimmy Beame."

"Give."

"You give. You were talkin' double sawbuck a minute ago."

I dug in my pocket and got out a ten; gave it to him.

"You can have another." I said, "if I like what you have to say."

"Fair enough." he shrugged. "I was in the Tri-Cities. must've been a year and a half or two ago. This kid Beame was thick with the local mugs. Small-timers… but they were connected to some Chicago folks."

"Go on."

"This kid wanted in."

"In where?"

"The mob. He wanted some fast money, he said. He'd been bootlegging and such- some of it in Chicago, he said, for these Tri-Cities mugs. But he wanted something bigger."

"What exactly?"

"He wanted to work with the Capone gang."

"What? He was just a hick kid!"

"Yeah, but he'd been around a bit. Had a gun on him, when he traveled with me. And I helped him out: he paid me to."

"So what did you do for him?"

"How 'bout the other sawbuck?"

I grabbed his shirt again. Another car came rolling down the side street and I let go.

"Easy," he said, brushing his college sweater off.

"What did you do for him?"

"I called Nitti. I done work for him, you know, time to time. Said the kid was all right, and Nitti said send him, and I gave the kid the address and that's that."

"That's that?"

"That's that," Cooney shrugged, and the car going by slowed as the driver extended an arm with a gun in its fist and I dove for the bushes as three silenced bullets danced across Cooney's chest.

Then the car was gone, and so was Cooney.

Night at the fair.

White lights bouncing off colored surfaces, colored lights careening off white surfaces, the modernistic lines of buildings brought out by tricks of incandescent bulbs, arc lights, neon tubes, a night aglow with pastels, like some freak occurrence, like a diamond necklace caught fire and flung along the lakeshore.

That was the view from atop the east tower of the Sky Ride, on Northerly Island, anyway, where Mary Ann had dragged me. But even down on the grounds of the fair, the effect was otherworldly. This was not the first time Mary Ann had asked me to bring her to the fair at night: the half dozen times we'd been here together, with the exception of that first afternoon, had been after the sun fell and the lights came up, and the futuristic city looming along the lake became even more unreal.

Of course I hadn't really brought her here tonight; I had met her at the Hollywood pavilion, which was her favorite place at the exposition- and where, tonight, she'd been working. A special broadcast of "Mr. First-Nighter" had emanated from one of the two radio studios within Hollywood, which sprawled over five acres on the tip of Northerly Island, just south of the Enchanted Island playground. Much of Hollywood was a bulky- structure in shades of red that despite the massive round Sound Stage entryway was strangely lacking the futuristic grace of the rest of a fair which was itself more a reflection of Hollywood's notion of the future than science's. Outdoor sets surrounded the building, and movies were shot here daily by a crew making two-reelers for Monogram, often featuring name stars, admittedly not of Dietrich or Gable stature, but stars (Grant Withers was here for the duration), and amateur movie photographers and the just plain star-struck could watch talkies being made, and afterward have a beer and sandwich in the outdoor replica of the Brown Derby restaurant. And there were several sound stages indoors, one of them an auditorium that seated six hundred, which was also used for radio broadcasts, and was where Mary Ann and the rest of the "Mr. First-Nighter" troupe had broadcast this evening.

I'd seen Mary Ann doing radio before: several times I'd picked her up at the massive nineteenth-floor NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart, in Studio A, the largest radio studio in the world, where I stood in the glassed-in soundproofed balcony and listened to whatever soap opera she was working on that day come in via small speakers. She would stand before the unwieldy microphone and read her script, and she was good, all right, but I can't say her talent bowled me over.

Tonight, though, I'd sat in the audience at Hollywood, and Mary Ann had impressed me. It was odd to sit in a theater and- where stage or screen should be- see a big glassed-in sound stage, inside of which were padded walls like an asylum, where not inmates but actors with scripts were caged, standing before mikes, sound effects man at his table with his blank gun and frame door to slam and quarter-flight of steps to climb in the background. Above the forty-foot glass enclosure were two smaller glass-enclosed rooms for the sound engineers; the control rooms were dimly lit, but lights on their console panels winked at the crowd. An impressive theater, unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

But it was Mary Ann that impressed me most.

Even with the glass curtain separating her from the audience, they loved her. And she loved them back. The awkwardness of standing reading a script did not keep her from making eye contact with them, from playing out to the hilt her role of damsel-iu-distress in the ludicrous private eye melodrama she was cast in tonight. She had dressed simply, in a milk-chocolate linen dress, with tiny pearl buttons down the front, some puff in the shoulders, the skirt clinging, then flaring a bit at the knees, and of course a matching beret; somehow it made her look innocent and worldly at the same time. When the show signed off the air, and the actors-under-glass took their bows, it was Mary Ann, not guest star Adolphe Menjou, who got the big hand.

"You were terrific," I said.

She grinned, crinkling her chin. "You never said that about my acting before."

"I never saw you wrap an audience around your pinkie before. Say, what kept you?"

She'd been nearly half an hour after the performance before meeting up with me outside.

"You won't believe this," she said, "but a scout for Monogram was in the audience."

"Somebody connected with the movies they're making here, you mean?"

"Yes, but he works for Monogram in Hollywood. Real Hollywood."

I wasn't sure there was any such thing, but I said, "And you've been offered a part?"

She was beaming. "Yes! Isn't it exciting? In August, if I can get a week off from 'Just Plain Bill.' They can write me out: give me the flu or send me on a trip or something. Isn't that just splendid?"

I was happy for her; I didn't mention that in the weeks previous she had dismissed Monogram as "poverty row." and had pooh-poohed the making of two-reelers here at the fair as a "small-time publicity scheme, catering to these hick crowds." But I also knew she'd filed her name with the Monogram people's casting office, as had most of the actors in Chicago.

We were walking past the Enchanted Island, and its giant boy on his Radio Flyer wagon. It was a little windy tonight; almost chilly, for summer, but pleasant enough.

"Mr. Sullivan- he's the director I'll be working with- says it will be a sort of paid screen test. If Mr. Ostrow in Hollywood likes my work in the two-reeler, I could be flown out to Hollywood and put under contract!"

"It sounds like money in the bank to me," I said, meaning it. She'd been good tonight; she'd connected with that audience like Barney's left and Canzoneri's chin.

"Nathan," she said quietly, as we moved among the crowd, wandering past the circular court of the Electrical Building, where a fountain fanned water and light in a silver arc before the pastel orange-and-blue building. "You'll come out there with me, if they send for me- won't you?"

"Sure," I said.

"Do you mean it?"

"Sure. I can pack my business in a suitcase in a minute flat. California's perfect for my kind of work."

"You're not just saying this?"

I stopped her: put my hands on her arms. I looked into the Claudette Colbert eyes and said. "I'd follow you anywhere. To hell, or Hollywood. Got that?"

She smiled and hugged me; some people going by smiled at us.

"Then take me to the fair." she said impishly.

"Where the hell do you think you are?"

"There's some things we haven't done."

"Like what?"

"The Streets of Paris. I want to see Sally Rand take off her clothes."

"Sally Rand doesn't take off her clothes; she already has her clothes off when she comes out. The trick is to catch a look at her when she's waving these damn ostrich plumes around."

"You speak as if from experience."

"This is what the boys tell me. I wouldn't know, myself. Why would I want to go see a gorgeous blonde parade around in her skin? For that matter, why would you?"

"Just checking out the competition. They say you haven't seen the fair if you haven't seen Sally Rand."

Actually, I did know why she wanted to check Sally Rand out. It'd been in the papers, just recently: several of the Hollywood studios were after the sensation of the fair to sign with 'em. So Sally Rand w&s competition.

But I had been hoping to go right home, either to my place or hers, and I told her so. What I didn't tell her was why.

Yesterday somebody had tried to kill me; I was convinced of that. I didn't know whether or not Dipper Cooney had been silenced on purpose, or had just happened to be there when an attempt on me was made. But my instinct was that I had been the prime target last night. And the only thing I'd been up to lately, outside of working at the fair, was snooping around looking for Mary Ann's brother.

I couldn't tell her about last night. I couldn't tell anybody, not Eliot, maybe not even Barney. That dark residential side street had been deserted enough for me to risk leaving poor Cooney dead, there on the sidewalk, and I'd walked quickly back the number of blocks to my car in the stadium parking lot and went home, to my Murphy bed. Because me being involved with another shooting right now what with the hostile cops and yellow journalists that would attract was something I could do without.

Apparently nobody had seen what happened: there'd been no screams, no shouts, when Cooney took those silenced slugs- no lights going on suddenly in windows. Just me tumbling into the bushes, and when the car had gone by and showed no sign of returning, and it seemed safe to come out, I took my powder, and unless somebody had recognized one of us when I'd gone pushing through the crowd after

Cooney, I didn't see how I could be pulled in on this.

And today had borne this out. I'd had a call from one of the boys from the pickpocket detail, telling me Cooney had been killed, wondering if that news was worth the fin I'd been offering 'round; and I'd said no. Cooney wasn't worth squat to me dead, but if my pal came around to Barney's sometime. I'd buy him a beer for his trouble. And we'd left it at that.

Also. Cooney had got a small mention on the inside pages of the afternoon papers: a longtime pickpocket with a record had been gunned down, and police figured it was a mob-related slaying, but had no leads. It would be added to the list of hundreds of gangland slayings in Chicago these last ten or fifteen years; if a gangland slaying had ever been solved in Chicago, I hadn't heard about it. Except for Jake Lingle's, of course.

But what did Cooney's death mean? I was afraid I knew. I was afraid that Mary Ann's brother, with his connections to Ted Newberry via the Tri-Cities liquor ring, had got in hot water with the Nitti crowd, and now that my snooping was leading me to Nitti's doorstep, the bullets were stalling to fly.

Nitti was supposed to owe me one. but I hadn't thought this was what he had in mind.

So I called him. Or tried to- I couldn't get through to him at his office over the Capri restaurant on North Clark Street (which was across from the City Hall, incidentally), but whoever I talked to relayed the message, and around seven that night, just before I was going to head out to the fair, Nitti returned my call.

"Heller, how are you doin'?"

"Better than Dipper Cooney," I said. "He died last night."

"So I hear."

"I was with him."

"That I didn't hear."

"Are you on the level with me. Frank? I did you a favor once, you know."

"I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Cooney. You want me to find out who did?"

"That. I'd appreciate."

"Let's talk. Meet me at my office tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock. I want to know about this punk you're trying to find."

"Jimmy Beame?" So he'd heard about that.

"Right. Who knows. I might even be able to help you out on that score."

"I'd appreciate that. Frank."

"See ya tomorrow, Heller."

And the phone had clicked dead.

I sat staring at it. wondering if I was being set up; I had the clammy sort of feeling you get waiting in a doctor's office for the results of your tests.

So I took my gun with me to the fair, and now I was trying to get Mary Ann to leave with me. since being at the fairgrounds with all these people was making me nervous.

"Nervous? What about? Nathan, don't be a grouch. Look. I'll let you take me to see Sally Rand some other night. But it's about time you took me up on the Sky Ride."

"We went on the Sky Ride last week."

"Not the observation deck."

"I'm not crazy about heights, okay?"

"Tough guy! Come on." And she tugged on my arm.

We were almost there, anyway; I glanced behind me, half-expecting to be followed. But I couldn't see anybody suspicious. Nobody that seemed inconsistent with his surroundings. And there were pith-helmeted guards with sidearms all around who knew me, and I could call on, if trouble turned up. So what the hell.

The Sky Ride towers were like twin Eiffels, and why not? That tower had been the hit of the Paris Exposition of '89. and these towers loomed over the Century of Progress in much the same way. The steel-web frameworks rose over six hundred feet, higher than any of Chicago's skyscrapers, the tallest towers this side of the Atlantic coast. A third of the way up, the silver, red-striped "rocket" cars, carrying thirty or fort)' passengers, crossed the lagoon on overhanging cable tracks. Last week, when we'd taken that trip, I felt we were up plenty high enough; now, as we entered the pennant-flapping SKY RIDE entryway, getting into one of the two elevators that went to the top (two others went to the rocket-car platform), we'd be going up another four hundred feet, to the observation deck.

It took a whole minute to get there, and we looked first from the windows of the enclosed observation room, the fair spread out before us like a colorful electric map. One of the fair's pith-helmeted security' guards was on-duty in the observation room; not too many people up here tonight- maybe a dozen, mostly couples. I said hello to the guard, a florid-faced guy of about forty who used to be a traffic cop; he said hello back, and whispered he'd got a pickpocket earlier that day, seeming proud of himself. I patted him on the arm and told him atta boy.

Mary Ann was still looking out the window, breathless; she loved looking down on the lights of the fair and, beyond that, of the city. But I was ready to go, and said so.

"Oh, Nathan! We haven't even been up on the observation deck."

"This is as far as I go."

She hugged one of my amis with both of hers. "Don't be a wet blanket. It's a beautiful night; there'll be a nice breeze."

"Freeze our butts off. is more like it," I said, but then we were walking the final flight up. and Mary Ann dragged me to the highest exhibit at the fair- the Otis Elevator exhibit, which showed the machinery that operated the Sky Ride's high-speed elevators- also the dullest exhibit. I might add- which was in a building that covered all but the outer walkway area of the unenclosed observation deck.

Outside, on the deck, there weren't many people; the wind was blowing a bit too much for standing on top of a tower six-hundred-some feet off the ground. We found a place around one side of the building, where the deck jutted out like a porch so you could get a better look at the fair, and stood by the rail, having a gander, enjoying some privacy.

And seeing the fair stretched out before you, not through a window, but right before you, leaning against a rail and looking out at it, well, dammit if it didn't take my breath away. Searchlights cut across the sky, from the very tower we stood upon, intersecting with the arc lights of the fair below; the fair's geometric buildings turned into abstract shapes and colors as if on the canvas of some Tower Town modern artist.

I turned to Mary Ann to comment on this, to leave cynicism behind for a moment and be frankly impressed with all this, and Mary Ann's eyes were wide and she was intaking breath, and not because of the view.

Somebody was coming up behind me.

Fast.

The outstretched hands hit me just as I was turning, my right hand reaching toward the automatic under my coat, but not quite getting there, and it was a guy in a straw hat and pale yellow suit and just as I was going over the rail, backward. I saw Mary Ann slapping at him with both hands and his hat flew off. got caught by the breeze and went flapping by me as I fell, and I recognized him. and the sole thought in my panic-stricken brain was. the son of a bitch is blond again.

I hit a steel support beam, hard, on my back, and it knocked the wind out of me, but somehow my mind or instinct or some goddamn thing overrode, and I grabbed at the beam, catching it in the crook of one ami, and I clung to it, hugged it, wrapped both amis, both legs around it. The support connected the platform to the tower structure at a 45-degree angle, and thank God I hadn't got to my gun, because I needed both hands. The support was about as big around as a man's leg, and had rough sharp edges all 'round, digging into my flesh as I hung there in the breeze, my tie, my suit, flapping.

I was on the underside of the beam, like some animal clinging to a tree limb. I didn't look down; I knew what was down there- my fucking stomach, for one thing.

So I looked up, back up, toward where I'd fallen from, and Mary Ann was leaning over the side, reaching her hand out to me, but she was far away, ten feet, ten miles, ten years, and the guy was behind her. and I had to swallow before I could yell, "Look out!"

And she was struggling with him, he had her halfway over the side, and I let go with one arm, clutching with the other, legs hooked 'round the slanted support, and got my automatic out from under my arm.

Christ knows how. and the guy just about had her over the side when he saw the eye of my automatic looking at him, and. before I could fire it at him, he disappeared from view.

Mary Ann, thankfully, did not; the blond gone, she leaned over and reached out again and I said, "No! Too far!" and she began to cry. I think she was trying to scream, but couldn't find the sound. Or maybe she was screaming and the wind in my ears was keeping me from hearing as I clumsily rucked the automatic back under my arm.

I yelled at her: "Go down to the observation booth!"

She nodded, and disappeared.

The support I called home angled under the platform, connecting underneath it; I'd fallen past the windows of the observation booth, but apparently nobody had seen me, and I was at a position that prevented them from noticing me, hanging here like Harold Lloyd. The support below me paralleled this one but connected right to the corner under the observation booth and its windows. If I could drop down to the next support, I might crawl up it and get in view of the people in the booth, besides which Mary Ann would by now have alerted them to my situation anyway, and I might with somebody's help make it in through a window.

It was only about five feet down; I wouldn't have to be an acrobat to make it. But it would have helped.

I tried not to look at the fair below me. I tried not to think about the six-hundred-foot drop below me. Just that support beam five feet down. Why was it so cold up here? So windy? Why was my mouth so

dry, and my eyes so damp? I let my legs loose and hung by my amis only; my feet touched the support beam below. I looped one arm around the support, let the other one loose, hanging by the crook of my arm, trying to stand on the beam below, trying to get my balance so I could risk letting go of the upper support altogether. A calm came over me; a passive, quiet feeling I couldn't hope to explain. I let go of the beam above, and then I was standing, I had my balance, but it was like standing on the tilted floor of a fun house, only much narrower, and, Christ! I began to slide, my feet began to slide, and my balance went and the fair whirled below me, and I hit the beam in a belly flop and clung, grabbed, hugged, slid. Then stopped sliding. Home again.

I looked up. Mary Ann's wide-eyed face was in a window, the corner window, and her mouth was open in a silent scream; I grinned up at her, like I was showing off, while resisting the urge to pee my goddamn pants. Then she was pointing, and the florid-faced guard was busting the glass out with his gun butt.

I edged up the beam toward them, on top of the beam this time, like a baby crawling, then I was up to where the beam joined with the underpart of the platform and the windows were right above me and the guard, some college-kid fairgoer bracing him from behind, was reaching out a hand down to me and I took it, hanging over the fair for one long moment before he pulled me up and in.

Mary Ann hugged me; she was crying, but she wasn't hysterical. Happy. Real happy.

Actually, I didn't have time for that. "Go back to your flat," I said curtly, moving past her. "Wait for me!"

What

"Just do it. baby. Just do it."

I thanked the college kid who'd helped the guard reel me in. then turned to the guard. "Keep this one under your hat. pal."

He glanced at the eight or ten people standing around open-mouthed, talking among themselves, as if they wondered if this were part of the show. "I don't know if I can do that"

"There's a half a C-note in it for you if you do. And I'm covering the damages."

He grinned, shrugged. "Do my best, Mr. Heller."

Then I went to the two elevators and grabbed one- I caught a glimpse of Mary Ann, her face tight with irritation, hands on hips, staying behind, but reluctantly. The elevators took only one minute to go down, and I didn't figure I'd been hanging out there more than two or three minutes, so my old friend, my blond friend, the man who killed Jake Lingle, the man who helped kill Cermak, had a lead on me; but not much of one.

The ticket-taker in the lobby of the Sky Ride entryway said yes, he had seen the blond guy in the pale yellow suit, moving quickly, and pointed toward the lagoon. There wasn't a huge crowd at the fair tonight, but enough of one, and the lights were designed to make the world an out-of-focus pastel wonderland, not to heighten visibility or clarity.

So I stood there looking for a figure moving quickly, but didn't see one; then I moved quickly, toward the Sixteenth Street bridge, and stopped the first pith-helmeted security guard I came across, and he recognized me and smiled and I asked him if he'd seen this guy.

He had, and he pointed across the bridge, toward the Hall of Science, its square buildings and towers burning orange and green and blue against the night. In the foreground, gondolas, canoes, sailboats glided; a peaceful scene, and my brain was on fire.

The Eighteenth Street entrance. That was the closest way out; the closest way to the parking lot.

I ran.

Like a bat out of fucking hell, and knocked a few people down and to hell with excuse me, and almost got stopped by more than one security guard, but when they saw who I was, figured I was after some pickpocket, and one guard, in fact, fell in stride with me and yelled, "Need any help, Heller?"

I shook my head no, and the guy fell away.

Then the fair was behind me and all the cars in Chicago were parked in front of me, row after row, car after car.

But it was private parking, and there were only a few ways in and out. Maybe, just maybe, I had him.

I showed my fair ID to the two attendants at the entry to the parking area; they were in street clothes but had coin changers on their belt, and they told me, yeah, they saw a blond guy run through here, and pointed down to the left. I saw no one. I jogged down the first row of cars, glancing to either side; when I'd put some distance between me and those attendants back there, I got the automatic out. A car was pulling out, so I ducked to one side, waited and watched as it passed. An elderly couple.

I kept looking: the parking area wasn't lit, but the aurora borealis of the fair, at left, provided light enough. I was Hearing the end of the first row when I saw a car pull out over on the next row, a little black Buick coupe with a white canvas top. It was the car that had glided by and gunned down Cooney last night. I ran between parked cars into the next lane and as the lights bore down on me, I saw him. Behind the wheel.

The blond.

I stepped to one side and pointed the gun at him but he swerved toward me, and as I backed up out of the way, squeezing between two parked cars, he got a shot off at me, a silenced one, and it grazed my arm, and, dammit, goddamnit, reflex sent my automatic flying.

And he saw that, and hit the brakes, and then he was hopping out of his car, moving toward me, gun in hand, the silencer making it look bulkily modern, as if a souvenir of the fair.

At the same time, I fell back, on my back, grabbed my chest as if he'd hit me there and kind of curled up and moaned and as he was standing over me, smiling, pointing the gun down at me, I kicked his balls up inside him.

This time he dropped the gun.

He dropped it, his hands popping open when he doubled over, and a wheeze came out of him. not a scream, just a dry pain-racked wheeze, and as he was still bent over I slammed a fist into his jaw that about took it off its hinges and he fell on his side, but the moment of white pain had passed, apparently, because then he was scrambling for his gun and suddenly he had the damn thing, was bringing it up toward me when I dove at him, and with both hands grabbed the wrist and turned it in on him and together we pulled the trigger. The sound was no more than a snick but the ghostly pale face went slack and I barely had time to say it: "This time I did get you, flicker."

I stood, his gun in my hand, and looked around. The only sound was the muffled roar of the fair; otherwise, the night was as silent and empty as the dead man's mind. Even the breeze had died. Nobody had seen this. Nobody had heard it- not with the blond's silenced gun as the instrument of death.

His car, the engine running, was only a few steps away; I dragged him to it, and hauled him up over the running board into the seat on the rider's side. I made him sit up straight, though his chin was on his chest; his belly was bright blood-red, and spreading. I shut the door and got in on the driver's side.

I flashed my ID to the attendants as we drove past and they smiled and nodded. I laughed to myself, remembering whose concession parking was.

I stopped at an all-night drugstore on Michigan Avenue and bought a bandage for my ami and used a phone book. Ronga was listed. I didn't have to jot the address down; I could remember it. It was only ten or fifteen minutes away, too. Good.

I went back to the car and the blond was still sitting there. Where was he going to go?

Me. I was going to call on the man who sent him: his boss.

I told him so, not starting the car back up yet. getting out of my coat and bandaging the nick on my arm.

"I'm taking you to Nitti, pal," I said.

But he made no comment; in fact he slumped over to the right and rested his head against the window as if bored- the glaze on his barely open eyes seemed to confirm that. I was sitting up nice and straight, in fact leaning forward; I was a little crazy, as a matter of fact.

"What good's your opinion, anyway?" I said to the blond, pulling out onto Michigan Avenue. "You're dead."

As dead as Lingle.

As dead as Cermak.

"As dead as Nitti," I said to my rider, stopping at a light.

Then it turned green and I went.

Dr. Ronga lived on West Lexington, on the near West Side. I caught Harrison, took it over to Racine, and when I reached the corner of Lexington and Racine, I knew I was a stone's throw from the address I was looking for. On the corner was a sandy-colored brick pharmacy, MacAlister's, with an apartment jutting out above- a perfect spot for a lookout post. But I didn't see anybody in the window.

We were in the midst of Little Italy, my silent blond passenger and I. but this was a remarkably nice neighborhood for the area- and a sleeping one: it was approaching midnight, with no one on the street. no other cars at the moment, nobody but the blond and me. Down at the end of the long block was Our Lady of Pompeü Church, with an open bell tower that could also be used as a lookout, if Nitti was feeling especially threatened.

In fact, the location seemed designed to be easily defensible. The Ronga apartment was in the middle of the block, a massive three-story graystone that came right up to the sidewalk; this was unusual, as other buildings in the neighborhood were set back from the walk, with a little yard and stairs going up a story to an entrance. Across the street were more apartment buildings, also three stories, where men could be posted on rooftops, if necessary.

I drove past; the next block over, on the left, there was a little cul-de-sac park. Lexington otherwise seemed to be fancy two-flats, row houses, small mansions, all set back with modest fenced front yards. A ritzy neighborhood, for Little Italy. Cabrini Hospital and Notre Dame Church were nearby; maybe that explained it.

I turned right at the church and cut down an alley behind it. taking a jog over to another alley that would take us directly behind Ronga's graystone. It was more a glorified gangway than an alley, and it was tricky, weaving around garbage cans; my passenger leaned from one side to the other as we went. Another alley intersected and I glanced down to my left, past my inattentive companion, and saw an old-fashioned lamp over the side door. Ronga's side door.

I continued down the gangway-style alley, stopping behind the building, but not killing the motor. A series of three open porches, one stacked atop the other, joined by one open staircase, ran up the back wall. Underneath the porches was a row of garbage cans, tucked away there. I sat and let the motor run and waited for something to happen.

Two figures appeared on the middle porch; two men in shirts with rolled-up sleeves and ties loose around their necks and no coats or hats. Two men with guns in their hands. One revolver each. They leaned over the porch and assessed the situation.

The motor still running but cutting the lights, I opened the door, stood out on my running board; if I'd opened my door wide, it would've smacked into the wall of the adjacent building- the alley was that narrow.

"Any of you guys know me? I'm Heller."

The two guys looked at each other. One of them was starting to look familiar, a small, dark man with a cigarette in his slack lips, its amber eye looking down at me.

Louis "Little New York" Campagna said, "What the hell ya doin' here. Heller?"

"This isn't my idea." I said. "This guy said I should bring him here."

Campagna exchanged glances with the other man, who was fat, dark, with eyebrows that joined in one thick line over beady black eyes. Campagna and his cigarette and his gun looked down at me. "What guy?"

"I don't know his name. He's wounded. He says he works for Nitti and made me bring him here."

"Get the hell outa here," Campagna said.

"He's got a gun." I said.

Campagna and the fat guy backed away, but they were still up there looking down.

"I think he's passed out," I said. "Give me a break! Handle this."

Campagna came clomping down the wooden steps; he didn't move fast. He looked at me with more distrust than one person should be able to muster and, revolver at the ready, squeezed past the car on the opposite side of me, by the window the blond sat next to. I stayed on my own side of the car: I had a gun in my hand, too, but with the car between me and Campagna, that wasn't readily apparent. Above me the fat gunman was watching.

"Jesus." Campagna said, looking in. "He looks dead."

"Could be," I said. "He was gut-shot."

"Whaddya doin' bringin' him here for. ya stupid bastard?"

"He had a gun. Stumbled in my office, bleeding, and said he was shot and wanted me to drive him. I did what I was told. You do know him. don't you?"

"Yeah. I know him. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it, though. Get him outa here."

"Fuck you, jack. He's your dead meat."

Campagna glared at me.

I tried to look apologetic. "Come on, take him off my hands. Look, it's his car- you can dump it someplace. I'll catch a cab."

"All right. Shit. Fatso!"

Fatso came trundling down the steps. As he reached the bottom, I stayed where I was while Campagna stepped away from the car, and he and Fatso faced each other within the tight dark alleyway.

Campagna tucked his gun in his belt. "Go someplace and flick yourself. Heller," he said, dismissing me.

barely glancing back at me.

Fatso put his gun away, too. and asked Campagna what it was all about, and I shut the engine off and stepped out from around the side of the car and laid the silenced gun across the back of Campagna's head, and he went down like so much kindling. Fatso's mouth dropped and his hand moved toward his waistband, but then he saw the look on my face- it was a sort of smile- and thought better of it.

Campagna was down there with red on the back of his head and on one ear; he looked out. He was out.

Holding the silenced gun on Fatso, I bent down and yanked Campagna's revolver out of his belt and emptied the cylinder of its bullets onto the brick alleyway, tossed the gun down the alley, where it fell a good distance with a dull clunk. Fatso had his hands in the air and I got his revolver out of his waistband and repeated the procedure.

Then, in a stage whisper, I said to Fatso, "Use his tie to tie his hands behind him."

He did what I told him. Huffed and puffed a bit, but he did it.

"Who's up there?" I said, still whispering.

"What do you mean?" he said, glancing back at me as he bent over working, picking up on the sotto voce. The single eyebrow across his forehead was raised almost to his hairline.

I put the silenced gun's snout near his. "Guess what I mean."

"Just Nitti."

"No other bodyguards?"

"A guy in the apartment over the pharmacy. He just stays there, sort of on call."

"Nobody else?"

"Two men in the apartment above; they're the day shift. Asleep, now."

"And?"

"Most of the people in the building are family or friends. Dr. Ronga owns the building. But no more bodyguards."

"Where's Ronga now?"

"At Jefferson Park. The hospital."

"When'll he get back?"

"Not till morning. He's on duty all night."

"Nitti's wife? Ronga's?"

"Mrs. Nitti and her mother are in Florida."

"Is that the truth?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's the truth!"

"If it isn't, I'll blow your guts all over this alley."

"If you live that long."

"Take that chance if you like."

"I'm tellin' the truth. Heller. There? Is that good enough?"

Campagna's hands were bound tight with the tie; he was breathing heavy, but was still dead to the world.

"Haul him over under the steps and put him behind the garbage cans. Get him out of sight."

He dragged Campagna like a sack of something and put him down the same way, as he moved the cans out a bit to make room. Then he heaved Campagna back there.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Now turn around," I said.

He sighed and shook his head and did. I laid the barrel of the ami across the back of his head.

He landed in the garbage cans and made a clatter. I just stood there looking up, the gun in my hand, waiting for someone to stick his head over the porch and look down. Just fucking waiting.

Nobody did.

I used Fatso's tie to tie his hands behind him. I rummaged around in one of the garbage cans looking for some paper or cloth; I found a nice dirty dish towel that had got burned, along the bottom, and discarded. I ripped it in half, wadded each piece, and shoved it in either unconscious man's mouth. Then I tied each man's shoelaces together, before laying the fat man on top of Campagna. That stood more likely to kill "Little New York" than my slugging him.

Kid games, I said to myself silently, thinking about the shoelaces. I'm playing kid games. I looked over at the car; the blond was visible behind the windscreen, tilted to one side, his eyes still open a bit. Not really, he seemed to be saying.

Somewhere, way down the alley, a tomcat let go a yowl; then the night went silent again. It was cool for late June, but I felt hot; well, I'd been working.

I went up the stairs. Onto the first landing: the lights were off in the flat on this level. I went on up to the next. Ronga's apartment. I could see a light on in there, past a second, enclosed porch.

There was a heavy door with a lock, standing open, from when Campagna and Fatso had come out to check up on the car that had stopped in the alley, and a screen door that was shut, but not locked. I peeked in. A figure was moving in the white room beyond; the room was a kitchen. The man seemed to be Nitti.

I didn't like the way the silenced gun felt in my hand; the automatic was still under my shoulder, but I supposed I should use this bulky- goddamn gun. since it belonged to the blond, and the portion of my brain that was still rational said it was a good idea to use the other man's gun for what I was about to do.

So I went in through the screen door, with a killer's silenced gun in my hand; I went in to shoot and kill Frank Nitti.

Who was in his pajama bottoms, at the oak ice chest across the kitchen from me. with his back to me, as he bent down, rummaging around in the icebox. His back was slimly muscular and tan, the latter from his naturally swarthy complexion and Florida; there was a nasty fresh red scar on his lower back, where Lang had shot him. In his right hand was a bottle of milk. His left hand was in there picking at stuff in the icebox.

He heard me come in but didn't turn.

"What's the commotion, Louie? A couple of kids in a car losin' their cherries, or what?"

"Well there's going to be blood spilled," I said. "You're that far right."

Nitti didn't move; the muscles in his back tensed, but he kept his pose. Then, slowly, he glanced back at me. I couldn't see much of his face, but I could see the confusion.

"Heller?" he said.

"Surprised?"

"Where's Louie and Fatso?"

"In the garbage."

"Are you feelin' okay, kid?"

"Take your hand out of the icebox. Frank. Nice and slow."

"What, you think I got a gun in the icebox? You fall off your rocker or something Heller?"

"I fell off something higher. Just take the hand out and turn around slow."

He did. There was another small but nasty red scar on his chest; and one more on his neck, where he'd also been shot by Lang. It looked like an ugly birthmark. He still had the milk bottle in one hand, nothing in the other.

"I was just raidin' the icebox, kid." he said, keeping it casual, but his narrowed eyes were anything but. "There's some leftover roast lamb in there. You wouldn't want to help me finish it. would you?"

The kitchen was white and modern; cozy, with a table in the midst. There were some cards on the table, from where Campagna and Fatso had been sitting, I supposed.

"Anybody else in the apartment, Frank?"

"No."

-

"Show me around."

He shrugged. Walking slowly, he led me through the place, going down a hallway that had several rooms off either side, bedrooms, a sitting room, a study. At the end of the hall was a big living room. The rooms were large, well-furnished; the walls were decorated here and there with Catholic icons. Nobody but Nitti was home.

In the kitchen again, I let him sit at the table, with his back to the door I'd come in. I sat with my back to the sink, so I could see the back door at my right and the hallway at my left. Nitti was studying me. He'd grown out his inverted-V mustache, I noticed; it was thicker, now. He looked older; skinny; small. While he hardly looked like a man on death's door, he was clearly not the man he'd been before Lang shot him.

"Kid. Mind if I take a swig of this milk?"

"Go ahead."

He took two gulps, right from the bottle, and for a moment a milk mustache mingled with Iris own, till he wiped it off with the back of one hand.

"Ulcers." he said. "All I do these days is drink milk."

"My heart bleeds."

"Yeah, well so do my ulcers, you little punk bastard. What the goddamn hell's this about? You're committin' goddamn suicide, you know."

"There's a dead man downstairs."

He sat up. "Louie? If you killed Louie, so help me I'll"

"Campagna's all right. He won't know his name for a couple hours, but he's all right. So's Fatso."

"Then, who…?"

"A blond guy. I don't know his name. But I've seen him around."

Nitti raised his chin and looked at me from slitted eyes.

"Last time I saw him," I said, "was at Bayfront Park, when you sent him to help kill Cermak. The time before that I saw him running down Randolph Street; that was when Capone sent him to kill Jake Lingle. And tonight, tonight you sent him to kill Nathan Heller. And he didn't get the job done, did he?"

Nitti was shaking his head. "You're wrong. Wrong."

"Tell me about it. Tell me you sent that son of a bitch to Florida just to catch some sun."

He pointed a finger at me, like my gun pointed at him. "I didn't say I didn't send him to Florida. What I do say is I didn't send him to kill you."

The gun in my hand was stalling to shake. I heard myself say. "He pushed me off the Sky Ride tower. Frank. Six hundred feet in the sky. and by all rights I should be a twisted sack of bones and meat on a morgue tray right now, but I'm not. I'm here, and he's dead, and so are you, Nitti. I wish to Christ Lang had killed you that day. I wish to Christ I hadn't made 'em call an ambulance for you, cocksucker."

Nitti sat there quietly; when I ran out of speech, he patted the air softly, as if quieting, settling down, a child.

"Heller," he said. "I didn't send him. I didn't even know the bastard was in town. He doesn't work for me."

"Fuck you. You're dead."

"Wait. Just w&it. Lower that goddamn thing, will you? Hear me out. I didn't say he never done work for me. He's from the East. He's a guy Johnny Torrio recommended to Al, back on the Lingle deal; and I use him now and then- on ticklish matters."

"So that's what I am. A ticklish matter."

"I know how you feel. I know the kind of emotions that are running wild in you. kid. I know all about revenge. If Ten Percent Tony wasn't in hell already, you could ask him if Nitti doesn't know all about revenge. But I didn't hire a contract on you. I swear by all that's holy."

As if on cue. a church bell began ringing. Midnight. I wondered idly if it was Notre Dame or Our Lady of Pompeü.

I said "Who sent him then?"

"I don't know the answer to that. Not for sure. But I can figure it out. So can you. if you try."

I was starting to feel confused: I was starting to wonder what the hell I was doing. The momentum, the moment, was slipping away from me…

"The Lang trial is comin' up in September." Nitti said. "Or have you forgotten? Is that all past history to you now? Well, it isn't past history to some people."

"Are you saying Lang sent that guy? He doesn't have the money or the connections to"

"He doesn't have the brains, or the guts, either. No. Not Lang. Nobody. Nobody sent him. You sang on the stand. Heller. You made news in Chicago: you told the truth. How do you think your blond buddy felt when he heard you were doin' that? You can identify him as the real killer of Jake Lingle; you can identify him as a second gunman at the Cermak kill. What sort of thoughts do you suppose went through his head when he found out Nate Heller's got a sudden case of telling the truth on witness stands? Who can say what might come out at this Lang trial. Lang was at Bayfront Park, too, you know."

I was resting the elbow of the arm with the gun-in-hand, on the table; now I leaned on the other elbow, too, and was rubbing the side of my face. I swallowed. My mouth was dry. And I felt sick to my stomach.

So did Nitti, apparently, because he took another swig of milk.

He wiped off his mouth, smiled, and said, "Put the gun down. Just set it on the table."

It sounded like a pretty good idea, but I wasn't ready to believe him just yet.

I said, "What about Jimmy Beame, then?"

"Forget Jimmy Beame. And I'm doing you a favor, giving you that advice. So put the gun down, take the advice, and go. Just go away."

I felt a surge of something; my face felt flushed. "I almost believed you for a minute, Frank. But now the truth comes out, whether you meant it to or not. Jimmy Beame was tied to Ted Newberry, I don't know how exactly, except that it was through the Tri-Cities liquor ring. And then he infiltrated your organization, and you found out, and you what? Had him killed? You're smiling. I'm right, aren't I? I'm right. And I started snooping around, and when I connected with Dipper Cooney- you were at the goddamn fight yourself, Frank- you tried to kill us both, but managed only to shut Cooney up, and"

"Cooney died because he was with you. That's my guess, anyway. And that dead blond son of a bitch out there was who did it."

That's right: the car he was sitting out there in right now was the car that had glided by shooting last night.

Nitti's voice was a calm drone. "I've known you were looking for Jimmy Beame for a long time." he shrugged. "Since you first started hitting the flophouses on North Clark Street. Nothing much 'scapes my notice, kid."

"He is dead, though, isn't he?"

"Yeah. And he did do some work for Ted Newberry- ran some errands for Ted and his pals in the Tri-Cities. But you're forgetting something: between Saint Valentine's Day, '29, when him and Bugs Moran just missed the party, and that ditch in the dunes this January. Ted was one of ours. Back when the Beame kid was working for him, Ted was working for me and Al. So that fairy tale you built won't wash."

"Tell me a tale that will wash."

"No. You go home. I owe you one. And here's how I'm gonna repay you: the blond's going for a midnight swim in his car, in the Chicago River; and I'm gonna tell Louie and Fatso it was all a misunderstanding and they shouldn't kill you. That's how I'm gonna repay you. Now leave the gun- it's the blond's, ain't it? Dicks don't pack silencers, at least that I ever heard of."

I shifted the silenced gun to my left hand and with my right got out my own automatic; then, awkwardly. I managed to take the clip out of the silenced gun, and put the clip in my pocket, leaving the emptied gun on the table. Then I shifted my automatic to my right hand and said, "I haven't finished with this."

"Yes you have."

"No. You don't get it. do you. Frank? Jimmy Beame isn't just another job I'm doing, just another missing persons case. He's my fiancee's brother. That's right: my fiancee. I met her months ago, when she hired me to find the kid When she finds out he's dead, she's going to insist on me looking into it. I'm going to have to find the guy who did it, Frank. And while you probably didn't pull the trigger, I got a feeling in a very real sense you're the guy."

Nitti laughed: it was a laugh that had no humor in it- something like sadness was more like it.

"Actually," Nitti said, "I owe you one for something else. Something you don't know about. You did me a favor once, and you don't even know it."

Capone said almost the same thing to me, at Atlanta.

"I didn't know this Beame kid by that name," he said. "I didn't know about the Newberry connection, either, at first. All I knew was Dipper Cooney- who knew better than to stiff me- okayed this kid, and when I talked to the kid, I found him different. He was a little wiseguy, for one thing, but more than that, he was smart. I said, you been to college, ain't ya, kid? And he said, don't let it get around. I liked that. He was real good with figures, and we made him kind of an accountant, in a wire room. Joe Palumbo's wire room. Ring a bell yet. Heller?"

No church bells rang on cue this time; but a bell was ringing.

"Got Jimmy Beanie's picture handy. Heller?"

I dug at my billfold; got the picture out.

"Lemme see." Nitti said, reaching across. "I never seen him this young, or this fat. either. Baby fat. His hair was longer, too, curlier. And he had a mustache. Must've grew that to look older."

The kid in the window.

"You killed him, Heller," Nitti said.

Then he wasn't in the window anymore.

"You killed him," Nitti continued. "That's the favor you did us. See, one of my guys recognized the kid was somebody who'd done some running for Newberry and the Tri-Cities boys. Only he knew the kid's name wasn't Hurt- that's what he was calling himself, Frankie Hurt- but the guy couldn't remember what the other name was. Well, hell, a lot of guys use more than one name in a lifetime- I was bora Nitto, ya know- but better safe than sorry. I had Louie check out the kid's flop.

"And Louie found something bad. He found notebooks. Lined paper, like a school kid. Only these notebooks were full of writing, and it wasn't no school kid's work. This Hurt was writing down everything he saw and heard, and because Palumbo's wire room was a place I was at a lot. the kid heard a lot. Just bits and pieces, of course, but good bits and pieces, or bad ones, depending on how you look at it. He also found the kid's real ID. a driver's license, and saw his name was James something Beame. James Palmer Beame, I think it was. And found an address book with the kid's father's name in it, and the father was a doctor in Idaho or something, and something else. The damn kid had his damn college diploma in the drawer, and guess what it said he studied in?"

"Journalism," I said.

"Right! The kid was going to peddle his story our story- to the papers! Something had to be done. Do I got to spell out what? But here's the catch- Louie found this out the morning of the day you and Lang and Miller raided the wire room at the Wacker-LaSalle. The kid was there, and Louie hadn't had a chance to tell me any of this- obviously, it was better for me to know about the kid before the kid knew he was found out. So I was in there mouthing off about this and that, as I was placing some bets, and Louie grabbed the notepaper I was jotting bets down on- I had Anna's grocery list on it, too, can you top it?- and wrote me a quick message about the kid, and then you guys showed."

I felt strange- almost dizzy. "That note," I said. "Was it…?"

"Yeah. That was the note I chewed up, the note I got shot over. Not that Lang wouldn't've found some other excuse. Then I got shot, and in the other room, the kid was getting nervous- this I found out later, of course, from Louie. The kid knows if he gets pulled in by the cops, he stands to get found out. He must've wanted to fill a couple more notebooks before goin' public. Anyway, so Louie tells the kid to make a break for it. The kid doesn't know. Louie says, do it. Go on. Go. And you come in the room, and Louie tosses the kid a gun. and you did us all a favor."

I just sat there. The gun was in my hand, but wasn't pointing at anything. The gun I'd used. The gun my father used.

Then Campagna was in the back doorway, unarmed, but angry, teeth bared, blood caked on the side of his face. He was moving toward me. not giving a damn that I had a gun, but Nitti put an ami out and stopped him. Campagna, confused, leaned over and Nitti whispered to him; and Campagna, rolling his eyes, sighing, said, "Well, then. I'll go help Fatso. He's still out."

"Good idea," Nitti said.

I put the gun back under my arm.

"You want a drink, Heller? I got some nice vino. Can't drink it myself, this damn stomach of mine. Been killin' me. Hey- cheer up. You'll think of something to tell your girl."

"I killed her brother," I said.

"I know that. You know that. Nobody else does. He's buried in potter's field; just another dead nobody. Leave him there."

I got up; my legs wobbled, but I got up.

Nitti. bare-chested, came around and put an arm around my shoulder. "You been through a lot. my friend. You go get some sleep. And let go of this."

"I was going to kill you."

"But you didn't. You did me some favors, I did you some. Now we're even."

"The blond…"

"What blond? Forget it. This nonsense with guns, it's gettin' old. When people think of Chicago, let 'em think of the fair, not guns and gangsters. How do you like my fair?"

"Your fair?"

He smiled, nodded. "If a wheel turns on the fairgrounds, I got a cut of the grease on the axle. Got the joint sewed up. It's like… a trial nan."

"Trial run for what?"

He shrugged elaborately. "For everything. For the country. We got the world by the tail with a downhill start. We got the bartender's union, which means we'll have every bartender in the country pushing our brands of beer and liquor. They'll have to handle our soft drinks. They'll get their pretzels and potato chips from us. That goes for every hotel, restaurant, cocktail lounge, and private club in the forty-eight states. Like Al used to tell us, we'll see the day we make a profit off of even? olive in every martini served in America. This is big business, kid; that's why this playing guns crap has got to stop. Let these asshole bank robbers play guns all they want; like this guy Dillinger, let hint have the headlines- I don't want 'em. Bunch of hicks shooting up small-town banks, it gives the cops something to do, keeps the heat off us. Here. You sit back down. I'm going to call you a cab. There's glasses in the cabinet over the counter, if you want some of this milk. And help yourself to the lamb in the icebox."

He left me alone.

The gun under my arm felt heavy.

The photo of Jimmy and Mary Ann Beame. together, younger, was on the table; I put it back in my billfold.

I folded my arms on the table and rested my head.

After a while Nitti woke me up and. still in his pajama bottoms, walked me down his last mile of a hallway, an arm around my shoulder, guided me into his living room and to a doorway and down the front steps where a cab waited.

"Where to?" the cabbie said.

"Tower Town." I said.

I went up the red stairway and knocked on the door. I heard a chair move inside and then the door opened and she was there and her eyes were red from crying and her lips were trembling and she said, "Oh. Nathan." and fell into my arms. I held her there, on the porch over the open stairs, for a long time: stood there holding her in the cold and we were both trembling, but I don't think the cold had much to do with it.

Then we went into the yellow crumbling-plaster kitchen, with its oil stove and sink of dirty dishes and no icebox. A real comedown from Nitti's kitchen. She'd been sitting at the table, chain-smoking an ebony ashtray held the evidence of that. I'd only seen her smoke a few times, and then it was at the Dill Pickle or some other Tower Town tearoom, when she was striking a theatrical pose. Tonight the smoking, it would seem, had been no pose; she'd really been worrying about me. and that made me feel good, somehow, and guilty.

She was still in the chocolate linen dress; no beret, or shoes, or any other affectation, though. Her makeup had long since been cried off. She sat at the table and so did I and she held one of my hands with both of hers.

"Thank God you're here." she said. "Thank God you're all right."

"I'm fine."

"I thought that maniac would kill you."

"He didn't. I'm fine."

"I've been beside myself. I've been so…" And she came over and sat on my lap, tumbled into my arms, hugged me 'round the neck and cried. And cried.

"I I thought I'd lost you," she said.

I stroked her hair.

"What was it about? Nathan, why did he try to kill you?"

"Baby. Baby. Not now. I'm not up to it now."

Her arms still 'round my neck, she leaned back enough to look at me; study me. "You look- "

"Awful. Yeah. I can imagine."

She got off my lap; took command. Miss Efficiency of 1933. "We can talk later. Come on. Let's get you to bed."

She took me by the hand and led me through the big open studio room. Alonzo had moved out long ago- he was living with a man, now- but had left a couple of his "experiments in dynamic symmetry" behind. He'd told Mary Ann she could choose any two, and, to her credit, she picked the two smallest. But for some unexplainable reason, I'd taken a perverse liking to both of the paintings, meaningless abstract splotches of color though they were.

In the bedroom, with its blue-batiked ceiling and walls, its single, painted-out window, its four-poster bed. I felt safe. Secure. Hidden away from reality. The man in the moon over the bed seemed to be winking at me. We had a secret.

"You look so tired." she said, looking at me with furrowed brow, taking my coat off me.

"Yes. I am."

She undressed me- except for the gun. which she didn't like handling, and left for me to deal with- and then she slipped out of her clothes and put me to bed.

I said. "Could you hold me? Just hold me."

She held me. She was the mother; I was the child. I fell asleep with her cradling me in her arms.

When I woke, she was cradled in my arms. The room was dark, though she'd left the electric moon glowing. I got up and looked at my watch, on the dresser. Four in the morning.

She stirred. "What woke you?"

"I remembered something."

She sat up; the covers were around her waist. Her breasts looked at me curiously.

I said. "I remembered I haven't made love to you tonight."

She gave me that impish grin. "It's too late. It's morning already."

I felt my face turn serious; I couldn't make it do anything else. "It's not too late." I said, and went to her.

I came inside her. It was the only time I ever did that, came without using something, without pulling out. I came inside her and it was wonderful. We were both crying when we came.

We lay in each other's arms.

"That can lead to little Nathans and Mary Anns, you know," she said, looking over at me, with a faint smile.

"I know," I said.

The next morning I told her. Not the truth, exactly, but something close to it. I woke, and she was making tea, and I went into the kitchen and she smiled, standing there in that black kimono with red and white flowers she'd worn the first night, and poured me tea and I told her.

"Jimmy's dead"

She put a hand on her chest. Then she sat slowly down.

"Your brother was working for gangsters. With gangsters. He may have been doing it to get material for a story, to try and make his dream about being on the Trib come true. But that doesn't matter now. The point is he was working for gangsters and he got killed."

She raised the back of a fist to her face and bit her knuckles; her eyes were very, very wide. She looked about eleven years old.

"That's why I got pushed off that tower last night. I've been snooping around and it almost got me killed. I didn't tell you, but I was shot at night before last; a man I was with, a man who knew your brother, was killed. Standing right next to me. Killed."

She was shaking. I pulled my chair around and put an arm around her. She was staring straight ahead; it was like I wasn't there.

After a while I said, "There's nothing we can do.'

"But- how- when- where's his- I"

She got up, pushing me and the chair away, rushed out of the room.

I went after her.

She was in the bathroom, kneeling over the stool.

When she was through. I helped her out into the studio. Sun streaked down through the skylight. Alonzo's mattress had been moved out and a secondhand sofa put in its place; we sat there. Dust motes floated.

"Do the authorities know?" she asked. It was a strain for her to keep her voice from cracking.

"No." I said. "I can't even prove it happened."

She looked at me sharply, contused. "You can't- what?"

"I don't even know where he's buried."

"Then how do you know he's really dead?"

"Frank Nitti told me."

"Frank Nitti…?"

"That's where I went last night. From the fair. I thought that man had been sent by Nitti to kill me. I was wrong, but never mind. I'll try to explain. A gangster named Ted Newberry tried to have Frank Nitti killed; your brother died as a result."

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to think, tried to make sense of it. "Newberry," she said. "He's dead, isn't he? Wasn't it in the papers? He was the man responsible for Jimmy's death?"

That was only vaguely true, but I nodded.

"Shouldn't we do something? What can we do, Nathan?"

"There's nothing we can do. Newberry's dead. Nitti disposed of your brother's body. Nothing can be proved. I'm sorry. It's ugly, but you're going to have to learn to live with it."

"We should tell somebody. The police. The newspapers. Somebody..."

I held one of her hands in both of mine. "No. Your brother would be made out to be a dead gangster. Is that something you want to cany- with you? You've got a career, Mary Ann…"

"Do you think I'm that crass?"

"I'm sorry."

"I have to- have to at least- tell Daddy."

"I wouldn't."

She looked at me, confused again.

I said. "I think it'd just about kill him. Let him think Jimmy's riding the rails someplace. Let him think his son will rum up one of these days. It's kinder."

"I- I don't know."

"Mary Ann, believe me. there are some things people are just better off not knowing."

She thought about that. said. "I suppose so." and got up.

With her back to me. she said. "Nathan, could you leave me alone for a while? I think I need to be alone for a while."

I got up. "Sure."

I went out of the room.

I was going out the door when she caught me; she wasn't crying, but she was close to it. She hugged me again.

"Call me tonight," she said into my chest. "I love you. Nathan. I still love you. This doesn't change anything. Not anything."

"I love you too, Mary Ann."

She looked up at me. "I told you never to hold anything back from me. No secrets. No deceptions. You could have hidden this from me, but you didn't. That was brave of you. Nathan. That was very brave. I want you to know I respect you for it."

I kissed her on the forehead and went out; I could feel her eyes on me as I went down the steps.

Well. I had her respect; I didn't deserve it, but I had it. As for her love, that was already fading. Try as she might to turn me into a brave knight who had the courage to tell his fair lady the bitter truth. I knew I would never again be the same in her eyes. She didn't know I killed her brother; but she might as well have.

I killed her romantic notions about me. and that was just as bad. I killed the dream that I was the true detective who would find the heroine's brother and make the world right again.

I killed the happy ending.

The Big Fall September 1,

I was sitting working up some insurance reports, rain pelting the office windows behind me. when Eliot came in. dripping wet. not wearing a raincoat.

"Damn rain came out of nowhere." he said, coming over and taking the chair across my desk from me.

"Glad to see you know enough to come in out of it," I said.

"Looks like you're keeping busy."

"I'm having a good first year."

"Job at the fair alone made it a good year."

I nodded. Put my pen down. "So. You're leaving tomorrow."

"Morning. Me and Betty and a Ford full of belongings."

"What exactly did you do to the Treasury Department to deserve Cincinnati?"

"Well." he shrugged, "where else are they going to send a prohibition agent when Prohibition's winding down? I'm supposed to clean up the 'Moonshine Mountains.' Think I'm up to it?"

"A hillbilly's squirrel gun can kill you just as dead as a machine gun."

"I suppose. Still, I never pictured myself as a 'revenooer.'"

"'Still' is right."

That made him laugh a little. But he seemed kind of sad. I knew how he felt.

He said, "See if you can't get out Cincinnati way. one of these days."

"Will do. Your folks are here. I imagine you'll be getting back now and then."

"I imagine."

"Was it worth it Eliot?"

"What?"

"Fighting the good fight. Putting Capone away. All that."

"Putting Capone away was satisfying. Trouble is. nobody's doing a damn thing about Nitti. The FBI's busy running after outlaws like Dillinger. because the public sees what the likes of that breed does."

"Then you figure Melvin Purvis'll take care of Chicago while you're gone."

"That jerk! That pip-squeak doesn't know his dick from a doughnut."

Then Eliot realized I was baiting him and we both sat grinning at each other.

He said. "I stopped in downstairs and Barney wasn't around."

"He's at his training camp in the Catskills. Canzoneü rematch is coming up in a few weeks."

"Speaking of rematches. I wish I could be around to see the Lang trial."

That was coming up in a few weeks, too.

"Won't be much to it." I said. "I don't imagine much'll come of it other than Lang and Miller getting good and kicked out of the department." Both were on suspension at the moment.

"Well, just the same. I'd like to be there. Have you heard from Mary Ann lately?"

"She dropped me a card last week. She's up for a part in a picture."

"Hollywood must agree with her."

"It's the place for her."

"I kind of… thought you were serious about her."

I was.

"You doin' okay. Nate?"

"I'm getting there."

"You want to take a break? Those reports can wait, can't they?"

"Got something in mind?"

Eliot stood. "Yeah. Let's go downstairs. I want to buy you a drink."

I saw Eliot only occasionally after that; but I kept track of him, and most of the others.

Eliot spent two years chasing moonshiners in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio; later he became public safety director of Cleveland, Ohio- at thirty-two, the youngest in the city's history. During World War Two, he was the director of social protection for the Federal Security Agency- a fancy title meaning he was charged with combating venereal disease on U.S. military bases.

He did that from '41 till '45, and while he was waging a battle against VD, so was an old friend of his: Al Capone. Al did get out of Atlanta Penitentiary, but not as he hoped: he was transferred to Alcatraz, the "rock," which had been especially designed to be "a place of confinement for the more dangerous, intractable criminals." Syphilis began eating his brain away, and by '39 he was out of Alcatraz, but he was already partially paralyzed, both in mind and body. By his death in '47, at age forty-eight, VD had made him pretty much a vegetable.

As for Eliot, he went into private business, became president of a Pennsylvania paper company. Some of his friends- myself among them- urged him to put the story of his war against the Capone mob in writing. I guess he had enough of the old publicity-hound left in him to go along with it, because he wrote his autobiographical book, The Untouchables, which sparked the TV series that made his name a household word, and did the same for Capone, to a generation who hadn't even heard of the Big Fellow.

But Eliot didn't live to see any of that; he had just finished correcting the final galley proofs of his book when he died of a heart attack, in 1957. He was fifty-four.

On September 12, 1933, Barney took Canzoneri in the rematch, in New York, Canzoneri's home turf. The speakeasy became the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge, and when Henry Armstrong defeated Barney for the title in '38, Barney devoted himself to the club and to gambling, and wasn't terribly successful at either. When World War Two came along, Barney joined the marines and fought at Guadalcanal, and got the Silver Star, a presidential citation, and malaria. The medics treated him for the latter with morphine, and, like more than a few Gls, Barney ended up an inadvertent addict. It's still hard for me to think of Barney as a junkie, but that's what he became- till he kicked it and went public with the story, winning the championship all over again. It finally took cancer ("the Big C," he called it) to beat him, in '67.

Frank Nitti had ten golden years- killing Cermak and getting away with it had given him power and credibility in the eyes of everybody from the high-hats to the hoods, the politicians to the harness bulls. Clearly this was not a gangster of the crudity of Capone, no hothead who would machine-gun a garageful of competitors and fill the headlines with blood and bad publicity. Nitti was an executive, a businessman; he, more than Capone, invented the modern corporate gangster.

And, like a lot of executives, he had stomach trouble: ulcers had developed in the wake of the attempt on his life by Sergeant Lang, and those wounds, though long since healed, had continued to give him pain, particularly the back wound. In 1943, faced with racketeering charges and certain imprisonment for his efforts with Campagna and others to extort big bucks from the movie industry, Nitti left his house in suburban Riverside and took a walk in the rain along some railroad tracks, about a block from Cermak Road (Twenty-second Street, renamed for the martyred mayor). His beloved wife, Anna, had died eighteen months before; he was fifty-eight. His stomach hurt him, and they say he just couldn't face another long prison term. Two witnesses saw him shoot himself in the head. The date was March 19, just one day short often years since the day Joe Zangara said, "Push the button." Nitti's gravestone reads: "There is no life except by death."

General Dawes died reading in his study, in 1951. He had given an interview shortly before, in which he told the reporters he had no interest in imparting any wisdom to the people through the mass media. He concluded with what might as well be his epitaph: "God give us common sense!"

Janey married a Republican count)' official from the suburbs. He rose to state senator, then finally to United States Representative he was defeated for reelection after serving for many years, but was offered a post with the Nixon administration. He was a minor figure in the Watergate scandal and served eighteen months at a prison farm, during which time Janey divorced him and is now living alone in Evanston- their three children are grown. I understand she is seeing a local businessman, an ex-mayor of Evanston who owns condos.

My uncle Louis died in 1948 after a stroke. We never reconciled.

Walter Winchell's sagging career was given one last boost when he was hired to do the voiceover narration for "The Untouchables" TV show.

George Raft made a movie in 34 called Bolero, in which he finally got to do more dancing than acting. One of his co-stars was Sally Rand, who did a laundered version of her famous world's fair fan dance. She flopped in the picture, and never had much of a movie career. She did her fan and bubble dances till her death a few years ago. Raft's career faded by the 1950s, partially because of his insistence on playing only "good guy" roles- Humphrey Bogart built a career on Raft's rejected "unsympathetic" parts, like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Raft's personal associations with the likes of Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone's brother John brought him public criticism, and toward the end of his show biz career, he acted as a shill for various mob casinos, from Havana to London. His most successful role in the last few years of his life was as a convict in an Alka Seltzer TV commercial, spoofing his image. He also gave a good performance weeping at his tax-evasion trial.

Dutch Reagan went into acting, too.

Campagna was fishing in Florida in 1955, reeling in a thirty-pound catch, when he had a heart attack and died. He was fifty-seven.

I lost track of Miller; he was kicked off the department and left the city, as best I know. Lang was found guilty at his trial but was immediately granted a petition for a new trial. He had loudly told reporters he would "blow the lid off the Democratic party" if he went to jail. A year and some eighteen continuances later, the case was thrown out of court. Lang waited a few years for the heat to die down, then sued the city for reinstatement as a detective sergeant and got that and restoration of full pay for the time he'd missed. I had run-ins with him from time to time thereafter, as you well might guess; but I don't know what became of him after he finally did retire from the department.

Mary Ann, of course, went to Hollywood and changed her name to something you would recognize more readily than Mary Ann Beanie. She did several pictures for Monogram before Twentieth Century-Fox bought up her contract. I was supposed to go out to Hollywood and we would get married. Mary Ann got married, all right; several times- never to me. She died last year of lung cancer; she was a heavy smoker, the National Enquirer said.

When I read of Mary Ann's death, it brought memories rushing back. I was (and am) living in Florida, having retired some years ago. I am married to a wonderful woman who is not a character in this book. We live in Boca Raton, but we set to Miami from time to time. We were walking through Bayfront Park one sunny February afternoon when I came to the memorial with the inscription "I'm glad it was me instead of you," and started to laugh. My wife wanted to know what was so funny, and I told her. And she suggested I write this book.

So I have.

As for the Century of Progress, it was held over for another year. And when they finally closed the fair down, crowds swarmed the lakefront to watch the demolition crews dismantle the City of Tomorrow. Last to go was the east tower of the Sky Ride. On Saturday. August 31, 1935, two hundred thousand people were on hand to watch the biggest crash since Wall Street. Engineers had placed seven hundred and fifty pounds of Thermit explosive in boxes wired to the north legs of the structure, and at the appointed time Rufus Dawes pushed the button and "the great tower" fell.

It made quite a racket.

/ Owe Them One

Because of the inconsistencies in "nonfiction" books about the gangster era in Chicago, and the tendency of history books to dismiss Zangara as "a demented bricklayer who failed to assassinate FDR." I went back to the newspaper files of the Tribune, The Daily News and other Chicago papers of the day. as well as the Miami Herald and News, where eyewitness accounts of such events as the shooting at Bayfront Park, and lengthy accountings of testimony at the Zangara and Nitti trials, were at variance with "history's" version of the events in question.

Nevertheless, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible- and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of my conflicting source material and the need to telescope certain minor events to make for a more smoothly flowing narrative.

Several hardworking people helped me research this book, primarily George Hagenauer, whose contributions include helping develop the family history of the Hellers; discovering the Nydick killing in the newspaper files, a related case not touched upon in any of the nonfiction books covering the Nitti shooting/Cermak assassination; and uncovering a massive scrapbook on the Century of Progress, which allowed me to "go" to the fair. George is a lifelong resident of Chicago, and he- and Mike Gold, another Chicagoan who is a Chicago history buff with an eye for detail- provided invaluable help and support. Jay Maeder, of the Miami Herald, was similarly helpful. If I have re-created any sense of Chicago in the 1930s- or, in Jay's case, Miami in the 1930s- much credit must go to them. Jim Arpy, of the Quad City Times, shared his expertise (and files) with me. Also helpful was retired police reporter

(of the Davenport Democrat and Quad City Times) Paul Conway, as were Rick McQuire and Dave Lund of WOC-TV. My friend and frequent collaborator, cartoonist Terry Beatty, also lent his support and help to this project (and the loan of another Century of Progress scrapbook/diary, kept by his grandmother when she attended the fair). And I'd like to thank Dominick Abel, my agent; Tom Dunne, my editor, and his associate. Ellen Loonam; Rick Marschall, who when he was editor at Field Enterprises encouraged me to do a story about a private eye in the '30s period; Bob Randisi, who encouraged me to do a story about a private eye. period; and Sarah Lifton, another former editor of mine, who seems to make a habit out of being in my corner.

Thanks are also due to Donald E. Westlake and Mickey Spillane, for more reasons than just the moral support they lent during the writing of this novel.

Photos selected by the author for use in this edition are courtesy the Chicago Historical Society⁷ (Maxwell Street, General Dawes, Water Tower, Al Capone, Hooverville, and Barney Ross); other photos are courtesy the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, and UPI; the Bayfront Park, 1983, photo was taken by Marice Cohn, staff photographer with the Miami Herald. Remaining photos have been selected from the personal collections of George Hagenauer, Barry Luebbert, and the author. Efforts to track the sources of certain photos have been unsuccessful; upon notification these sources will be listed in subsequent editions.

Literally hundreds of books and magazine and newspaper articles have been consulted in researching True Detective. I am particularly indebted to the anonymous authors of the Federal Writers Project volumes on the states of Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Iowa, all of which appeared in the late '30s: also helpful were several University of Chicago sociological studies, including From the Gold Coast to the

Slum (1929) and Chicago Police Problems (1932). A few other books deserve singling out: A Corner

of Chicago (1963). Robert Hardy Andrews; Al Capone (1930). Fred D. Pasley; The Bootleggers (1961), Kenneth Allsop; Boss Cermak of Chicago (1962), Alex Gottfried; Captive City (1969), Ovid Demaris; Chicago Confidential (1950), Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer; Dining in Chicago (1931), John Drury; The Dry and Lawless Years (1960), Judge John H. Lyle; Four Against the Mob (1961), Oscar Fraley; George Raft (1974), Lewis Yablonsky; The George Raft File (1973), James Robert Paris with Steven Whitney; Headquarters (1955), Quentin Reynolds; Maxwell Street (1977), Ira Berkow; Mayors, Madams, and Madmen (1979), Norman Mark; No Man Stands Alone (1957), Barney Ross and Martin Abramson; That Man Dawes (1930), Paul R Leach; The Twenty Incredible Years (1935), William H Stuart; The Underworld of American Politics (1932), Fletcher Dobbins; The Untouchables (1957), Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley; Where's the Rest of Me? (1965), Ronald Reagan and Richard G. Hubler; and Winchell (1971)_: Bob Thomas.

When all the debts have been paid, or at least acknowledged, one remains: this book could not have been written without the constant help and support of my wife, partner, and toughest (and best) critic, Barbara Collins.

Table of Contents

Start