True Detective

that killed him (unless the bashing had already done the trick): a single execution-style slug, fired from behind, at the base of the skull. There wasn't much blood, here. He'd been killed elsewhere and dumped in the dunes, pockets pulled inside out, in a nod toward faking a robbery.

Eliot was looking at the tire tracks. He studied them for a few minutes, then turned to me. 'The car came from the west, dumped Ted, turned around, and went back the way it came.'

I moved away from the body, pointing at it as I did. 'He had a place near here, didn't he? A summer home?'

Eliot nodded. 'At Bass Lake. They probably killed him there.'

Last night, at about two, Newberry's lawyer, at the prompting of a worried crony of Ted's who said Ted was two hours late for an appointment, had called the detective bureau and asked if his gangster client had been arrested, and got no answer. Then the lawyer had called Eliot at home and asked if the feds had his boy, and Eliot had told the lawyer to go jump and went back to sleep. A writ of habeas corpus was filed, and by early this morning the chief of detectives and Eliot were in the former's City Hall office, both officially responding to the lawyer that Newberry was not in custody. And at that point the word came in that a body answering Newberry's description had been found in Indiana.

Shortly after the sheriff had returned from his phone call at a nearby farmhouse, a dark blue Cadillac sedan pulled up and a short squat man in a blue pinstripe with a diamond stickpin hopped out; he was Newberry's lawyer.

'Hello, Abe,' Eliot said, as the little man trundled toward the body in the ditch.

Without acknowledging Eliot's greeting, the lawyer looked at Newberry and, as if speaking to Ted, said, 'Where's the county official?'

The sheriff, standing in the road, called out, 'Me, mister!

The lawyer walked up to the sheriff and said, 'That man is Edward Newberry. Where will his body be taken?'

The sheriff gave him the name of the mortuary.

The lawyer nodded, said. 'We'll be in touch.' and got in his Cadillac and drove off.

The man in the cap and brown jacket was still over by his flivver, standing first on one foot, then the other. He said, to no one in particular, 'Where's the reporters, anyway?'

'Stick around,' Eliot said, and advised the sheriff the same thing, then nodded to me and we walked back to his Ford.

'Aren't you going to wait for the press, Eliot?' I asked him.

He shook his head no. 'This is nothing I want to be part of. You, either.'

On the way back to Chicago, Eliot said, 'That's Nitti's work, of course. So much for Ted Newberry as the mayor's handpicked candidate for running gambling on the North Side.'

'That still leaves Touhy in Cermak's pocket.'

'Touhy's nothing. Nitti's made an important point here. Newberry offered fifteen thousand for Nitti dead. Well, Nitti's alive and Ted isn't.'

'I wonder how Cermak's favorite bodyguards will take the news of Newberry taking a ride.'

Eliot smiled a little. 'I wonder how Cermak will take it.'

'Why'd you want me to see that, anyway?'

Eliot, watching the road, said, 'It concerns you.'

'Sure. But you could've phoned and told me about it. Why'd you want me along? Outside of me being charming company.'

'Newberry was Cermak's man.'

'So?'

'He's nobody's man. now.'

'Point being?'

He glanced at me. then back at the road. The dunes were still around us: it was like the Midwest was doing a bad but impressive imitation of Egypt.

Eliot said. 'Maybe this opens the door for you telling a different story at the Nitti trial.'

'Like the true story, you mean.'

He shrugged. 'You might want to consider it. Newberry's an example of how Nitti operates. And Newberry's also an example of Cermak's current lack of strength in mob circles.'

'So, what? You're saying if I stick with Cermak's team. I'm ditch-bound? That's bullshit. Eliot. Nitti knows I'm an innocent bystander in this. You notice that was Newberry dead back there, not Lang or Miller. Frank Nitti doesn't kill the messenger; he kills the guy who sent the message.'

Eliot just drove.

I kept talking. 'Just because Cermak isn't aligned with a gang of any power, at the moment, doesn't mean he isn't going to be again, soon. He's been playing this game a long time, you know. And if I cross Cermak, I'll get my op ticket, and my gun permit, pulled. Get serious, Eliot.'

Eliot didn't say another word to me till he pulled up in front of my building on Van Buren; not until I was getting out, feeling just a little irritated with him.