A matching marble staircase with a black wrought-iron rail extended either to the afterlife or the second floor. The gun urging me on indicated it might be both. The rooms up here had doors and I was shown through one into what appeared to be a guest bedroom that might have been in a Holiday Inn. Pompous here, prosaic there, Buster Wortman’s moat castle definitely sent mixed signals, even if his gun-toting emissaries did not.
As he uncuffed me, Dutch Downey said, “Strip.”
“What?”
“See that towel on the bed?”
“I’m not blind.”
“Strip and put it on. We’ll collect you in ten minutes.” It sounded like I was a butterfly about to go into an album.
The door shut. The double bed had a towel neatly folded on the pink nubby spread. Above the bed was one big frame of shots of the house and moat under construction. A big picture window had its curtain drawn halfway back. I went over and looked out. Fish jumped in the moonlight. I watched this a while. One missed and hit the grassy shore and wriggled there, dying. Don’t ask me what kind of fish. I shut the curtain.
The bedroom had its own bathroom and I went in and bowed before the porcelain god and finally got rid of the Musial’s meal. Not near as good on the return trip. I sat on the edge of the tub and worked at feeling human, breathing like a guy who’d just been saved from drowning.
Then I was wearing the towel like Sabu in a picture with dolls in sarongs, not guys in baggy suits and revolvers. At just about ten minutes on the dot, Dutch and Mel returned for me. They walked me down the hall and into a big nightclub-ish room with a full bar along one wall and black leather upholstered sofas and chairs scattered around in little groupings, with glass-topped tables for ashtrays and drinks. The lighting was indirect but not dim, canceling any notion of me playing loin-cloth Tarzan on these fedora-sporting apes.
I was shown through a big bathroom, with a shower that would have accommodated enough chorus girls to keep any dumb-ass hood from getting bored, and into an adjacent steam room, which at least explained the towel.
This was no small sauna, however, but more like what the Sands or Flamingo in Vegas might offer — three tiers of slatted wooden seating in a tiled space big enough for the top Romans to gather and discuss how the Lions Vs. the Gladiators game came out.
One small moderately hairy man in a towel and a pearl-gray fedora on loan from George Raft sat perched on the middle row of the facing wall as I entered. He had his hands folded on his lap. He had a kind of long, deadpan face that made me wonder if he’d been nicknamed for a resemblance to a famous comedian.
“If I don’t wear a hat,” Frank “Buster” Wortman said in a second tenor, “I get sweat in my eyes. I know it looks stupid, but you know what? It’s my house.”
That was his greeting to me.
He gestured toward the side wall with a cigar he had going, its smoke mingling with the steam. “Take a load off.”
The seating right next to him was taken up by a folded towel over something that made a lump. I had an idea that it might be a .38 caliber lump. On the other side was a phone on a long cord and an ashtray.
I sat on the second tier on the side wall to his left. You could have fit a dozen guys in here comfortably. And frankly, I’m not sure why, but the heat felt good. Seemed to make my splitting headache recede.
“I know it was bad manners,” he said, “pulling you in, in the middle of the night. Thanks for coming.”
Thanks for coming? Bad manners?
“Sure.”
“I don’t think we ever met.” He leaned over and offered a hand and I met him halfway and we shook; then he and his loin-wrapped towel settled back where they were.
“I know it sounds stupid,” he said, “but this cools me down when I get hot. And I got very damn hot, earlier, and I suppose I tied one on a little.”
That didn’t seem to call for a response.
“You were a friend of Frank’s,” he said.
The “were” meant Nitti not Sinatra, or anyway I was pretty sure it did.
“I was.” I played a card that wasn’t entirely an exaggeration. “I was fond of Mr. Nitti. He could be like a second father to me.”
“I know you been here a couple days,” he said, “asking about the Greenlease money.”
I gave him a nod.
“Who are you working for?”
No hesitation: “Jimmy Hoffa.”
That impressed him. He didn’t even try to hide it. “No shit. He’s, uh, concerned about these rumors that half the Greenlease ransom wound up in the Teamsters Pension Fund. Am I right?”
“You’re not wrong.”
Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Did the fellas show you around at all?”
The fellas?
“Did you get a look at these digs?” He gestured with the cigar like it was a magic wand. “Too bad it’s after dark. Even with outside lighting, you miss things. And I got a twelve-horse stable, a swimming pool out back. Rathskeller in the basement.”
“Impressive.”
“I hardly ever leave this place. Since my divorce, I let the world come to me. This steam room is perfect for meeting with other guys in my line of work, and with politicians and local business leaders. I got a phone in every room, including this one.”
“I noticed.”
He went on: “The steamfitters piped in a heating system no hotel could beat — those union guys are great — and since not everybody loves me... hard to believe I know... they put in a steel plate. Not in my head!” He laughed. “Coverin’ the roof, I mean. People drop things from planes these days, y’know. So. I made this place like a castle ’cause I’m the king of my little kingdom.”
“I would imagine you are.”
He pushed at the air. “Now, I’m not full of myself. I don’t have no big head or nothing. It’s a little kingdom, East St. Louis. But my ‘subjects’ are happy as clams. Taxes are low, city coffers overflowing with all kinds of revenue, and I keep the worst elements out. With the help of the local John Law. I’m mostly vending machines now, and I never put up with the dope trade. Sure, we run wide open in the entertainment districts. But drive around my town and see — streets in good repair, beautiful parks with no trash scattered around, grass at public buildings tended like a goddamn golf course. Good schools.”
Why was he telling me all this?
“It’s a fine place to raise a family, Nate... I’ll call you Nate, and you call me Buster. Okay?”
“Okay, Buster.”
“Why, there’s less street crime here than any other city its size in the whole damn country! And less than St. Louis itself! Real crime, I mean. I can see you wondering why I care about your opinion. Somebody in my position can’t be swayed by people who don’t understand what we are trying to accomplish for the community.”
I nodded.
Something sharp came into his tone. “You listen to me. I wouldn’t touch that Greenlease money with a ten-foot pole. When that kid was snatched, I told one and all, everybody around me, that it was the most stinking no-good thing a man could do, steal a kid. I got three of my own! And when that boy turned up dead...”
He crushed the cigar in a fist and flung it to the floor.
“...everybody in my world knew: I would strangle those who did it with my bare hands, my bare fucking hands! I made no secret of it, Nate.”
“I believe you, Buster.”
A slow nod of the fedora-topped head. “All right. Okay. Just so you know. And know this, too: nobody offered me that money. Nobody was dumb enough to. If Joe Costello got it, and some people say he did, he did not bring it to my attention. And I have stayed out of it because there is disagreement about such things.”