'Telling you to get your butt off the pavement and walk around the comer, back in the alley.'
He had nothing smart to say; the remark about radio had about used up his wit inventory' for the night. He gave me that mean owl look and got up, slowly, as I kept right with him, my free hand in the crook of his arm, the revolver buried in his side now', and I noticed for the first time that he smelled of lilac water. It didn't do much for him. I walked him around the comer into the alley, and we stepped back into a small, courtlike area back of the Adams.
It was dark, but light from the street let us see each other, not that either of us were wild about it. The El rumbled in the background, like an earthquake happening a country over. I didn't make him back up against a wall; I'd already taken this too far, thanks to the beer, and the crap I'd had to take these last couple days. But I had something to say, and I said it.
'I made a deal with Cermak,' I said, 'and I'll stick to it. When Nitti's trial comes up, I'll be playing parrot to you and Lang. Don't worry about it.'
'Then what's this about?' Miller asked.
'Cermak wanted to know why I turned my badge in. Everybody wants to know why I'm so upset over Frank Nitti getting shot. I couldn't care less about Nitti. I don't like being put in a position where I have to kill some damn kid, but never mind. You and Lang are the ones who fucked me over. You pulled me in on something and didn't tell me what the score was. People get killed in this town for any old reason- no reason sometimes. So I don't appreciate you pulling me in unawares on a raid that turned out to be a hit- on Frank Nitti. no less. Thanks to you, my life isn't worth a plug nickel. Nitti'll probably have all three of us hit. Haven't you figured that out yet?'
Miller just looked at me.
'Sure you have.' I said. 'I saw in the papers where there's a police guard on Lang's house. Watching the wife and kid. Seems there were threatening phone calls.'
Then he said, 'They wouldn't kill cops.'
That rated a laugh. 'Right. Like noboby would dare kill a state prosecutor. Only Capone killed McSwiggin. And nobody would dare kill a reporter. But Jake Lingle is real dead. We can be real dead, too, and in the wake, you should pardon the expression, the papers'll be full of us, full of how dirty we were, full of how we were on the take, and most of it'll be true. And then it won't be cops dead. It'll be crooked cops dead, and who'll give a damn?'
We stood and looked at each other in the darkness.
And when I got tired of looking at him. which didn't take long at all. I dumped the slugs out of the revolver's cylinder and they rained on the pavement. Then I kicked 'em away. Handed him the gun.
'Fly home. Miller. Sleep. Dream.'
He glared at me. As much as that owl mask could glare. He said. 'You haven't heard the end of this. Heifer.'
'Touch me. and I'll tell the world the real story. Kill me. and a lawyer will open the envelope I left him. in case something happened to me. The envelope with my statement in it.' That last part was a bluff, of course, but by tomorrow afternoon it wouldn't be.
Miller cleared his throat, spat a clot of something to the right of me.
'Get out of here, Miller.'
He did.
Pretty soon I was in my one-room apartment in the Hotel Adams, on my back in my underwear on top of the blankets; the radiator in the little room was overambitious tonight, so there was no need to climb under the sheets. The lights were out. but some neon pulsed in from out on the street, three floors below. I was on the third floor, just like Cermak. And, like the mayor, I was getting ready to move out- only / couldn't afford the secluded suite atop the Morrison, though Christ knows I could've used the protection.
What I'd told Miller was right: there was good reason to expect a reprisal from the Nitti forces. I hadn't told it to anyone- not the commissioner or the hundred other people I tried to turn my badge into, not the mayor, not even Barney or my girl Janey when I had called her last night, briefly, to assure her everything was all right- but one of the main reasons I turned my badge in was to send a message to Nitti: To let him know I was unhappy about being sucked into something I had nothing to do with. If he and his boys had been paying attention yesterday at the Wacker-LaSalle, they might have picked up on that. And my quitting the department over the incident would confirm it. I hoped, and might indicate my intention to tell the truth at Nitti's trial.
Except my intention to tell the truth at the trial had changed. I'd done a deal with the mayor, to tell the story his way. Otherwise, no op's license. I could lie now. to the mayor, and tell the truth later on the witness stand. But. as Cermak had pointed out. my license could then be revoked, if for no other reason than I'd waited all that time to change my story. If I had to corroborate Miller and Lang's story at the inquest tomorrow, under oath, and then went back on it later, that'd be perjury. Testifying against Nitti could get me killed, however, in which case not having an op's license would be something I'd get over.
I was tired. It had been a long, draining day, but my brain kept buzzing; it buzzed about half an hour, anyway, at which time (approximately these things are hard to pinpoint) I went away. I dreamed about Nitti and Cermak and Miller and Lang and Little New York Campagna and all sorts of people, and I won't go into it, but it wasn't a nice dream, and it climaxed with somebody grabbing me upright in bed, by the front of my T-shirt, only that part wasn't a dream, I finally began to realize.
My first thought was Miller: He'd come back to beat the crap out of me, despite my threats of envelopes and attorneys. Then somebody turned on the lamp on the dresser next to my bed, and I saw two guys in gray topcoats with black Capone hats with pearl bands; they would've looked like twins, only they were a Mutt and Jeff pair. Jeff was particularly unimpressive, one of those guys who when he needs a shave looks like his face is dirty. Mutt, unfortunately, a big swarthy guy with a wart on his cheek the size of a knuckle, was the one hoisting me up by my T-shirt.
'You're coming with us. Heller,' he said, and goddamnit, that was enough. How many flicking times were people going to grab me and take me someplace I didn't want to go, and since the place these guys were going to take me was probably for a ride, I got my hand on my spare pillow and slapped the guy with it.
It surprised him, anyway, and knocked his hat off. It didn't hurt him much, but it did give me time to take the automatic out from under my other pillow and show him, and Jeff.
