this room, look at the three of us and make a wrong guess, because I think this guy Servi helped set you up with a guy imitating my brother.”
“The guy who got killed on the West Side yesterday,” I threw in. “Old actor named Morris Kelakowsky. I think maybe Servi set it up for him to take you for $120,000. Then he tried to hold Chico up for it.”
Nitti rose, glaring from Groucho Marx to me. Chico just leaned back and watched.
“Sounds possible to me,” said Capone.
“Gino’s my cousin,” said Nitti.
Capone laughed.
“You never heard of a cousin doing in a cousin, or a brother a brother? They may be right, Frank. Gino set all this, got rid of Bistolfi, the Canetta kid and the Jew to keep them from talking.”
“Maybe,” said Nitti, rubbing his chin.
“If he did,” said Capone, “I want him. Bistolfi was working for me.”
Capone motioned to Chaney and told him to make some phone calls, to track down Gino. We sat while Chaney reached for the phone and started his calls. He got nervous and turned his eyes down. On the third call, to the Fireside, he got lucky, and kept saying, “Yeah, O.K.” He hung up and talked slowly to Nitti.
“Gino left there two hours ago, said he was coming right here. He ain’t been home or to any of the other places. You want me to check the hospitals?”
“No,” said Nitti.
Capone got up and nodded to the guys against the wall.
“Remember, Frank. I get him.”
“We talk to him first,” said Nitti.
“Sure,” said Capone, “you talk to him. Then I talk to him.”
It was my turn.
“Then we can go?”
“You can go back to the Drake and stay there till we find Gino,” and Nitti. “Then you get out of town fast if things don’t look good for him. We’ll let you know.”
Groucho was going to say something, but Harpo moved quickly to his side and touched his shoulder, shutting him up. Chico put five bucks on the table, reached down and cut the deck of cards in front of Nitti. Nitti smirked and looked up at him with something that might have been dyspepsia or grudging respect. Nitti cut the cards. Chico’s card was a five of clubs, Nitti’s a jack of hearts. Chico led the way out of the door with Costello and Chaney behind us.
When the door closed, we could hear the voices of Capone and Nitti, but couldn’t make out the words.
No one said anything on the way down. In the lobby, Chico suggested when he saw the blonde that he might be back at the Drake a little late. I suggested strongly that he do as Nitti said and just go to the hotel.
It had worked out, but not the way I expected. All I had left to do was stick around till the mob nailed Servi. In the morning, I’d tell Kleinhans that Servi was the triple killer. I didn’t think the cops would get to him first. Then I’d call Mayer and tell him the whole thing was wrapped up.
The cop car was across the street when we went through the door. Costello followed us out into the wind with his hands in his pockets. He moved his blue face close to me so that I’d be the only one to hear.
“When Frank gives you the word to go,” he said without moving his lips, “you got exactly two hours to be out of town and not come back, not ever. Got it?”
“I got it,” I said, and led the way around the corner to Narducy’s cab. The street was pretty well deserted. The area was mostly industrial. A couple of big factories stood in the sky, silhouetted against the moon. We got in, and Narducy asked how it had gone. The Marxes were quiet. I told Narducy everything looked fine.
We pulled away, and he made a U-turn to take us back to Michigan Avenue. Something bumped in the car and rattled. Narducy said he’d check it later and guessed it was a loose muffler.
We got back to the Drake in ten minutes, and the Marxes got out. I said goodnight and that I’d see them in the morning. Groucho leaned through the door and said “Thanks.” No gags, no smirk. No sour face. Harpo shook my hand and grinned, and Chico suggested that he never knew when he might need my help again. I closed the door, and Narducy pulled away singing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” in his Groucho voice. I didn’t mind.
When he pulled in front of his apartment building, I paid him and marked the price and tip in my black book. He said he’d be on the street for a few more hours. I turned to head in and up to Merle while Narducy got out of the cab to check the loose muffler.
About twenty seconds later, he caught me going up the stairs. His eyes were wide and he had something to say, but words weren’t coming out, not even an impression of Cary Grant. I followed him back down the stairs and out to the cab.
“Muffler wasn’t loose,” he finally said, breathing fast in little gulps. “It was the trunk. Someone broke the lock.”
He pointed to the trunk and I went over to it. It was partly open. I opened it the rest of the way and found out what had happened to Gino Servi. Someone had put a bullet in his forehead and folded him into Narducy’s trunk. Narducy didn’t move around to where he could see the corpse again.
“Well?” he said as if he had to find a toilet fast.
“No, not well. Not well at all.”
A large caliber bullet had not only cancelled Gino Servi’s life but maybe the chance for Chico Marx to walk away clean and me to turn a killer over to the cops.
I was five squares back with nowhere to go, and I was tired, damned tired.
“You got two choices, Raymond,” I said, looking down the street to be sure no one was coming or looking. Whoever had given Narducy this present probably knew about me, Narducy, and Merle. Sooner or later he was going to find it easier to get rid of me than to keep sweeping witnesses out of my path. “You go to the cops and tell them you found this gentleman in your trunk, or you dump the body someplace. I suggest you avoid the questions and dump the body.”
“I never-” he started. “I can’t.”
“I have,” I said. “And I can. Get back in and tell me a good place to put our friend where the cops can find him.”
Ten minutes later, we left Gino sitting on a bench in Lincoln Park looking at a bunch of icebound pleasure boats in a harbor. Ten minutes after that Narducy had dropped me at the Ambassador Hotel. He was too nervous to tell if someone had followed us, and I was having too much trouble scheming to worry about it.
The doorman at the Ambassador was tall, black, and polite. He was also young and handsome in a blue uniform. We were a nice contrast on every point. I made my way to the desk walking on a carpet four feet thick. Just off the desk was a restaurant with a sign indicating it was “The Pump Room.” Someone opened the door of the Pump Room and I spotted a Negro waiter dressed like Punjab with a big turban. It looked like the kind of place where Ian Fleming would feel at home.
The desk clerk wore a modified tux and was too classy to even give me a suspicious look. He just called Fleming’s room and announced me, and Fleming, apparently, said I should come up.
11
Fleming opened the door with an amused smile on his face, a drink in one hand, and his pearl cigarette holder in the other. He wore a dark smoking jacket that looked as if it were made of velvet. The only other time I had seen anything like it was in a Ricardo Cortez movie a good ten years earlier.
“Mr. Peters,” he said genially. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Another attempt on your life?”
He stepped back to let me in, and in I went to a large, carpeted room with plenty of soft furniture and a tall, black-haired woman in a black dress. She looked like an ad for expensive perfume. She didn’t look soft like the furniture.
“Were you followed?” Fleming asked matter-of-factly.
“Maybe,” I said, looking at the woman, who raised a drink to her mouth as if she were in a fashion show. The mouth pouted and the face did not show signs of pleasure in my company.
