Another firm head shake. “No. If it came into his hands. I didn’t say it did! But the one thing I want you to take away from this little talk of ours: I had not a damn thing to do with any of this, and the fact that you and me, Mr. Heller, never did business before is the only reason why I don’t take offense.”
“Offense at what, Mr. Vitale?”
“Offense that you would think I’d ever have anything to do with that kind of blood money! What happened to that kid makes me sick. I have a son myself. And daughters, and making a profit off the death of some little boy... pulled out of the hands of a goddamn nun... that’s what you burn in hell for.”
Said the drug-dealing, gun-running gangster.
Still, I felt he was sincere.
“I appreciate hearing this,” I said.
“Good. Good. You know, my people... Frank Nitto’s people, Alphonse Capone’s people... went in the kinds of businesses that was available to us, as immigrants and sons of immigrants. Now time passes and we make money and inroads into more respectable things. Like backing the working man in unions — my friend here helps in that area. I think you’ll find, if you talk to our mutual Outfit friends in Chicago, that even the hardest-ass men don’t want nothing to do with foul evil shit like the Greenlease snatch.”
So quick it startled me, Shenker stood and said, “Thank you for your time, Mr. Heller.”
Vitale stood as well, but sat right back down. The thugs just kept eating. I’d been dismissed, so I gave the mobster and the lawyer a nod to share and got the hell out of there. This was one red room too many, as far as I was concerned. But I had learned things that helped bring a fuzzy picture into focus.
Back in the main dining room, I joined Sandy. The dish of spumoni had been taken away — melted and uneaten, judging by the grim look the woman wore.
She clutched my right hand. “What did Vitale want?”
I saw no reason not to tell her. “To let me know he had nothing to do with the Greenlease money.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I do. I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it, but, yeah.”
Her words came quick: “He’s not as important as he used to be, you know. He backed down when Buster muscled in on the pinball racket. And the Syrian mob has taken over the South Side. Well, they’re Lebanese but everybody calls them Syrian.”
Her nerves were getting to her.
I said, “Let’s get you out of here.”
I took her by the arm through the lobby, past a big oil painting of Musial at bat and a display case of memorabilia, trophies, and autographed baseballs. As I was paying the check, Sandy stepped through the glass doors into the warm night under the roof of the carport. A gentle sirocco-like breeze riffled her short dark hair and creamy white blouse.
A taxi was waiting and the driver called out to her. I heard him just as I was going through the doors: “Did you call a cab, ma’am?”
She walked closer and bent down to talk to him through the open rider’s side window, and said, “No, I’m sorry, must be someone else,” and he shot her in the head.
Even before she fell, the cab squealed off. Some of what had been inside that pretty head splashed on my suit coat and drops spattered my face. When her legs went out from under her, she collapsed in a surprisingly graceful pirouette, the blue-gray eyes large if unseeing and yet staring right at me. The black hole in her forehead stared at me, too, and then she was on her face on the cement with the exit wound a cavernous thing, a carved-out red room of its own.
She’d finally got that payoff.
Chapter Sixteen
As would be expected, I was first questioned at the scene by uniformed officers followed by plainclothes homicide detectives. Then I drove the loaner Cadillac — under police escort, as if I were a visiting dignitary, but thankfully without sirens — to police headquarters at the corner of Twelfth Street and Clark Avenue.
Somewhere in that massive six-story gray limestone cube of a building (where Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady had early on been held), I was further questioned, but not until after I’d been given my phone call. Someone on duty at the nearby FBI office, also on Twelfth Street, arranged to have a big football coach of a special agent named Don Hostetter come over to Police HQ.
Hostetter worked on Greenap with Wes Grapp, who was in Kansas City right now. Despite our never having met, the Special Agent vouched for me as an investigator for the Senate Rackets Committee. He informed one and all that the late Sandra O’Day was a potential witness I had been trying to groom for Senator McClellan and chief counsel Robert Kennedy.
That name-dropping, and an assurance I would make myself available as a material witness, got me shaken loose from the noble department that had brought the world the likes of Lieutenant Louis Shoulders and Patrolman Elmer Dolan. I was to let them know when I returned to Chicago, my contact information collected.
Walking me out into the warm, windy night, Hostetter — a no-nonsense six-three in his mid-forties — said, “You have blood on your face and gory dried shit on your suit coat.”
“I know.”
“It’s not a good look.”
“I don’t plan to go out.”
He walked me to the Caddy in the police parking lot and said, “Stop by the office tomorrow. I’ll see if I can get Wes in from K.C. Seems like you may have some things you’d like to share.”
“Thanks for springing me.”
“No problem. The Chief always likes it when we can add to your package, Mr. Heller. It’s about four inches thick now.”
I was back at the Coral Court in twenty minutes, snugging the Cadillac into its little private garage. When I stepped from there into the Red Room, I found the TV going and a guest watching it. On the red vinyl couch, in a yellow sport shirt and brown slacks and moccasin slippers with no socks, sat the motel’s proprietor — Jack Carr, smoking a cigarette, an ashtray on the coffee table before him, from a pack Sandy had left behind the other night. A book of Coral Court matches was nearby.
He glanced at me with his dark-circled gray eyes. “Sandy made the news but you didn’t,” he said, sounding like an all-night D.J. who smoked too much. “Blood on your face.”
“Yeah.”
“Crusty shit on your jacket.”
“Not the first to notice.”
“Brush it off and take it to a dry-cleaner.”
Unintentional irony.
I went into the bathroom and got out of the suit coat and wadded it up and stuffed it in the wastebasket. Richard Bennett could make me a new one. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My tie was loose but I didn’t remember making it that way. The blood spots on my cheeks were like freckles applied for a high school play. I ran cold water and splashed it on my face. Soaped up my hands and rubbed the stuff off. Brownish water swirled down the drain.
I went back out there in my short-sleeve white shirt and shoulder-holstered nine mil. I said to Carr, “Any special reason you’re here?”
He didn’t answer me. The TV was heading into the national anthem, signing off for the day, and he got up and shut it off, the cigarette dangling from that not-quite-a-smile. We stood facing each other in the open area between the foot of the bed and the door. He brought his ashtray along, nursing the cigarette’s gray residue.
“I liked her,” he said. “She was a tough broad but she wasn’t mean. That’s not a bad combination.”
“No it isn’t.”
He took some smoke in. Let it out. “And she really held onto her looks. Always a pleasure doing business with her. See who killed her?”
“Somebody in an Ace Cab.”
“Almost anybody could be driving an Ace Cab. They all have records, you know. You could hire any of those crumbs to do about anything. Still. Doesn’t mean Joe Costello was behind it.”