Inside, the air-conditioning was working almost too well. Costello’s reputation as a dapper dresser befit the zebra booths, pink walls, and black-and-white tile floor. But compared to the Cosmo Club, the Tic Toc was barely ticking. A couple of probable bookies were going over figures in their notebooks in one booth, an older guy with a young woman probably not his wife (or his daughter) were in another, and two teenage boys with bottles of beer sat giggling in their pew. Serving underage clientele was one thing the Cosmo and the Tic Toc did have in common.
Moving across a small uninhabited dance floor, I headed toward the rear of the room where a black chrome-trimmed bar with high-backed stools curved around its black-vested bartender and his impressive inventory. Looming over all this was a raised recessed stage where a pianist could create a mood of intimacy, or a stripper a mood of debauchery, neither having to be worried about the customers getting too close.
No musician or stripper was on stage at the moment. The barstools were empty but for a tall beefy guy off to my right who might have been a bouncer. In a pale yellow sport coat and an Aloha shirt, lacking only the lei, he was younger than me though not young, forty-five maybe. He wore a small amused smile but his gray eyes weren’t laughing, as he paid me more attention over his glass of beer than I deserved.
Ignoring him, I said to the bartender, “Is Joe Costello in?”
The bartender — mustached, bald, and until now bored — thought about the question, as if I had asked him what number pi was equal to, approximately. Before the barkeep could come up with 3.14159, the maybe bouncer intruded, saying, “Who’s asking?”
I looked at him like he was a Jehovah’s Witness on my doorstep. “Who’s asking,” I said, “who’s asking?”
While he was parsing that, I said to the bartender, “Tell Mr. Costello it’s Nathan Heller from Chicago.”
He had a phone back there by the bottles and he used it, passing the information on in a near whisper as if afraid one of the paucity of patrons might hear. “Yes, sir... I will, sir.”
Two doors were at the end of a short hallway past the restrooms — one was marked FIRE EXIT, the other PRIVATE; being a trained detective, I knocked on the latter.
The office was small, differing little from the one at Ace Cab, just a little classier — painted within the decade, carpeting and wainscoting. The desk was metal, not beat-up wood, and colorful framed posters of past Tic Toc attractions were on the walls — again, a mix of name nightclub talent (Buddy Greco, Jerry Vale) and striptease gals (Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm).
And hanging right behind his desk was an oversize framed photo of himself and his late partner Leo Brothers, shaking hands in front of Joe’s previous night spot, the Clover Club.
Like the other time I’d seen Costello, he was sharply dressed, his cream-color sport coat flecked pink and black, his tie silk, dark brown with a white-and-tan geometric design. Maybe I should ask him about pi. The intervening five years, since we’d last met, had not been kind — he looked a decade older, easy, and the curly sandy hair was going gray. He’d reminded me of Crosby back then, and he still did. But Der Bingle was getting a little long in the tooth to be making another Road picture with ol’ Ski Nose.
He stood behind the desk and stretched his hand across and I took and shook it. The massive gold-set diamond ring remained on his left hand. He was three or four inches shorter than me and his slenderness had turned bony, his cheekbones as sharp as his clothes.
A visitor’s chair was waiting for me and I filled it.
He worked up a smile. “What brings you back to town after so long, Nate? And how did you know to look for me here?”
“I’m doing a job for a client that may involve you. You’re the first person I’m touching base with in St. Louis. I called Ace Cab and they said you were at your new club.”
His quick frown said he’d have to talk to somebody about giving out information so freely. Like I’d known not to mention I’d phoned Ace Cab from a booth in East St. Louis after talking to Mollie Baker.
“Who is your client in this, Nate?”
Since we seemed to be on first-name terms, I said, “Can’t tell you that, Joe. Could be any number of people. No shortage of folks might take an interest in the missing Greenlease money.”
His jaw went tight; his cheeks glowed red and I didn’t think it was good health. “I had nothing to do with that, Heller! I live in the same house I did back then. I have two businesses that generate all the income I need. Hard work allowed me to put paneling in the basement and stonework around my fireplace. Before that money went missing, I would buy a new Cadillac every two years and I still do, which is about my only goddamn extravagance!”
I stayed cool. “I didn’t ask about your finances, Joe. But the FBI told the press you were the main suspect in the disappearance of the ransom money.”
His eyes flared. “Fucking FBI. For months they tailed me day and night. They tap my phones, they question my friends and relatives and even the fucking guy who put in my new furnace! They harass my drivers at Ace. It’s only been lately they backed off. And now you come around?”
“I’m not harassing you, Joe. You’re just my first stop.”
He reached down and flung open a desk drawer; my hand went to my unbuttoned suit coat, where I could reach the nine mil easily. But what he withdrew was a quart bottle of Cutty Sark; he reached again and brought out a glass. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised — would I like...? — and I shook my head. At least the offer had been for a shot of Scotch whiskey and not from a handgun.
He poured himself three or four fingers and took a sip that really should be called something else. He tasted it a while and swallowed it down, closing his eyes.
Then he sat back, calm now or pretending to be, and said, “Chicago sent you, I take it.”
“Joe, I didn’t—”
He raised a palm. “You tell them Buster Wortman and I are tight. They don’t need to send Nate Heller around with a gun under his arm. Yeah, I know a tailored suit when I see one. Tell your ‘client’ to have Buster ask me about anything they want to know... or should I just go to Chicago and talk to them myself? Is it Accardo? Or Humphreys maybe? Or both?”
“I did not mention Chicago.”
He finished his glass. Quickly. Then he lurched forward, clutching the empty vessel like a grenade he was ready to throw. “Those FBI pricks don’t care where that money went! They’re just looking to frame somebody. They want a fall guy!”
Suddenly it was 1941 and I was in The Maltese Falcon.
“Joe, settle down...”
“You think I want anything to do with that kind of money? Me, a father who loves his son! I built a model train set for him, goes from room to room. I bought him a little replica Model T to ride outside around in. The thought of what happened to that Greenlease child makes me want to...” He swallowed, his eyes shining wet. “I’m a father, for Christ sake!”
“I know, Joe. I just want to know what you know — for example... did your friend Buster Wortman get that money?”
He looked hurt. “I don’t know. Why does everybody think I know something?”
I kept it matter of fact. “Because you and Lou Shoulders go way back. You introduced me to him five years ago at Ace, remember? He was a bent cop, and you have what might be called underworld connections.”
Now he was pouting. “I’m an honest businessman.”
“You run a fleet of pimps on wheels, Joe. You’ve done hard time, you plan heists, then middleman swag to fences, especially jewels, except maybe those you cherry-pick, like that big-ass diamond ring on your finger. Don’t shit a shitter.”