“Never mind that,” he said, looking nervously behind him. “We don’t have all that much time.”
“For what?”
“For me to tell you why I hired you.”
“Oh. Somehow I figured it didn’t really have much to do with picking pockets. But why the elaborate show in front of your secretary and everybody?”
We were passing by a nice little park, now. O’Hare turned right onto Ogden, which was a well-traveled four-lane thoroughfare, a diagonal street, making each major intersection a three-way one. For now, the railroad yard was on our left, more frame dwellings on our right. And lots of neighborhood bars. This was Cicero, after all.
“I don’t know who I can trust,” he explained. “Every person in my life, with the exception of my kids, is tainted by those hoodlums. Even my fiancee.”
“Who’s your fiancee?”
Vaguely sad, he said, “Sue Granata.”
I’d seen her before; a beautiful young woman with dark blond hair and a brother who was a mob-owned state representative.
I said, “And you figure you can trust me?”
“You have that reputation. Also, we have a mutual friend.”
“Besides Frank Nitti, you mean?”
“Besides Frank Nitti.”
“Who, then?”
He looked back over his shoulder. Then he said, flatly, “Eliot Ness.”
“How do you know Eliot?”
“I was his inside man with the Outfit.”
I felt my jaw drop. “What?”
O’Hare had a faint, sneering smile. He was gripping the wheel like it was somebody’s neck. “I’ve always detested the hoodlums I’ve been forced to deal with. Their loud dress, their bad grammar, their uncouth manners.”
“Yeah, their grammar’s always been one of my chief complaints against ’em.”
“This is hardly amusing, Mr. Heller.”
“What happened to ‘Nate’?”
“Nate, then. All I ask is that you ride along with me, into the city, and listen to what I have to say.”
“I’ll listen, but I don’t appreciate being brought out to your track on false pretenses.”
He shook his head, the firm little chin contrasting with the quivering flab it rested on. “The security work for which I’ve retained you is legitimate. But I have a second job for you-a matter that must stay between just the two of us.”
“I’m listening.”
“Some years ago, I was a conduit of information for your friend Mr. Ness, as well as Frank Wilson and Elmer Irey.”
Jesus. That was a laundry list of the federal agents credited with “getting” Capone.
“Then this is about Capone getting out,” I said. “You’re nervous he may’ve found out you were an informer.”
“That is a part of it. And I’ve been told as much, that Capone’s been making noise about me in Alcatraz. But I’m valuable to the Outfit, and am as powerful in my way as any of them.” He sighed. “It’s all rather complex. With Capone’s release, various factions within the Outfit will be jockeying for position.”
We were moving up over a tall traffic bridge, over the railroad yard; then we came down into Chicago, into a factory district.
“What do you want of me?” I asked him.
“I haven’t been an…‘informer,’ as you put it…in years. And my racing interests are quite legal, now. But recently federal agents have tried to contact me, left several messages at my office, asking for information about a small-time thief from my St. Louis days. Apparently somebody told them I’d be willing to talk. This comes at a very bad time indeed!”
We were in a residential area now; occasional bars, mom-and-pop groceries.
“With Capone’s return imminent,” I said, “it’s a very bad time to be renewing your federal acquaintance. Say-the recent problems Billy Skidmore and Moe Annenberg have had with the feds could also be laid at your doorstep-”
Skidmore, scrap-iron dealer and bailbondsman, had run afoul of the Internal Revenue boys; and Moe Annenberg’s nationwide wire service-on Dearborn, around the corner from my office-had just been shut down for good.
“Precisely. And I had nothing to do with either. But I’m afraid some people suspect I may have.”
“Oh?”
“I fear for my life, Nate. I’m being followed. I’m being watched. I’ve taken to staying in a secret little flat in a building I own on the North Side.”
We crossed Pulaski and 22nd Street-renamed Cermak Road, though nobody seemed to call it that yet-into a commercial district. A black Ford coupe, a similar make to O’Hare’s, pulled out from the curb and fell in behind us.
I said, “If it’s a bodyguard you want, I’m not interested.”
“That’s not what I want of you. I wish that simple a remedy were called for. What I want is for you to go to them, the feds in question. Woltz and Bennett, their names are.”
“I don’t know ’em.”
“Neither do I! But you’re Ness’s friend. He’ll vouch for you.”
“He’s not a fed anymore; and he hasn’t been in Chicago in years.”
“I know, I know! He’s in Cleveland, but he’d vouch for you, with them, wouldn’t he? There’s such a thing as telephones.”
“Well, sure…”
“Tell them I’m not interested. Tell them not to call me. Tell them not to leave messages for me.”
“Why don’t you tell them?”