True Detective Page 14

  I smiled at him, a bit charmed in spite of myself. "Some of my best friends are pickpockets. And as long as they sit across the booth from me, we stay friends."

  "I understand you're a private dick now."

  "That's right."

  "Barney says you got an office upstairs."

  "That's right."

  "How 'bout giving me a tour? Who knows. I might have to play a private dick in a movie someday."

  "Sure. You never know. Barney? You coming?"

  Raft got out of the booth. "I'm expecting a phone call. Barney. Would you mind sticking around, in case it comes in? I'm on suspension from Paramount, at the moment, and my agent's Dying to work something out for me."

  Barney shrugged, smiled. "Sure. See you guys in a few minutes."

  Raft climbed into a black formfitting coat with a velvet collar, pulled a pearl-gray hat down over one eye. With his high trousers, spats, and pointy shoes as shiny as his hair, he seemed a movie star's idea of a gangster- or was it the other way around?

  He followed me through the deli out onto the street and up the stairs to my office. He hung his coat and hat on the tree by the door, and took a seat across from my desk before I'd even got behind it. It was clear this was more than a movie star wanting to meet a real private detective for research purposes; besides. I had a feeling George Raft was one Hollywood actor who didn't need help researching underworld-related matters.

  I got behind the desk; Raft was eyeing the box against the wall. "That looks like a Murphy bed," he said

  "I'm supposed to be the detective." I said.

  He smiled: wider, more at ease. "I spent years sleeping in worse places than my own office… lofts, pool halls, subways. Times are tough. You're lucky to be in business."

  "You're kind of lucky yourself."

  He got a silver cigarette case out from his inside coat pocket. "You said it. You mind?" I nodded I didn't, and he lit up a long cigarette with a bullet-shaped silver lighter.

  "What's this really about, Raft?"

  "Let's keep it friendly. Let's keep it 'George' and 'Nate,' all right?"

  "Sure, George."

  "I get the feeling, from that remark about Camera and Madden, that you know a little about me."

  "I know you used to be a bootlegger for Madden, and that he helped pull some strings to get you started in Hollywood."

  Raft shrugged. "That's no secret. The columnists have had hold of that, and it hasn't hurt me. Nobody thinks a bootlegger's a bad guy; nobody who drinks, that is."

  "You don't drink."

  "I grew up in Hell's Kitchen. It was no fuckin' picnic. I was in a street gang with Owney. You woulda been too, if you grew up where I did. He went his way. I went mine. I was never a hood, really. I used to see them, though, when I was sitting 'round the dance halls. Sharp young hoods in candy-stripe silk shirts, flashing their roll. Was I green with envy. They had money to spend and their pick of the skirts, and I wanted a candy-stripe silk shirt so bad I was ready to pull one off the first guy I could catch alone in a dark alley."

  "But instead you became a movie star."

  Raft's hooded eyes blinked a few times, his face impassive. "I'm no saint. I was a pickpocket, a shoplifter. Then I found a trade- dancing. I got into taxi-dancing, I worked up a Charleston act, eventually. Did some vaudeville. Owney was in Sing Sing through all this, but when he got out, after Prohibition came in, he helped me climb. I worked the El Fey with Texas Guinan, and I was doing a little bootlegging on the side, for Owney. And Owney helped me make it to Broadway, and Hollywood. And I ain't ashamed of that. What are friends for?"

  "This is all real fascinating," I said, "but what the hell does it have to do with me?"

  Raft inhaled on the cigarette. Blew smoke out, like a movie tough guy. "This office. Barney set you up, right? Did a friend a favor?"

  "Yeah. Right. So?"

  "Friends do favors for friends. Sometimes you even do favors for friends of friends."

  "You ought to sew that on a sampler. George."

  "Don't be testy. I didn't come 'round here to look up Barney Ross; that was just for appearance sake. though Barney don't know that. It's you I come to see."

  "Why, for Christ's sake?"

  "I used to work at a place called the Club Durant. Jimmy Durante's place. There was a small garage below street level, connected with the club, that was the largest floating crap game in New York. That's where I got to know Al Brown."

  "Al Brown."

  "I saw him later, at El Fey's. And he was a good friend of Owney's. too. They were business associates."

  "Oh. That 'Al Brown.'"

  "Yeah. That one. I was in New York last week, and a friend asked me to do a favor for Al Brown."

  "Why you?"

  "It had to be somebody neutral. Somebody who could come around and see you without anybody getting any ideas. But somebody important enough for you to take it seriously."

  "What does he want?"

  "He wants you to come see him." Raft reached in his other inside pocket, withdrew a flat sealed envelope. Handed it to me.

  Inside was a thousand dollars in hundreds, a round-trip ticket to Atlanta on the Dixie Express, and credentials identifying me as an attorney with the Louis Piquett firm.

  "These tickets are for Monday," I said.

  "That's right. I'm told if there's a conflict, they can be switched to any other day next week. No pressure,

  Nate."

  "Do you know what this is about?"

  Raft got up. "I don't want to know what this is about. But I can guess. If it doesn't have something to do with another friend of mine, Frank Nitti, getting shot up by your mayor's favorite cops, I'll go back to taxi-dancing."

  I got up. I extended my hand to Raft, who smiled tightly and shook it. "Sorry I was a wiseass," I said.

  "I take it you'll do it."

  "Why not? A grand is a nice retainer for a guy that sleeps in his office. And it isn't every day that George Raft stops by to play middleman."

  "It isn't every day you take on Al Capone for a client," Raft said, and we went down and spent some time with Barney.

  I took a sleeper to Atlanta, catching the Dixie Express at Dearborn Station early Monday afternoon; the next morning I was having breakfast in the dining car, finishing my last piece of toast as the train steamed into Atlanta's Union Station at half past eight. I caught a taxi, my topcoat slung over my arm (it was sunny, about sixty degrees not a Chicagoan's idea of a winter morning), and waited till I was in the back of the cab before I said, "McDonough Road and South Boulevard."

  The cabbie turned and looked at me, a skinny guy with a Harry Langdon deadpan and a drawl you could hang a hammock on. He said, "Mister, that's the pen."

  "Right," I said, and gave him a sawbuck. "This should take about an hour round trip, and you get another one when it's over."

  He smiled, shrugged, left the flag on the meter up, drove the four miles to the address I'd given him.

  He pulled over by the side of the road, shut the motor off, and waited, as I got out and approached the small barrack from which a blue-uniformed, armed guard came out and asked me my business here. I told him, and he passed me on, and I moved down a walk to a second barrack in front of the barred gates stuck in the midst of a thirty-foot gray granite wall. A second uniformed guard, carrying a Winchester rifle, asked me the same thing as the previous one, and asked if I had a camera or a weapon. I said I had neither.

  At the gate in the massive wall, its stones haphazardly cut and set, no doubt reflecting the attitude of the labor that had done the job, a guard looked at me. through the bars, and asked me my business here, for the third time. And one side of the gate groaned open.

  Inside the massive granite main building, I was led by a guard to a little desk in the big main corridor; at the end of the corridor was a steel gate, and guards with clubs were watching as blue-denim-garbed inmates shuffled hurriedly along. I was given a small blank sheet of paper on which I was to put the name of the pr
isoner I wished to see, which I did- ALPHONSE CAPONE- and was told to give my own name and address, and reason for calling upon said inmate. I listed my real name, but gave the address of the Piquett law firm, and stated my business as legal representative. This wasn't a lie, as I was representing that firm, but it did tend to give the impression that I was an attorney.

  The guard passed my slip of paper to a second guard, who relayed it to a convict runner stationed in the corridor beyond the second gate, who was sent to fetch the prisoner. The guard and I talked about the differences between Chicago and Atlanta weather, the guard coming to the conclusion that he was glad he lived in Atlanta, and me coming to the silently held conclusion that I was glad I wasn't a prison guard. When five minutes had passed, the guard led me to a nearby reception room about the size of my office, and had me sit on the near side of a long, bare wooden table. I could see a partition that ran underneath the table to the floor- to prevent the passing of items, I presumed- but there was no wire mesh separating the two sides of the table. The walls were gray stone with the windows high and barred. Other than the table, the room was completely bare.

  Five minutes later a guard with a club escorted a prisoner into the room: the prisoner was about five ten, weighed perhaps two hundred pounds, and had a nice tan. His thinning dark brown hair was prison-short, his eyebrows bushy and his gray eyes piercing, surrounded by dark circles that showed even against the tan; they were the kind of dark circles that come from genes, not lack of sleep. The head was shaped like a squeezed pumpkin, and along the left cheek were two scars, a long and a short, the latter deep and pronounced; under the jaw. riding a nearly nonexistent neck, was a third scar. Without the guard, he came around the table and sat across from me; with a thick-lipped smile that showed no teeth, he nodded at me, fishing in the pocket of his faded denim jacket for something. It was a cigar; a thick, six-inch one. He fished some more for some matches and lit it. Without saying anything to me, by gesturing with the cigar, he asked if I cared for one, and I shook my head no. He looked over at the guard with a benevolent smile and nodded, and the guard left the room. And Al Capone and I were alone.

  He extended his hand to me, and the smile increased, showing some teeth. I shook the hand; Capone had slimmed down, but his hand was still pudgy, soft. His grip wasn't.

  "So you're Heller," he said.

  "I'm Heller."

  "We never met, but you did me a favor once."

  I wasn't sure I knew what he meant. I said so.

  "No matter, no matter. Sure you don't want one of these?" He waved the cigar; it smelled pretty good. "Two bucks. Havana."

  "No thanks."

  He leaned on one hand, cigar in his lips, cocked upward. "It ain't so bad in here, you know. This is the first rest I had since Philly."

  He was referring to the year stretch he'd done after he was picked up a few years ago in Philadelphia on a gun-carrying charge. Speculation was he'd sought the rap for a cooling-off period, his old mentor Torrio, who was putting the national crime combine together, having advised him to lay low in the wake of the bad publicity of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, among other excesses.

  "Still, they screwed me," he said philosophically. "Eleven years the fuckers gave me, when they promised me a couple years tops, if I gave 'em their guilty plea. Those bastards, their word means nothin' to em."

  "It looks like Atlanta's agreeing with you."

  He shrugged, smiled some more. "It's the tennis. Exercise and sun. It's okay. Be nice if there was some women in here, but what the hell, you can't have it all. You know Rusty Rudensky?"

  "No."

  "Good little safecracker. Did some work for me years 'n' years ago. Turned out to be one of my cellmates. I'm in with seven other guys, in case you think this is the fuckin' Ritz. But Rusty's okay. He knew the ropes, fixed it up so a trusty pal of his who drives a supply truck can smuggle cash into me. That buys privileges with guards you don't think we're alone just 'cause you're supposed to be my mouthpiece, do you?- and it helps keep me protected. You know, there's a lot of little shots want to take a shot at a big shot. So I got cons playin' bodyguard for me in here, just like Frankie Rio in the old days."

  A wave of something went over his face; the smile went. Referring to life on the outside as "the old days" was what did it.

  "I'm doin' all right. Heller." he said, as if trying to convince himself. "They got me workin' in a shoe factory, cobblin' shoes, can you buy it? Eight hours a day for seven bucks a month. Hell of a deal, me with a million bucks in half a dozen banks. Sitlin' in a hole like this."

  I didn't say anything; I still didn't know what I was doing here, but it was his nickel. His grand, actually.

  "I could be in Florida right now," he mused, looking up, like Florida was heaven. "I got a wife and a boy at Palm Island, ya know. I idolize that boy; he's gonna be goddamn president. If I could be with him and his momma in Florida, I'd be the happiest man in the world. God, I'd love to lay under those palm trees. God, I'd love to be at Hialeah followin' the ponies."

  I'll be damned if I didn't feel a little sorry for him, but then he pointed a finger and the cigar in his mouth right at me, like two gun barrels, and his beady gray eyes in their dark sockets bored into me, like I'd done something to him.

  "And your pal Ness and those other dumb bastard feds go and nail me on a bookkeeping rap! A damn tax rap, and now I'm in here, and the rest of'em are out there splitting up what I built!"

  The beady eyes glowed with something that was scary; the fat head seemed like a skull somehow- a skull with eyes.

  "They're going to flick it up. Heller. They're gonna piss away what I made, what I… created. If I don't stop 'em." This was said with religious certainty.

  I ventured a question. "Who. Mr. Capone?"

  "Let's make it 'Al,' okay? What's your first name? Nate? Nate. Nate, Frank's a good boy, he really is. He's family. But he just don't got what it takes to fill my chair."

  Nitti. He meant Nitti.

  "Now, I know all about what you've been through. I know you got sucked into hitting Frank with Cermak's goons. I can tell you without a doubt that Frank don't hold nothin' against you. You were honorable, quittin' that scumbag police force. Bunch of fuckin' crooks. I hate 'em damn near as much as the politicians, two-faced fuckin crooks. I thought Cermak was different, but he's like the rest. Just another politician spending half his time covering up so the public don't see he's a thief."

  "Mr. Capone"

  "Al."

  "Al. What am I doing here?"

  "You're here 'cause I need somebody I can trust. You showed yourself to be honorable, and I ain't forgetting the time you helped me out in the past, though maybe you didn't know it was me you was helping. I can't call on any of my boys, 'cause I gotta handle this… from the outside. And I don't want to mix my brothers in. if I can help it. 'Cause I don't want to go up against Frank, toe to toe. 'cause, what the hell, he's out there, and I'm in here, and how the hell we gonna go toe to toe with bars in between."

  "I don't understand."

  "Understand this: I'm gonna be out of this cage before the year's over. I'm gonna be sitting in my chair, not Frank. But it's gonna take time. I shelled out two hundred grand and then some to a big shot in Washington who's gonna open these gates up wide, right from D.C. And I got five of the biggest attorneys in the land getting me ready for being sprung. But it'll take time, and in the meantime, I don't want Frank and the rest of them bums flushing my empire down the shithole."

  "What makes you think they're doing that?"

  He shook his head, sadly; puffed the pool-cue cigar. "I thought Frank was smarter than this. No kiddin', I did. I thought he learned from my mistakes; I thought he learned my lessons. You can't stir up the heat. That's the one mistake I made, and I learned to correct it, but too late, I guess, or otherwise I wouldn't be sitting in here. I stirred up the heat. I put too many bodies on the front page. People want candy on Valentine's Day, not headlines."

  I said noth
ing.

  "I tried to play peacemaker, you know. All along. I done that. Just last year, 'bout this time, when I was waiting in the Cook County Jail, they brought that crazy bastard Dutch Schultz and Charlie Luciano in to see me. They been feuding. It was Schultz's fault, horning in on Charlie's territory. The dumb bastard Schultz wouldn't listen, and I didn't end up gettin' nowhere, but the point is I tried, my natural bent's to be a peacemaker. Only how do you make peace with Dutch Schultz? If I'd had him outside, I'd've shoved a gun in his guts."

  Capone's cigar, in one pudgy hand now, had gone out; he lit it again, and I sat patiently waiting to see where I fit in.

  "When I heard what Frank's planning, I sent word to him: don't do this, Frank. You'll stir up the heat, Frank. You can find a better way, Frank. And you know what he says, what the lawyer says he says? He says, you're inside, Al, and I'm out, and, all due respect, I gotta trust my judgment. I'm outside, he says, and I'm handling things. That's what he says."

  There was a great sadness, greater frustration, in his face.

  Then he smiled, a small, private smile.

  "You know what Frank's planning?" he asked innocently.

  "No."

  "Guess."

  •I- I can't."

  "Go on. Guess."

  "Gang war? He hit Newberry the other day."

  Capone grinned, said, "And about time! That bum jumped from side to side whenever the wind blew his way. He shoulda got his February fourteenth '29. No, you can kill somebody, from time to time, if you don't do it on no big scale, and you don't make a habit of it. But there's some people you just can't hit."

  "Like who?"

  "Like the mayor of a big city."

  "What?"

  "Cermak. Frank's gonna hit Cermak."

  He leaned back and puffed his cigar and smiled at me, quietly, amused by the look on my face no doubt.

  "You're kidding," I said.

  "Yeah, I'm kidding. I paid you a grand and brought you down on the Express to tell you my life story."

  I thought about it. "I saw Nitti in the hospital." I said. "He hates Cermak, all right. I guess it's possible he'd do something like that… but it seems- "