So around seven that night I walked to a parking garage near Dearborn Station and picked up my ’32 Auburn. I’d only gotten the sporty little number back out of storage last week; while I was overseas, I’d kept it in a client’s garage in Evanston, in lieu of payment for a divorce case. I had the top up-there was still snow on the ground-and my C sticker in the window, and the old buggy was riding well, though I was in no frame of mind to enjoy it. I was on my way to see Frank Nitti, to share a quiet little chat with him in his suburban Riverside home. I turned South on Michigan Avenue, at the Hotel Lexington, Capone’s old headquarters, and headed west on 22nd Street, a.k.a. Cermak Road. I drove through Chinatown. After a while I was within a few blocks of where O’Hare had been gunned down, then crossed through the south end of my old neighborhood, South Lawndale, then Cicero, not far from Sportsman’s Park, and across to Berwyn, catching Riverside Drive to Riverside itself. The ride was like having my life pass before my eyes.
I didn’t want to park the Auburn in front of Nitti’s house, so I left it two blocks up, by a small park, and walked down. It was a cool, clear night, and Nitti’s quiet, quietly wealthy little suburban neighborhood, with its large lawns and oversize bungalows and driveways and backyard swing sets, looked as unreal and ideal as a street in an Andy Hardy movie. As American as apple pie and twice as wholesome. The smell of cordite was not in the air.
712 Shelbourne Road. A relatively modest brown brick house on the corner, story-and-a-half high, with crisp white woodwork. Car parked in the driveway, ’42 Ford sedan, black. A few lights on in the downstairs windows. Shrubs hugging the house; average-size lawn, house well back from the street; postage-stamp patio. Somewhere a dog was barking. Frank Nitti lived here.
Cars parked across the way, turning the narrow street into a one-lane. I wondered if eyes were watching me from those cars. Bodyguard eyes? Federal eyes?
Yes, I was nervous. This was much worse than meeting Nitti in a suite at the Bismarck. His suburban home in Riverside? Wrong. This was wrong.
But, just the same, I walked up the sidewalk, which wound gently up the sloping lawn, to the white front door, over which a light was on. I rang the bell.
The door cracked open, and a sliver of dark attractive female face looked out at me.
Then she was standing in the doorway wearing a Mona Lisa smile and a simple blue dress with a gold broach. A tall, distinctive-looking woman with cold smart dark eyes, wide dark-lipsticked mouth, Roman nose, ironic arching brows. She wasn’t as attractive as she’d been a few years ago, pushing forty now and looking it, and she’d always had a certain hardness, but she was still a handsome woman.
“You’re Toni Cavaretta,” I said. Blurted.
“Mrs. Frank Nitti, now,” she said, in her smoky, throaty manner. “Come in, Mr. Heller.”
I stepped inside and Mrs. Frank Nitti, the former Antoinette Cavaretta, the former secretary of the formerly living E. J. O’Hare, took my coat.
“I’ll just hang this up for you.”
She did so, in the closet I was directly facing, and then I followed her around the corner, out of the vestibule.
“Frank just stepped out for a walk,” she said. “I’ll see if I can catch him.”
Then she went out the way I’d come in and left me there.
To my left was a door; directly before me, stairs; to my right, a big open living room, beyond which the dining room could be seen, the kitchen presumably connecting off that. The furnishings seemed new, and expensive, the woodwork dark and shiny; everything was greens and browns, plush overstuffed sofas, dark wood furniture, very masculine, very soothing, a tastefully decorated room. A little boy eight or nine was sprawled on the floor in the midst of it, reading a comic book. He looked up at me through clear-rim glasses. Slight, serious-looking, dark-haired kid; I could see Nitti in his face.
“Hi, mister,” he said. “Are you a friend of my daddy’s?”
I went over and sat on the sofa near him. “That’s right,” I said. “How old are you, son?”
“Nine.” He closed the cover of the comic book; it said CRIME DOES NOT PAY. He sat Indian-style. “Were you in the war?”
“Yes I was. How did you know?”
He pointed at me. It took me a second to realize he was pointing at the lapel of my suitcoat. His pale blue eyes were alert, his expression serious. “I saw your pin. I got an uncle who has one of those. It’s called a Ruptured Duck.”
“That’s right.”
“I want to be a Marine when I grow up. Maybe a Marine flier. My daddy has a friend who was a Marine.”
“Really.” I nodded toward his comic book. “Do you like to read?”
“Yes, but I like skating better. Daddy says the weather’s going to get better soon and I can get my skates out.”
Mrs. Nitti came back in, shrugging, smiling, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t catch up with him. He must’ve forgotten what time you were coming by. He often takes an evening walk, and with these winding streets, who knows where he is or how long he’ll be?”
I was standing, now, and said, “Well, uh-I could go and come another time, at your husband’s convenience…”
“Nonsense. Why don’t you step into his study and relax. Can I get you a cup of coffee, or some wine?”
“No thanks.”
I followed her through the doorway by the stairs into a small unpretentious study-lots of dark wood, a desk, a black leather couch, built-in-the-wall bookcase.
She gestured to the couch and said, “Why don’t you sit down? When Frank gets back, I’ll tell him you’re here. Just relax.”
She went back out into the living room, where I could hear her say to the boy, “Up to your room, Joseph, and do some studying before bed.”
Toni Cavaretta seemed to be as perfect a housewife as she’d been an executive secretary. And as perfect a mother, too. Well, stepmother, actually. The boy was Nitti’s only son, only child, by his first wife, Anna. Whose picture, in fact, was on his desk in a gilt frame: a beautiful Italian madonna with a glowing expression. Nitti had worshipped her, it was said. Yet here he was, little over a year after his beloved Anna’s death, married to Toni Cavaretta.
It came rushing back, that business with O’Hare. She’d been Nitti’s “man” all the way, keeping tabs on E. J., probably helping set him up for the one-way ride I’d almost taken with him. Planting that note about the feds in his pocket. I’d only checked up on her once, after the hit. I’d asked Stege, probably in ’41 sometime, what had become of her. He said she was managing an Outfit racetrack in Florida-Miami Beach to be precise-a dogtrack that had previously been looked after by O’Hare. Seemed she had stock in the Florida track, as well as Sportsman’s Park; and some people said she and Nitti were like this. And he held his fingers up in a crossed fashion.
The notion of Nitti having a mistress had seemed crazy to me-everybody knew he kept Anna on a pedestal, that he loved his son, that he was a devoted family man-and I’d dismissed Stege’s implication as hogwash. But I also knew Nitti kept a separate home in Miami Beach. And men in his position-particularly men who kept their wives on pedestals-often had side dishes, somebody warm and female and closer to the ground.
Now here he was, beloved Anna gone. Here he was, married to Toni Cavaretta. In his suite at the Bismarck, that time, back in ’39, days after O’Hare’s murder, I’d heard a woman’s voice…
I slapped myself. Knock it off, Heller! These were dangerous speculations to make. They seemed especially dangerous to be making, sitting in Nitti’s own study, even if I was keeping them confined to my mind.
I got up and looked at the books on his shelves. A lot of leatherbound classics, whether read or not I couldn’t say. Some less fancily bound nonfiction books, on accounting mostly, and a couple of books about Napoleon, seemed well read.
I was tired. I sat on the couch again and looked at my watch-I’d been here half an hour already-and tried to fight my heavy eyelids. At some point, I lost the fight, because sounds in the other room suddenly jarred me awake.
I was stretched out on the couch. The room was dark. Why I’d been left to sleep like that, I didn’t know; why the light had been shut off, I couldn’t say. How long I’d been asleep was a mystery, too. The room was so dark I couldn’t read my watch. But if the film in my mouth was any indication, I’d slept for hours.
Conversation had woken me; and muffled conversation was still quite audible, even though I was sitting on the couch and the door to the living room was across the study from me. Occasionally the pitch of the conversation peaked-in anger? One of those peaks had been loud enough to wake me, anyway.
I got up. Slipped out of my shoes. Crept across the study to the door. I didn’t dare crack it open. But I did dare place my ear up to it.
“Frank,” a harsh voice was saying, “you brought Browne and Bioff to us. You masterminded this whole thing-and it went sour.”
“You didn’t complain at the time, Paul.”
Paul?
Jesus Christ-Paul Ricca. The Waiter. The number-two man. Capone had his Nitti; and Nitti had his Ricca.
And I didn’t have a gun.
“There is no point in all of us going down,” Ricca said. “Remember how Al took the fall for us, and went on trial alone? Well, that’s the way we ought to do it now.”
“It ain’t the same situation, Paul.” Nitti’s voice was recognizably his; but something was different. Something had changed.