Joey’s handsome face contorted as he said to me, “I can ask him, but what’s he gonna say? I mean, to me? Being who I am. What do
I said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Joey held out open palms. “Where does Frank stand?”
“Oh. Well—he’s scared right now. The feds are squeezing him—you want bad publicity, try being a show business guy labeled a Red.”
“Never mind that,” Charley said. “What’s your opinion of Sinatra’s integrity?”
“I can’t see him selling you guys out,” I said.
Rocco asked, “Too scared?”
“No. He likes you guys. Respects you. You know how some people feel about movie stars? That’s how he feels about you.”
Charley thought about that, nodded, set his martini glass on the coffee table. “Appreciate your frankness, Nate. Your insights.” He checked his watch, then patted my shoulder. “Gotta chase you out, now—before my next appointment.”
When Charley stood, so did I, and his brothers. I shook hands with Charley and Rocco, and Joey walked me to the elevator.
“Thanks for standing up for Frank,” Joey said, in the entryway. “I’ll get you a ringside table, opening night.”
“Make it a booth,” I said.
Afternoon was turning to dusk, as I reached my car, parked across from the apartment house. I sat for a while, wondering if Drury had gotten his ass out of there yet. But I was also waiting to see who the next appointment was.
A heavy-set man in an expensive topcoat with a fur collar walked up the sidewalk to where George the doorman held the door open for him, like he was a regular. Maybe he was: the guy was Captain “Tubbo” Gilbert, candidate for Cook County sheriff.
I was chewing that over when the blonde showgirl with the black eye came out, wearing a pink long-sleeve sweater and pink slacks and carrying two big pink suitcases with a gray garment bag over her arm. I had a hunch her railroad cap wasn’t in either suitcase.
She was stumbling; she’d been crying. George looked like he might want to help her, but didn’t.
She must not have had a car of her own, because she hauled the suitcases to the corner and sat on them, like she was waiting for a bus. A cab might come by, eventually—maybe she’d called one. I knew I should mind my own business.
Instead, I called out, “Hey!”
She looked up and squinted across the street at me.
“You need a lift?” I asked.
She swallowed and nodded.
So I got out and went over and helped with her bags, and loaded them—and her—into my Olds.
As I headed back to the Loop—it was on the tail end of rush hour on the Outer Drive—she looked over at me, timidly, using big brown eyes that were beautiful even if they were bloodshot. “You…you’re not one of
I figured she meant, was I a mob guy?
“No,” I said, and hoped to hell I was right.
At the time of its construction before the turn of the century, the sixteen-story Monadnock Building in the south Loop had been the world’s biggest office building, as well as the last—and largest—of the old-style masonry structures, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base. The dark brown brick monolith nonetheless had a modern, streamlined look—thanks to its flaring base, dramatic bay windows, and the outward swell at the top, in lieu of a cornice. A classy building, a classic building—and home of the A-1 Detective Agency.
The A-1 had begun back in December ’32 as a single office over a blind pig in an undistinguished building on nearby Van Buren, sharing a street with hockshops, taverns, and flophouses, with fellow tenants numbering abortionists, shylocks, and a palm reader or two. It was always an awful place, but my friend Barney Ross, the boxer, owned it, so that’s where I got my start.
By ’43 I’d expanded to a suite of two offices and had taken on two operatives (including Lou Sapperstein, who was now a partner) and a knockout secretary named Gladys, who was unfortunately all business; we eventually took over most of the fourth floor. After the war we were briefly in the Rookery, but the space was limited and the rent wasn’t.
So we now had the corner office on the seventh floor of the venerable Monadnock, with a view over Jackson Boulevard of the Federal Building. I had four full-time operatives and two part-time, who shared a big open bullpen of desks; Lou had a small office and I had a big one (Gladys had a reception cubbyhole). We were close to the courts and the banks, and yet still within spitting distance of the Sin Strip of State Street. It was everything a private eye in Chicago could want.
I even looked like one, in the military-style London Fog raincoat and my green Stetson fedora, as—on the cool, overcast September morning after my meeting with the Fischetti boys—I strolled in the Monadnock’s main entrance at 53 West Jackson. Plenty of natural light filtered through the store windows on either side of the corridor—the building was narrow and these were the back-end show-window entries of stores facing Dearborn and the glorified alley that was Federal. The Monadnock had open winding stairwells all the way up, beautiful things, but I took the elevator to seven.
I took a left as I got off on my floor and strode down to the frosted-glass-and-wood wall behind which was our reception nook—or was it a cranny? In bold black, the door said:
