The Million-Dollar Wound

you? Goddamn newspapers. Why couldn’t the bastards give you a fair shake…?”

He shrugged. “I think it was the fact that Evie and I had both been drinking. We weren’t drunk, Nate, I swear-but we had been drinking, and, well, you know my reputation as the big-shot prohibition agent. It made me look like a hypocrite.”

“How are you and Evie?”

Evie was his wife; his second wife.

“Not so good,” he admitted. “A little rocky. I’m traveling a lot.”

I was sorry to hear that, and said so. He just shrugged again.

Then I said, “What are you doing these days? Since you’re here to quiz me for the grand jury, I assume you’re back in the law enforcement business. So what is it? Treasury or Justice or what?”

“Nothing so glamorous,” he said, with a chagrined grin.

“Come on. Spill.”

“Actually,” he said, sitting up straight, summoning his self-respect, “it’s a pretty important job. I’m working for the Federal Security Agency. Specifically, the Office of Defense Health and Welfare.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well,” he said, shrugging, “I’m the Chief Administrator of their Division of Social Protection.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We’re dealing with social problems of the sort that inevitably develop when there’s a rapid expansion of a work force in a community, or a large concentration of armed forces.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pursed his lips, mildly irritated, or was that embarrassment? “I’m talking about safeguarding the health and morale of the armed forces and of workers in defense industry. What do you think I’m talking about?”

“I think you’re talking about VD.”

He sighed; laughed. “I am talking about VD.”

“I think I saw some of your movies while I was in the Corps.”

That did embarrass him, and he waved it off. “That’s only a small part of it, Nate. I’m supervising the activities of twelve regional offices, and what we’re primarily doing is trying to help the local law enforcement people cut back on prostitution, especially in areas close to military and Naval bases, or industrial areas. And in cities where military and Naval personnel are likely to go on leave. That’s why they brought an old copper like me in to be in charge.”

“I see.”

“You can sit there and grin if you like. But VD’s a big problem; in the first war, soldiers suffered more cases of venereal disease than wounds in battle.”

“I think you’re right. What we need in this world is more killing and less fucking.”

He smiled wearily. “Only you would look at it that way, Nate. I look at it as important work.”

“You don’t have to sell me, Eliot. I know enough to wear my rubbers when it rains.”

“You haven’t changed much.”

“Neither have you. You’re still with the goddamn Untouchables.’’

He laughed and so did I. It was a nice moment. But then the moment was gone, and silence filled the room, somewhat awkwardly. An El rumbled by and eased the tension.

“You know why I’m here,” he said, tentatively.

“Yup. I don’t know why they sent the top VD G-man to do a grand jury prosecutor’s job, though.”

“I am still a G-man, and that’s why I’m in town, doing a joint workshop with the FBI over at the Banker’s Building. We got cops from all over the city and the suburbs coming in.”

I bet I knew the conference room they were using-the one next to the old FBI HQ, that big room whose windows faced the Rookery across the way, windows from which agents like Melvin Purvis and Sam Cowley hung suspects out by their ankles till they talked. At least one suspect had been dropped. It made a splash in the papers. And on the cement.

Now Eliot Ness was using it to teach cops about whores. Wasn’t law enforcement a wonderful thing?

“Let me guess,” I said. “The steel mill district on the east side must be hooker heaven about now.”

He nodded. “The Pullman plant, just west of there, is another key area.”

They were Pullman Aircraft, for the duration. Electromotive was near there, too; even before I joined up, it was rumored they were making tanks.

He got up and got himself a Dixie cup of water from the cooler over by the bathroom. “The cops in these industrial districts never had a prostitution problem the like of this before; it’s an epidemic. We’re helping ’em out.”

“You and the FBI.”

“Yeah.” Sitting back down, sipping his water.

“So if they ask you to help them out, by talking to a contrary cuss name of Heller, you say, why sure.”

“Do you resent that, Nate?”

I shook my head. “I could never resent you, Eliot. Not much, anyway. But it’s been ten years now that you’ve been trying to turn me into a good citizen. Won’t you ever give up?”

“What are you talking about? I’ve heard you tell the truth on the witness stand before. With my own ears. Saw it with my own eyes.”

“Who else’s were you planning on using?”

“Well, you did do it. You told the truth.”

“Once. That doesn’t make me a saint.”

“Nate, you’re not on Nitti’s side. You never were.”

“That’s right. I’m on my own side.”

“Which is whichever side is safest, you mean.”

“Or the most profitable.”

He crumpled the paper cup in a fist and gestured with it. “The Outfit is strangling every union in this town. Can you honestly think about your father, and what he gave to unionism, and sit back and let that happen?”

I pointed at him, gently. “Eliot, you’re my friend, but when you bring up my old man, you’re pushing it. And when you suggest that I could in any way single-handedly clean up union corruption that goes back years, decades, you’re screwier than the guys I was bunking with back at the bughouse.”

He tossed the crumpled cup at the wastebasket by my desk; it went in. “The investigation is centering on the IA movie extortion racket, you know.”

“So?”

“So you were involved in Pegler’s initial investigation of the racket.”

“Something you dragged me into, by the way, giving my name to your federal pals. I never thanked you for that, did I?”

“I guess you didn’t.”

“That’s because at the time I felt like kicking you in the slats.”

He ignored that, pressed on: “You know plenty about that racket, Nate. You had contact with most of the principals.”

“I don’t know anything firsthand. All I did was talk to some people.”

“One of whom was Frank Nitti.”

Shit.

I said, “Nobody knows that for sure.”

“Federal agents have a record of you going to see him several times, over a seven-year period, including in November 1939. At the Bismarck Hotel?”

“Christ.”

“The Grand Jury is going to want to know what was said in those meetings. Going way back, Nate. Back to Cermak.”

I sat up and gave my friend as nasty a grin as I’d ever given him. “What about back to Dillinger? How would the FBI like to have what I know about the Dillinger hit go public? How at best the feds aided and abetted crooked