'Are you kidding? What floor is he on?'
'Three.'
'Oh.'
We walked the two flights; evidently it wasn't enough for the rich folks in the lobby not to see me. I was even persona non grata to the hired help who might ride the service elevator.
The exchange at the elevator, incidentally, was the extent of conversation between Miller and myself since leaving the blind pig. Miller seemed distant behind his Coke-bottle glasses; about as personable as a potted plant. He wasn't somebody I particularly wanted to know any better, so I didn't press it.
Miller knocked twice and the pale gold door opened and a detective I'd seen around but whose name I did not know answered with a gun in hand. He was a skinny guy with a pencil-line mustache and a dark brown suit that hung on him like it had been a good buy but they didn't have his size. His hat was off and his mouth hung open; he wasn't the brightest-looking sort I ever saw, and my guess was he was temporary Lang would be back as soon as the finger healed.
We went in. Miller first, and he pointed me to a sofa that looked, and was, about as plush and comfortable as the furniture in the Congress lobby. This was a sitting room or living room or whatever, with chairs and a couple of sofas, a fireplace and a glass chandelier, and various furniture that was probably named for some French king with numbers after his name. The only light on in the room was a standing lamp over in one corner, and it was consequently a little dark in there, like a cloudy day.
Across the room from me were windows looking out on Grant Park and Michigan Avenue; the south corner suite, this was. In front of me was a coffee table, a low marble-topped one, with a silver champagne bucket full of ice and brown bottles. Beer. The only thing between me and the view of the park was an empty chair, not a soft- looking, plush chair, but a wooden one with a curved shape to its back, like a captain's chair, or a throne. It was not a chair that had come with the room.
Miller parked himself over by the window, leaned against the sill, and looked out; he was miles away. The other guy, who introduced himself as Mulaney, sat as far away from me as he could and still be in the room, over on a sofa at left. He had put the gun away shortly after we entered. There was the faint sound of a radio playing Paul Whiteman from next door, off to the left, beyond Mulaney.
To my right, on either side of the fireplace, were doorways standing open; from the room beyond the door nearest me came the muffled sound of a flushing toilet.
His Honor, hitching up his trousers a bit, rolled into the room like a pushcart.
'Heller!' he said, beaming, like we were the oldest, bosomest of buddies, thrusting a hand forward; I stood and took it- it was a bit damp.
He gestured for me to sit and I did. He went to his chair across from me but did not sit. as yet; he just stood there studying me, with the friendliest of smiles and the coldest, hardest of eyes. Like Miller, he wore glasses with round lenses- but the frames were dark and thick and clumsy and rode his face uneasily, like the foreign object they were.
He was in his shirt sleeves and suspenders, but his tie wasn't loosened 'round his neck; he looked a bit like a participant in the Scopes trial, if cooler. It was, in truth, a bit warm in the room, and he bent down and pulled a bottle of beer from the champagne bucket and took an opener from somewhere and popped the cap and handed me the bottle. All the time smiling, almost apple-cheeked, a big man, barrel-chested, thick-bodied, broad-shouldered, larger than life, getting himself a beer now.
We sat there silently, each of us having a couple of swigs at his beer.
Finally I said, 'This is good beer.'
The smile turned into a grin, and the grin seemed more real. 'It beats that piss Capone bottles and calls beer, by a hundert miles,' he said.
'There's no label.'
'It's Roger Touhy's beer. The beer he bottles isn't for sale. It's for friendship. The beer he sells, he sells by the barrel, to the roadhouses, saloons, and such. All outside of Chicago.'
Roger Touhy was a bootlegger in the northwest suburbs; the sort of safe, minor-league gangster Cermak could control.
'Well, it's the best beer in or out of town.' I said.
Cermak nodded, his smile gone, his expression thoughtful. 'It's the water, you know.'
'Pardon?'
'They got an artesian well near Roselle. The finest, purest water. That's Touhy's secret.'
We sat and drank for a while. Periodically, Cermak would seem to wince or something; put a hand on his stomach.
'And how is your uncle Louis?' Cermak said, putting the half-empty bottle of Touhy beer on the marble-top. 'I understand he had kidney stones.'
'Why, uh, yes,' I said, startled that Cermak had remembered me and my connection to my uncle, 'that's right. But he's, uh, he's over it, I think.'
Cermak shook his head gravely. 'You never get over that. I had 'em, you know. Goddamn stones, if you pass 'em, it's like pissing glass.'
I suddenly realized that Cermak didn't remember me, or that particular piece of patronage; he just had done his homework.
He offered me another beer and I turned it down: I'd already had three or four at Barney's, and I was feeling the effect. This guy was too cute, too cunning to deal with tipsy.
'I suppose I should get to the point.' he said. 'You're a busy man. I don't want to waste your time.'
He said this quite ingenuously, as if he didn't sense the irony of the mayor of Chicago not wanting to waste one
