She kept nodding, kept looking at the floor. She didn't ask to go in and be with her husband; she just nodded and looked at the floor. The boy started to cry. Nobody comforted him.
A few other guests were cracking their doors and peeking out. In a loud, firm voice, Eliot said, 'This is a police matter- go about your business.' The doors closed.
Then he took Miller by the arm and led him down the hall and around a comer, glancing back at me to follow, which I did.
With a smile that was in no way friendly, he backed Miller up against the wall, gently.
'Didn't you kill somebody else this year?' he asked.
Miller nodded. 'A thief. I don't like thieves. Nydick was a thief.'
'Ever meet Nydick before?'
'No.'
'He didn't hold a gun on you and your partner Lang once?'
'No. That… story got around, but it was just a story. Nobody can…'
'What?'
Miller swallowed. 'Nobody can prove it happened.'
'I see. Boy. the hoodlum squad's going all out. First you and Lang nail Nitti. Now the notorious Nydick. What next?'
'We're just doing our job. Ness.'
Eliot took him by one arm and squeezed and said, 'Listen to me. you trigger-happy son of a bitch. I got my eye on you. You keep turning your job into a shooting gallery and I'm going to fall on you like a wall Got me?'
Miller didn't say anything, but he was shaking- it was barely perceptible, but he was shaking.
Eliot turned his back on him and started to walk away. Then he glanced back and said, 'How long do you think your buddy Cermak is going to back you up on these pleasure cruises? The word's out about Newberry offering fifteen grand for Nitti dead, you know. And if that wife of Nydick's isn't your girl friend. I'll invite you over for Christmas dinner.'
Miller started to blink behind the glasses.
'Oh. by the way,' Eliot added. 'Heller wasn't here tonight. Neither one of you needs the stink that might raise, and Heller's along innocently, just 'cause he happened to be with me. I'll tell your boys, and you tell 'em. too. The civilians won't remember how many cops they saw. Got it?' He turned to me. 'Anything you care to add?'
I said, 'Give me a minute with him alone, Eliot.'
He nodded and walked back around the corner and down the corridor.
Miller looked at me and tried to get a sneer going; he didn't quite manage. 'I don't like the company you keep,' he said.
'Maybe you picked the wrong person to pull in out of a speakeasy to do your shit work for you.'
'What's the idea of bringing Ness into this?'
'Ness has been in since the first day, but never mind. You and Lang should've told me about Newberry, Miller.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'Let's just say if Nitti has a relapse and kicks the bucket, I'll expect my five thousand. Give my love to Lang. Tell him when his finger heals to stick it.'
'You're dead. Heller.'
'Sure, why not, what's another body to a big-game hunter like you? Some free advice: I don't know what you and Nydick's little lady had going, but I don't think she expected you to kill him. I hope you can get her to get her story together. You just got to start letting those close to you in on your plans, Miller. See you in court.'
I left him there to think about that and joined Eliot, who was waiting by the door that said EXIT over it.
'Take the stairs down,' he said. 'Find your way home. The ambulance and reporters'll be here anytime. You don't need that kind of publicity.'
I grinned at him. 'Don't tell me Eliot Ness is helping cover something up?'
He laughed a little, but his heart wasn't in it. He'd been sickened by what he saw here tonight.
He said. 'That guy really puts the 'hoodlum' into hoodlum squad, doesn't he?'
And opened the door for me to leave.
Chicago is a city where rich and poor stand side by side, ignoring each other. Take the block where my office was. Starting at the deli on the comer and looking down toward Wabash, you'd see Barney's blind pig, a pawnshop, a jewelry store, a flophouse, a sign advertising a palm reader one floor up- buildings wealing fire escapes on their faces like protective masks, looking out stoically on the iron beams of the El: not the classiest landscape in the world. But just around the corner from the deli, right before Binyon's, was the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club, and across the street from Binyon's was the Standard Club, the Jewish equivalent of the Union League. Some of the richest men in Chicago walked under the SC canopy into the gray, dignified Standard Club, while around the corner and down the block, winos slept it off in a 'hotel for men only.'
Saint Hubert's, the restaurant General Charles Gates Dawes had selected for our luncheon meeting, was on Federal Street at the foot of the Union League Club, where he'd be able to stop in after his conference with the two
