He looked heavier than the last time I’d seen him, and older, but good. The mustache he’d had when I first met him was long gone; he was a smooth executive now, despite his rough features, a strong, almost handsome face with flecks of scar tissue here and there, most noticeably on his lower lip. His hair was longer, brushed back with less of that slick look I remembered, a little gray in it, and the part in his hair had wandered from left to right. Maybe he was cutting his own hair, now-I’d known him to be dissatisfied with other barbers. I say “other” barbers, because he’d begun as a barber himself (his first such job in Chicago had been in the same shop as Jake “The Barber” Factor, who later helped Nitti frame Roger Touhy, but that’s another, if typical, Nitti tale) and even before he began to effect the look and style of a business executive, he’d been immaculately groomed.
“Forgive me if I don’t rise,” he said.
I tried to find sarcasm in the words, but couldn’t quite do it. Couldn’t quite rule it out, either.
“Sure, Frank.” Was it still okay to call him that? “Mind if I sit down?”
Still reading the ledger, his eyes having not yet landed on me, Nitti waved one hand with mild impatience, saying, “Sit, sit.”
I sat in a high-backed, gold-upholstered chair near Nitti. I was up higher than him, in this thronelike chair; and he was a relatively small man, perhaps four inches shorter than me. None of which kept me from feeling intimidated, and very small indeed.
After what seemed forever, and was probably a minute, Nitti put the ledger on top of some other ledgers and pointed to his glass of milk. “Care for something? Just ’cause I gotta drink this goddamn stuff doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself.”
“No thanks, Frank.”
“Not a drinking man?”
“Sometimes. Not during business. I assume this isn’t a social call.”
He shrugged, ignored the question, saying, “I’m not a drinking man myself. Some occasional vino, that’s about it. My apologies for bothering you on a Sunday, a Sunday night at that.”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, “it’s good to see you,” trying not to let it sound like a lie.
He gestured with both hands, a very Italian gesture, or in his case Sicilian. “I usually don’t work on Sundays,’’ he said. “I like to spend Sunday with the family. Go to Mass. Play with my boy. Hey, you want to see something?”
I swallowed. “Sure, Frank.”
He dug under the robe. I remembered the story about the night Capone threw a testimonial banquet for Scalise and Anselmi and was toasting them when he reached behind him for a baseball bat and splattered their brains.
But Nitti was only getting his wallet. He opened it, grinning, pushed it in front of me.
It was a picture, in a plastic compartment in the wallet, of Nitti, smiling, his arm around a little boy. Hugging the child; the child was smiling, too, obviously loving his father. As that’s what this obviously was: a snapshot portrait of father and son.
“He’s big for six,” Nitti said, beaming; he withdrew the wallet and looked at the picture himself. “You know, I’m a little guy.”
Right.
“My son’s gonna be a bigger man than me. The men in his mama’s family are six foot, some of ’em. He’ll stand taller than his old man.”
There seemed to be no irony in his words.
“Handsome lad,” I said.
Nitti nodded in agreement, smiled at the picture, and put the wallet back in his pocket.
“Now,” he said, “what’s this about you nosing around in the Outfit’s business?”
I hadn’t
“What do you mean, Frank?”
“Don’t shit me, kid.”
I wasn’t a kid anymore, but I didn’t point that out to him; I’d been young enough for him to call me that when we first met, and it was clear I’d be a kid to him till the day he died. Maybe that was a saving grace; maybe his looking on me that way was keeping me alive.
“I did a job for Willie Bioff,” I said. Hoping that was what he wanted to hear. Hoping to Christ he didn’t somehow know about Montgomery. That was the job that would get me the testimonial banquet.
“I know,” Nitti said. He reached for the glass of milk, sipped it; brushed away a small milk mustache with a hand that then extended to point a blunt finger at me. “You shouldn’t try keeping things from me.”
I gestured with two open hands. “Bioff didn’t ask me to keep anything from you, exactly. He just didn’t want this situation advertised. He seemed to think he was in the doghouse enough with you fellas, over the income-tax trouble he was in.”
Nitti’s eyes weren’t narrowed; they seemed as casual as two eyes could be. But I knew they were studying me; watching my every movement. Looking for me to betray myself.
“I sometimes think it was a mistake,” Nitti said, reflective all of a sudden, “letting that pimp represent us. But he was in on the ground floor, on the IA deal, so it only seemed fair.”
“He seems to have done a good job for you.”
“He’s got himself rich, is what he’s done, and I don’t begrudge him. That’s what we’re in it for, all of us, our own financial well-being. How the hell else are a bunch of immigrants like us gonna make it in this world, if we don’t look after ourselves?”
“Right,” I said. He seemed to be including me in that, so I didn’t remind him I was born here.
“Tell me what you did for Bioff, exactly.”
I did. From Barger through the phone calls to the movie circuit bigwigs to Estelle. No details about my method of dealing with the latter party, but Nitti smiled at the mention of her name, anyway.
“Nice work if you can get it,” he said.
“She’s who told you, isn’t she? I mean, Sonny Goldstone obviously reported seeing me at the Colony Club, but then you talked to Estelle, and she spilled about me and Bioff, right?”
“Never trust a whore, kid. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
“I guess not. But, then, I’m tempted to say the same thing to you about pimps.”
“Point well taken,” he said, nodding.
“I, uh, didn’t feel I was working behind your back, Frank. Bioff’s one of yours, after all.”
For the first time this evening, his expression seemed thoughtful, not offhand. “I asked around a little. I hear you hate Bioff. Why would you take work from somebody whose fuckin’ guts you hate?”
Shrug. “Money’s money. And I don’t hate Willie. I don’t feel much about him one way or another.”
“I hear you arrested him once.”
Batter up.
“Uh, Frank, that was a long time ago. I haven’t been on the force since ’32, remember?”
He cracked his knuckles; it sounded like a firing squad warming up. “This guy Pegler,” he said, back to his deceptively casual tone, “this big-deal columnist that Bioff was havin’ you issue the warnings about. You had any contact with him?”
Straight was the only way to play it; pretty straight, anyway.
“Twice,” I said. “He came around early this week asking if I ever arrested Bioff. I said yes, but gave him no details. He came around to my office this afternoon, looking for more information; I didn’t give him any. In fact, I threw him out of my office. And I mean
He took another slow sip of milk. “Why?”
“He called me a hebe.”
“Why, are you a hebe?”
“My father was Jewish. Does Heller sound Irish to you?”
He liked that small bit of impertinence. He said, “If he called me a wop, I’d have him talked to.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I wouldn’t kill him. I’d like to have him hit, right now, for the trouble he’s drumming up for me, but he’s out of bounds.”
