His eyes narrowed. “Oh. You figure he was hospitalized over here.”
“Yeah. He might even be out by now. The kind of wound I had, they keep you inside longer.”
“What’s his name?”
“D’Angelo. B Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Regiment, 2nd Marine Division.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He dug inside his suitcoat and came back with a little notebook and a pen. He had me repeat the information.
“What’s his first name?”
“Anthony, I think.”
“You think?”
“We weren’t much on first names.”
He put the notebook and pen away, smiled tightly. “Get right on it, first thing tomorrow.”
“Thanks. I’ll be in the office.”
“This sounds pressing.”
“It is. Somebody else will be looking for him, and I want to get there first.”
Eliot thought about that for a moment, then smiled again and said, “It’s your business. You asked a favor, and it’s yours, no questions asked. I don’t expect an explanation.”
“I know you don’t. And I’m not going to give you one, either.”
He laughed and finished the beer. Waved at a waitress, cute as candy in her skimpy black and white lacy outfit, who came over and brought him a new bottle. Manhattan brand; the Capone mob’s label, forced upon the local niteries by union pressure. I was still working on my previous bottle of Nitti nectar.
“This afternoon sounds like it was pretty rough,” he said, pouring the bottle’s contents into his glass, meaning Estelle.
“Rough enough. That’s something else you could do for me.”
“Oh?”
“Keep me posted, Eliot. Now that Estelle’s been murdered, the shit’s gonna hit the federal fan.”
The young lady got up and threw her napkin down and the beau went rushing after her.
“You mean, specifically,” he said, “you’re interested in how this event affects Nicky Dean and his willingness to testify.”
“Precisely, my dear Watson. And my prediction is he zips his lip.”
“Do you agree with Drury that it’s a mob hit, or not?”
“Why, did Drury fill you in on his views?”
Eliot nodded.
I said, “It could well be. But it sure isn’t Nitti’s style.”
He nodded again. “I tend to agree. On the other hand, a million dollars is a lot of money.”
“So you know about that? The Stagehands ‘income-tax’ fund.”
“Yes. And that’s a conservative estimate. I’ve heard as high as two million, and the most frequent figure is one point five mil.”
“Your point being?”
He lifted his eyebrows and set them back down. “A torture killing is hardly Nitti’s style, granted. Estelle Carey was enough of a celebrity in this town to guarantee her murder attracting headlines. Knowing that, Nitti would seem more likely either to have arranged an ‘accident’ or at the very least brought in out-of-town torpedoes to neatly do the deed. Estelle was running with Eddie McGrath, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. And who the hell is Eddie McGrath?”
“A New York crumb. Very high ranking in the Joe Adonis/Frank Costello circle. She’d been seeing him down in Miami Beach.”
“In other words, if Nitti wanted her dead, he could bring in out-of-town talent and the blame easily be placed on New York.”
“Right. He’s done it before.”
“E. J. O’Hare,” I said. “Tommy Maloy.”
“Certainly. And others. So I agree that using what appears to be local talent on a torture killing doesn’t fit Nitti’s pattern. But there are rumors, Nate, that Nitti’s slipping.”
“Nitti slipping? How?”
He shrugged. “Mentally. Physically. Some say Ricca’s more powerful than Nitti, now. Or anyway coming up fast. You yourself mentioned Accardo and Giancana, so you had to have noticed it starting even before you left town, last year.”
I shook my head no. “I don’t buy it. Nitti slipping? No way. Never.”
“He’s not a god, Nate. Or some kind of satan, either. He’s a crafty, intelligent, amoral human being. But he is a human being. His wife Anna died a year and a half ago, you know.”
“I did see that in the papers…”
He gestured with two open hands. “He was devoted to her. His family is all to him, they say.”
I remembered him showing me the photo of his little boy.
“He’s had some financial setbacks,” Eliot went on. “He’s got this federal grand jury breathing down his neck, and the income-tax boys are after him again. He’s been in and out of the hospital for his ulcers and back pain. It’s closing in on him.”
“And this, you think, might lead to him condoning what happened to Estelle Carey today?”
“Possibly. That money she supposedly had hidden away for Dean was something Nitti might well have instructed his killers to find out the whereabouts of, by whatever means necessary, before finishing the job. A million bucks, Nate! Or possibly even two. Sure it’s possible.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t want to think so.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not stupid. But I think you, well… Nate, you look up to the guy, somehow. Admire him.”
“Bullshit.”
“You just can’t remember when this wasn’t his town. You just can’t accept change.”
“I didn’t know I had a choice. I tried to buy a pair of shoes, late this afternoon, they told me I needed a goddamn ration ticket. I told ’em I was at Guadalcanal fighting to preserve their way of life, and they suggested I go
He laughed. “I bet you took that well.”
“Funny thing is, I did. I started out bad, and was shouting, the guy was shouting back, and then I just sort of faded away. Wandered back out on the street.”
“Well, you’d just come back from that ghastly scene at the Carey apartment…”
“That was part of it. But I can’t handle this place.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What place?”
“
“And it changed on you.”
“Not really, not in any important way. That’s the trouble. I came back, and it was the same trivial everyday life waiting for me, my job, credit checks and insurance adjusting and divorce surveillance, and is that what we’re the fuck fighting for?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s enough.”
“And then there’s the killing. The Outfit or whoever, they’re still at it, I mean here we are fighting for democracy over there and over here people are pouring whiskey on people and setting them on fire, and cutting them up and…”
He grabbed my arm, squeezed. Apparently it had been shaking, my arm.
“Nate.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Here,” he said. He handed me a handkerchief.
Apparently I’d been crying. I wiped my face with it.
“Goddamnit, I’m sorry, Eliot.”
