The Million-Dollar Wound

He waved that off, taking a lime monogrammed crushed velvet robe off a nearby lounge chair and belting it around him. He exchanged his sunglasses for clear rimless octagonal ones from a pocket of the robe. “I told you once, we should let bygones be bygones. I meant it then, I mean it now.”

“Okay.”

He turned a hard, hooded gaze on Browne and said, “I want to talk to Heller alone.”

“Sure thing, Willie. I’ll just sit here by the pool.”

“Why don’t you go down to the office?”

“Friday’s a slow day. You know that.”

“You should be there.”

“Look, Willie, I’ll just sit by the pool. Could you send your house-boy out with some beer?”

“Why don’t you sit in your car and drink your own?”

Browne seemed more sad than embarrassed by this exchange, wandering off without another word, as Willie showed me inside, through glass doors into a big white modern kitchen.

“You’ll have to pardon my lush of a partner,” Bioff said. “He can be a real cluck. You care for anything to drink?”

“No thanks.”

“I gave the help the morning off,” Bioff said, as if needing to explain the emptiness of the kitchen, and the house beyond. “My wife and kids are at our place in Canoga Park-I’ll be joining them this afternoon for the weekend. But I wanted to see you first.”

“Why, Willie?”

“I’ll get to that. Come with me.”

For a place called Rancho Laurie, where you’d expect rustic to be the word, it was pretty posh. We padded across a plush carpet, past a formal dining room, and various antique furniture, none of it early American, and paintings in the manner of old masters, and Chinese vases seemed to be set on anything that wasn’t moving.

I never imagined I’d find myself in Willie Bioff’s bedroom, but neither did I imagine it would be an elegant Louis XV affair. He led me into a walk-in closet where dozens upon dozens of tailored suits hung; the back of the door was heavy with racks of ties, dozens of ties, every color, every pattern in creation; snappy snap-brim hats sat on a long shelf in a row, as if supervising. Shoes polished like black mirrors lined the floor. I thought he was going to change clothes, but that wasn’t the point of this.

“What do you think of my ties?” he said, running a caressing hand over some of them.

“They’re real nice, Willie.”

He sucked on the cigarette, smiling with immense satisfaction. Then he said, “How about those suits?”

“They’re swell. Hats, too. Like your shoes.”

He looked at me and smiled, just a little. “I’m not showing off. I just wanted to share this with you. You were a poor Chicago street kid yourself. You can appreciate how sweet my life is, compared to what shit it was once.”

“Sure.”

He led me out of the closet and I sat down while he changed into slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt in the adjacent bathroom, losing the cigarette. Then he led me back down the stairs and we were soon in a knotty- pine library that was uncomfortably similar to Montgomery’s study. About the only difference was the lack of hunting prints-Willie had instead some handsome tinted photos of outdoor landscapes (“I took those,” he said proudly, as I looked at them)-and the leather furniture here wasn’t oversize, and was black not tan. On the couch, spread open face down, as if to save a place, was a book: Das Kapital by Karl Marx. I didn’t think I’d have found that at Montgomery’s; of course I didn’t expect to find it here, either.

I sat down next to the book. “Are you reading this, Willie?”

“A great man wrote that book,” he said defensively. “We’ll be living that way sometime in the future.”

And then we’ll all have closets full of suits and ties and hats and shoes. “Why am I here, Willie? Besides to look at your suits and ties and hats and shoes.”

He sat beside me. “You still think I’m a low uncouth man, don’t you?”

“The question isn’t whether you own Chinese vases, Willie. The question is how you paid for ’em.”

He sneered, and looked more like I remembered him. “Are you sure you’re from Chicago? Jesus, Heller, I come up the hard way, you know that. I slept in my share of doorways, stomach growling like a stray dog; like the man said, bread is expensive when your pockets are empty. I learned to earn a buck any way I could. But I’m legit now. I’m doing good work for the unions out here, lookin’ after my members.”

“Why do you feel you have to justify yourself to me, of all people? I’m just an ex-cop who busted you once.”

“That’s why. I want you to understand I don’t hold any grudge against you. You were doing your job. I was doing mine. Hell, they were the same job, really.”

“How do you figure?”

He shrugged. “We were both maintaining law and order. I just happened to be maintaining it in a whorehouse.”

“Slapping women around.”

“I never slapped a woman in my life. I got great respect for women. I have slapped some whores in my time. Of various sex. Like the man said, most businessmen are nothing but two-bit whores with a clean shirt and a shine.” The moon face beamed. “Only now I know more subtle ways of slapping them around than just plain slapping.”

“I guess greedy people just rub you the wrong way.”

“Be sarcastic if you want, but I’m a union man. I look out for the little guy!” Unconsciously or not, he was pointing a thumb at his own barrel chest as he said that.

“Why am I here, Willie?”

“To maybe do a job for me.”

“Aren’t there any detectives in California?”

“Sure. But not the Chicago variety. When Georgie called me from the Troc last night, I thought, this is perfect. Just the ticket.”

“What is?”

“You being here. You know what irony is?”

“We’ve met.”

“Well, then you can appreciate this. You know who Westbrook Pegler is?”

My mouth went dry.

“Irony’s sister?” I said.

“You know who he is. He’s in Chicago right now. He’s looking for dirt on me. To spread in his column.”

“I know,” I admitted.

It was the only way to play it.

The hard dark pig eyes behind the rimless glass squinted. “You know?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. He stopped by my office the other day. He wanted to know if I was the arresting officer on your pandering charge, years ago.”

He went a little pale, sat up. “What did you say to him?”

I shrugged again. “I said yes.”

“Shit. Did you give him any details?”

“No. It was a long time ago, Willie. He just asked if the rumor that I arrested you for pimping, once, was true, and I said it was. He asked if you were convicted, and I said you were.”

He didn’t like that. He stood, paced; wandered over to a writing desk decorated with framed pictures of his brood of lads and lit up a cigarette and began smoking nervously. But soon he said: “I can’t expect you to have said otherwise. Thanks for telling me straight out.”

“No thanks needed.”

He sat next to me again, cigarette in hand, his expression painfully earnest. “You got to understand, Heller- the feds have been breathing down my neck for months. I had to step down as the IA’s representative, not long ago, ’cause of this federal heat. Oh, I’m still running things. But from the sidelines; I can’t even go in my own goddamn office, can you picture it?”