In a few moments Lou Sapperstein, wearing his suitcoat, looking spiffy as a hundred bucks, entered, nodding, smiling, eyes lingering just a second on the enticing, enigmatic Miss Cavaretta. I made introductions all around, ending up with Lou: “He was my boss on the pickpocket detail. And he’s my top operative, now. I’ll put him on this for you, Mr. O’Hare.”
O’Hare’s face turned pale; weird as it might seem, his expression was tragic as he said, “But that simply won’t do. I must have you, Mr. Heller. I must have the top man.”
I laughed just a little, a nervous laugh. “You don’t understand, Mr. O’Hare. Lou’s my top man. He was my boss. He taught me everything I know about dips. You couldn’t be in better hands.”
O’Hare stood. “Perhaps when it comes to the supervision of my people, he would be satisfactory. But I’m afraid I must insist that you come out to the park and have a look around personally. I only deal with the top man, understand?”
“Mr. O’Hare, with all due respect, I am the top man in this agency, and I delegate work as I see fit…”
O’Hare reached in his inside coat pocket. He withdrew a checkbook. Leaned over the desk and began to write. “I’m leaving you a thousand-dollar retainer,” he said. “On the understanding that you will come out to the park tomorrow afternoon to inspect the plant, personally.”
He tore off the check and held it out before me, the ink glistening wetly on it.
I took it and blotted it and put it in my desk.
“You want Nate Heller,” I said, “you got Nate Heller.”
“Good man,” O’Hare beamed. He turned and all but bowed deferentially to his secretary. “Miss Cavaretta?”
She stood; smoothed her dress out over long, presumably lush thighs. Why is a woman in mannish clothing such a perversely attractive thing? Maybe Freud knew; personally, I didn’t give a damn. I just knew I would’ve liked to see the lacy things underneath Miss Cavaretta’s pinstripe suit.
She extended a hand with long, clear varnished nails, which I took; was I expected to kiss it? I didn’t.
She said, “It’s been very interesting meeting you, Mr. Heller.”
“Same here, Miss Cavaretta.”
He helped her with her coat, and got his own coat on; he left his hat on the rack. Lou was about to point that out to him, but I raised a finger to my lips and stopped it. I’d been watching O’Hare closely; he’d left that hat on purpose.
I stood and waited and then O’Hare ducked in again, calling back to Miss Cavaretta, “Forgot my blamed hat, my dear,” and went to the hat rack and got it and said to me, very quietly, his face sober and without a trace of the glad-hander’s smile, “Come alone.”
He closed the door and was gone.
Lou and I looked at the door, our brows furrowed.
Lou sat down and so did I. He said, “What the hell was that all about?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“That guy’s connected up the wazoo, you know.”
“I know.”
“He was Capone’s front man for the old Hawthorne dog track. He’s been an Outfit front man for years.”
“I know.”
“Why’d he bring his secretary along?”
“So she could take notes, he said.”
“Did I miss something? All I heard him do was ask if he could hire us-hire you-to do some security work at his lousy racetrack.”
“That’s right.”
“What did he need to bring a secretary along to take notes for, if that’s all he wanted? Hell, why didn’t he just call you on the phone, if all he wanted was to hire you for some pickpocket work?”
“I don’t know, Lou,” I said.
And I didn’t know.
Nor did I know why he felt he had to impart his final message to me out of his dark, lovely secretary’s earshot.
But I was detective enough to want to find out.
E. J. O’Hare was a lawyer, but he hadn’t practiced law since he moved from St. Louis to Chicago in the late ’20s, to begin overseeing various of Al Capone’s business interests, specifically horse-and dog-racing tracks. And not just in Illinois: O’Hare also looked after the Outfit’s tracks in Florida, Tennessee and Massachusetts. He was a stockholder in all of those parks, having gotten a foothold via owning the patent rights on the mechanical rabbit used in dog racing. From that he’d built a financial empire that included extensive real estate holdings, an insurance company and two advertising agencies. According to Barney, O’Hare was also a heavy investor in the Chicago Cardinals pro football team, though that wasn’t widely known.
He was unquestionably a wheeler-dealer, and a financial wizard; the mob’s “one-man brain trust,” the papers called him.
But today, as I entered his office at Sportsman’s Park in Stickney, he was just a nervous little heavyset man in a gray vested suit and blue-and-gray-speckled tie, sitting at his big mahogany desk atop an elaborate Oriental rug, cleaning and oiling an automatic pistol. A foreign make, I’d say.
“Nate Heller!” he said, with a big grin, standing behind the desk to extend a hand, like I was an old friend, an unexpected and welcome guest who just happened to drop by. Never mind that I’d known him since yesterday and was here at his paid request.
I shook his hand; the other one held the automatic. There was a little 2-in-l oil on the hand that firmly gripped mine, and when I took a handkerchief out of my pocket to wipe off my palm, he apologized for this uncharacteristic messiness.
“Sorry,” he said. “A man can’t be too careful.” He meant the gun, which he now lay gently on the desk.
“I’ve already had a walk around your facility, Mr. O’Hare,” I said, hanging my topcoat and hat next to his on the tree in one corner. “I hope you don’t mind my taking the liberty.”
“Not at all, and I asked you yesterday to call me Eddie.”
“Fine, Eddie. Call me Nate.” He already had, actually.
“Pull up a chair,” he said, and I did, glancing around the office, which-like O’Hare-was small but plush. Dark wood paneling, a wall of framed photos to my left, a built-in bookcase at right. The wall of photos-from which I took a chair-showed O’Hare in the presence of various civic leaders and Chicago celebrities, here at Sportsman’s Park, lots of big smiles and arms around shoulders, his Outfit associates conspicuous in their absence. My favorite picture was one of him with Mayor Cermak at the opening of the park, His Honor and O’Hare standing on either side of the winning jockey who was atop his horse, with a huge floral horseshoe draped around them all. Behind him at his desk was a gigantic framed photograph of Sportsman’s Park, from a slightly overhead angle that got both the grandstand and the track in, in color, pastel tints. On the desk, at either side, were clusters of framed family photos. The bookcase at right was brimming with volumes, some leather-bound, interspersed with an occasional fancy crystal glass piece and various busts of various sizes of Napoleon.
He must have noticed me taking in the Napoleon busts curiously, as he smiled, rather proudly, and said, “An interest of mine. Those books, all of them, are on the Little General. A small sampling of what I daresay is the largest collection of Napoleonana in the United States.”
“Really?”
He had a distant expression as he looked at the wall of Napoleon stuff. He said, “Napoleon was a little man.”
“Uh, yeah. So I heard.”
“But he was the biggest general history ever saw.”
“No argument there.”