The Million-Dollar Wound

The light above me went on; light glowed redly through my lids. I “slept” on.

A hand gently shook my shoulder.

“Heller,” Nitti said, softly. “Heller, wake up.”

I sat slowly up, sort of groaning, rubbing my face with the heel of a hand, saying, “Excuse me, Frank-oh, hell. Aw. I don’t know what happened. Must’ve dozed off.”

“I know you did. I was out for a walk, and I got back and you were sound asleep. Snoring away. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you. So I just let you sleep.”

He sat next to me. He looked very old; very skinny; very tired. Cheeks almost sunken. His dark eyes didn’t have their usual hardness. His hair was the real tip-off, though: the little barber needed a haircut.

“I didn’t see the harm,” he said, “letting you sleep. Then, to be honest with you, I forgot all about ya.” He gestured out toward the other room. “I had some business come up all of a sudden, and I sent my wife and boy over to the Rongas, and she said now don’t forget about Heller, and I went and forgot about you, anyway.” He laughed. For a man who minutes ago had heard his own death sentence, and who had in return thrown down the gauntlet to Ricca and the whole goddamn Outfit, he was spookily calm.

“When I first got back from overseas,” I said, “I had trouble sleeping. But lately I catch myself napping every time I turn around. I’m really sorry.”

He waved that off. He looked at me; his eyes narrowed-in concern? Or was that suspicion?

“I hope my business meeting didn’t disturb your sleep,” he said.

“Nope,” I said, cheerfully. I hoped not too transparently cheerfully. “Slept right through it.”

“Why was it you wanted to talk to me, Heller?”

“Uh, you invited me here, Frank.”

“Oh. Yeah. Correa called you. That prick.”

“He’s going to call me to testify. I guess they were keeping tabs on you, when we were having our various meetings over the years. They’re going to ask about those meetings, and…”

He shrugged. “Forget it.”

“Well, that’s what I intend to do. What you and I talked about is nobody’s business but ours. Like I told Campagna, I got some convenient after-effects of my combat duty-they treated me for amnesia, while I was in the bughouse. I don’t remember nothing, Frank.”

He patted my shoulder. “I’m proud of what you did over there.”

“What?”

“I brag on you to my boy, all the time. You were a hero.” He got up and crossed to an expensive, possibly antique cabinet and took out a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. “This is a great country. Worth fighting for. An immigrant like me can have a home and a family and a business. Some vino, kid?”

“No thanks, Frank.”

He drank the wine, pacing slowly around the little study. “I never worried about you, kid. You coulda gone running off the mouth about Cermak, and you didn’t. You coulda done the same thing where Dillinger was concerned, but you didn’t. You understand it, omerta, and you ain’t even one of us.”

“Frank, I’m not going to betray you.”

He sat down next to me. “You seen Ness lately?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Last month.”

“You know what he’s doing these days?”

“Yeah,” I said, and smiled.

Nitti sat there and laughed.

“Al coulda used his help,” he said, and laughed some more.

When he stopped laughing, he finished the glass of wine and said, “That’s another secret you kept.”

“Frank?”

“You knew about O’Hare.”

I swallowed. “You mean, you knew…”

“That you figured out I…” He gestured with one hand, as if sculpting something. “…sent Al away. Yeah. I saw it in your eyes, kid, when we talked that time.”

He meant that night in ’39 in the suite at the Bismarck.

“Then why in hell am I alive?” I said.

“I told you to stay out of my business. You stayed out, more or less. I trust you. I respect you.”

“Frank-I’m right in thinking you didn’t have anything to do with Estelle Carey’s death, aren’t I?”

“Would I invite such heat?” His face tightened into an angry mask. “My bloodthirsty friend Paul the Waiter sent those”-and then he said something in Sicilian that sounded very vile indeed-“to hit her. He was afraid she’d talk, this grand jury thing. I believe her killers took it on themselves to try to make her talk.” He laughed without humor. “To make her lead them to money she never had.”

“Money she…what?”

He got up and poured himself some more wine. “The Carey dame never had Nicky’s dough. He didn’t trust her. He thought she’d fingered him to the feds. That million of his, well, it’s really just under a million, the feds exaggerate, so they can tax you more…anyway, that million is stashed away for Nicky when he gets out. He’s being a pretty good boy. He’s talked some, but not given ’em anything they didn’t already have. Willie and Browne, well… don’t invest in their stock.”

Nitti’s openness was startling. And frightening. Was he drunk? Was he telling me things he’d regret telling me, later?

“You killing that bastard Borgia and his bitch was a good thing,” he said. “And then calling me so we could clean up, that I also appreciate. Think of what the papers woulda done with that; talk about stirring up the heat. Do you know how many of the boys have been pulled in over the Carey dame? Shit. That’s Ricca for you. Anyway.” He sipped his wine. “I owe you one.”

He’d said that to me before, more than once. More than twice.

“Hey, you have some wine, now,” he said.

I had some wine. We sat and drank it and I said, “If you feel you owe me one, Frank, I’d like to collect.”

Nitti shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

“You know about my friend Barney Ross.”

He nodded. Of course he knew; I’d heard it from him. Or from Campagna. Same difference-before tonight, at least.

He said, “Have you talked to him about this problem of his?”

“Yes I have,” I said. “And he claims he can handle the stuff. He needs it for his pain, he says. To help him sleep. He acted like it was no big deal-then made me promise not to tell his wife, his family.”

“He’s a good man,” Nitti said. “He shouldn’t have this monkey on his back. It will ruin him.”

“I know.”

It seemed to anger Nitti. “He’s a hero. Kids look up to him. He shouldn’t go down that road.”

“Then help me stop him.”

He looked at me; the old Nitti seemed to be home, if only briefly, in the hard eyes.

“Put the word out,” I said. “Nobody in Chicago sells dope to Barney Ross. Cut off his supply. Capeesh?”

“Capeesh,” Nitti said.

We shook hands at the front door and I walked out into the wintry air, wondering how many eyes other than Nitti’s were on me.

Drury drove. We left his unmarked car on Cermak Road, near Woodlawn Cemetery, and walked along the railroad tracks, south. A light drizzling rain was falling. These were Illinois Central tracks, freight, not commuter; at this time of afternoon, just a little before four, there would be little or no train traffic, not till after rush hour-Cermak Road was too major a thoroughfare to be held up by a train, this time of day.

We were out in the boonies, really. To my left a few blocks was downtown Berwyn, but just due north was a working farm; and right here, the tracks ran through a virtual prairie-tall grass, scrub brush and trees. Up at right was a wire fence, behind which loomed the several faded brick buildings of a sanitarium. Some uniformed cops were