True Detective (3 page)

Inside the Wacker-LaSalle, a gray-speckled marble floor stretched out across a large, mostly empty lobby, turning our footsteps into radio sound effects. On the ceiling high above, cupids flew halfheartedly. There was a newsstand over at the left; a row of phone booths at the right; a bank of elevators straight ahead.

Halfway to the elevators, more or less, in the midst of the big lobby, a couple of guys in derbies and brown baggy suits were sitting in cane-back chairs with a card table set up between them, playing gin. They were a Laurel and Hardy pair, only Italian, and Laurel had the mustache; both had cigars, as well as bulges under one arm. We were a stone's throw from the financial district, but these guys weren't brokers.

Hardy glanced up at the two Harrys, recognizing them, nodding; Laurel looked at his cards. I looked ahead at the building registry, in the midst of the elevators with their polished brass cage doors: white letters on black, coming into focus as we neared. Import/export, other assorted small businesses, a few lawyers.

We paused at the elevators while Miller cleaned his thick wire-frames again. When they were back on his head, he nodded and Lang hit the elevator button.

"I'll take Campagna," Miller said. It sounded like he was ordering drinks.

"What?" I said.

They didn't say anything; they just looked at the elevators, waiting.

" 'Little New York' Campagna?" I said. "The torpedo?"

An elevator came; a guy in another brown suit with matching underarm bulge was running it.

Lang put a finger on his lips to shush me. We got on the elevator and the guy told us to stand back. We did, and not just because he was armed: in those days when you were told to stand back on an elevator, you listened- there were no safety doors inside, and if you stood too near the front and took a shove, you could lose an arm.

He brought us up to the fifth floor: nobody was posted up here; no comedians with guns playing cards. Nobody at all with a bulge under his arm. Just gray walls and offices with pebbled glass in the doors with numbers and, sometimes, names. We were standing on a field of tiny black-and-white tiles- looking down the hallway at the receding mosaic of them made me dizzy momentarily. The air had an antiseptic smell, like a dentist's office, or a toilet.

Lang looked at Miller and pointed back to himself. "Nitti," he said.

"Hey," I said. "What the hell's going on?"

They looked at me like I was an intruder; like they didn't remember asking me along.

"Get a gun out, Red," Lang said to me impatiently.

"It's Heller, if you don't mind," I said, but did what he said, as he did likewise. As did Miller.

"We got a warrant?" I said.

"Shut up." Miller said, without looking at me.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" I said.

"I just told you." Miller said, and this time he did look at me. "Shut up."

The blank eyes behind the Coke-bottle glasses were round black balls; funny how eyes so inexpressive could say so much.

Lang interceded. "Back us up. Heller. There may be some shooting."

They walked. Their footsteps- and mine, following- echoed down the hall like hollow words.

They stopped at a door that had no name on its pebbled glass- just a number. 554.

It wasn't locked.

Miller went in first, a.45 revolver in his fist; Lang followed, with a.38 with a four-inch barrel. I brought up the rear, thoroughly confused, but leaving the snubnose Lang gave me in my topcoat pocket: I carried a nine-millimeter automatic, a Browning- unusual for a cop, since automatics can jam on you, but I liked automatics. As much as I could like any gun, that is.

It was an outer office; a desk faced us as we entered, but there was no secretary or receptionist behind it-There were, however, two guys in two of half a dozen chairs lining the left wall two more brown suits, topcoats in their laps, sitting there like some more furniture in the room.

Both were in their late twenties, dark hair, pale blank faces, average builds. One of them, with an oft-broken nose, was reading a pulp magazine,
Black Mask;
the other, with pockmarks you could hide dimes in, was sitting smoking, a deck of Phillip Morris and a much-used ashtray on the seat of the chair next to him.

Neither went for a gun or otherwise made any move. They just sat there surprised- not at seeing cops, but at seeing cops with guns in their hands.

In the corner to the left of the door we'd just come in was a coatrack with four topcoats and three hats; the right wall had another half dozen chairs, empty. Just behind and to the left of the desk was a water cooler and, in the midst of the pebbled-glass-and-wood wall, a closed door.

Then it opened.

Standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, was a man who was unmistakably Frank Nitti. I'd never met him, though he'd been pointed out to me a few times: but once having seen him, you couldn't miss him: handsome, in a battered way, fighter's nose, thin inverted-V mustache, faint scar on his lower lip: impeccably groomed, former barber that he was, slick black hair parted neatly at the left; impeccably dressed, in a gray pinstripe suit with vest, and wide black tie with a gray-and-white pattern. He was smaller than Frank Nitti was supposed to be, but he was an imposing figure just the same.

He closed the door behind him.

There was a look on his face, upon seeing the two Harrys, that reminded me of the look on that uniformed cop's face. He seemed irritated and bored with them, and the fact that guns were in their hands didn't seem to concern him in the least.

A raid was an annoyance; it meant getting booked, making bail, then business as usual. But a few token raids now and then were necessary for public relations. Only for Nitti to be involved was an indignity. He'd only been out of Leavenworth a few months, since serving a tax rap; and now he was acting as his cousin Capone's proxy, the Big Fellow having left for the Atlanta big house in May.

"Where's Campagna?" Lang said. He was standing with Miller in front of him. partially blocked by him. Like Miller was a rock he was hiding behind.

"Is he in town?" Nitti said. Flatly.

"We heard you were siccing him on Tony," Miller said.

Tony was the mayor: Anton J. Cermak. alias "Ten Percent Tony."

Nitti shrugged. "I heard your bohunk boss is sleeping with Newberry," he said.

Ted Newberry was a Capone competitor on the North Side, running what was left of the old "Bugs" Moran operation.

Silence hung in the room like the smell of wet paint.

Then Lang said to me, "Frisk the help."

The two hoods stood; I patted them down with one hand. They were unarmed. If this was a handbook and wire-room setup, as I suspected, their being unarmed made sense; they were serving as runners, not guns. Lang and Miller taking their time about getting into the next room also made sense: most raids were conducted only for show, and this was giving the boys inside time to destroy the evidence.

"Let's see if Campagna's in there." Lang said finally, nodding toward the closed door.

"Who?" Nitti said, with a faint smile.

Then he opened the door and went in, followed by his runners, then by Miller, Lang, and me.

The inner room was larger, but nothing elaborate: just a room with a table running from left to right, taking up a lot of the space. At right, against the wall, was a cage, and a guy in shirt sleeves wearing a green accountant's shade was sitting in there with a bunch of money on the counter; he hadn't bothered putting it away. Perhaps it wouldn't all fit in the drawer. At left a young guy stood at a wire machine with a ticker tape in his hand, only this wasn't the Board of Trade by a long shot. Two more sat at the table: another one in shirt sleeves, his back to us, suitcoat slung over the chair behind him, four phones on the table in front of him; and across from him, a hook-nosed hood wearing a pearl hat with a black band at a Capone tilt. There were no pads or paper of any kind on the table, though there were a few scattered pens and pencils. This was a wireroom, all right. The smoking wastebasket next to the table agreed with me.

The guy in shirt sleeves at the table was the only one I recognized: Joe Palumbo. He was a heavyset man with bulging eyes and a vein-shot nose; at about forty-five, the oldest man in the room with the exception of Nitti, who was pushing fifty gracefully. The hood in the Capone hat was about thirty-five, small, swarthy, smoking- and probably Little New York Campagna. The accountant in the cage was in his thirties, too; and the kid at the ticker tape, with curly dark hair and a mustache, couldn't have been twenty-five. Lang ordered the accountant out of the cage; he was a little man with round shoulders and he took a seat at the table, across from Palumbo, next to the man I assumed (rightly) to be Campagna, who looked at the two Harrys and me with cold dark eyes that might have been glass. Miller told the runners to take seats at the table; they did. Then he had the others stand and take a frisk, Campagna first. Clean.

"What's this about?" Nitti asked. He was standing near the head of the table.

Lang and Miller exchanged glances; it seemed to mean something.

My hand was sweating around the automatic's grip. The men at the table weren't doing anything suspicious; their hands were on the table, near the phones. Everyone had been properly searched. Everyone except Nitti, that is, though the coat and vest hung on him in such a way that a shoulder holster seemed out of the question.

He was just standing there, staring at Lang and Miller, and I could feel it starting to work on them. Campagna's gaze was no picnic, either. The room seemed warm, suddenly; a radiator was hissing- or was that Nitti?

Finally Lang said "Heller?"

"Yes?" I said. My voice broke, like a kid's.

"Frisk Nitti. Do it out in the other room."

I stepped forward and, gun in hand but not threateningly, asked Nitti to come with me.

He shrugged again and came along; he seemed to be having trouble deciding just how irritated to be.

In the outer office he held his coat open as if showing off the lining- it was jade-green silk- and I patted him down. No gun.

The cuffs were in my topcoat. Nitti turned his back to me and held his wrists behind him while I fished for the cuffs. He glanced back and said. "
Do you
know what this is about, kid?"

I said. "Not really," getting the cuffs out, and noticed he was chewing something.

"Hey," I said. "What the hell are you doing? Spit that out!"

He kept chewing and, Frank Nitti or not, I slapped him on the back and he spit it out: a piece of paper: a wad of paper, now. He must've had a bet written down and palmed it when we came in: hadn't had a chance to burn it like the boys inside did theirs.

"Nice try. Frank," I said, grasping his wrists, cuffs ready, feeling tough, and Lang came in from the bigger room, shut the door, came up beside me and shot Nitti in the back. The sound of it shook the pebbled glass around us; the bullet went through Nitti and snicked into some woodwork.

I pulled away, saying, "Jesus!"

Nitti turned as he fell, and Lang pumped two more slugs into him: one in his chest, one in the neck. The.38 blasts sounded like a cannon going off in the small room; a derby dropped off the coatrack. Worst of all was the sound the bullets made going in: a soft sound, like shooting into mud.

I grabbed Lang by the wrist before he could shoot again.

"What the hell are you"

He jerked away from me. "Easy, Red. You got that snubnose?"

I could hear the men yelling in the adjacent room; Miller was keeping them back, presumably.

"Yes," I said.

Nitti was on the floor; so was a lot of his blood.

"Give it here." Lang said.

I handed it to him.

"Now go in and help Harry," he said.

I went back in the wire room. Miller had his gun on the men. all of whom were standing now. though still grouped around the table.

"Nitti's been shot," I said. I don't know who I was saying it to, exactly.

Campagna spat something in Sicilian.

Palumbo, eyes bulging even more than usual, furious, his face red, said, "Is he dead?"

"I don't know. I don't think he's going to be alive long, though." I looked at Miller; his face was impassive. "Call an ambulance."

He just looked at me.

I looked at Palumbo. "Call an ambulance."

He sat back down and reached for one of the many phones before him.

Then there was another shot.

I rushed back out there and Lang was holding his wrist; his right hand was bleeding- a fairly deep graze alongside the knuckle of his forefinger.

On the floor, by the open fingers of Nitti's right hand, the snubnose.38 was smoking.

"Do you really think that's going to fool anybody?" I asked.

Lang said, "I'm shot. Call an ambulance."

"One's on the way," I said.

Miller came in, gun still in hand. He bent over Nitti.

"He's not dead," Miller said.

Lang shrugged. "He will be." He turned toward me, wrapping a handkerchief around his wound. "Get in there and watch the arease-balls."

I went back in the larger office. One of the men, the young, nervous one with the mustache, was opening the window, climbing out onto the ledge.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked.

The other men were seated at the table; the young guy who was half out the window froze.

Then somebody at the table tossed him a gun.

Where it came from, who tossed it. I didn't know. Maybe Campagna.

But the guy had a gun now. and he shot at me, and I got the automatic out and shot back.

And then he wasn't in the window anymore.