me.”
That was overstating it, but I wanted to be welcome in these circles, and of course Nitti had been the successor to their beloved cousin Capone.
“Do you like modernist?” Charley asked. “I like modernist.”
Charley liked modernist, all right. The penthouse had the same layout as Rocco’s, with the same light gray walls and charcoal slate floor, but offset by the turquoise of a biomorphic-shaped sofa, the forest green of a sculpted plywood lounge chair’s webbed upholstery, and the salmon pink throw rug (with black geometric squiggles) on which this stuff sat in front of the out-of-place traditional fireplace, over which a huge metal-framed Picasso lithograph squinted with its various eyes.
“Oh yeah,” I said, amazed and appalled by the array of atomic age nonsense: kidney-shaped glass on a claw hand of sculptured walnut serving as a coffee table, green Fiberglas chairs with black wire legs, black metal floor lamp that looked like a praying mantis.
“Most of this,” he said, gesturing expansively, “I buy overseas. The Scandinavians get all the credit, but the best modern design is Italian. Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Gian-franco Frattini….”
“No kidding.”
“Take a look at this,” Charley said, waving me over to several framed paintings on the wall (Joey had taken a three-legged Fiberglas chair, proving it could be sat in). The canvases were abstractions, doodlings in color and geometry.
At his side, I regarded these masterpieces, wondering if Drury’s microphone was snugged behind one of them.
“You know, the great artists, they all had patrons,” Charley said. “In the Renaissance. Guys like Da Vinci, Michelangelo. It was an Italian thing.”
“So I heard.”
“See, I have a lot of fine pieces in my collection. I have three Dalis. That’s a Picasso over the fire. I got a Miro, and a Klee. Worth a goddamn fortune. But these, these mean more to me.”
“I take it these are new painters.”
The tiny mouth curved in a slice of a smile. “You know, Nate, you impress me, your sensitivity. Your insight.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re absolutely right. I’m tight with Ric Riccardo. He’s my artistic advisor.”
An accomplished artist himself, Riccardo ran a popular, artsy cafe on Rush Street out of a converted warehouse, where he had single-handedly started the local craze of restaurants and merchants exhibiting artists and sculptors.
Charley was saying, “Ric only recommends the best of the new young talent.”
What, as compared to the old young talent?
“You see, Nate, I’m not just a collector—I’m a patron.”
“Take this one here,” he said, pointing to a canvas that appeared randomly splattered with green, brown, and black. “Ric says this fella is going to be the next Jackson Pollock.”
I didn’t burst Charley’s bubble and point out there already was a Jackson Pollock; I merely nodded and murmured appreciatively if nonverbally.
He slipped his arm around me. He smelled like Vitalis, too, but the cologne was something more expensive than Old Spice—something more expensive than I could recognize.
“Nate,” he said, “I feel comfortable with you. I really do. I am so used to uncouth company.”
“Yeah, I hate that.”
“I hope you feel comfortable with me. A lot of people get the wrong idea about me, you know.”
“I know what you mean.”
“People like us—you’re from the West Side, right?”
“Right.”
“Maxwell Street?”
I nodded.
Stepping away, he shrugged elaborately. “You know about coming up from the streets. Rough beginnings.” He leaned near again and put a hand on my shoulder and whispered: “That’s the trouble with Joey. We pampered him. He come to be a man when we already had our family position, our fortune.”
“That can be hard on a kid.” Even a forty-year-old one.
“What I mean is, coming up, we all make youthful indiscretions. Now, I’m a respectable businessman—and a connoisseur of the finer things.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m not gonna kid you, Nate—you swim in the same Chicago sewers I do….”
From connoisseurs to Chicago sewers, in one leap.
“…and you know I have to keep my hand in certain areas of…we’ll call it entertainment. Servicing public needs.
