True Detective

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