'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.'
'
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
