The Million-Dollar Wound

“I was his inside man with the Outfit.”

I felt my jaw drop. “What?”

O’Hare had a faint, sneering smile. He was gripping the wheel like it was somebody’s neck. “I’ve always detested the hoodlums I’ve been forced to deal with. Their loud dress, their bad grammar, their uncouth manners.”

“Yeah, their grammar’s always been one of my chief complaints against ’em.”

“This is hardly amusing, Mr. Heller.”

“What happened to ‘Nate’?”

“Nate, then. All I ask is that you ride along with me, into the city, and listen to what I have to say.”

“I’ll listen, but I don’t appreciate being brought out to your track on false pretenses.”

He shook his head, the firm little chin contrasting with the quivering flab it rested on. “The security work for which I’ve retained you is legitimate. But I have a second job for you-a matter that must stay between just the two of us.”

“I’m listening.”

“Some years ago, I was a conduit of information for your friend Mr. Ness, as well as Frank Wilson and Elmer Irey.”

Jesus. That was a laundry list of the federal agents credited with “getting” Capone.

“Then this is about Capone getting out,” I said. “You’re nervous he may’ve found out you were an informer.”

“That is a part of it. And I’ve been told as much, that Capone’s been making noise about me in Alcatraz. But I’m valuable to the Outfit, and am as powerful in my way as any of them.” He sighed. “It’s all rather complex. With Capone’s release, various factions within the Outfit will be jockeying for position.”

We were moving up over a tall traffic bridge, over the railroad yard; then we came down into Chicago, into a factory district.

“What do you want of me?” I asked him.

“I haven’t been an…‘informer,’ as you put it…in years. And my racing interests are quite legal, now. But recently federal agents have tried to contact me, left several messages at my office, asking for information about a small-time thief from my St. Louis days. Apparently somebody told them I’d be willing to talk. This comes at a very bad time indeed!”

We were in a residential area now; occasional bars, mom-and-pop groceries.

“With Capone’s return imminent,” I said, “it’s a very bad time to be renewing your federal acquaintance. Say- the recent problems Billy Skidmore and Moe Annenberg have had with the feds could also be laid at your doorstep-”

Skidmore, scrap-iron dealer and bailbondsman, had run afoul of the Internal Revenue boys; and Moe Annenberg’s nationwide wire service-on Dearborn, around the corner from my office-had just been shut down for good.

“Precisely. And I had nothing to do with either. But I’m afraid some people suspect I may have.”

“Oh?”

“I fear for my life, Nate. I’m being followed. I’m being watched. I’ve taken to staying in a secret little flat in a building I own on the North Side.”

We crossed Pulaski and 22nd Street-renamed Cermak Road, though nobody seemed to call it that yet-into a commercial district. A black Ford coupe, a similar make to O’Hare’s, pulled out from the curb and fell in behind us.

I said, “If it’s a bodyguard you want, I’m not interested.”

“That’s not what I want of you. I wish that simple a remedy were called for. What I want is for you to go to them, the feds in question. Woltz and Bennett, their names are.”

“I don’t know ’em.”

“Neither do I! But you’re Ness’s friend. He’ll vouch for you.”

“He’s not a fed anymore; and he hasn’t been in Chicago in years.”

“I know, I know! He’s in Cleveland, but he’d vouch for you, with them, wouldn’t he? There’s such a thing as telephones.”

“Well, sure…”

“Tell them I’m not interested. Tell them not to call me. Tell them not to leave messages for me.”

“Why don’t you tell them?”

“I’ve had no direct contact with them as yet, and I want to keep it that way.”

We were now in what had been Mayor Cermak’s old turf-some of the storefronts even had lettering in Czech. I’d grown up not far from here, myself-we were just south of Jake Arvey’s territory, where Czech gave way to Yiddish.

“Okay,” I said. “I suppose I could do that.”

“There’s more. I want you to go to Frank Nitti and tell him what you’ve done.”

“Huh?”

He was smiling and it was the oddest damn smile I ever saw: his upper lip was pulled back across his teeth in a display of smugness tinged with desperation. And what he said was everything his smile promised: “As if you’re going behind my back, out of loyalty to him, you go to Nitti and tell him that somebody’s trying to make it look like O’Hare’s informing the feds, but that in fact O’Hare isn’t informing, that he went so far as to instruct you to tell the feds he is not about to do any informing.”

I hate it when people talk about themselves in the third person.

“Why don’t you just go to Nitti yourself?”

“Coming from me, it would be dismissed as self-serving. I might be lying to him. Coming from you, without my knowledge, it can prove my loyalty.”

We went under the El.

“Will you do it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t want anything to do with Nitti.”

“Nitti likes you. He’ll believe you. He respects you.”

“I don’t know that any of that is true. I’ve had dealings with him from time to time, and he’s been friendly to me in his way, but I always wind up in the middle of something bloody.”

He took one hand off the wheel and reached over and grasped my arm with it. “I’m being set up, Heller. Only somebody on the outside can save me.”

I shook the arm off. “No.”

“Name your retainer.”

“No.”

We crossed Kedzie into Douglas Park. I used to play here as a kid; I wondered if the lagoon was frozen over yet. Probably not.

“Five thousand. Five grand, Heller!”

Judas Priest. For running a couple of errands? Could I say no to that?

“No.” I said. “No more Nitti. Five grand is five grand, but it ain’t worth getting killed over. Now, pull over and let me out.”

“Somebody’s following me.”

“I know. They have been since Twenty-second Street.”

The park was empty of people; the faded green of it, its barren trees, leaves blown away, seemed oddly peaceful. O’Hare was picking up speed, going forty, now, and the Ford was a few car lengths behind, keeping right up.

“Do you have a gun?” he sputtered.

“In my desk drawer in my office, I do. Pull over.”

“Use mine, then!”