You Bet Your Life

6

There was no one in the LaSalle Hotel lobby except a drowsing bellhop whose uniform buttons needed polishing. Curtis Katz was at the desk looking just slightly wilted at the end of an all-night shift. He gave me the hint of a smile.

“I’m checking out,” I said. “Get my bill ready. I’ll be right down.”

“I hope it wasn’t-”

“No,” I said, hurrying to the elevator. “Urgent business back in Hollywood. Gable needs me. You know how it is.”

Katz knew how it was. The elevator boy put his newspaper down and brought me up to six. By the time I reached my door, the power of Ian Fleming’s elixir had just about worn off. I turned the key and kicked the door open with my foot. No one shot at me. I switched on the light, did a quick check of the bathroom and closet, put on my holster and.38, and snapped one of the locks of my suitcase (the other was broken when I bought it). Since I had never unpacked, the whole process took me about two minutes.

I paid Katz with a check when I got back to the lobby. My account in L.A. might just barely cover it, and I couldn’t afford to give up any cash. I was heading for the door when Katz called, “Wait.”

“Yes?” I said nervously, looking down through the pattern of scratches on my watch, to show I was in a hurry.

“You have a message.” He got the message while I watched the entrance doors for a familiar face with a machine gun under it.

“Mr. Marx called from Las Vegas,” preened Katz. “Said he and his brothers would arrive at Midway Airport here at noon. I presumed you’d know who Mr. Marx was.”

“I do know, Curtis,” I said, leaning over the counter confidentially. “I can call you Curtis, can’t I?”

“Certainly,” he smiled.

“Good,” I beamed back. “Mr. Marx is a producer. We’re thinking of shooting a movie with Gable here in Chicago. It’s important that no one know Mr. Marx is in town. So if anyone comes looking for me, don’t give them the information. Might be reporters or a rival studio. You know how those things are?”

He knew how those things were. I strongly suggested that his cooperation would be borne in mind when the decision was made to shoot the picture. There would be good jobs and small roles for friends.

There were no cabs around, and the morning sun was already high enough by now to keep the streets from having any good shadows to jump into. There were some people on the streets, probably hotel workers, pickpockets, and confused drunks who had lost their way. I didn’t think the presence of a few people would stop Nitti’s friends from gunning me down on LaSalle Street.

I ran across the street. My suitcase bounced as if it was about to split, and my holster and gun put a weight on my chest I didn’t like. I pushed through the nearest revolving door.

Stepping back into the lobby of an office building, I watched a familiar big black Cadillac pull up in front of the LaSalle. Two men jumped out. One was Costello, with his right arm in a sling. The other was the juke box man. Chaney was at the wheel of the car. He looked right at the building I was in, but I was sure the lobby was dark enough.

Two things had probably given me the time to get out of the LaSalle. I had hoped for one or both and had been rewarded. Costello was whatever brains the group of muscle had, and he didn’t have much. He didn’t want to call Nitti or Servi and tell them that I got away if he didn’t have to. He probably could have put in a call and had someone waiting for me when Fleming and I drove up at the LaSalle, but Costello was counting on getting me without help and without admitting a failure. He had also stopped to get his arm bandaged and put in a sling.

Costello ran into the LaSalle and came back out in less than two minutes. He didn’t look as if he had found out much if anything from Katz. Before he got back in the car, he looked around the street, but he didn’t see me or anything else of interest. I gave them three more minutes to get out of the neighborhood and made a dash for a taxi that pulled up in front of the LaSalle to let someone out.

“Midway Airport,” I told the cabbie. On the way, I considered the possibility that Costello might call Nitti and they might have a couple of people at airports and train stations to stop me from leaving. Then I figured that Nitti probably wouldn’t bother. He hadn’t been kicked around by a middle-aged detective and a stylish Englishman. Nitti would probably be happy to have me get out of town. Costello and his chums might think otherwise, but they’d have to report to Servi or Nitti before too much time passed, or risk their own heads on the train tracks.

The trip to Midway was long. I blew my nose a few times, dozed off a few more times, and ignored the driver. When we got to the airport, I paid him off and hurried inside. I found a washroom, shaved, and changed my shirt. Then I found a coffee shop, had some Wheaties with sliced bananas, and bought a newspaper.

I found the waiting room where the Marx Brothers flight would come in, but I was hours early. I took a seat in the middle of a group of guys who looked like businessmen and were talking about options.

The paper told me it was Saturday. It also told me that snow would fall, that five senators didn’t like some war bill, and that slot machines were running wide open in the northern suburbs of Cook County. I could have shown them a few in the western suburb of Cicero, too. I also found out that British raiders had bombed Nazi bases in Sicily. That wasn’t what I was looking for. I paused over a story of some kids in Sag Harbor, New York, at a place called Pierson High School. Some of the students had dressed up as storm troopers and started to bully others to show how it feels. There was a picture with the story, showing some girls scrubbing a sidewalk with the young storm troopers standing over them. J. Edgar Hoover was asking for seven hundred more FBI men to help curb Nazi spies. Then I found what I was looking for. Tony Zale had KO’d Mamkos in the fourteenth. Zale had gone down in the fifth, and the fight had been close up until the knockout.

Content, I fell asleep. My dream was about men with different mustaches, all leering and chasing me around a gym. There was a Groucho mustache, a Servi mustache, a Katz mustache, a Hitler mustache. I started throwing balls and gradually worked my way up through baseballs, basketballs and medicine balls. None of them stopped the attack, and my old pal Koko didn’t materialize to save me. I ran through a door and found myself in downtown Cincinnati. I woke up with a groan and a massive sneeze. No one was sitting next to me. I had just enough time to lug my suitcase to a newsstand, buy some aspirin, gulp down a half dozen, and make it back to the waiting room when the Las Vegas plane came in.

Nobody looking like Marx Brothers came off in the first batch. I was about to give up when I heard the familiar screen voice of Groucho saying,

“The least Perry Mason could have done was meet us here.”

The voice came out of a short, erect dark man with a decidedly Jewish face. He was flanked by two slightly older men his own size who looked like twins. I stepped in front of the three men and spoke to one of the twins.

“Chico Marx?” I tried.

“That’s Harpo,” said Groucho. “And it’s pronounced Chick-o, because he’s a chick chaser. Well, whoever you are, you didn’t waste any time in trying to sell us brushes.” He looked down at my suitcase.

“I’m Peters,” I said.

“We’re Wheeler and Zoolsey and El Brendel,” said Groucho, whose bad mood was spreading beyond the four of us.

“I’m Chico,” said one of the men who looked like twins. He held out his hand and I took it. “These are my brothers, Groucho and Harpo.”

“Our real names are Julius, Leonard arid Arthur,” said Groucho, “but the last person who called us that is still locked in the bathroom of Loew’s State.”

Clumps of people went past us, but no one gave even the hint of recognizing the famous brothers. I would have missed them myself if I hadn’t heard Groucho’s voice. Chico’s voice, as I knew, was nothing like his screen voice.

An idea hit me, but I needed time to put it together.

“Well,” said Groucho, “are you going to erect a tent so we can have a noon tea, or are we going to get off of this elephant path?”

I led them to the coffee shop. While they ordered lunch, I did some fast explaining, giving the whole story of the search for Servi and Nitti’s refusal to listen.

“So, you’re telling us Chico should pay $120,000 he doesn’t owe,” said Groucho.

“No,” I said.

“I see, I see,” said Groucho. “You’re telling us Chico should pay and should wait until somebody with a pushed-in face-no offense-”

“None taken,” I said.

“Some guy with a pushed-in face,” Groucho went on, “turns him into Swiss cheese.”

“No,” I said.

“You’re a sterling judge of options, Peters,” said Groucho, turning his attention to a chicken sandwich. “And I’d like to sit around this Chicago version of Ciro’s for days, but we’ve got to throw ourselves on the mercy of someone fast. Just lead us to this Servi character and we’ll work something out.”

“Now wait a minute, Grouch,” said Chico quietly, while Harpo ate silently with eyes never leaving his brothers. “Maybe Toby has a plan.”

“I’ve got a plan,” said Groucho. “You sign legal papers turning all your earnings over to me so things like this don’t happen again. You’ve gambled away more money than you’ve earned, and that’s a lot of gambling.”

“Come on, Grouch,” sighed Chico. “We gonna go through that again?”

“No, no. Sorry to bring it up and ruin your lunch. Just pretend I didn’t say anything. We’ll just go on forever making movies so you can keep ahead of your debts. We’re middle-aged men. We should be bouncing grandchildren and planting petunias. Instead we run around getting hit by trains, falling off horses, and getting punched by heavies.”

It sounded like my life. I let them talk for a few more minutes while I ate an egg sandwich. The three of them had obviously been through this so many times that they knew the routine. Harpo apparently wanted no part of it.

“O.K., Peters,” sighed Groucho, finishing off his sandwich. “What’s your plan-though I know I shouldn’t ask.”

“The three of you go to a hotel,” I said. “You know any hotels in Chicago?”

“We used to live here back in the vaudeville days,” said Chico. “We know the town. How about the Palmer House? There’s usually a good card game or two.”

“This is against my better judgment, but we’ll be at the Drake,” said Groucho.

“And,” I went on, “don’t register with your own names.”

“I almost never do,” said Groucho, “but then again, it’s not because I’m hiding with my brothers. We’ll give you two days for your plan.”

“Fair enough. You sit tight and don’t call anybody. I’ve got an idea that may get you out of this, but it will take me a day or so to set it up.”

“Right,” said Chico. “We can play pinochle in our rooms.”

“I didn’t even bring my guitar,” sighed Groucho.

We picked up their bags and caught a cab. On the way back, I asked them if they were ever spotted on the street and asked for autographs. They agreed that they weren’t very often. I was fairly sure that if I didn’t know who they were and couldn’t tell Chico from Harpo at first look, it might not be very difficult for some small, Jewish-looking guy to pass himself off as the real Chico Marx. It was a wacky possibility, but it was worth a try and it gave me something to work on. First, find the guy who passed for Chico, if such a guy existed. Second, set up a meeting with Chico and Servi, so Servi could either lie or say Chico was the wrong guy. The second was dangerous for Chico, but things didn’t look too great for him now. I didn’t know how to go about the first.

After I checked the brothers in at the Drake-as the Rothsteins of Ohio-I headed for a telephone and called Sergeant Kleinhans. It took a while to track him down.

“Where are you, Peters?” he said. “You checked out of the LaSalle.”

“Some friends of Frank Nitti were looking for me,” I said. “I’ve got some news and questions. You want to hear them or do you want to threaten me?”

“Both,” he said. “What have you got?”

“The guy who put the finger on Chico is Gino Servi. Know him?”

“Yep. Keep going.”

“There’s a good chance that if Servi sees Chico Marx, he’ll know he’s the wrong man. Servi doesn’t like me, but I’ll give it a try.”

“You’re going to bring Chico Marx here for that?” said Kleinhans.

“I can get him if I have to,” I said. “The second possibility is to find someone who might have passed himself off as Chico Marx. He doesn’t have to look just like him, maybe wasn’t even gambling before. He might have a record. Between forty or fifty-five or so. Short.”

“That’s nothing to go on,” said Kleinhans. “But I’ll fish around. Where can I reach you?”

“You can’t. I’ll call you back. People in the Chicago police department are on Nitti’s payroll. They knew I was at the LaSalle and about the murder of Bistolfi before you did.”

Kleinhans laughed.

“Tell me something new,” he said. “O.K. Give me a call.”

I hung up, picked up my suitcase, went to the bar, ordered a Fleming flu special, and went outside to call a cab. I told the cabbie to take me to Kitty Kelly’s. There wasn’t a safe hotel for me in Chicago, and my friendships were nonexistent.

Suitcase in hand and collar up, I slouched into Kitty Kelly’s. Before my eyes adjusted to the dark, I blew my nose and did a little play with my coat buttons. Then I made out forms at the bar and the three Twenty-One tables. Merle Gordon was at the same table where I had seen her before.

“You don’t look so good,” she volunteered.

“I’ve been sick,” I sighed.

She rolled the dice and motioned me closer.

“Drop a quarter, pretend you’ve lost, and get the hell out of here,” she whispered. I tried to look down the top of her dress. She caught me, but I hadn’t been trying to hide it. She shook her head and grinned.

“You’re something,” she said. “You mentioned Kitty Kelly’s to get into the Fireside last night. Somebody remembered and came here asking about you.”

“Stumpy guy with a sling?” I guessed.

“Right,” she answered, rolling the dice. “I told him I didn’t know anybody who looked like you and no one else here remembered you, but one of the other girls might notice you right now. So goodbye, and it’s been nice knowing you.”

I didn’t move.

“Nowhere to go,” I said. “Can’t check into a hotel. The bad guys might have them covered, and I don’t know many people in Chicago.”

My eyes went down. I tried to look near defeat, shoulders slumped, eyes moist. Years ago it had worked on my wife Anne, but the last time I tried it on her she wasn’t having any. She had had enough of mothering me.

Merle pulled a pad of paper from under the table and scribbled on it. Then she reached deeper under the table and came up with something that tinkled.

“Reach over and take these,” she said. “And drop another quarter. My address is on the note and that’s the key. There’s juice in the refrigerator. Sleep on the sofa. I’ll be there later. I’m off early today.”

I grinned.

“Forget it,” she said. “You stay on that sofa and away from me. I can’t afford to catch your cold.”

I shrugged with enormous regret, pocketed key and note, and went outside to find a cab.

Merle’s apartment was a little north of the Loop, on a street called Barry. It was a three-story yellow building with a courtyard and maybe twenty apartments in three entrances. Her place was in the second entrance on the second floor. It was small-two rooms with a kitchen area that stood in a corner of the living room. The bedroom was big enough for a single bed. On the chest of drawers near the bed, there was a picture of a good-looking man with a thin smile. The picture looked as if it were a few years old. There was also a picture of a little girl-a cute kid with dark hair, a big grin, and a tooth missing in front. She looked something like Merle.

The furniture looked used or rented. It was clean, but it didn’t look like the kind of thing I would have guessed she had. The refrigerator had a full quart of juice. I drank most of it and looked for cereal while I made coffee. There wasn’t any cereal, so I ate a sandwich with two slices of something that was either pale salami or ripe bologna. There was no bath, just a shower. I used it, shaved, drank my coffee, and stretched out on the sofa with a roll of toilet paper for my nose. I fell asleep. No dreams came. No trip to Cincinnati. No Marx Brothers.

A knock at the door pulled me slowly out of the sofa. I fumbled for my gun and tried not to breathe, which is easy with a deviated septum and the flu. I had figured Merle for someone who’d help a poor bedraggled detective, but I’ve been wrong about women, men and kids all my life. She might just have given Costello a call, claimed a reward or amnesty, and gone back to the dice.

“Wake up and open the door,” she whispered. “You took my only key.”

I opened the door, holding the gun behind my back. She came in and threw her coat on a chair.

“You always sleep with that?” she said, walking to the kitchen.

“This,” I said looking at the gun. “I don’t know what this is.”

She touched the coffee, found it cold and turned the heat back on. Then she turned and looked at me. I had taken my clothes off and stood in underwear and a tee shirt with the.38 in my hand. I looked down at myself and shrugged. She laughed and drank her coffee.

“You alone?”

“Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. If you mean do I have a family, just a brother. Nothing else. I once had a wife.”

“I know how that is,” she said, biting her lower lip.

“You want to talk about it?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I want to finish my coffee and admire your droopy drawers. Then I want to get in bed.”

“I remember,” I said sadly. “You don’t want a cold, and I stay on the sofa.”

“It’s too late,” she said, pulling a napkin from a cabinet and dabbing her nose, “I already caught your cold.”

“Really,” I grinned.

“Really,” she grinned back, a kind of sad, friendly grin.

Ten minutes later we were in the small bed, sneezing, laughing, exploring and coughing. It was love time in the pneumonia ward. Her body was small and perfect. Mine was hard and scarred and imperfect-an attraction of opposites.

“What happened to your nose?” she said, kissing it.

“It put up a gallant but losing fight three times too many.”

“I like it.”

“It’s hard to breathe through it, especially when I have a cold.”

“Are you always this romantic?”

“Only when I’m inspired by royalty.”

An idea hit me, and I rolled over on top of her and we both tumbled off the bed. We bounced together against the wall and stayed that way till someone knocked at the door. She squeezed away from me and called, “Who is it?”

“Ray.”

“Just a second.”

She put on an oversize purple robe and rolled her sleeves up. The bottom of the robe trailed on the floor. She padded barefoot to the door, looking like a kid trying to play grownup. I rolled over and pulled on my shorts.

“Peters,” beamed Ray Narducy, a cab driver sans protective muffler. His hack hat was pushed back on his head and his glasses had a film of steam over them.

“Hi kid,” I said.

“Find anything?”

“A little,” I answered. “Our friends in the Caddy caught up with me, and I’m trying to keep out of their way.”

He walked comfortably to the refrigerator, opened it, and looked for something to eat while we talked. Merle reached over his head, standing on tiptoe to pull down a box of cookies and hand it to him.

“Need any help?” he said.

“Maybe later,” I told him, “but not while they might be able to link your cab with me.”

We sat around eating cookies and sneezing, swapping stories about the good new days, listening to Narducy’s imitations of Herbert Marshall and Lum Abner. Merle yawned. I said I was tired. Narducy ate cookies and drank a quart of milk. Merle went to bed, and I told Narducy I had to get up early. He said he did too and stayed twenty minutes more, giving me the plot of the last episode of “Lights Out.”

When he left, I flew back into the bed with a grunt and a wheeze.

“Asleep?” I whispered.

“No,” she said. She leaned over in the dark and kissed me. “But I’ve had enough action for the night, on top of a fever. Let’s sleep on our memories.”

I dreamed something, but I don’t know what. When I woke up in the early morning light I held it in the palm of my memory, but it flittered away on dusty moth wings. Merle was still asleep, snoring through a congested nose. The room was full of romance and germs. I got dressed, shaved in the kitchen sink to be quiet, and left a note saying I’d contact her that night. Then I went out in the snow to find a phone. I found one at a lunch counter, where I ate Choco-nuts cereal and had two cups of coffee. It was about nine on Sunday morning, and the place was empty except for me and a guy with a kid he kept patting on the head everytime the kid said anything. Since the kid was only about two, he had a lot to say, but not much of it was clear. I listened for a while and watched. Something like nostalgia or longing started to get to me. I knew I’d have to pull away, or go through some somber hours envying that man with the kid.

Kleinhans wasn’t at the Maxwell Street Station, but he had left a message for me to call him at home. They gave me his home number, and I heard the now familiar but fuzzy voiced Sergeant Chuck Kleinhans.

“What time is it?”

“After nine,” I said. “What have you got for me?”

“A large, heavy chair given to me by my grandfather when he came to this country. There’s still enough strength in these old arms of mine to lift it above my head and bring it down on yours.”

“I’ve offended you,” I said sadly.

He tried to hold back a laugh.

“I’d say you have Peters, and you can ill afford to lose what little patience I have left. When we were in the State Street station a few hundred years ago, you called Indianapolis.”

“Is that a question or a statement?” I said, looking back at the dad and kid who were cutting each other’s waffles.

“It is a warning. Besides owing the City of Chicago a dollar and sixty cents, you played me for a sap.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t resist it. Cops bring out the trickster in me.”

His yawn was enormous.

“I checked on the Canetta kid. He has a Chicago record three sheets long.”

“You have an address for him?”

“Yeah,” said Kleinhans with a sigh, “and not that old Ainslie junk the Indiana cops had. He’s on probation and living at 4038 West Nineteenth Street. You wanna check him, go ahead. I don’t think he’s connected.”

“What about my little old man?”

“Forget it. You didn’t give me enough to frame a nigger newsman.”

“How about a sheeny grocer?”

“Yeah,” chortled Kleinhans, exhausting his range of over-the-phone emotions, “know one?”

“My old man. Stay in touch, Kraut.”

I hung up, knowing Kleinhans would forgive and forget, or hold it against me for turning his words against him. If he was a normal respectable human being, he’d remember.

The snow was an inch thick outside. I looked into the grey sky and into the coffee shop window at the father-son team. The kid had spilled chocolate milk, and the father was cleaning it up with a proud smile. I felt like shit and wondered why I had missed Christmas.