I took the Saturday morning guard slot. I drove down State, then began cutting over on side streets to avoid the Bud Billikens festivities that would be swarming over the South Side, starting around 29th Street. Bud Billikens was a mythical character concocted by the Chicago Defender, the Negro newspaper, to be a sort of colored Santa Claus, and today was the annual parade and festival at which damn near the entire colored population of Chicago would be in attendance.
I arrived at eight, taking over for a bleary-eyed Walt Pelitier, who’d been on since midnight, and met Dr. Snaden for the first time. He was the Ragens’ Miami doctor who happened to be in town and who, with Dr. Graaf, their Chicago family doc, was attending Jim. At my suggestion.
He was a thin, very tan man of about forty-five; he wore thick, heavy-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look too big for his face.
“Don’t know how we’ve managed to miss each other,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’ve been here mostly evenings.”
“I’ve been here mostly days,” he said with a small smile, though he didn’t seem like the type who smiled much.
“You know, I’d swear I know you from somewhere.”
“We met a long time ago, Mr. Heller, in Miami.”
I snapped my fingers. “You were one of Cermak’s doctors.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I was Mayor Cermak’s personal physician in Miami. I wish I could have done more for him.”
“Well, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. How do you think Jim is coming along?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say. He came through the operation yesterday fairly well. He’ll have somewhat more use of that arm than was first anticipated. But he has several extensive skin graft operations ahead of him. I don’t think he’ll see the outside of this hospital for several months.”
That was going to be a long haul for the A-1 Detective Agency to provide round-the-clock protection. On the other hand, Jim was a millionaire and there was money in it.
“You think he’s up to me talking to him this morning?”
“He’s in there, sitting up, drinking juice right now. I think he’d like to see you, Mr. Heller.”
“Thanks, Doc. I wish you better luck on Jim’s case than you had with the late Mayor.”
“I’ll see if I can’t do a little better this time,” he said, a wry smile cracking his parchment tan. “On the other hand, if I recall, you were Mayor Cermak’s bodyguard as well. Do all your clients get shot up like this?”
“Not more than half,” I said, with a put-in-my-place grin, and the doc smiled thinly and walked on, and I went in.
Jim was indeed sitting up in bed, sipping orange juice through a long plastic straw. He looked skinnier than I ever saw him, and his right arm was heavily bandaged and in a sling, but his cheeks looked damn near rosy. I guess that’s what a dozen transfusions can do for you.
“I feel like a million bucks today, Nate,” he said.
“What, green and wrinkled?”
“That joke’s older than me,” he said, smiling, putting his glass on the bedstand where arrangements of flowers huddled.
“Yeah, but it’ll outlive us both.” I pulled up a chair. “You given any more thought to selling out?”
“I have.”
“And what’s your position?”
“Unchanged.”
“I had a little talk with Guzik.”
His eyes tightened. “When was this?”
“Monday night,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea-he sent for me.”
I gave him the particulars, including Guzik’s claim that Siegel did the hit, including Guzik’s $200,000 offer. I didn’t see any reason to mention I’d been paid five C’s to deliver the message.
“Two hundred grand is chicken feed,” Jim said, sneering.
“It is?”
“My business is worth $2 million a year.”
“It is if you’re alive,” I said, not showing how impressed I was by that figure, mentally raising his daily rate. “Why not quote Guzik a price? Tell him what you would settle for.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Mostly mine. Then yours. Not Guzik’s at all.”
Jim laughed. “At least you’re honest, lad.”
“Don’t let it get around. It’s bad for business.”
“Do you think Greasy Thumb could be tellin’ the truth? Do you think this-” he gestured with his left hand toward his bandaged right arm “-could be the work of that crazy Jew bastard instead?”
“Siegel? Sure. It could be.”
“Are you looking into it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you trying to find out who did this to me?”
“Not really. I’m mostly just trying to keep you alive. I have been cooperating with Drury, who’s doing his best to find the shooters.”
“You think he’ll get the job done?”
“Stranger things have happened.” I told him about the trip to Bronzeville and the witnesses that Two-Gun Pete turned up for Drury.
“If the shooters are Outfit,” Jim said, almost gleefully, “that will prove it was Guzik behind it.”
“No it won’t. There are plenty of people in this town who do work for Guzik who also take on freelance work, from time to time.”
“But if it’s out-of-town talent who did it, that would clear Guzik, and point to Siegel.”
“Not necessarily. Frank Nitti used to hire out of town talent all the time, for his hits; just to confuse the issue. That’s what he did where Tommy Malloy was concerned, and O’Hare, too.”