“Toby,” he shouted, ever distrustful of the ability of the phone company to transmit voices outside the circumference of Los Angeles County. “I’m glad you called. Remember Mr. Stange?”
Mr. Stange was a neighborhood bum Shelly had pulled out from under the stairs in our office building. Mr. Stange had only one tooth. Shelly had dedicated himself to saving that denture and anchoring a new personality to it.
“I remember Mr. Stange.”
“We saved the tooth. There’s a slight infection, but nothing serious.”
Shelly’s office, hands, and body were a hymn to decay. His only defense against rampant infection was the cigar he held in his mouth even when working on patients. He was enough to make Lister and Semmelweis commit murder or resign from the health game.
“Shelly, do I have any mail or messages?”
“I’ll go check. It rained here.”
“Too bad,” I said. “It’s beautiful here in Chicago.” Through the window I could see that the darkness was complete. It had been almost dark before five o’clock. Shelly grunted and went for my mail.
“Let’s see. Looks like a bill, some ads, a letter that smells very nice. Want me to open it?”
“Who’s it from?”
“Ann Peters with a return address of-”
“I know the address.”
“Want me to open it?”
“No,” I said. Someone knocked at the door. “Leave it on my desk. I’ll be back in a few days, I think.”
“Right. I’ve got a bridge to build for Mr. Stange. Want me to wait till you get back?” Someone knocked again.
“No,” I said. “Science will have to move on without my admiration. Goodbye.”
I hung up and went to the door. I was curious about why my ex-wife would write to me. The last time I had seen her she made it clear that I wasn’t welcome company, and she was seriously thinking about marrying some guy at the airline she worked for. Whatever she wanted, I didn’t want it filtered through Shelly Minck.
The “kid” at the door was about seventy. He took my suit and said he’d have it back in an hour. I got in a hot bath, letting myself cough and sputter. After my suit came back and I had tipped the old kid fifty cents, I lay down on the bed in the dark in clean underwear and listened to “Information Please,” “Gang Busters” and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” Both Warden Lawes and Holmes got the guy they were after. It inspired me to rise out of bed and begin the search for Gino Servi. I flicked off the radio two minutes into Lawrence Welk from the Trianon Ballroom, put on my suit and coat and went down in the lobby. I didn’t take the gun. I’d never used it, and the place I was going there were probably a lot of people who would recognize that bulge and not take kindly to it.
I waved to Curtis Katz at the desk and asked the doorman to get me a cab. One was waiting about twenty feet away. The life of semiluxury felt good, but I started to worry. I knew what I was going back to when this was over. I didn’t want to get too used to things I couldn’t have.
While I pondered the meaning of life, gobbled Bromo Quinine cold tablets, and blew my nose into Kleenex, the cab driver pulled quietly into the Chicago night.
When I told the cabbie I wanted to go to the Fireside Lounge in Cicero, he turned to look at me and shrugged. We arrived in front of the place half an hour later. He took my fare and tip and shook his head sadly.
When I got out, I was facing a black Cadillac parked across the street. The guy behind the wheel looked like Lon Chaney. His eyes were pointed straight at me.
5
There were at least two possibilities. One was that Nitti’s two boys, with some help from Nitti’s friends on the police force, had found out I was staying at the LaSalle and had simply waited and followed the cab when I came out. Another possibility was that Gino Servi was the man I wanted, and they had simply waited for me to show up in Cicero, which would suggest they had more confidence in my detecting that I did. Of course their presence could have been a coincidence. I’d heard that you could safely stand on a streetcorner in Cicero forever and never see anyone you knew. That’s what I’d heard, but it was old information from an ex-con named Red. The thing that mattered was that Nitti’s men knew where I was. I tried not to think about what they wanted from me.
Cicero was no warmer than Chicago, and in spite of its name, the Fireside did not look particularly warm. It was a big fake-log building with a gravel-covered parking lot you got in by driving under a sign on hinges. It was too dark to tell if the logs were brown. The windows were covered with dark drapes and a small red neon sign over the door announced the location. The large
I went through the heavy wooden door, dragging flu-stricken legs, and found myself facing another door with a menu on it. All items on the bill of fare had been crossed off. That and the lack of prices didn’t encourage the dinner trade.
Through a second door I found a creature who looked something like a juke box-short, solid, and wearing a maroon jacket and tie. The dim light turned his face orange and purple and danced on glasses so thick they looked bulletproof.
“Kitty Kelly sent me,” I said.
He put his newspaper aside, looked me over. He made it clear that it didn’t matter who sent me. I wasn’t carrying hardware. That was all he cared about. His job was to send them in, not keep them out. He took my coat and handed it through a dark square. Something or somebody inside the dark square took it.
“Go on in,” said the juke box, with a slight Irish accent. I went on in, stifling a sniffle.
“In” was a large, softly lit, low-ceilinged room with no fireplace. “In” did not look particularly warm. There were about sixty men and women in the room, well to reasonably dressed, at five card tables and a roulette wheel. One-armed bandits lined the walls and jingled constantly. There was a bar in the right corner with a door behind it. The bar was so small that only a half dozen stools were needed to surround it. Patrons apparently were not encouraged just to drink and pass the time of day with Joe the bartender, who looked like he was eight feet tall and not the kind of guy you’d want to pass any time with, or meet by chance in the washroom.
A single pillar, about as big around as a small redwood, stood in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t supporting the ceiling. I’d seen pillars like this in Vegas and Reno. The pillar had an eye-level series of dark mirrors running around it. Inside the pillar was at least one man with a gun, probably a very big gun. There was no real attempt to hide the purpose of the pillar. The door was clearly outlined and was surely locked on the inside. If the man with the gun had a heart attack, it would probably take dynamite to get to him. I had the feeling that dynamite might not be too far away either. The pillar was a warning to youthful, ambitious punks who might want to take on the power. It was also a reassurance to the honest patrons and an extra eye on the possibly dishonest ones.
A platinum blonde moved away from a pair of youngish women at the bar and headed for me. She wore a black dress that glittered in the soft brown light. She was about forty, maybe a little too skinny, with a good smile and a voice that suggested a touch of state college.
“Companionship, or action?” she said.
Our eyes met. I wondered how long and deep someone would have to scratch, and with what, to get through her first three lines of defense. From the way she looked at me, I could see that I didn’t have the tools for the job. Maybe it was my running nose and rheumy eyes.
“I’m here from out of town,” I said, trying to look the part. My red nose probably helped the Mortimer Snerd image. “I’d like to try my luck at that roulette table.”
I rubbed my hands together, not hard enough to start a fire but enough to show I was hot to lose the few bucks I had saved in a sock in the old chicken coop.
“Oh brother,” she said, grinning and taking my arm. My first level of disguise had certainly been penetrated. I had been taken for a clown instead of an idiot.
She guided me around black jack and poker tables to the roulette wheel in the far left corner.
