I wasn’t particularly amused by anything to do with Billikens, thank you. I said, “You showed them some suspect photos?”
He nodded. “About a dozen that Drury brung ’round, with pictures of Finkel and Leonard mixed in. They both of ’em picked ’em out.”
“Both? You had four witnesses.”
“I never did track the newsboy down, and I’m meetin’ with the other eyeball, Tad Jones, over at the DeLisa in about an hour. But there ain’t no doubt in my mind. Finkel and Leonard was the boys with the big guns in the big green truck, all right.”
“I wonder if Drury has tracked them down yet.”
“I don’t think so,” Jefferson said.
“The dairy float queen!” I said, snapping my fingers.
“What?” Peggy said.
I pointed to Reba, who was smiling with pleasure that pretended to be chagrin. “You were on that float today!”
She smiled and nodded.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Peggy asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just proves it’s a small world.”
“Yeah,” Jefferson said, “but it’s a big city. And Finkel and Leonard are somewheres lyin’ low in it.”
“I hope your witnesses hold up, Pete. Because I don’t have a thing on ’em, where the attempted hospital hit is concerned.”
Peggy reached for my arm, gripped it. “How can you say that? You told me you caught them dead to rights!”
“I did. But by the time I got back to the hospital, their car was gone, and so were the guns I took off them.”
“Weren’t there any witnesses?”
“Oh, sure. Half a dozen nutcases. Maybe a few more, if you count the ones with split personalities twice.” I shook my head, chipped at my rum cocktail. “Nobody a prosecutor would dare put on the stand. And the cop who left his post, leaving that fire escape unguarded, claims he developed stomach flu and had to head for the shitter. Excuse my French, ladies.”
“You gonna have a little…talk with this sick cop?” Jefferson asked, with a very white, very nasty smile.
“I don’t think I’ll bother. I asked Drury to take him off hospital duty, and maybe Bill will do something about him. But I can’t go feeding the goldfish to a cop.”
“Feeding the goldfish?” Reba asked.
“He means working somebody over with a rubber hose,” Peggy explained.
“How do you know what that means?” I said, a little amazed.
“I wasn’t born yesterday,” she smiled, demurely.
“Sometimes I think you weren’t born this century,” I said.
“Besides, you’re not the rubber hose type,” Peggy said.
Jefferson smiled at that, tried with no luck to wave a waitress down to order some drinks. I suggested we go over to the Club DeLisa, where the drinks were cheaper and Tad Jones would be showing up before long.
The Club DeLisa was, among the black-and-tan niteries of the South Side, a true survivor; when the place burned down, proprietor Mike DeLisa just moved across State Street and started again. I’m always suspicious when restaurants or nightclubs burn down and reopen, but no insurance company ever hired me to investigate the DeLisa, so what the hell. I could enjoy the sixty-five-cent highballs, no minimum or cover, with the rest of the clientele, which was just slightly more colored than it was white. The room was as big as a barn and about as fancy; it had a low, ceiling-tiled ceiling, and used the time-honored nightclub effect of dim lighting to hide its flaws.
DeLisa, our short, white, deadpan host, who pumped the hand of every male patron as he entered, regardless of race, was said to have been a pal of Capone’s. That impressed out-of-towners.
“Haven’t seen you here for a while, Mr. Heller,” DeLisa said. He wore a dark suit and a red bow tie.
“I didn’t think you’d remember me, Mike.”
“Anybody who sits at Mr. Nitti’s table is worth remembering.”
“Anybody who sits at Mr. Nitti’s table these days is dead. Got a table for four live ones? I know it’s Saturday, and you’re packed-”
“I got a ringside saved for Serritella, but he ain’t showed yet. He’s an hour late.”
“Serritella?” That was sweet. “Well, give us his table, and send him over if he shows. We’re old pals.”
I pressed a fin into DeLisa’s hand and a smile cracked the deadpan, barely, and he handed it back.
“No tip’s necessary, Mr. Heller. Not for a man who’s friend to both Frank Nitti and Two-Gun Pete Jefferson.”
“Keep it anyway.”
He shrugged and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He was from Chicago, where you rarely turn down money, and you never turn it down twice.
“Mike,” Jefferson said, slipping an arm around the little white man’s shoulder as he walked us over to our table, “if somebody asks for me, fella name of Tad Jones, send him over.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Jefferson.”
From our ringside table we watched a wild floor show- while the Red Saunders Band played, a twentyish, scantily-clad colored cutie named Viola Kemp sang and danced and then stood on her head, then tied herself up like a human pretzel, legs tucked behind her head as she beamed, her face perched above her sweet bottom. Then a guy named Harold King tap-danced on roller skates on top of a rickety card table, blindfolded; it was the damnedest thing. Finally some sepia babes in tutus spoofed ballet steps to the band’s hot music. It was not as sophisticated a show as the Chez Paree-it wasn’t as sophisticated as the Beige Room, either-but it was sure as hell fun.
The waitresses were almost as pretty as the chorus girls, though instead of skimpy frilly outfits they wore simple white blouses and navy blue skirts, and one of them brought us our meals, and we all four had the specialty of the house, thick, juicy, onion-covered steaks, under four bucks per. For a moment I wondered why I didn’t come down to Bronzeville more often; then I moved a muscle, and the aches and pains from this afternoon reminded me.
DeLisa was escorting our way a slightly chubby white gentleman, perhaps fifty years of age, on whose arm was a beautiful young girl, also white; she was as blonde as Betty Grable, but a whole lot younger, possibly a Joliet Josie, which is to say jailbait, though her makeup sought to add some years and maturity. The part of her spilling out the top of her low-cut blue gown did a better job of it.
The slightly chubby gentleman-who was no gentleman- wore a nicely tailored dark suit with a red, white and blue striped tie; he also wore wire-frame glasses with coke-bottle lenses, behind which owlish eyes blinked. He had a weak chin and a prominent nose and a receding hairline; owl eyes or not, he looked a little like a fish, and about as harmless.
DeLisa was gesturing toward us-pointing out the “friends” who were awaiting the “senator” at his table-but as Serritella approached, his fish face fell. In the background, the jazz band was playing a frantic piece, which provided an appropriately unnerving backdrop for the first ward committeeman.
Serritella had been a political fixer for the Capone people since the late ’20s; he’d been appointed City Sealer under the incredibly corrupt and incompetent administration of Big Bill Thompson, and as Sealer had conspired with merchants to short-weight consumers. Later, quite by accident, he made Thompson’s mayoral defeat by Anton Cermak inevitable by causing a scandal that was outrageous even for a Chicago administration: Serritella and his chief deputy, a Nitti associate, were charged with conspiracy to “appropriate” funds collected for Christmas distribution to the poor. That kind of thing went over real big in the depression.
Nonetheless, Dan had, with Capone support, gone on to serve in the Illinois legislature for twelve years. Head of the newsboys’ union as well, which explained his ties with oldtime circulation slugger Ragen, he was a Chicago institution; they should’ve bronzed him and mounted him on one of the lions outside the Art Institute.
Before our distinguished visitor could waddle away, I stood and gestured to two empty seats at our table and said, “Dan- good to see you. Join us.”