someone, or something, called Verese. Kleinhans looked toward the cop singing “Shine on Harvest Moon” and indicated that Verese should go to him.
On the street, the sun was shining and the wind was calm. The temperature had shot up to the very low thirties. I’d been in Chicago less than a week but it seemed like a balmy day to me. With his hands in his pockets, Kleinhans turned right on Maxwell Street and looked straight ahead. A cop car pulled up and Kleinhans nodded to the two guys who got out.
“Ever been on Maxwell Street?” said Kleinhans.
“No,” I said, “is it something to remember?”
He shrugged. Within half a block, the street was crammed with pushcarts. Some of them were as long as two Chevies, some were covered with canvas, but most were open for business with men, women, and boys hawking goods to each other and to bundled-up customers. The cars lined both sides of the two-way street and narrowed the area for driving to barely a car’s width. Behind the pushcarts, on either side of the street, were shops and stores with more men, women, and boys talking to passersby, shifting their legs to stay warm as they caught a potential customer, or lost him and went for a new one.
Signs were all over the place-hand-lettered, some with cartoons on them, some in Yiddish. The spelling was awful. The cardboard they were written on was flimsy, but the bargains were terrific providing you could use lots of slightly warped arrows, soiled suitcases, sox-pairs and nots-rope, screwdrivers with handles melted by a railroad fire, army pillows, suits-“perfect.”
“This bargain day?” I said.
“No,” said Kleinhans, “this is an off day, a slow weekday afternoon. You should come on a Sunday.”
The air smelled as if everything on sale had been grilled in onions-sweet and just this side of nauseating. A thin kid no more than thirteen, who should have been in school, grabbed my arm and shouted in my face.
“Ties, ties! Yours got dirt all over. Look at these ties.” He held up a handful of ties that looked like they were stolen from the Ringling Brothers clowns during intermission.
“Sorry,” I said. The kid was going to try again, but he saw Kleinhans and recognized him. The kid turned to another prospect.
Then Kleinhans grabbed my arm, grinned and pointed across the street. We moved between two carts and in front of a grey Buick that was inching its way up the street. I wondered what would happen if a car came the other way.
The small cart in the middle of the block was a white square with a hot dog painted on the side. The paint was peeling, and the dog had begun to show blue under the red.
“Tony’s gonna be famous some day,” said Kleinhans, ordering two dogs “with everything.” Tony was a little round man with a dark face, an apron, and a serious professional look.
“I’ll take ketchup instead of mustard,” I said, “and no peppers.”
Tony nodded, businesslike, and worked with a flourish.
Kleinhans handed me a hot dog sandwich wrapped in a napkin and gave Tony two quarters.
“On me,” he said.
A shot of wind came along, and Kleinhans pointed to a doorway with his hot dog. He had already taken a bite out of it that reduced the sandwich by a third.
In the doorway, I took a bite and admitted it was a damn good dog.
“You want to talk business?” I asked with a mouthful of dog and onion. There were little seeds on the bun, and it was hot and soft. Kleinhans’ mouth was full, and a mustard-covered onion fell from it as he nodded that talking was all right with him.
“I think I know who killed Servi and the others,” I said.
He nodded and kept eating.
“At least,” I went on, “I know who killed Servi and I have a pretty good idea who killed the others.”
“Who?” he said, chomping down the last bit of his sandwich. “I think I’ll get another one. You want a second?”
“Not through with my first,” I said, “but it is the best dog I ever ate. Don’t you want to know who the killer is?”
“I said, ‘Who?’, didn’t I?” he said, cleaning his Fingers with the napkin and throwing it toward the sidewalk where it hit a Mexican woman walking by.
“You,” I said, pausing on my way to indigestion.
Kleinhans looked at me and shook his head.
“No,” I said. “I mean it. Harpo Marx gave me the idea. I should have figured it out, but I kept putting the idea away. Too much coincidence. Then I asked myself whether it was coincidence.”
“I don’t get it,” said Kleinhans.
“When you met me at the station the day I arrived,” I explained, “you said your boss had sent you to work with me. I figured your boss was a cop who had a call from the Miami police, possibly an overly-conscientious county cop named Simmons. Otherwise who could have called your boss? I called Simmons this morning. He didn’t call anyone in Chicago about my coming. He checked around and none of his people called. The way I figure it, Bistolfi called someone in Chicago, probably Servi, to say I was on my way. Then Servi got in touch with you and told you to stick with me. Should I keep going or you want to give me some help?”
Kleinhans kept smiling. “Go on,” he said.
“I talked to one of Nitti’s boys this morning and asked if he knew a cop named Kleinhans. He didn’t say, but he got quiet fast. The way I figure it, you were in on this with Servi, working for him, giving him protection. Then he got the idea of taking Nitti and the mob for a bundle and letting you in on it. He needed you to keep any investigation from starting. If Nitti smelled something, Servi would suggest that you look into it. Since you were already part of the deal, you’d find nothing or a fall guy. Everything looked good. Morris won a bundle.”
“Won and lost,” corrected Kleinhans. “He played five different places on Chico Marx’s tab. He lost 120 grand and almost won 100 grand. He took the $100,000 in cash from the places he won and left markers for the $120,000 he lost.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Kleinhans shrugged.
“What the hell. You gotta take risks sometimes to make a buck.”
“Bistolfi figured out what was going on and wanted a piece of it?” I guessed. Kleinhans nodded.
“But there wasn’t enough yet to make splitting worthwhile,” he said. “And Bistolfi had ties to Capone. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
“So you gunned him in my room?”
Kleinhans nodded yes.
“We thought a stiff might send you back to California.”
“Why didn’t you just put some holes in me?” I said.
“Besides the fact that I liked you,” he said, looking out and waving at a pair of old men who walked by, “it wouldn’t have done much good. Whoever paid you could have paid another private cop who might be even smarter than you. No. Servi figured the way to go was to get rid of anyone who could lead you to us.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed.
Kleinhans chuckled deep.
“Almost made a mistake with you, though,” he said, blowing his nose. “I sent you to Canetta’s place on the West Side and came damn near not beating you there. I got called in to identify a guy after I called you. Had to really move my ass to get there ahead of you. You almost made it a tie.”
“You took a shot at me.”
He laughed.
“If I wanted to hit you, I would have done it you came in the door. We didn’t want you dead if we could help it. We just wanted you tied up as a suspect.”
“Canetta tried to tell me you shot him. He said ‘cop.’ I think he was trying to tell me a cop or cops shot him. I thought he wanted me to get the cops.”
“See what I mean about a smarter private eye?” said Kleinhans.
“Yeah, I wasn’t very smart about Servi,” I said. “I told you I had the meeting set up with Servi and Marx. You knew Servi couldn’t bluff his way through it. If Servi went down, you’d go down, so you waited for Servi at the New
