didn’t take much to guess he was calling the Medical Examiner or Coroner or whatever they called it in Cook County.
“Chopper did that,” said Kleinhans. “Relatively clean. Short burst. I’d say someone who knows how to handle it. No needless extra shots. The walls are clean.”
“Maybe he was shot someplace else and brought here,” I suggested, popping another Bromo tablet and blowing my nose into a wad of toilet paper.
Kleinhans sat down in the only chair in the room. I sat on the bed. The cop on the phone kept talking.
“Nope,” said Kleinhans, pursing his lips and scratching his bulbous nose. “And you don’t think so either. According to the stuff we got on you last night from L.A., you were a cop. Maybe not much of a cop, but a cop. How would anyone get a bloody corpse like that up to the sixth floor of a downtown Chicago hotel?”
“A better question is why,” I said.
Kleinhans took his hat off, scratched his scalp like a nervous chimp and examined his fingernails to see what they had found. The cop hung up the phone and said, “They’re on the way.” Kleinhans rubbed his ear and nodded toward the door. The second cop left. I blew my nose.
“Better take care of that,” he said.
“I’m trying,” I said.
Kleinhans looked at the body for a few more seconds before speaking.
“Ever see our friend before?”
“Two days ago in Miami. He was keeping an eye on Capone for someone. Nitti, Guzik, or his brother Ralph. He didn’t say.”
“Must have come up by plane,” he said. “You working some kind of deal with him?”
“Am I going to need a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so,” said Kleinhans, getting up. There was a knock at the door. He opened it and let the fat cop in. They talked without me for a few seconds.
“We’ve got to get out of here for awhile,” Kleinhans said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “State Street district is a few minutes away. Let’s ride down there and talk.”
He was pretty good. He made it all sound like a friendly request. Doctor and patient. Dad and son. In Los Angeles I might have tested him, pulled back to see how mean he could get, but it wasn’t in me. The cold in my head and outside the hotel were getting to me as much as Leonardo was.
“Right,” I said. “Know why he had that circle of white hair on his head?”
“Beats me,” said Kleinhans.
We were at the State Street Station in about five minutes and in an office Kleinhans borrowed from a lieutenant who was home with the flu. My brother’s a cop with an office. My brother’s office was small and almost as old as California. There was no room in it to run if Phil lost his temper, which was about eighty percent of the time. The Chicago lieutenant’s office was a big cold barn with bare wooden floors and an echo. It looked as if someone years earlier had moved all the furniture into the middle of the room to get ready to paint the walls and then forgot about it.
“Tell your story,” said Kleinhans, getting comfortable behind the desk with a cup of coffee. He gave me one, too. We both kept our coats on. I started my tale in Miami, worked my way forward to include my battle with the orange-shirted kid in the train, and made it up to Leonardo in the closet.
Kleinhans was looking out of the window at a passing streetcar when I finished.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know. Someone went to a lot of trouble to dump the body on me. Maybe it’s a warning. It might be a threat or a screwy accident. Maybe Leonardo decided I got something from Capone or I was on my way to something. Maybe he called Chicago for orders. Maybe he called the kid in Jacksonville and told him to grab my stuff so they could check me out. Maybe Leonardo decided to come here and stop me, but someone stopped him instead.”
“And maybe elephants piss nickels,” sighed Kleinhans, wrinkling his brow for a massive belch that never came.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re lying,” he said, finishing his coffee. “You don’t have a chopper and you’d be one fool to kill a guy in your hotel room and call the cops. It smells like a gang job with you in the middle, but I don’t see how or why. I’ve seen a lot of them put away like Leonardo. Thompson submachine gun bootlegged from a crooked Army supply sergeant somewhere or stolen by a mob kid who spent a few years in the army. Bullets are easy to get. Standard forty-five in ACP rimless cartridges, basic U.S. Army pistol round since 1900. The ammunition is held in a circular drum. Fifty rounds. Our expert at the LaSalle didn’t need more than ten or twelve. He had a pro finger. Those things kick, but they’re nice and easy to work. Just pull back the bolt, push the trigger, the bolt comes forward, throws a round into the magazine and pushes it into the chamber. The round pops into the chamber, drops in place. The firing pin on the bolt crushes the cap, and the bullet flies. The bolt kicks back from the shot, and another slug falls in the chamber. Two or three spit out every second. Takes a soft touch and strong hand to handle a chopper without making a mess.”
“He was a mess,” I said.
Kleinhans shook his head no.
“The St. Valentine’s Day party was a mess. I was on the cleanup. I moved Frank Guzenberg. That was a mess. You want another coffee?”
“No,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Have some coffee, Toby my friend. Were I you, I’d get the hell out of here. But I’m not you. I’m going to do nothing much except turn this over to some homicide boys. The hotel is in their district, and happy I am of it. Now I’m going to the can and getting some more coffee. Then you can go back to looking for your gangsters, but I’ve got a feeling one of them has already found you.”
He left the room closing the door behind him. The phone on the desk gave me an idea. Kleinhans wasn’t worried about the mob death of a bodyguard, but I had a lot of reasons for caring. One was that it must have had something to do with the Chico Marx business. The other was that death was too close to me. I blew my nose, took a deep breath and picked up the phone.
“Desk,” came a tired voice.
“Get me Indianapolis Central Police Headquarters and move it fast. If you’re too tired to move, we can get you out on the street.”
The guy on the desk put the call through fast. He didn’t want to be out on the streets of Chicago in the winter. I watched the door and waited. A voice came through the phone, a little tinny, but clear.
“Tashlin.”
“This is Detective Peters in Chicago. You got a pencil?”
“Yeah.”
“Write this number.” I gave him the number on the phone. “Now check on a blotter report for last night. Kid in an orange shirt had his nose broken at the train station.”
“Probably a local,” Tashlin said through his teeth.
“Hey,” I snarled. “You just find it. Don’t guess. The mayor here wants it and he’s on my ass. I don’t know why he wants it or what’s going on, but if he doesn’t get it, I serve you on a platter, Tashlin. When our mayor gets mad, he knows how to use the phone and he’s got your mayor’s number. Got it?”
All he had to do was ask me who the mayor of Chicago was and the game was over, but he took the easy way out, which I figured he would. If he hadn’t, nothing was lost.
“You want to call me back?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Hang on.”
I hung on and Kleinhans came back with his coffee. With my hand over the mouthpiece I explained.
“Local call. MGM office. I need some more cash and the name of a lawyer in case I need one.”
“Next time you ask first.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll pay the nickel.”
“Here’s an address for you,” said Kleinhans, pulling out his pencil and writing it on the torn end of a ratty blotter. “You may find Nitti there or you can leave a message. There’s no phone.”
“Is it far?”
“You can almost walk it from here. It’s over on twenty-second. We’re on twelfth. Ten blocks almost
