True Detective

'And Schultz didn't like that.'

'No, and I was on the spot. I lived under the threat of a gangland execution for months; I had a goddamn nervous breakdown from it, kid. I ain't ashamed to say.'

'Your point being?'

'I'm a public figure. They shouldn't have been able to bump me off without a major stink. I pointed this out to Owney. You know what he said?'

'What?'

'They could find a way, he said. They could find a way and nobody would even know it was them who bumped me off.'

We stood halfway down the steps of the courthouse, the balmy breeze fanning us like a lazy eunuch.

'I think that little bastard hit Cermak,' Winchell said. 'I think he thinks he's dying from that stomach of his anyway, and they probably promised to support that family of his back in Italy in return for him taking Tony out. and for his silence. What do you think?'

'I think you're right on the money.' I said. 'But if you print it, nobody'll ever believe it.'

'What's a guy to do?' Winchell asked. 'The bullshit they'll believe.'

And he walked off. looking for a taxi, now that traffic was moving again.

The next morning around seven. I read the Herald over breakfast in the Biltmore coffee shop: peeking out between the eyewitness accounts of last night's shooting at the park was an item about General Dawes. He was finally testifying to that Senate committee about the Insull case. Yes, it was true that he had loaned Insull eleven million dollars of the twenty-four-million-dollar capital and surplus of the Dawes bank; and he copped to 'putting too many eggs in one basket.' Puffing his pipe and nodding ruefully, he admitted, 'The bankers of this country in retrospect look pretty sad.' When asked for suggestions for new banking laws, he said, 'I don't want to give any half-baked views on new laws- though that is a habit not unknown in Washington.' The latter apparently got the General a laugh from the gallery. But not from me.

Then I went up to my room and packed my white suit and my two guns, and checked out and drove the forty- buck Ford to the northwest section of Miami. Up a winding lane lined with hibiscus, oleanders, jasmine, and crocus bushes was Jackson Memorial Hospital, a two-story building with any number of long rambling white stucco wings with red tile roofs and awnings on the windows, set amid lush palms.

I parked in the adjacent lot and walked to the entrance, where twenty or so beautiful young nurses were standing around chattering, all smiles and excitement, apparently awaiting the arrival of someone special; that someone did not seem to be me.

Within the reception area in the main wing were most of the reporters from the park last night, and then some. No Winchell. however. He'd filed his big story? and was leaving the pickings for lesser lights. Over against one wall Western Union had set up wires and typewriters for the press.

Two Secret Service men stopped me as I entered and asked who I was; I told them, showed them ID, and asked if there was any possibility of seeing Cermak. Without answering, one of them took me by the arm and walked me through the wall-to-wall reporters to a corridor just past the reception desk.

Still holding onto my arm. the Secret Service man said, to two more of his ilk guarding this corridor, 'This is the guy Cermak's been asking to see.'

Everybody except me nodded gravely, and I was escorted by the same guy down the corridor- which was bordered on either side by more pretty nurses. It was like a hospital scene in the latest production of Earl Carroll's Vanities: the cuties were all smiles and giggles as if about to break out into a song and tap dance.

The Secret Service man saw me falling over my feet, trying to look at both sides of the nurse-lined corridor at once, and said, 'There's a nurses' training school here. The reporters have been taking a lot of pictures this morning.'

'I bet.'

Between clusters of nurses, doorways to hospital rooms stood open, and patients in bed were sitting up, leaning over in some cases, to get a look at me. Or who they hoped I'd be.

'When are you expecting Roosevelt, anyway?' I said.

The Secret Service man frowned at me, like I'd just let something big out of the bag. 'He's due any time now.'

Like any good parade, this one had pretty girls and flowers: floral displays lined the walls, stretching to the end of the corridor, where some people were grouped, among them Alderman Bowler, some more Secret Service men. a couple Miami detectives, and several white-coated doctors. Standing on either side of the door to the nearby hospital room were Lang and Miller.

'Doctor,' the Secret Service man said. 'This is Mr. Heller. The gentleman Mayor Cermak has been requesting.'

Lang and Miller exchanged smirks at the word 'gentleman.'

White-haired Alderman Bowler gave me a weary smile and extended his hand. I took it, and Bowler said, 'You kept your wits about you last night, young man. Thank you for that.'

'That's more thanks than I deserve,' I said. 'How is the mayor doing?'

One of the doctors, a middle-aged man who, prematurely, was as gray as Bowler, said, 'We're hopeful.'

The other doctor, a younger man with glasses and a parchment tan, said, 'There's no use deluding ourselves. The mayor's life's in danger. The bullet- which is still in him, just over his right kidney pierced his right lung, and he's been coughing up some blood. There's a strain on his heart. And there's always danger of pneumonia developing, and/or infection.'

The other doctor shot a withering glance at the younger one. who didn't seem to notice, or anyway care.