Tubbo shook his head, sadly. “The failure of human nature, Senator, is that we are prone to believe evil about our fellow man…especially about a police officer.”
That gem of folk wisdom seemed to stun his inquisitors, and after a few more questions, the executive-session interrogation of the World’s Richest Cop came to a close.
As disingenuous as he’d been, Tubbo—thoroughly incompetent witness that he was—had revealed more than anyone might have expected; but—because of the closed nature of the session, designed not to embarrass the Democratic Party—the transcript would be confidential until the committee’s eventual report. Kefauver’s usual frank press summary of witness testimony would be suspended in the captain’s case. The public would not be privy to Tubbo’s testimony until weeks, perhaps months, after election day.
I’m sure Kefauver did this reluctantly; but the politics of it were unavoidable. Whether some deal with Tubbo had been cut in advance—and his “surprise” appearance was expected—or the senator instinctively toed the party line by temporarily covering up Tubbo’s testimony, I couldn’t tell you.
What neither Tubbo nor Kefauver had contemplated, however, was a certain sleazy private detective among the insiders in the gallery, a surveillance-savvy divorce dick whose briefcase contained a battery-operated miniature wire recorder about the size of a fat paperback book, with a spool handling two and a half hours without a reload. In other words, Drury’s tapes may have been missing, but Heller’s weren’t. I sold them to Ray Brennan of the
I would rather have put a bullet in the fat fuck’s brain; but had to settle for just ruining him. The man who plotted with Charley Fischetti to have Bill Drury and Marvin Bas murdered lost the sheriff’s race by nearly four hundred thousand votes— and, even in Chicago, the Democratic machine was soundly trounced by protest voting from its own party, from key county offices to Senate majority leader Lucas losing to Everett Dirksen.
The day following the election, Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert resigned in disgrace as chief investigator of the State’s Attorney’s office and from the police department itself. He had plenty of money for his old age, but the commodity he valued most of all—power—was lost to him forever.
Tim O’Conner lived on the far Northwest Side, on Forest View Lane off Milwaukee Avenue. I’d called Tim and told him I had something for him—Bill Drury’s widow, Annabel, had asked me to deliver a personal item—and he said tonight would be fine.
A few weeks had passed since Tubbo appeared before the Crime Committee—the papers were still having a field day with the story, including speculation over who might have leaked the testimony (Kefauver blamed the reporting company who transcribed the court recorder’s work). This was a Tuesday evening in early November and drizzly and cold, enough so that I’d zipped the lining into my London Fog.
I pulled the Olds into the Forest Preserve and walked across the woods, leaves crunching damply under my Florsheims, and angled through the trees until I came out at the dead-end street that was Forest View Lane. Tim’s house was the last one on the end of the block, with no one directly across the street, and a vacant lot of knee-high weeds next door. A standard Chicago brown-brick bungalow, the squat, pitch-roofed one-story had an attic with an overhang and a big bay window in front of the living room, drapes closed, though lights burned behind them.
Carrying a paper bag about big enough for a sandwich, I walked up on the cement stoop and knocked and had just knocked a second time when Tim opened the door.
“Jesus, get out of the rain,” he said.
I did, removing my fedora, shaking the beads of moisture off. My lanky host closed the door behind me and took my raincoat, tossing it over a straightback chair by the door. I pitched my hat on the same chair.
In a gym-style T-shirt and rumpled gray moleskin slacks, in his stocking feet, O’Conner looked lousy—his sandy blond hair uncut and unkempt, his blue eyes bloodshot, and his pockmarked complexion had taken on a grayish cast; already thin, he seemed to have lost some weight, which made the sharp features of his face seem less handsome, more exaggerated…and his nose was as red as if he were working on a huge pimple. But it was just the beer, which was on his breath, by the way.
“I guess you haven’t been here since the divorce,” he said, with an embarrassed chuckle, gesturing to the all but empty living room. To call the room, with its bare wood floor, sparsely furnished was a ridiculous understatement: facing a television console against the far wall was an easy chair with one of those lamp/end table combinations, several empty Pabst bottles on the table part, and that was all. No sofa or other chairs—a few newspapers tossed on the. floor, some magazines, a couple more beer bottles. On the wall opposite his TV area was a formal fireplace, its mantel bare, though a mirror over it served to make the big empty room seem even bigger and emptier.
“I got the house,” Tim said, “but Janet got the furniture.”
And the kids. And any life inside these walls that might have been worth living.
“Hey, don’t worry,” he said, with a grin, putting a hand on my shoulder, “she didn’t get the poker table…. Come on.”
In the dining room—always an object of discussion between Tim and Janet—was a large octagonal poker table with a felt top and built-in chip holders. Tim had fashioned a piece of dark wood that could fit over it, so Janet could serve dinner to company (not in use at present); and the wall you saw entering from the living room still had the built-in china hutch—piled with a few paperbacks and pulp magazines now—reflecting the room’s onetime schizophrenic functions.
“Why don’t we sit in here,” he said. “Beer all right?”
Indeed, chairs were all around the poker table, just as when Bill Drury, Tim, Lou Sapperstein, and a few other cops and reporters had regularly played poker here—what was it, once a month? Up until maybe three years ago.
“Beer is fine,” I called to him. He had gone into the kitchen, off the dining room.
The skinny pockmarked man in the T-shirt came back with two sweating bottles of Pabst, no glasses, and he sat with his back to the kitchen doorway, and I took the chair right next to him, placed the brown paper bag on the table before me, making a little clunk.
“Lots of memories at this table,” O’Conner said between gulps of beer.
