True Detective

Dawes interrupted with a wave of the hand. 'Louis, I quite understand your position.' He turned his gaze on me and it was like one of those stone lions was looking at me. 'You should not have spoken to the papers about this. It was quite a breach of confidence.'

I shrugged. 'You said nothing about our agreement being a confidential one. Besides which. I didn't tell the reporters why you offered me the job at the fair- that might have been a breach of confidence. My testimony at the trial made news, you know; my views are of interest to the press at the moment. And they asked me my future plans.'

Dawes leaned his head back and quite literally looked down his nose at me and. as if lecturing, said, 'Once a reporter asked me if I were going to take my knickers with me to London- black silk knee breeches are usual court dress, over there- and I asked him if he wanted a diplomatic answer, or the kind the question deserved? And then I told him to go plumb to hell. You might in future take that example to heart.'

'But if you void our deal. General, I'm going to be placed in an embarrassing light; I'll have to let the press know the circumstances. You've already had some unfortunate publicity of late, General- if you'll pardon my adding Insull to injury.'

He looked at me solemnly. 'This reeks of blackmail, young man.'

'This reeks of business. And business is about money, and three thousand dollars to a private detective just starting out is good business indeed.'

Uncle Louis was breathing hard.

The General said, 'In my very young days, I had a burning ardor for money, Mr. Heller. But since then I have been interested in it only intermittently. One of the Rothschilds once said he made his fortune because he discovered there are times when one should not try to make money. It strikes me that money is something you are unduly interested in.'

'The Rothschilds can afford that attitude. The Hellers- this Heller, anyway- can't. Now, I apologize for my bad etiquette with the press. But our agreement is binding, as far as I'm concerned, and if you feel differently, I'm going to be noisy about it. I'm not a big wheel, like you, General. But us little wheels can get awful goddamn squeaky when we don't get our grease.'

Uncle Louis sat shaking Iris head, staring blankly at the wall of photos of the famous: Coolidge and Dawes; Hoover and Dawes; Pershing and Dawes; Mellon and Dawes.

The General lowered his gaze and began shuffling papers. He said. 'My secretary will have contracts ready for you to sign this afternoon at four. Please return then, and sign them, Mr. Heller. Good afternoon, gentlemen.'

I rose and went out; Uncle Louis stayed behind, speaking to the General, but the General didn't seem to be having any. Uncle Louis caught up with me at the elevators.

'Let's you and me talk, Nate,' he said, pointing down the hall. 'I have an office, too.'

That he did- and his own secretary, an attractive if bookish woman in her early thirties- but the interior office was perhaps a quarter the size of the General's, albeit bigger than my own. And Uncle

Louis didn't seem to have a Murphy bed.

He did have a desk, and he sat behind it and tried to look as authoritarian and stem as the General. He damn near pulled it off; but I didn't help matters by refusing to take a chair.

He fairly spit the words at me. 'You know damn good and well that the General's offer was made at a point in time when besmirching Mayor Cermak's name was a desirable thing. Now that Cermak is dead, and a martyr, your testimony at the Nitti trial has only caused the very sort of bad Chicago publicity? the General wishes to avoid. You know all that, don't you? You knew that all along.'

'Sure.'

'And yet you take advantage of the General, and of me. and hold us to a bargain that was made under vastly different circumstances. Where do you get your damn nerve?'

'I think it's called chatzpa, Uncle Louis.'

'You're an embarrassment to me. You must know all I have to do is tell the General that I'm willing to deny being a witness where that verbal contract is concerned, and your windfall at his- and my- ¦ expense will be forfeit.'

'Maybe. Maybe not. The General has old-world notions about keeping his word; part of the way he sees himself includes keeping promises, pretentious old fart that he is.'

He stood and. his face redder than a Communist, thrust an arm out and pointed a finger as close to my face as he could get without hurtling the desk. 'Consider yourself disinherited, disowned, you smart-ass, you gonif... you just traded three thousand dollars for more money than you could ever dream of. You're disinherited!'

'I don't want your money.'

He suddenly seemed embarrassed for his outburst. Whether it was a pose or not, I can't say; but he sat down and folded his hands and, nervously, said, 'I have no sons, Nathan. I have two daughters I love very much. But I always thought of you as… the son I never had.'

'Horseshit.'

Maybe it had been a pose: the hands flattened on the desk, fingers spread out but arched, like spiders, and his face turned hard. 'You stood to inherit a lot of money, you ridiculous, ridiculous fool. And you threw that money away. Just threw it away. And nothing you can ever say will change it.'

'Fine. So long.'

I started to go.

'Get out! You're no nephew of mine. As far as I'm concerned, you're dead. As dead as Cermak.'

'As dead as my father?'

Uncle Louis blanched. 'What does your father have to do with it?'