Neon Mirage

hand, if I recall, you were Mayor Cermak’s bodyguard as well. Do all your clients get shot up like this?”

“Not more than half,” I said, with a put-in-my-place grin, and the doc smiled thinly and walked on, and I went in.

Jim was indeed sitting up in bed, sipping orange juice through a long plastic straw. He looked skinnier than I ever saw him, and his right arm was heavily bandaged and in a sling, but his cheeks looked damn near rosy. I guess that’s what a dozen transfusions can do for you.

“I feel like a million bucks today, Nate,” he said.

“What, green and wrinkled?”

“That joke’s older than me,” he said, smiling, putting his glass on the bedstand where arrangements of flowers huddled.

“Yeah, but it’ll outlive us both.” I pulled up a chair. “You given any more thought to selling out?”

“I have.”

“And what’s your position?”

“Unchanged.”

“I had a little talk with Guzik.”

His eyes tightened. “When was this?”

“Monday night,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea-he sent for me.”

I gave him the particulars, including Guzik’s claim that Siegel did the hit, including Guzik’s $200,000 offer. I didn’t see any reason to mention I’d been paid five C’s to deliver the message.

“Two hundred grand is chicken feed,” Jim said, sneering.

“It is?”

“My business is worth $2 million a year.”

“It is if you’re alive,” I said, not showing how impressed I was by that figure, mentally raising his daily rate. “Why not quote Guzik a price? Tell him what you would settle for.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Mostly mine. Then yours. Not Guzik’s at all.”

Jim laughed. “At least you’re honest, lad.”

“Don’t let it get around. It’s bad for business.”

“Do you think Greasy Thumb could be tellin’ the truth? Do you think this-” he gestured with his left hand toward his bandaged right arm “-could be the work of that crazy Jew bastard instead?”

“Siegel? Sure. It could be.”

“Are you looking into it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you trying to find out who did this to me?”

“Not really. I’m mostly just trying to keep you alive. I have been cooperating with Drury, who’s doing his best to find the shooters.”

“You think he’ll get the job done?”

“Stranger things have happened.” I told him about the trip to Bronzeville and the witnesses that Two-Gun Pete turned up for Drury.

“If the shooters are Outfit,” Jim said, almost gleefully, “that will prove it was Guzik behind it.”

“No it won’t. There are plenty of people in this town who do work for Guzik who also take on freelance work, from time to time.”

“But if it’s out-of-town talent who did it, that would clear Guzik, and point to Siegel.”

“Not necessarily. Frank Nitti used to hire out of town talent all the time, for his hits; just to confuse the issue. That’s what he did where Tommy Malloy was concerned, and O’Hare, too.”

“Damnit, Nate!” He pounded his bed with his good hand. “Give me some good news!”

“Take it easy, Jim. The good news is you’re alive. The good news is Guzik wants to buy you out, not kill you.”

“He says.”

“It’s his style. You’re not dealing with Ricca or Campagna or Accardo, here. Guzik’s favorite weapon is money.”

“How can I do business with a man if he tried to have me killed?”

“You don’t know that he did.”

“I don’t know that he didn’t. Find out for me.”

“What?”

“I want to look into it-work with Drury, but work on your own, as well. You have your contacts, your ways. Find out whether it was Guzik or Siegel who did this; I’ll pay a fancy fee.”

“I just love fancy fees, but I don’t want that job. Jim, I can get away with playing your bodyguard. I have enough clout with Guzik to manage that. But if I go snooping in Outfit business, it could get me killed.”

The features of his face squeezed tight as a fist. “You’ve been saying you think I should sell-well, I’m seriously considering it, now. But I’ll only do it, if it’s that crazy bastard Siegel who put the hit out on me. How can I sell to Guzik, if he took out the contract?”

“What’s the difference who took out the contract? Guzik’s willing to buy you out and, apparently, let you walk. Maybe those affidavits of yours, your ‘insurance policy,’ is working.”

Jim rubbed his chin. “That would explain it. Siegel could care less about those affidavits coming out. They’re no skin off his ass…”

“True. And if Siegel’s the one gunning for you, well, once you’ve sold out to Guzik, the heat’s off. Siegel would no longer have reason to want you dead. No matter how crazy he is.”

“Damnit, Nate! Find out for me! Find out whicha them bastards tried to kill me. Tried to kill us!”

I stood. “Jim I’m just upsetting you. I’m going to have to go. I’ll be outside the door, if you need me, till noon. That’s when another of my ops comes on for me.”

His expression pleaded with me; so did his words: “Nate…take the assignment. There isn’t a private dick in town, in the country, that knows these Outfit bastards better than you. You’re the only man for the job, lad…”

“Jim, you’re my friend, and more important, my client, and I’m doing my best to keep you alive. It ends there.”

And I went out in the hall. Breathed out some air. I felt battered. Even with a clipped wing, that Irish son of a bitch was a handful.

I went down to the lounge area where I’d spoken to Peggy last Monday night and, after bumming a cigarette off a passing doctor, sat and smoked. I don’t smoke, as a rule-I picked the habit up overseas, in the Marines, and dropped it when I got back. But now and then I got the craving. Usually when I started getting the combat jitters. I’d been smoking off and on all week.

A few minutes later, just as I was standing up, grinding the cigarette under my heel, ready to go back and help guard Ragen’s door, an orderly approached me, a colored kid of maybe twenty with a light brown complexion and dark close-cropped brown hair.

“Are you one of the detectives watching Mr. Ragen?” he asked.

I said I was.

“I think I have something I oughta tell you about.”

“Well why don’t you, then.”

He swallowed. “Okay. After work yesterday, I was playing ball over at the recreation grounds. At Wentworth Avenue? I was playing softball. I saw these men looking at me in particular. They was watching us play ball, I thought, but they was looking at me. I had my badge on that shows I’m an employee here at the hospital.” He swallowed again.

“Go on, son.”

“Well, one of them come up to me and asked if I work at the hospital. I say I did. He ask me some questions about Mr. Ragen’s condition. He say he was a reporter. Anyway, he ask where Mr. Ragen’s room was. I…I told him.”

“He gave you money, didn’t he?”