“Not perhaps,” I contradicted. “Well, something’s happened to a couple of your men — at least I assume they’re your men — and I wanted you to hear it straight from me.”
The Brother’s hint of a smile disappeared. “Go on.”
“I’ll start with day before yesterday — Saturday. Your driver — I don’t know his name — thought it would be good sport to whack me across the face, which he did.” I indicated the vestige of a bruise. “Then tonight, when I got off the streetcar from work, Marko sat in the surveillance car outside my place and started riding me. I called him a baboon, which pissed him off. The upshot was that I was in this saloon a few minutes later when Marko — he’d followed me there — came in and tried to drag me out. Said he was going to take me for a long ride, which isn’t hard to translate as the last ride I ever make.
“Well, some folks who I’d never seen in the saloon before didn’t take too kindly to this attitude of Marko’s and they cold-cocked him from behind. Then the guy I call the Driver because I don’t know his name came in looking for Marko with his automatic drawn and got the same treatment.”
“It appears they were careless,” the Brother observed impassively.
“Among other failings. Anyway, the reason I tore over here is to ask you not to take it out on the bar. Those people were just protecting me, and your boys were out of line all the way.”
He nodded grimly. “Unfortunately, Marko is a baboon. I would expect something like this from him. But the one that you call ‘the Driver,’ he has more sense than he apparently showed.”
“Yeah? Maybe, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for him to take that swipe at me the other day.”
The Brother drummed manicured fingernails on the polished surface of the streamlined bar. “What condition are they now in?”
“Your guys? I can’t say for sure, but they’re probably going to have king-sized headaches for several days. And when I left the saloon a few minutes ago to come here, the cops were on their way over.”
The smile crept back. “It will be a lesson well-learned,” the Brother said quietly. “Mr. Malek, you may not value my word, but others do. I say this: I am prepared to guarantee that neither of those men will ever set foot in that establishment again, wherever it is. And they will not get revenge against you, your friends, or the establishment.”
“Well, I appreciate that.”
“You should. And now, to ensure my guarantee, I want your word on something as well.”
“There’s always a catch, isn’t there?”
His smile broadened, then disappeared as if it had been erased. “We have discussed this matter before. May I assume that you continue to search for the killer of Lloyd Martindale?”
“Yeah... and still without success.”
“But you plan to continue?”
I raised my shoulders and turned my palms up. “Yes... if I don’t get myself fired first.”
He scowled. “For one who has your experience and your ability, that seems unlikely.”
“Don’t be too sure. But that’s my problem, not yours. Make your play.”
“It’s as I said to you before, Mr. Malek. If you discover the identity of the murderer, my organization wants to know before the police, and before it appears in your newspaper.”
“I still don’t get it,” I told him as frosted pilsener glasses of beer were placed on coasters in front of us by the bartender. “You’ve got your net out all over town, and way beyond. And it’s got to be a damn good net. Christ, you ought to be able to find out who knocked off Martindale a lot easier than I can.”
It was his turn to gesture with his shoulders. “To use your own words, don’t be too sure.”
“And you obviously don’t place much faith in the ability of the police to find the killer?”
Although he didn’t open his mouth or alter his expression, the Brother made a noise that actually sounded like a laugh, and I knew why. In the last two months, there had been at least nine mob killings in Chicago, most of them execution-style, and not one had been solved. (Business as usual in the city that Capone made infamous.) Despite this, the syndicate was upset because, or so the Brother intimated, they were being unfairly tagged with the Martindale rubout.
“Okay, so I keep looking, and if I learn something, I tell you first, right?” He nodded.
“And your men stay away from that saloon and my friends, right?” Another nod.
“One more thing,” I said as I got up to leave. “Am I still going to have a tail?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Mr. Malek,” he replied, adjusting the knot of his silk tie. “Good night.”
Augie Galan was still parked outside in his gleaming Lincoln Zephyr. “I was just about to come in. You okay?” he asked as we pulled away from the curb.
“Yeah, under the circumstances. I’m as okay as anybody who just made a deal with the devil.”
Galan looked over at me, rolling his eyes, and I didn’t blame him.
Chapter 20
The next day at Headquarters was blessedly uneventful — and I heard nothing from Bob Lee, who apparently had put things right with Bernice Martindale after I left his office. After work, I rode the Clark car one stop north of my apartment building, although I did not spot a mob car parked anywhere along the block. Either they had gotten sneakier or the Brother had ordered the surveillance dropped — which I doubted.
It was just past 6:30 when I walked into Kilkenny’s, surprisingly almost deserted except for a half dozen guys at the far end of the bar, none of whom I’d ever seen before. “Hey, where is everybody?” I asked the Killer, who wore a disgruntled expression.
“And where in Hades d’ya think they be, after last night’s little contretemps? They’ve all probably been scared away for a while. Police came in here maybe ten minutes after you left, and they took those two thugs away, both of ’em by this time moaning like mourners at an Irish funeral and holding their heads.
“The cops didn’t question us much,” he continued. “They just wondered who knocked them out, and I said it was me, with the baseball bat I keep behind the bar, which I showed to them. We all said we never saw the thugs before — which is the truth, of course — and that they just came in looking for trouble. One of the cops seemed to recognize the second guy who had walked in, the one Diz plunked just as he came through the door. Diz was hiding upstairs in the storeroom all the while, like I told him to. At least nothing about this got into the papers, so the only ones who know about it are the ones who were in here last night. That’s mostly regulars, so they’ll all be back, I hope. What was it all about, Snap?” he asked, softening the tone and lowering his voice. “You in some trouble with... them?”
“Damn, I’m sorry about what happened, Killer. It’s a long story, but I can tell you this much: They won’t be back in here, either of them. After Galan dropped me off at home last night, did he come back for Dean?”
“Yeah, and by then, the gendarmes were long gone with those goons and their headaches; it’s a wonder one of ’em wasn’t killed by those balls. As it is, they both probably have concussions. I told Diz it might be a good idea to stay away from here for a couple of days until things blew over, and — hey! — did you hear about this afternoon’s game?” He jerked a thumb toward the small radio on the back bar.
“No, how’d it go?”
The Killer slapped the top of the bar. “Friend, I’m about to tell you how it went. Diz shut down the Bees 3 to 1, went the distance. Gents broadcasting the game said he looked sharp, good control.”
“Well, we know there’s sure nothing wrong with his accuracy, judging by the two pitches he threw in here last night. But what about his speed? That fast ball still just a memory?”