“But, Nate, you’re a Jew…”
“I’m not a Jew. That doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize with what’s happening to the Jews in Germany. I don’t like the idea of military seizure of property happening anywhere to anybody. But I don’t feel it has anything special to do with me.”
“You’re a Jew, Nate.”
“My pa was a Jew, my ma was Irish Catholic, and me, I’m just another mutt from Chicago, Barney.”
“Maybe so. But as far as Mr. Hitler’s concerned, you’re just another Jew.”
Well, he hadn’t scored a knockout punch, by any means, but Barney had made his point. It wasn’t the first time, and was hardly the last.
So without even trying to crack wise, I sent him on his way, while I went in to get to work. I made several calls on an insurance matter before I noticed the morning was nearly gone.
Then Gladys stuck her pretty, impersonal puss in my office and said, “Your eleven o’clock appointment is here.”
I’d almost forgotten.
Which considering the stature of the client-potential client, as we hadn’t talked, he’d merely called for an appointment-was stupid of me.
“Send Mr. O’Hare in,” I said, straightening my tie and my posture.
But Mr. O’Hare wasn’t the first person in. A striking-looking woman was, a rather tall, dark woman who strolled in as if out of an Arabian dream (or was it a Sicilian nightmare?), regal in her camel-hair swagger topcoat with padded shoulders, open to reveal a mannish, pinstripe suit beneath. Beneath the suit, any good detective could deduce, was not a mannish body, the lapels of my suit didn’t flare out like that. She wore a gray pillbox hat atop long black shining hair pulled back in a bun; a large purse was slung over her shoulder on a strap-she could’ve carried a change of clothes in the thing. She glanced at the portraits of actresses on my cream-color wall and seemed faintly amused. Then she smiled at me. nodded; there was no warmth in it, but there was sensuality and smarts: a wide mouth, with dark red lipstick, a patrician Roman nose, dark, dark eyes and ironic arching brows.
O’Hare, shorter than her, was on her heels, helping her with her coat, like she was the queen and he was her foot servant.
Which was ridiculous, whoever she was, because Edward J. O’Hare-a small but powerful-looking man in his own natty pinstripe suit, a diamond stick pin in his red, spotted-black tie, a black topcoat over his arm, black fedora in his hand-was a big man in this city, a millionaire with connections in both city hall and the underworld. Especially the underworld. His face was handsome in a lumpy way, dark bushy black eyebrows hanging over piercing dark blue eyes, a sharp, prominent nose, strong features undercut by a small chin riding a saddle of flesh.
He hung her coat up, and his own, and smiled at me, the smile of the professional glad-hander. “Mr. Heller, 1 hope you don’t mind my bringing my secretary. Miss Cavaretta, along…to take some notes during our visit. It’s my practice at business meetings.”
I was standing, gesturing to the chairs along the nearby wall. “Not at all,” I said. “Such charming company is always welcome.”
She smiled, tightly, holding something back, her eyes alive with things she knew I didn’t, and she sat down and crossed slender, shapely legs, getting a steno pad and a pen from her purse.
O’Hare was standing across from me, offering his hand, still smiling like a politician. I shook the hand, smiled back, wondering why he was so eager to please. This was an important man. I was nobody in particular. Did he always come on this strong?
“It’s a real pleasure Mr. Heller,” he said. “I’ve heard good things about you.’
“Who from, Mr. O’Hare? Frank Nitti, possibly?”
His smile disappeared; I shouldn’t have said that-it just blurted out.
He sat. “My associations with that crowd are exaggerated, Mr. Heller. Besides, you can make money through such associations and run no risk if you keep it on a business basis, and are forthright in your dealings. Keep it business, and there is nothing to fear.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself, not me.
I said, “I didn’t mean to be rude, Mr. O’Hare.”
“Call me Eddie,” he said, getting out a silver cigarette case. He offered one of the cigarettes to Miss Cavaretta; she took it. He offered me one and I politely refused, though I eased an ashtray toward Miss Cavaretta. Our eyes met. She smiled at me with them. She had long legs. They were smiling at me, too.
“We’ve just closed the season out at Sportsman’s Park,” Edward J. O’Hare said, lighting Miss Cavaretta’s cigarette with a silver lighter shaped like a small horse’s head. He put the cigarettes and lighter away without lighting one up himself.
I said, “You’ve had a good year, I understand.”
Sportsman’s Park, of which O’Hare was the president, was a 12,000-seat, half-mile racetrack, converted from dogs to nags back in ’32. It was in Stickney, very near Cicero. In other words, right smack in the middle of mob country.
“Yes. But we have had a few problems.”
“Oh?”
Miss Cavaretta was poised, ready to write something down; she’d written nothing as yet, not even a doodle. She wasn’t the doodler type.
“As you may know, at a park like ours, some of our clientele is less than savory.”
“Sure,” I said. “Ex-cons, thieves, bookmakers, whores…excuse my French, Miss Cavaretta.”
The faintest wisp of a smile.
“Particularly on the weekdays,” I went on, “when working stiffs can’t get away from the salt mines.”
“Precisely,” O’Hare said, sitting forward, striving to be earnest. “We’ve done our best to keep out the hoodlums and deadbeats and troublemakers. But there’s only so much we can do, in our business. That’s where you come in, Mr. Heller.”
“I do?”
“We’ve been having pickpocket trouble. A regular epidemic. We don’t mind our customers getting their pockets emptied, it’s just that we prefer to do it ourselves.”
“Naturally.”
“I understand that you have a certain expertise in that area. Pickpocket control, I mean.”
“That’s my police background, yes. And, since going private, I’ve done a lot of security work in that area, that’s correct.”
He smiled-patronizingly, I thought. “I understand you even handled the pickpocket problem at the World’s Fair.”
“The Chicago one, back in ’33,” I said. “They didn’t invite me out to New York for the new one.”
“They’re holding it over, I hear,” someone said.
Surprisingly, it was Miss Cavaretta-who was now in the midst of actually taking a few notes-putting in her two cents, in a lush, throaty voice that was like butter on a warm roll.
“Maybe they’ll invite you there next year,” she said.
O’Hare laughed at that, a little too loud I thought. Was he trying to get in her pants? Was that what this was about? And since when did a millionaire have to try so hard to get in his secretary’s panties? Then again, on the other hand, I kept in mind my own situation with Gladys. Of course, I wasn’t a millionaire.
“Maybe they will invite me,” I said, feeling like the unwanted chaperone on a date.
“What I would like,” O’Hare said, “is for you to instruct my own security staff in the art of spotting and catching pickpockets. I will want you to spend some time at the park yourself, when the next season opens, supervising. You’ll need to come out, as soon as possible, and take a look around the facility, of course.”