And me.
We stood in the middle of the echoey chamber, but we didn’t echo. He kept his voice down, and I did the same, in case anybody came in, and more than a few did, during our brief discussion. About half of them seemed to recognize Jim, but nobody had the nerve to interrupt; one even backed out. Anyway, you don’t ask for an autograph or shake a celebrity’s hand in the john.
This occasional company, however, did not take any of the edge out of Hoffa’s voice.
“This is where you explain yourself,” he said. He was smiling, but it was the smile of a father meeting his daughter’s date at the door an hour after curfew.
“Jim,” I said evenly, “you’re gonna have to be more specific.”
The smile disappeared and he seemed to be trying to swallow both his upper and lower lip. His fists were clenched. Not a good sign. At all.
Then he said, “This PR guy from Milwaukee, what’s his name, Elliot, Ellison, what the fuck was you doing at the 606 with him Friday night? That specific enough for you?”
It was.
Now I had the choice of softening and shaping the truth into something that made it more palatable. But then we were in a big men’s room, redolent of piss, shit, disinfectant, and urine cake, where nothing palatable got served up.
So I gave it to him fairly straight. “Tom’s an old friend of mine. He said he’d been doing some PR work for you and some friends of yours. He’s an honest businessman, and when one of your guys asked him to make a money drop … he got understandably nervous.”
“Why?” Indignant. Nostrils flaring. Fists clenched again. “Does he think we’re a bunch of fuckin’ crooks?”
That was like Polly Adler saying, “What, do you think I run a whorehouse?”
“It just wasn’t … business as usual,” I said, gesturing with an open, soothing hand. “He’s a straight citizen, Jim. He doesn’t usually go into strip clubs passing an envelope to the likes of Jack Ruby. Who, let’s face it, is a mobbed-up little piece of shit.”
Rather than make Hoffa angry, this actually settled him down. The truth, oddly, did that sometimes. I had often been in a room of his sycophants and caught the moment in Hoffa’s eyes where he got fed up with having his dick stroked.
The union boss hunched his shoulders like Jimmy Cagney in an old gangster movie-a familiar tic of his. “So, he come to you? For help.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t call me, or one of mine?”
“What for? Your guy didn’t hide the fact the envelope was full of money. Probably ten grand. Tom was asked to hand it over to somebody in a strip club a block away from Skid Fucking Row. Tom and me go way back. He thought he might need a bodyguard. Wouldn’t you think the same?”
Hoffa was squinting, considering that. “Like … should some asshole try to mug him or such shit.”
“Exactly.”
He raised his chin, looked down at me, which was tricky at his height. “You saw the transaction go down?”
“I wouldn’t call it a transaction, Jim. Tom did what he was told-he handed off the envelope to Ruby. And he left.”
He pointed at me with a blunt-tipped finger. “And your friend Tom-did you tell him later that you knew Ruby, and what his name was and so on?”
“No! Why would I? All Tom wanted was to do you a favor and not get his ass handed to him, in the process. What’s wrong with that?”
Hoffa thought about it.
“Nothing,” he admitted.
I shrugged. “It’s a coincidence that the guy picking up the envelope happened to be Ruby, who I happen to know.”
“Happen to know how?”
“We go back to the West Side. Way back. He grew up with Barney Ross and me. His real name is Jake Rubinstein.”
There was no question about Hoffa knowing Ruby. His box-seat pal Allen Dorfman’s father, Red, had taken over the Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union back in ’39, after that shooting Ruby had helped cover up. Right when the Teamsters stepped in and took over.
Hoffa said, very low-key, “At the 606, did you speak to your old West Side buddy?”
Surely he knew I had.
“Yeah. Sat and talked with him a while. Nothing about the envelope he’d been handed. He didn’t indicate he knew I’d seen the handoff. Or even suspected my being at the club had anything to do with Tom.”
“What did you talk about?”
“This and that. Discussed which strippers he might want to book in his club. He has a club in Dallas, you know.”
“And that’s it?”
Should I tell him?
I told him. “Funny thing was … he mentioned Cuba.”
His eyes tightened. “Cuba?”
“Yes … you know … how certain people have been helping certain other people with certain Cuban problems.…”
Hoffa grunted something that was not exactly a laugh. “This Mongoose deal.”
I hated that he knew the name of it. But I wasn’t surprised. He’d bragged to me before about helping Uncle Sam try to take Castro out. And he’d complained that “Booby” had cut him no slack for his patriotic efforts.
He cocked his head, like a deaf guy trying to hear better. “So you just talked to Ruby a while, shot the shit, nothing else … memorable?”
“Some kid stopped and talked with us,” I said, figuring I better not leave anything out.
“This kid have a name?”
“Osborne, I think.”
Hoffa shrugged. “Don’t mean nothing to me.”
Some guy came in and entered a stall. We moved to the other side of the chamber-for privacy, not to avoid potential unpleasant odor.
Hoffa’s eyebrows went up, his expression indicating that if I hadn’t been entirely straight with him, now was the time.
“Heller, you’re saying nothing you talked to Ruby about had anything to do with your Milwaukee friend. With the … favor he done us.”
“Nothing.”
Ruby talking to me at all meant he’d suspected I’d been there to back Tom up, or Hoffa and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I didn’t point that out.
I went on: “Jake always did run his mouth. He was bragging to this kid that I’d been a Marine hero, that kind of bullshit. Showing off. That’s how Cuba came up. Telling this kid how I was the guy that first put things in motion.”
A john flushed. A guy came out, used the sink, left.
Hoffa was studying me. “You’re saying … this was a straight-up bodyguard job. Your friend had all that cash, got jumpy about it, and wanted some protection. That simple?”
“That simple. Jim, I don’t know why Tom gave that envelope to Ruby, and I don’t want to know. Not interested. And neither is Tom.”
“… Okay.” He did the Cagney shoulder hunch again. “Might as well piss while we’re here.”
“Might as well.”
So we stood at the metal trough and pissed …
… though I was a little surprised I could, figuring it had already been scared out of me.
The game never turned into anything special, but the Bears did win-16 to 7. That made seven wins and one loss.
Still in contention.
That evening Helen and I sat in a booth at Pizzeria Uno and shared a small tomato pie.
“How long will you be in town?” I asked her.
We were both eating slices with forks-the stuff was just too formidable to do otherwise, half the sauce on the North Side piled on the little pie, on top of just as much cheese.
“I was thinking maybe a week,” she said, with a little shrug. “If you can get me meetings at the Chez Paree and Empire Room, and something comes of it … a little shorter stay. Otherwise, I plan to make the rounds of the other spots.” She made a face. “And there’s always the strip joints.”
“Well, even so, we can’t have you staying at the Lorraine.”
“Oh, I don’t mind it, Nate, really. Lot of nice girls there.”
“Why don’t you bunk in at my place? You can take the client apartment downstairs. You’ll have your own key. That way you can come and go as you please, and spend as much time with me as both our schedules allow.”