'No,' I said, 'I wanted to hear it again, from the source's mouth. You tell it much better than my uncle.'
Dawes beamed, and looked across the table at Uncle Louis. 'I don't remember telling you that one before. Louis. Is that really one of your favorites?'
'Oh. yes,' Louis said, beaming back.
'Mine, too,' Dawes nodded. He turned his distant gaze on me. 'I took the liberty' of ordering for you, Mr. Heller, since you were a bit tardy.'
Tardy? What was this, fucking school?
'Not at all,' I said. 'What are we having?'
Dawes relit his pipe. 'Mutton chops, of course. The specialty of the house.'
Mutton? Jesus Christ!
'My favorite,' I said.
'Mine, too,' Uncle Louis nodded.
I was starting to understand why my father had hated Uncle Louis.
But I was wrong about the mutton chops- they were thick and juicy and good. And when the General ordered plum pudding for us, I didn't argue; I trusted his judgment about such things by now, and that too proved, as the General said, a culinary delight. The General had a way with words: he left no cliche unturned.
'Of course they lack the brandy so necessary in the making of proper plum pudding.' the General said after we'd finished it. 'But the law? is the law. Even in England, I refused to serve liquor at embassy functions, out of regard to the prohibition laws in force at home.'
'But liquor wasn't illegal there,' I said.
'I was a representative of the United States government.' he said, matter-of-factly. As if that explained it.
'General,' I said, 'it was a wonderful lunch. I'm honored you asked me… though I'm still confused as to why.'
When Dawes smiled, he smiled with his mouth closed; that's the way he was smiling now, at any rate.
'Is it such a surprise to you,' he said, 'that one public servant should want to meet, and honor, another?'
'I hope it won't be rude of me to say this,' I said, 'but neither one of us is a public servant, at the moment. We're both, you might say, in private business.'
Uncle Louis shifted in his seat.
Dawes nodded. 'That's fair. But you were recently honored by the city council for meritorious,
'Yes.'
'And now you've chosen to leave the department.'
Not again!
'Sir.' I said, 'my decision to leave the department is final.'
He sat back, looked down his pipe at me. 'Fine,' he said. 'I respect that.' Then he leaned forward, just the slightest bit conspiratorial. 'That, in fact, is why you are here.'
'I don't understand.'
Uncle Louis said, 'Let him explain, Nate.'
'Sure,' I shrugged
We had been there an hour and a half, and the room was emptying out: with no liquor served on the premises, the long lunch hour for executives was less common. It had been this near-privacy in a public place that the General had been waiting for.
'You're familiar with President Hoover,' he said, with no apparent humor.
'We've never met.' I said, 'but I have heard of him.'
'Are you aware that he is the man who put Al Capone away?'
I grinned. 'I always thought my friend Eliot Ness had something to do with that.'
'Indeed he did.' the General said, nodding sagely. 'A good man. He is part of what I am talking about. You see, there were some of us here in Chicago… in positions of responsibility… who began to feel, a few years ago. that Mr. Capone and company were giving our city more than just a 'colorful' reputation. Chicago had come to be viewed as a happy hunting ground for gunmen and other criminals, and. while I undertook a European campaign to defend her good name, Chicago to a degree did deserve this stigma. This colony of unnaturalized persons, which Mr. Capone came to symbolize, had undertaken a reign of lawlessness and terror in open defiance of the law. My friends on Wall Street were beginning to ponder upon whether or not their money was safely invested here. The time had come to act.'
The time had also come for me to ask a question, because the General paused dramatically, here, to light his pipe again.
So I said, 'How does this make Herbert Hoover the guy who got Capone?'
He shrugged facially. 'That is just a way of putting it. The efforts actually began before Mr. Hoover reached office, but it is well known that for many months, every morning, when he and Andrew Mellon would toss the medicine ball around on the White House lawn, the president would ask Andrew, who is a personal friend of mine and the secretary of treasury, if that man Capone was in jail yet. So it has been the interest and support of Mr.
