After a pause, Kleinhans sent out a sigh I didn’t need a telephone for.
“You’re lucky you got me, Peters. Cops in Chicago don’t like jokes about bodies.”
“No joke,” I said. “He’s lying on my floor. According to his wallet, he’s Leonardo Bistolfi. You know him?”
“I know him. Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
I had exhausted everything I could do to keep busy. I knew what would happen as soon as I put the phone down, and it did. The tremor started in my fingers. If I didn’t do something, it would travel up my arms and into my legs. Then I’d start to sweat. If I didn’t stop it then, the next step would be to give up my breakfast. I’d seen corpses before, too many of them, but there is something about finding one in your closet that kicks the crap out of professional distance. A smart-ass voice not too deep inside my chest tried to say, “It could have been you. It could have been you.”
To drown out the voice and give my hands something to do, I sang Pinky Tomlin’s “The Love Bug Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out,” while I went through Bistolfi’s pockets and clothes again.
By the time I sang “and when he gets you you will sing and shout”, I had discovered that Leonardo Bistolfi bought his suit in Miami and had a thick ring of keys. A decorative metal disc on the key ring had the initials LVB on one side and the word “Fireside” in black enamel on the other. He had sixty-three cents in change, including an 1889 Indian head penny I was tempted to pocket for my nephew Dave who saved coins. I resisted temptation. It was easy. Besides a monogrammed white handkerchief in his jacket pocket and the wallet I’d already looked at, Bistolfi was empty.
I went through the wallet more carefully, but it told me nothing more. No membership cards. No notes. No numbers. No addresses, only Bistolfi’s address in care of Capone, Palm Island, Miami, Florida. I had succeeded in stilling the voice inside me and moved on to my rendition of Tomlin’s “What’s The Reason I’m Not Pleasing You?” Then my eyes fell on Leonardo’s bloody face. He was looking at me in surprise. I put the wallet back, washed my hands, and sat down to wait. My brain had stopped working. It needed a live human or two to get it running again.
Thirteen minutes later, Kleinhans and two uniformed cops were at the door. We all looked at the body for a while, with Kleinhans humming something I didn’t recognize. He nodded to the older of the cops, who moved to the phone. People were gathering outside the open door, so the second cop, who he called Rourke, went outside and closed the door.
“You hear Rourke out there yelling?” said Kleinhans softly as he kneeled.
“No,” I said. There was a hum of voices beyond the door.
“Rourke’s a yeller. If we can’t hear him, this room is the next best thing to soundproof. It’d have to be for someone to do this and not draw curious citizens like flies to Maxwell Street.”
The fat cop was talking on the phone behind us, but he kept his voice down so I only caught a few words. It didn’t take much to guess he was calling the Medical Examiner or Coroner or whatever they called it in Cook County.
“Chopper did that,” said Kleinhans. “Relatively clean. Short burst. I’d say someone who knows how to handle it. No needless extra shots. The walls are clean.”
“Maybe he was shot someplace else and brought here,” I suggested, popping another Bromo tablet and blowing my nose into a wad of toilet paper.
Kleinhans sat down in the only chair in the room. I sat on the bed. The cop on the phone kept talking.
“Nope,” said Kleinhans, pursing his lips and scratching his bulbous nose. “And you don’t think so either. According to the stuff we got on you last night from L.A., you were a cop. Maybe not much of a cop, but a cop. How would anyone get a bloody corpse like that up to the sixth floor of a downtown Chicago hotel?”
“A better question is why,” I said.
Kleinhans took his hat off, scratched his scalp like a nervous chimp and examined his fingernails to see what they had found. The cop hung up the phone and said, “They’re on the way.” Kleinhans rubbed his ear and nodded toward the door. The second cop left. I blew my nose.
“Better take care of that,” he said.
“I’m trying,” I said.
Kleinhans looked at the body for a few more seconds before speaking.
“Ever see our friend before?”
“Two days ago in Miami. He was keeping an eye on Capone for someone. Nitti, Guzik, or his brother Ralph. He didn’t say.”
“Must have come up by plane,” he said. “You working some kind of deal with him?”
“Am I going to need a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so,” said Kleinhans, getting up. There was a knock at the door. He opened it and let the fat cop in. They talked without me for a few seconds.
“We’ve got to get out of here for awhile,” Kleinhans said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “State Street district is a few minutes away. Let’s ride down there and talk.”
He was pretty good. He made it all sound like a friendly request. Doctor and patient. Dad and son. In Los Angeles I might have tested him, pulled back to see how mean he could get, but it wasn’t in me. The cold in my head and outside the hotel were getting to me as much as Leonardo was.
“Right,” I said. “Know why he had that circle of white hair on his head?”
“Beats me,” said Kleinhans.
We were at the State Street Station in about five minutes and in an office Kleinhans borrowed from a lieutenant who was home with the flu. My brother’s a cop with an office. My brother’s office was small and almost as old as California. There was no room in it to run if Phil lost his temper, which was about eighty percent of the time. The Chicago lieutenant’s office was a big cold barn with bare wooden floors and an echo. It looked as if someone years earlier had moved all the furniture into the middle of the room to get ready to paint the walls and then forgot about it.
“Tell your story,” said Kleinhans, getting comfortable behind the desk with a cup of coffee. He gave me one, too. We both kept our coats on. I started my tale in Miami, worked my way forward to include my battle with the orange-shirted kid in the train, and made it up to Leonardo in the closet.
Kleinhans was looking out of the window at a passing streetcar when I finished.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I don’t know. Someone went to a lot of trouble to dump the body on me. Maybe it’s a warning. It might be a threat or a screwy accident. Maybe Leonardo decided I got something from Capone or I was on my way to something. Maybe he called Chicago for orders. Maybe he called the kid in Jacksonville and told him to grab my stuff so they could check me out. Maybe Leonardo decided to come here and stop me, but someone stopped him instead.”
“And maybe elephants piss nickels,” sighed Kleinhans, wrinkling his brow for a massive belch that never came.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re lying,” he said, finishing his coffee. “You don’t have a chopper and you’d be one fool to kill a guy in your hotel room and call the cops. It smells like a gang job with you in the middle, but I don’t see how or why. I’ve seen a lot of them put away like Leonardo. Thompson submachine gun bootlegged from a crooked Army supply sergeant somewhere or stolen by a mob kid who spent a few years in the army. Bullets are easy to get. Standard forty-five in ACP rimless cartridges, basic U.S. Army pistol round since 1900. The ammunition is held in a circular drum. Fifty rounds. Our expert at the LaSalle didn’t need more than ten or twelve. He had a pro finger. Those things kick, but they’re nice and easy to work. Just pull back the bolt, push the trigger, the bolt comes forward, throws a round into the magazine and pushes it into the chamber. The round pops into the chamber, drops in place. The firing pin on the bolt crushes the cap, and the bullet flies. The bolt kicks back from the shot, and another slug falls in the chamber. Two or three spit out every second. Takes a soft touch and strong hand to handle a chopper without making a mess.”