“So I gathered from what you said on the phone,” he said, picking some tobacco off his tongue. “I’m disappointed in you, Heller. Taking work from a rat bastard like Willie Bioff. Don’t quote me.”
“Don’t worry. I’m on Bioff’s payroll, not president of his fan club.”
He shook his head. “Who’d have thought Nate Heller’d be another of Willie Bioff’s whores.”
“Who’d have thought Jack Barger would.”
He laughed humorlessly. “Fair enough,” he said.
“Speaking of Pegler,” I said, “Fair Enough” being the name of his column, “that’s why I’m here.”
He squinted at me. “Westbrook Pegler? The big-shot columnist? What would he want with a minor-league Minsky like me?”
Barger’s humility was false; while he was certainly no Minsky, he was the king of the local grind circuit. And in a convention town like Chicago, that meant money.
“He’s looking to smear Bioff,” I said.
“I’ve seen Pegler’s stuff,” Barger nodded, unimpressed. “He makes a living out of hating the unions, and Bioff’s as good a place as any to start giving unionism a bad name.”
“This has to do with the power the Stagehands Union is building in Hollywood, you know.’’
He expressed his disinterest with a wave of the hand in which the cigar resided, embers flying. “Don’t give me history lessons on Willie Bioff and George Browne. I been around that block so many times your head’d spin. No, far as I know, Westbrook Pegler ain’t been in my establishment. Not unless he likes young tits and old jokes.”
“He doesn’t seem the type,” I admitted. “But he might send somebody around to pump you.”
“Nobody pumps Jack Barger for information.”
“It might not be direct; somebody might come around under false pretenses and-”
“Do I look stupid to you, Heller? Do you think I’m going to advertise what those bastards done to me? That’d make me look like a schmuck, and if Frank Nitti found out I’d been vocal, which he would, I’d wake up with a hole in my head in a goddamn ditch.”
He was talking to me like I was an insider; if I handled this right, I could open him up like a clam.
“I’m not working for Nitti,” I said. “I’m working for Bioff. And I’m only in it for the dough.”
He pointed the cigar at me. “Be careful who you go whoring for, my friend. Those sons of bitches are murderers and thieves. Grow up.”
I knew Barger primarily from the occasional drink he’d have with Barney and me in Barney’s cocktail lounge, when it was still below my office, and just around the corner from the Rialto. He and Barney were friends, hit it off fine, but Barney’s more Jewish than I am. I always felt Irish around guys like Barger.
So I gave him the needle for a change. “You say you’re surprised to see me, Jack. Hell, I was surprised to get your name from Bioff. I didn’t know they had their hooks in you.”
He stirred in his chair. “What’d you think, I don’t have stagehands? Not that I should pay those lazy bastards anything for what little they do. Move some scenery here, carry a prop there. They should pay me for the privilege of working here, the ass they get. Only it don’t work that way. And, fuck, the IA’s got me coming and going, cause I’m a moviehouse, too, I got projectionists to deal with. Shit, I’ve had to put up with that beer-guzzling slob Browne longer than Bioff himself!”
The best way to keep Barger talking was to make him think I already knew more than I did. This required some calculated guessing, which as sluggish as I was from the sixteen-hour plane ride was going to be a good trick.
But I jumped right in-casually: “Browne must’ve been a phantom on your payroll since the Star and Garter days.”
He didn’t hesitate in confirming that: “To the tune of a hundred and fifty smackers a week, the drunken bastard.”
The Star and Garter, a burlesque house at Madison and Halsted, had been Barger’s mainstay prior to the success of the Rialto, which the “minor-league Minksy” opened during the World’s Fair in ’33; the Rialto’s Loop location was closer to the fair, and less threatening for tourist trade, than the Star and Garter’s Skid Row neighborhood.
“Of course a hundred-and-fifty’s cheap,” I said, “compared to what Bioff’s hitting you for, these days. By the way, he said, ‘Give my regards to my partner Jack.’”
Which Bioff had in fact said, and which proved to be what opened Barger’s floodgate: “That arrogant little pimp! Partner! The first time I ever talked to him, what, must’ve been four years ago anyways, he walked in here with Browne and said, ‘Kid,’ called me kid, the condescending little bastard, ‘kid, everybody’s paying to keep the unions happy. So you have to pay.’ What the hell, this is Chicago, I expect that, so I say, ‘How much?’ And Bioff says, ‘Let’s say twenty-five grand to start.’ And I damn near fall off my seat! I say fuck you, go to hell, I ain’t got twenty-five grand, and Bioff says, ‘You want to stay in business, that’s how it’s gotta be.’ I told ’em to get the hell out and they did.”
He smiled to himself, pleased with the memory of getting tough with Bioff and Browne, then noticed his cigar had gone out and was relighting it when I said, “Yet here I am, Jack, giving you a message from your partner Willie.”
His expression turned as foul as the cigar smoke. He said, “The fat little pimp came back alone, next time. No Browne, just the two of us, in this same office, and he said, ‘How’s tricks, partner?’ And I said, ‘I ain’t your goddamn partner, and I suggest you leave.’ And he said, ‘I already talked to the Outfit about our partnership.’ And I told him I’d close my show down before I got in bed with the mob.”
Barger was shaking, now; whether with anger or fear or just the intensity of the memory, I couldn’t say. But he went on speaking, and it seemed more for his own benefit than mine.
“The bastard Bioff says, ‘You’re already in. There’s no getting out. You’re partners with me, and I’m partners with the Outfit.’ He said it’d be foolish for me to close down my show ’cause a man’s gotta work, a man’s gotta eat.” Then with harsh sarcasm he added, “‘Like the man said,’ he said, ‘don’t throw away the blanket because you’re mad at the fleas.’”
He sat smoking, his eyes glowing like the cigar’s tip.
“That’s Willie Bioff,” I said. “A proverb for every occasion.”
Very softly, with what I felt to be self-hate, he said, “And then he said, ‘And just think, if you close the show, there’s always the fact that maybe the mob wouldn’t like it. They’re sensitive people.’”
“And you went along with it,” I said, with a tiny matter-of-fact shrug. “What else could you do?”
He slammed a fist on the desk and the clutter there jumped. “I didn’t go along with it. Not till…aw, fuck it.”
I made an educated guess, based on past experience: “Not till Little New York Campagna invited you in a certain suite at the Bismarck Hotel.”
Where Frank Nitti himself would’ve waited.
Barger only nodded.
Then he sat up, pointed with the cigar. “Some friendly advice, kid. If you can get out from under Bioff, do it. That’s bad company you’re in. I like you, Heller. Any friend of Barney’s is a friend of mine. This is no good for you.”
I had a card left to play. On two occasions, in Barney’s cocktail lounge, I’d seen Barger approached by Frankie Maritote, also known as Frankie Diamond, Al Capone’s brother-in-law, a big ape with a broad homely mug and thick eyebrows like grease smears over beady eyes. It had stuck with me, and, when Bioff mentioned Barger as one of those I was to warn about Pegler, I remembered the mob connection the earlier Barger/Diamond encounters seemed to indicate.
Anyway, I played the card: “How long was it before Frankie Diamond came around?”
Barger shrugged. He seemed defeated. “Not long. They thought I was monkeying with the books, because I said business was off, and they heard we did standing-room-only, which was true, when the fair was in town. Since then it’s weekends and conventions; we die during the week.”
“So they sent a Syndicate bookkeeper over.”
“Yeah. This guy Zevin. He’s the Stagehand Union’s bookkeeper, for this local anyway. He found I was giving myself a salary of two hundred a week. They made me fire myself and take Diamond on as manager. Only he never came around except to collect money from me, me who was doing the actual managing. Then, on one of the happiest days of my life, Diamond leaves town, for some other Syndicate deal, and I figure I’m rid of the leech. And this guy Nick Dean-you know him?’
I nodded. “He’s a cold one.”
He almost shivered. “Freezing. He brings Phil D’Andrea around. Phil D’Andrea!”
D’Andrea was the Capone bodyguard infamous for attending the Big Fellow’s trial armed with a revolver, and getting caught at it. Contempt of court and six months in jail.