“He’s a good man, Nate, he really is.”
“What’s your job?”
“I’m treasurer of the union.”
“You’re the collector, then.”
“Well…yeah. Does it show?”
“I just didn’t figure you for the accountant type.”
He smiled sheepishly. “Every union needs a little muscle. Anyways, Cooke. He’s trying to stir things up, we think. He isn’t even legal counsel for the union anymore, but he’s been coming to meetings, hanging around. We think he’s been going around talking to the members.”
“Got an election coming up?”
“Yeah. We want to know who he’s talking to. We want to know if anybody’s backing him.”
“You think Nitti’s people might be using him for a front?”
“Could be. Maybe even Skidmore. Playing both ends against the middle is Cooke’s style. Anyways, can you shadow him and find out?”
“For fifteen a day and expenses, I can.”
“Isn’t that a little steep, Nate?”
“What’s the monthly take on union dues around this joint?”
“Fifteen a day’s fine,” Jake said, shaking his head side to side, smiling.
“And expenses.”
The door opened and the secretary came in, quickly, her silk stockings flashing.
“Mr. Rubinstein,” she said, visibly upset, “Mr. Cooke is in the outer office. Demanding to see Mr. Martin.”
“Shit,” Jake said through his teeth. He glanced at me. “Let’s get you out of here.”
We followed the secretary into the outer office, where Cooke, a man of medium size in an off-the-rack brown suit, was pacing. A heavy top coat was slung over his arm. In his late twenties, with thinning brown hair, Cooke was rather mild looking, with wire-rim glasses and cupid lips. Nonetheless, he was well and truly pissed off.
“Where’s that btard Martin?” he demanded of Jake. Not at all intimidated by the little strongarm man.
“He stepped out,” Jake said.
“Then I’ll wait. Till hell freezes over, if necessary.”
Judging by the weather, that wouldn’t be long.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Jake said, brushing by him. I followed.
“Who’s this?” Cooke said, meaning me. “A new member of your goon squad? Isn’t Fontana enough for you?”
Jake ignored that and I followed him down the steps to the street.
“He didn’t mean Carlos Fontana, did he?” I asked.
Jake nodded. His breath was smoking, teeth chattering. He wasn’t wearing a topcoat; we’d left too quick for such niceties.
“Fontana’s a pretty rough boy,” I said.
“A lot of people who was in bootlegging,” Jake said, shrugging, “had to go straight. What are you gonna do now?”
“I’ll use the phone booth in the drug store to get one of my ops out here to shadow Cooke. I’ll keep watch till then. He got enough of a look at me that I don’t dare shadow him myself.”
Jake nodded. “I’m gonna go call Martin.”
“And tell him to stay away?”
“That’s up to him.”
I shook my head. “Cooke seemed pretty mad.”
“He’s an asshole.”
And Jake walked quickly down to a parked black Ford coupe, got in, and smoked off.
I called the office and told my secretary to send either Lou or Frankie out as soon as possible, whoever was available first; then I sat in the Auburn and waited.
Not five minutes later a heavy-set, dark-haired man in a camel’s hair topcoat went in and up the union-hall stairs. I had a hunch it was Martin. More than a hunch: he looked well and truly pissed off, too.
I could smell trouble.
I probably should have sat it out, but I got out of the Auburn and crossed Roosevelt and went up those stairs myself. The secretary was standing behind the desk. She was scared shitless. She looked about an inch away from crying.
Neither man was in the anteroom, but from behind the closed door came the sounds of loud voices.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“That awful Mr. Cooke was in using Johnny…Mr. Martin’s telephone, in his office, when Mr. Martin arrived.”
They were scuffling in there, now.
“Any objection if I go in there and break that up?” I asked her.
“None at all,” she said.
That was when we heard the shots.
Three of them, in rapid succession.
The secretary sucked in breath, covered her mouth, said, “My God…my God.”
And I didn’t have a gun, goddamnit.
I was still trying to figure out whether to go in there or not when the burly, dark-haired guy who I assumed (rightly) to be Martin, still in the camel’s hair topcoat, came out with a blue-steel revolver in his hand. Smoke was curling out the barrel.
“Johnny, Johnny,” the secretary said, going to him, clinging to him. “Are you all right?”
“Never better,” he said, but his voice was shaking. He scowled over at me; he had bushy black eyebrows that made the scowl frightening. And the gun helped. “Who the hell are you?”
“Nate Heller. I’m a dick Jake Rubinstein hired to shadow Leon Cooke.”
Martin nodded his head back toward the office. “Well, if you want to get started, he’s on the floor in there.”
I went into the office and Cooke was on his stomach; he wasn’t dead yet. He had a bullet in the side; the other two slugs went through the heavy coat that had been slung over his arm.
“I had to do it,” Martin said. “He jumped me. He attacked me.”
“We better call an ambulance,” I said.
“So, then, we can’t just dump his body somewhere,” Martin said, thoughtfully.
“I was hired to shadow this guy,” I said. “It starts and ends there. You want something covered up, call a cop.”
“How much money you got on you?” Martin said. He wasn’t talking to me.
The secretary said, “Maybe a hundred.”
“That’ll hold us. Come on.”
He led her through the office and opened a window behind his desk. In a very gentlemanly manner, he helped her out onto the fire escape.
And they were gone.
I helped Cooke onto his feet.
“You awake, pal?”
“Y-yes,” he said. “Christ, it hurts.”
“Mount Sinai hospital’s just a few blocks away,” I said. “We’re gonna get you there.”
I wrapped the coat around him, to keep from getting blood on my car seat, and drove him to the hospital.
Half an hour later, I was waiting outside Cooke’s room in the hospital hall when Captain Stege caught up with me.
Stege, a white-haired fireplug of a man with black-rimmed glasses and a pasty complexion-and that Chicago
