Another time, at his urging, we spent almost a whole day riding Elevated trains. We rode all the way north through Uptown and Rogers Park to Evanston and then back down on the Howard line and then out to Oak Park on the Lake Street train and back downtown and over to the Stock Yards on that branch, and he never got tired of it.
“I must have fallen asleep a half dozen times today on those old rattlers,” I told Norma after I dropped Peter off following our El marathon. He had gone to his room and we were standing in the living room. “I’ve never seen the roofs of so damn many apartment buildings and houses in my life. Or so many back porches with long johns hanging on their clotheslines.”
She laughed sympathetically. “Well, it’s clear from his face that he had a wonderful day. That was awfully nice of you to do.”
“Yeah, well I owe him a lot more days like that. There were too many times...” I didn’t have to finish the sentence, and she didn’t respond. “I’m trying to do better,” I said.
“I know you are,” she replied softly. “And he appreciates it; he looks forward to your times together, and he talks about them for days afterward.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Do you appreciate it, too?”
“Well, of course I do, Steve. I want to see him happy, and I think it’s terribly important that he have a close relationship with you.”
“So do I. Say, how about you and I have dinner one of these days, Norma? Maybe next weekend?”
“Um, I don’t think so... not right now, anyway,” she said, her voice still soft, maybe to keep Peter from hearing.
“Oh? Why not?”
“Well, I just don’t think it would be a very good idea right now, Steve.”
“You’re seeing someone?”
She nodded, looking away. “I’m sure Peter has probably said something about him.”
“He has, just a little. You like him quite a bit?”
“Yes, quite a bit.”
It was awkward, being in the living room of what used to be my home. I had never felt less like I belonged than at that moment.
On a Wednesday evening in mid-March, I swung off the Clark Street car and into a battering downpour, opened my umbrella, and paused on the sidewalk, wondering whether to go up to my apartment and fix dinner or stop first at Kilkenny’s for a beer or two. I decided on the Killer’s and turned north on Clark, angling the umbrella into the wind and the almost horizontal sheets of rain.
I didn’t notice the long car that was idling at the curb until I’d pulled even with it and a disembodied voice came from the rolled-down back seat window. “Hey, Mr. Malek.”
“Huh?” I turned to look and as I did, someone grabbed my arm from behind and moved me effortlessly toward the sedan.
“What the hell—”
“Easy there, Mac.” It was a second voice, this one belonging to whoever was doing the shoving. “Just get in and everything will be jake.” He grabbed my umbrella and pushed my head down, forcing me into the back seat, all in one fluid motion.
I found myself inside a large sedan, probably a Cadillac or its slightly smaller sibling, a LaSalle. On my left, his face partially obscured by a fedora and the darkness, was the one who had called my name. On my right, the shover, also wearing a fedora. And in the front seat was a third fedora, on the head of the figure behind the wheel.
“Mr. Malek, we need to talk to you,” said the man on my left, his voice scratchy and high-pitched, like he’d been shouting a lot. “Mel, drive around for awhile.”
“Just what is it that we’re talking about?” I asked in the toughest tone I could muster as the car eased from the curb and moved into the flow of traffic north on Clark.
“We talk, you listen,” Mr. Left said firmly, but with no trace of hostility. “Mr. Capone wanted us to see you. It’s about the unfortunate death of Mr. Lloyd Martindale.”
“What to you mean, Capone? He’s out in—”
I was cut short by a hard jab in the ribs on my right. “Shaddup and listen,” gruffed Mr. Right.
“Don’t have to get rough with him,” Mr. Left remonstrated with his partner as the car turned west on Addison at the Wrigley Field corner. “Now, as I started to tell you, Mr. Capone requested we talk to you. He has a message: It is that the organization had nothing to do with the Martindale death, no matter what the papers and the cops and the politicians say.”
I was breathing a little easier now, but still trying hard not to let my fear show.
“How can Capone — ugh!” I was cut short again by another painful jab to my right side.
“That’s enough, Monk!” Mr. Left said sharply. “Let him talk. Go on, Mr. Malek.”
I dropped my right arm, protecting my rib cage. “How can Capone know who killed Martindale? He’s been holed up out there at Alcatraz for almost four years now.”
My answer came from the left. “Listen good, Mr. Malek. He knows everything that happens on the outside.”
“All right, then. Why did Capone want to tell me, of all people, that Martindale wasn’t a... mob hit? And how do I even know that you really are messengers on this? And third, if this wasn’t a mob hit, just who did it?”
“You ask a lot of questions, just like Mr. Capone said you would. First, the reason he wanted you to know was that he says you’re a straight-shooter and you’re fair. Second, he said to remind you that when you talked to him down in Atlanta, you were wearing a light gray suit and a red-and-blue striped tie, and that you both ate beef and boiled potatoes and peas and apple pie. And that when he asked you how the Cubs were going to do that year, you said no better than third, that the Giants and the Cardinals were just too good for them. You remember?”
“Yes-s-s.”
“Good. Okay, and third, he doesn’t know who got Martindale, nobody does... yet. And he’s mad as hell that we — that the wrong people — are getting the blame on this.”
“So, what’s the purpose in telling me?” I asked as the driver wheeled back south on Ashland.
Mr. Left made a growling noise, down deep in his throat. “He says you’re a damned good reporter. Me, I wouldn’t know, because I think you’re all a bunch of wise-assed shits, and not very frigging smart on top of it. But he figured maybe you could find out who did the job.”
And in the process clear the “good name” of the mob, I thought but had the sense not to mouth. I took a safer tack: “So you’ve got no clues as to where I should start?”
“We got nothing. But now you’re ahead of the pack, because you know who didn’t do the job.”
Maybe, I thought. Or maybe I was being fed a line of bull, although if that were the case, I didn’t see the point of it. “I understand Alphonse is a pretty sick boy,” I said, recalling a piece that I’d read a few weeks back in the Trib about how Capone was diagnosed with an advanced case of syphilis out at Alcatraz. That earned me another jab in the ribs on my right ride, and this time Mr. Left didn’t voice an objection.
“Mr. Capone is just fine,” he snarled. “Just fine. Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, including your own rag.”
As we were having our stimulating conversation, the driver had turned east on Fullerton and then north on Clark. When we got to the spot where I’d been picked up, the car slid to the curb. “Mr. Malek, this meeting never happened, did it?” Mr. Left asked.