“Go on in,” the dispatcher said in a grudging, we-don’t-cotton-to-strangers-in-this-here-town way. Probably an in-law. The switchboard redhead glanced at me with a little smile and shrug. Probably a mistress.
There was only one door, so I didn’t have any questions. In I went.
The scarred-up wooden desk was older than I was, the top empty of anything but a cup of coffee and a butt-filled glass ashtray, in a small office as dingy as the outer building and the mechanics in the two-bay garage. But the man at the desk — slender, mid-forties, with sandy, curly hair — was if anything spiffy. He wore a gray suit and a white shirt buttoned at the neck, no tie; a snap-brim fedora sat back rather jauntily, its indoor use suggesting he might be bald.
“Nate Heller!” He vaguely resembled Bing Crosby. He stood and shoved his hand across the desk at me like a spear. I shook it. You’d think we were old pals.
“Mr. Costello?” I said tentatively.
“Joe. Why would we stand on formality?”
He seemed to know me, and by more than just reputation. But if we’d met, I didn’t recall. He told me to make myself comfortable — “Take off your coat and stay a while!” — and I hung the Burberry and Dobbs on a corner coat tree with his own topcoat. I was in the Richard Bennett, by the way, cut for the holstered nine mil.
That precaution had to do with the type of cab company Ace almost certainly was — not that it was an unusual type for a city the size of St. Louis, or a lot of cities either, of any size. Certain cabbies all across America were rolling pimps, ready to fix up a visitor to their fair communities with female companionship, games of chance, and assorted other illegal recreational activities.
Beyond that, this cab company was run by a top Gateway City mob guy, said to be a front for fencing stolen goods, smuggled firearms and burgled jewels. I didn’t know Joe Costello personally, but I knew he’d done time on robbery raps in his salad days, and in his main-course years had made a rep setting up heists for others to pull off.
Looking like Bob Hope’s co-star in Road to Alcatraz, Costello folded his hands on the desk — whether he was intentionally showing off that big gold-set diamond ring, I couldn’t tell you. On the wall behind him were framed photos, all hanging crooked, of Joe and a narrow-faced, hooded-eye guy who looked vaguely familiar, taken over a period of time — shaking hands, smiling, laughing, sometimes with a cab in the background, other times in a barroom.
I pulled another of those wooden schoolhouse chairs over and sat down. “You paid well for the right to see me here in St. Louis. What can I do for you?”
“Maybe it’s what I can do for you.” Like Bing, he was a baritone, though not melodic. “You still working for the Greenlease family?”
“I was about to head back to Chicago when your friend Barney Baker caught up with me. I’m on call if Bob Greenlease needs me. Uh, Mr. Costello—”
“Joe. Please. I mean, Nate, I feel like I know you.”
I eyed him. “Why do you feel like you know me, Joe?”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Are you kidding? I owe you, friend.”
Was he pointing at those pictures?
I asked, “Who is that anyway?”
“You really don’t recognize him? My late partner. We ran the Clover Club on Delmar together. Then we opened up Ace — he’s the one came up with the slogan, ‘Call an Ace cab for ace service.’ He never spoke ill of you, Nate. And him and me, we was like brothers.”
And then I finally recognized that narrow, jug-eared face: Leo Brothers! In June 1930, Jake Lingle, a mobbed-up Tribune leg man who phoned scoops in to rewrite men, was in the pedestrian walkway beneath Michigan Avenue, about to catch the 1:30 P.M. to Washington Park racetrack, when someone shot him in the head. Leo Brothers took the fall for it, identified on the witness stand by a uniformed cop who’d been paid off by the Capone mob. Brothers, also paid off, did eight years of a fourteen-year sentence, and the cop got promoted to plainclothes. His name was Nathan Heller.
“Your buddies in Chicago,” Costello said pleasantly, “set Leo up here with me in the Clover Club after he got out. Piece of luck for yours truly. I knew Leo from the old days when I was driving cab and he was union organizing. This is all news to you?”
“I heard the Outfit took care of him,” I admitted.
“Took care of him in a good way,” Costello clarified with a grin. “Nate, I never heard him say a bad word about you. Matter of fact, when you turned up in the papers or the true detective magazines, he always laughed and said, ‘My old pal Nate Heller — the man who made me!’”
Made him was right — made him in court as a man running away from the scene of the Lingle murder. And yet I’d never spoken to Brothers in my life. But I wasn’t surprised I’d made an impression.
I asked, “What’s become of my... old pal?”
Costello made a sad click in a cheek. “Booze and gambling and babes caught up with him, couple years ago.”
“How so?”
“Ah, well, when he drank he got hotheaded, and he was known to slap a mouthy broad now and again. He made his share of enemies here, too, frankly, getting tough with help who was holding out. Not every driver we hire is a fuckin’ boy scout. Somebody shot him through his screen door in the kitchen grabbing a beer from the fridge. Three times. And it took him three months to go. Tough man, my partner.”
“My condolences,” I said. “But you didn’t send Barney Baker to flag me down with a grand because it’s Old Home Week.”
“No. But before I make my pitch, I want you to get the low-down on this Good-time Charley my boys have been driving around town all day.”
Then began a parade of the mostly questionable-looking cabbies I’d seen lined up in the outer area. Each came in and stood with cap in hand like this was the office at school and Costello was the principal.
It’s about eight o’clock, the first cabbie said, a flat-nosed character who referred to his logbook, when I get called to the Sportsman’s Bar at 3500 South Jefferson. This guy who needs a shave is with a blowsy blonde who must have drunk her breakfast. Guy says he’s Steve Strand and this is his wife Bonnie, and somebody broke into their car and stole their luggage. He wants me to take them to the nearest pawnshop so he can buy replacements. I don’t know of any pawnshops around there, but we get in the cab and drive around.
Nothing.
I even pull over and ask a couple of times.
Nothing.
Finally I head downtown and find a pawnshop but it’s closed. Slay’s Bar at 114 Broadway is open. We go in and Steve has a shot of Walker’s Deluxe whiskey and so does Bonnie, twice. They buy me a drink... just a Coke, Mr. Costello, just a Coke... while we wait for the Army Store at 17 North Broadway to open at nine.
Nine comes, and Steve goes off to buy luggage and comes back with a green footlocker and a black suitcase. Both metal. Both empty. I load ’em in the trunk. They have me take ’em back to the Sportsman’s Bar and unload the footlocker and suitcase onto the sidewalk. They pay me. I go.
I find their behavior peculiar and take a spin around the block. On the return trip, I see ’em loading the luggage in the blue Ford’s trunk. I look to see if any windows in the car look busted, because of what they said about it being broken into. All the windows was rolled up and looked fine.