He responded, but I couldn’t make out the words. I did manage to get a reasonably good grip on his left wrist, but the whole operation was full of potential failure. My hands were cold and so were his, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull him up even if I could hold my grip.
“Don’t try to pull,” he shouted. “Just get a firm grip and let me try to get up on your arm.”
He let go with both hands and my left arm pulled painfully in the socket, but I held my grip. His right hand reached up to get a grasp on my sleeve and he threw his legs up agilely over the same concrete outcropping to which he had been clinging. Just as my right hand lost its hold on the moist wrist, Fleming’s left hand grabbed the brick along the roof and he pulled himself up and over.
We lay there panting and enjoying the firmness beneath us for a minute or two without speaking.
“Do things like this happen to you often?” he finally gasped.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Fascinating,” he came back with a grin. He pulled himself up and helped me to my feet. “I hope you don’t resent my saying this Toby, but aren’t you getting a bit long of tooth for this sort of thing?”
I shrugged and he nodded in understanding.
As we made our way down the stairs back to his room, Fleming explained that he had heard the man with the gun take a shot at me and had, in turn, thrown a snowball with a rock in it at the carrier of certain doom. The man, whom he did not get a decent look at, had turned and taken a few shots at him, and Fleming had scrambled over the side of the roof to avoid the bullets.
“I don’t think anyone heard the shots with the wind blowing like this,” I said, as we went into the room and Fleming closed the door behind us.
He kicked off his remaining slipper, finished off his bourbon and branch water while humming a tune I didn’t recognize, and went into the bedroom to get his gun.
“We must stay in touch,” he said, turning an armchair to face the door. “Now I suggest you lie down on the sofa and get a few hours sleep while I tell you my life’s story.”
I was too tired to argue so I kicked my shoes off and stretched out. The last thing I remembered him saying was that he had either studied under a psychiatrist in Austria or been studied by one. Either possibility seemed reasonable to me at that point.
In my dream, Cincinnati was undergoing a massive reconstruction and I kept having to move from house to house to stay out of the way. I’d had the dream before and I didn’t like it. When I woke up in the morning, Fleming was sipping a cup of coffee. He wore a fresh suit and was clean shaven.
“Sleep well?” he said.
“O.K.,” I said.
Fleming looked at his watch. “I have an appointment or two,” he said, “and I think you have a crime to get on with.”
We shook hands.
“If you ever get to L.A., look me up,” I said. “I’m in the phone book.”
“And if you ever get to England after this damned war of ours, look me up.”
I went out the door without looking back, made it to the lobby without being shot, let the doorman get me a cab, and told the cabbie Merle’s address.
12
In the very late morning, I shaved, made a couple of scrambled eggs and some toast for Merle and threw two more eggs on for Narducy, who stopped in. Merle coughed her way through breakfast and put up a half-hearted resistance to the orange juice I forced on her. Narducy just looked at his coffee and pulled out a copy of the
Merle had a half box of Rice Krispies on a high shelf, which wasn’t so appetizing, but she also had two brown bananas, which compensated. I had three bowls of Krispies with bananas and read about Servi being found on the Lincoln Park bench frozen solid. The story was on page four with no picture. My tale of murder and machine- gunning, under O’Brien’s by-line, made page three with one-column shots of Bistolfi, Canetta, Morris Kelakowsky, and me. The photo of me was the worst, which seemed unfair since I was the only one of the quartet still alive. They had dug up an employment photo from my Glendale police days and had it sent by wire. It was a good ten years old. As awful as I felt, I knew I looked a lot better than that right now.
O’Brien played up the fugitive bit and added a little more blood to my already bloody tale. Aside from that, and the strong indication that I was responsible for the murders, the story seemed fair enough.
“I fixed the lock and cleaned out the trunk,” Narducy muttered.
Merle wandered dizzily back to the bedroom in her floppy robe and groaned.
“Toby,” she croaked in a voice two octaves lower than I recognized, “take care of yourself.”
“Well, Raymond,” I said, rinsing out dishes, “I’ve got two hours to turn myself in to the cops.”
“Hell,” he said, “you can just get on a bus or train and get out of here. The paper says they just want you for questioning. They wouldn’t drag you back from California, would they?”
“I don’t think so, but I promised a guy I’d turn myself in. I haven’t got much to sell but a body that’s ready for scrap, a brain that doesn’t work half the time, and my word. I can’t count on the body and brain, but my word has held up pretty well.”
Narducy shrugged and threw down the last two scrambled eggs and a slice of toast.
“How about finishing up and getting me over to the Drake so I can give the bad news to the Marx Brothers?”
Narducy nodded, finished eating everything on the table that could be eaten, put on his jacket and cap, inched his glasses up, and said he was ready. I looked in on Merle, who was asleep and giving off rasping sounds.
The sun was high, but nothing was melting as we went through the streets. I tried to think, but I was out of tricks and ideas. Narducy said he’d wait for me while I talked to the Marxes. Costello and Chaney were in the Drake lobby not even pretending to hide behind a newspaper. I walked over to them.
“Marx don’t leave,” said Costello. “Not till Frank finds out what happened to Gino. You don’t leave either till Frank says.”
“Someone’s been reading the papers,” I said.
“That a crack about my being able to read?” said Costello through his teeth.
“No,” I reassured him, “I’m not in the crack-making business today. I’ve got more important things to do.”
“Like?”
“Like keeping somebody alive,” I said, and walked to the elevator.
The Marxes were dressed and arguing, at least Groucho and Chico were arguing. Harpo was doodling on a pad.
“Well, Peters,” said Groucho, “you got more publicity in Chicago today than we had all last year.”
“In my business, publicity is not a sign of success,” I said.
I hadn’t sat down, and Chico invited me to pull up a chair. I did and the three brothers looked at me.
“You’ve got something to say, Peters,” said Chico.
“Yeah, Nitti’s boys are downstairs, and Nitti’s not a patient man. I’ve got to turn myself in to the Chicago cops in an hour about those killings, and I don’t think they’ll let me go for a while. I don’t know who killed those guys, and I don’t know who set Chico up as the fall guy. I’m no closer than I was five days ago. The only changes are that I’ve managed to get four guys killed and to give pneumonia to a lovely lady. My advice to you,” I said, looking at Chico, “is to borrow the $120,000 from your brothers, give it to Nitti, and go back to California.”
“O.K.,” said Chico. “Then what do you do?”
“Cops hold me a few days, and I keep trying to find out who killed those guys. Maybe I get lucky and it ties in to who set you up. I think it will.”
“And what does Nitti say about your staying around?” asked Groucho.
