The Million-Dollar Wound

“Sure. How have I been doing?”

“You’re not getting rich, but you’re no pauper. Business is off slightly-divorce work is way down-but there’s still too much for one op to handle. If Frankie were here, one of us might be feather-beddin’, but there’s plenty here for the two of us.”

Why didn’t I care? I tried to look interested and said, “Such as?”

“Half a dozen suburban banks are using us for investigating loan applicants and credit; also some personnel investigation, and inspection of property and businesses. We got plenty of retail credit-risk checks to do, and four lawyers are now using us to serve their papers…”

I couldn’t listen. I tried. I swear I tried. But after while I was just looking at his face and his mouth was moving but I couldn’t make myself listen.

This is your business, a voice in my head was saying, this is what you worked so hard to build, once upon a time, so jump back in, jump back in, but I didn’t give a shit.

“Nate?” he said. His change of expression, to concern, made me tune his words in. “Are you all right? You seemed…distant, all of a sudden.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I sighed. Sipped the beer. “You just drop a stack of work on my desk and I’ll get to it. I promise you.”

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“In name only. You got to run the show till I get back on the ball. I had amnesia, did you know that?”

“No,” he said. Trying not to show his surprise. “We were told…battle fatigue. Shell shock…”

“I blocked it all out,” I said. “Forgot everything I could. My name. Who I am. Who I was. I don’t know if I can remember how to be a detective, to be quite honest with you.”

He smiled a little, swirled his beer in its glass. “Nate Heller with amnesia is still twice the detective of any other man I can think of.”

“That’s horseshit, Lou, but I do appreciate it.”

He looked in the beer, not at me, as he said, “I took the liberty of setting up an appointment for you this afternoon.”

“Really? I don’t think I’m in any mood to see a client just yet, Lou-”

“It’s not a client, and this is something you might just as well deal with right away, ’cause they’re not going to let loose of you till you do. They been calling for weeks, trying to set something up.”

“Oh. The federal prosecutor. That grand jury thing.”

“Yeah. Treasury and Justice Department investigators been swarming around town for weeks. Months. They’re really trying to put the screws to the Outfit. For whatever good it’ll do ’em. The prosecutor’s name is Correa, by the way.”

“Don’t know him.”

“He’s out of New York. That’s where the grand jury will eventually meet. But much of the investigation’s going on here. Most of their witnesses, and those they indict, will be from here, so Correa keeps a local office. And there’s an Illinois-based grand jury in the works, as well. Same subject-the Syndicate infiltrating the unions.”

“Aw shit.”

“They want to talk to you, bad.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“There’ll be somebody to talk to you, informally, at the office at two this afternoon. If you don’t want to face it, duck out. Me, I’d suggest you get it out of the way. You won’t get any rest till you do.”

“Shit.”

“Correa won’t be there; he’s in New York at the moment. But a couple of old friends of yours will be.”

“Such as?”

“Such as your favorite cop, for instance.”

“Stege?”

“Stege?” Lou shook his head, grinned. “You’re behind the times, Nate. Stege retired months ago, while you were overseas.”

I felt a strange pang; a sense of loss. Funny.

“I’m talking about our buddy from pickpocket-detail days,” Lou said. “Bill Drury.”

Drury. That lovable hard-ass.

“I should’ve guessed,” I said. “He always has had a hard-on against the Outfit. He would get involved in something like this. You said two old friends.”

“What?”

“You said two old friends were going to meet with me about this grand jury deal. Drury, and who else?”

He smiled on one side of his face. “If you were Uncle Sam, and you wanted to convince Nathan Heller to testify, who would you send?”

“Oh, no,” I said.

Lou toasted me with his beer.

“That’s right,” he said. Drank some beer. “Mr. Untouchable himself.”

Eliot Ness.

Eliot was fifteen minutes early.

He walked into the big single-room office-into which he’d walked so often, years before-and the sight of the Murphy bed against the wall, in its long-ago position, and me sitting behind my big old scarred oak desk in my long-ago position, made him smile.

“Isn’t that a Murphy bed?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a housing shortage. It’s been in all the papers.”

I got up from around the desk and I thought I could make out a slight tightening around his eyes as he got his first good look at me, skinny, gray, sunken-eyed me. I put the sore into sight for sore eyes.

He, on the other hand, looked much the same; a slight salt-and-peppering around the ears was the only noticeable difference. All else was familiar: a comma of dark brown hair falling down on his rather high forehead, a ruddy, handsome six-footer who was pushing forty and didn’t look it, partly due to the trail of freckles across his nose that kept him looking boyish in the face of time.

We shook hands, exchanging grins. His topcoat was over his arm, hat in hand; his gray suit with vest and dark tie was nicely tailored, giving him an executive look. I took the coat and hung it on the tree by the door.

“You look good, Nate.”

“You’re a liar, Eliot.”

“Well, you look good to me. You crazy SOB, what’s a grown man doing fighting a young man’s war?”

SOB was about as blue as Eliot’s language got.

“I’m not fighting it anymore,” I said, and got back behind the desk, gesturing to one of the two waiting chairs I’d placed opposite me in anticipation of my visitors. “What are you doing in Chicago, anyway? Who’s minding the store?”

“If you mean Cleveland,” Eliot said, crossing his legs, resting an ankle on a knee, “I resigned.”

That was a shock; the public safety director slot-which was essentially like being commissioner of both the police and fire departments-was perfect for Eliot. He’d had a lot of glory, a good salary, and accomplished plenty. I thought he’d die in that job, an old bearded public servant.

“First I heard of it,” I said.

“It was while you were away.”

“I knew you’d had that trouble…”

In March of ’42 Eliot had been involved in an auto accident that had found him, wrongly, briefly, accused of a hit-and-run; as a public safety man known for taking a tough stand on traffic violators, Eliot caught a lot of public heat.

“The press never left me alone after that,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact but his expression just barely revealing a buried hurt.

“Fuck ’em! You’ve been their fair-haired boy for years. You were cleared, weren’t