Michael shrugged. “Unless it was a bartender or somebody else employed here, nothing.”
“Right!” she said, hair flouncing. “I mean, what the hell — I can’t be responsible for our clientele. We’re a popular place; all kinds of people come here.”
“How about the cops? They come here?”
“Not yet... It’s just, I know Mr. Nitti wants to keep things low-key, about now. Mike, I promise I laid the law down with the girls: no exchange of cash. Big rollers get comped with a little affection, but that’s it.”
“I’ll say something to him, if you want.”
“Would you?”
She’d seemed fine after that, and by the next day, the MOVIE STAR JEWELRY HEIST had, like his Medal of Honor, faded from the headlines.
And now it faded from Michael’s mind, too, as he began drifting off to sleep...
...only to have gunshots rudely wake him.
In half a heartbeat, he was out of the bed in his boxer shorts, snatching the .45 from the holster draped over a chair and heading in bare feet for the door. Behind him, startled to wakefulness, Estelle sat up, fists pulling the sheet to her chin, eyes huge and frightened; but he was in the hallway before she could speak.
Two guys, one skinny, one burly, were barreling right at him. They were in T-shirts and pants and socks, charging down the narrow pink carpet, single file, though he could see them both — and each had a gun in his fist.
The skinny one, at the rear, was firing over a shoulder, three sharp reports, shooting at the stairwell door, punching splintering holes. No one in sight, down there — the door itself seemed to be the guy’s target.
He recognized them, sort of: they’d been hanging around the Colony all week; not local, a couple gladhanders who for the last couple days had been hitting the casino hard.
Right now Michael was between them and the elevator, and the burly guy was raising his gun, teeth bared, eyes intense, motioning, motioning, motioning for Michael to move aside.
Instead, Michael walked into the path of the stampeding gunmen and slapped the first guy across the side of the head with the .45.
Then Michael stepped aside — so that the man could go down and his partner stumble over him. Both men lost their guns, identical .38s that went flying.
The burly man Michael had pistol-whipped was unconscious, and his skinny partner was piled squirming on top of him, like shower night at Joliet. Before the surprised partner could get his bearings, Michael leaned in and slapped him across the side of the head, too, with the .45 barrel.
The partner slumped on top of his pal, as if in postcoital exhaustion.
Michael was collecting the two fallen weapons when the shot-up stairwell door cracked tentatively...
Then it opened wide, and Eliot Ness stepped out, his own .38 in hand.
Ness, very much his public image in fedora and brown suit, had a spooked expression, not at all like his public image. Clearly the gunshots fired at that door had been meant for him. Seeing Michael, Ness opened his mouth.
Before any words could come out, however, Michael yelled at him, “Who the hell are you? What’s going on here?”
Behind Ness, from out the stairwell, came a firm-jawed, dark-haired guy in a homburg and beautifully cut charcoal suit with black vest and red tie. His natty attire might not say plainclothes cop, but his manner — and the badge pinned on his breast pocket, plus the Police Special in his fist — did. As he joined Ness, a pair of uniformed cops with weapons in hand also emerged from the stairs.
Ness strode up the hall, saying, “I’m Eliot Ness, with the Federal Social Protection Division. This is Lieutenant William Drury, from Town Hall Station.”
Drury stayed back, talking to the two cops, sending them into a room down on the right, next to the stairwell.
“These are suspects in a jewelry robbery,” Ness said, nodding toward the fallen duo.
“You mind if I get some clothes on,” Michael asked, “while you handcuff these boys?”
“Not at all.”
Michael rejoined Estelle in the blue suite, where — the bedside lamp switched on — she’d already put on a simple business-like brown-and-white suit. As he got dressed, Michael explained that he’d apparently just captured the two jewelry bandits for the cops.
“But that fed Ness is along for the ride,” Michael said.
Confusion merged with indignation in her response: “What does he have to do with catching jewel robbers?”
“Nothing. He’s probably here to try to shut you down.”
She followed Michael to the door, but he turned and took her by the arms. “Let me deal with this.”
Estelle drew in a deep breath, considering taking issue; then she let the air out and nodded. She sat in a chair by the window, and folded her hands primly in her lap, Rush Street neon winking through the curtains next to her.
In the hallway, Michael saw the T-shirted bandits, too groggy to be pissed off yet, on their feet and in the process of getting hauled off by the uniformed men.
Michael gave Ness a hard look, indicating it wasn’t safe to talk, and said, “I heard the gunshot and ran out into the hall... I have a license to carry.”
He patted the .45, snugged back under his shoulder.
“Fine,” Ness said. “Come with me.”
Michael followed him down the hall and past a shot-up door into a suite done up in whorehouse red, though otherwise identical to the blue room.
Cowering under the covers, wide eyes peeking over their edges, was a 26 girl named Marie, a cute little brunette Michael knew only to say hello to; apparently the robbers had been sharing her, or maybe one had opted for the sidelines. Neither Ness nor Lieutenant Drury acknowledged her existence, much less her presence.
Drury was standing at the bedstand, where a wallet was open and the detective was thumbing a wad of bills.
“Pretty flush couple of fellas, huh?” Drury said idly.
Ness asked, “Without the jewelry, can you make it stick?”
Drury nodded; he had dark alert eyes, a jutting nose, and, though not particularly heavyset, a double chin that cushioned his firm jaw.
“We have the fence,” Drury said, “and we can put both of ’em in the hotel. I think they have an accomplice here, probably a bartender, who called and gave ’em the all clear. We’ll see if they give the guy up.”
Ness was shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. They’re finished here.”
Not sure he understood what Ness meant, Michael asked Drury, “What’s going on?”
Drury was the police contact Ness had mentioned several times, so he knew damn well who Michael was; but with the little naked brunette witness quivering under the bedsheets, the detective knew enough not to make that evident.
“You’ve figured out,” Drury said, “that we were after those jewelry punks.”
“But the robbery warrant gave us entree to the Colony Club,” Ness said, “where we’ve discovered all kinds of law-breaking — including, on this floor, prostitution.”
Marie said, “I am not!”
Ignoring that, Ness said, “Anticipating as much, we brought along half a dozen paddy wagons. We’ve already shut down the casino, though with so many lawbreakers on the premises, we’ll have to make a number of trips.”
“And about now,” Drury said, “my boys will be knocking on doors all up and down this floor — taking johns and whores into custody.”
“I am not!” Marie insisted.
Ness said to Michael, “We appreciate your help, sir... We haven’t got your name yet, have we?”
“It’s Satariano. Michael Satariano.”
Playacting, Drury said, “Oh, Medal of Honor winner! Well, you deserve another one, for nabbing these bad guys.”
“They’re not local,” Michael said. “I’ve been around the club every night this week, and heard ’em making conversation at the bar. They said they were salesmen.”