Max Collins - Target Lancer

Softly I said, “I mean Nicoletti and DeStefano.”

He shrugged. “So?”

“So I get the message.”

He sipped Smirnoff. “I just sent a couple of the fellas over to give you a lift, is all.”

“The two most ruthless killers in town, is all, the top whack guy and the biggest whack job. Both as well known for torturing people as for putting them out of their misery.”

He smiled, displaying no teeth, just puckish amusement. “All right. So it was a message of sorts.”

“A warning. That you could send those two animals again, and not just for chauffeur service. I almost shot the bastards, John. They won’t tell you, but I had the drop on them for five fucking minutes while Nicoletti played nice.”

Now the toothsome dazzler of a smile came out. “I’ll bet Sam didn’t.”

“No, he just giggled like a schoolgirl. A cop told me that’s what he did when they questioned him about murdering his brother. Nice crowd you run with, John.”

A tiny shrug of shoulders almost as broad as Nicoletti’s. “We swim in dangerous waters, Nate, you know that. Sometimes it pays to bring your own sharks along. Trained ones. You know, domesticated.”

“DeStefano is about as domesticated as a rabid mountain lion. So, you can probably have me killed if you feel like it. Okay. That’s the threat. What’s the point?”

He called the waiter over and ordered up another Smirnoff. I was still nursing the rum cooler.

“You ran into Jack Ruby the other night,” Rosselli said.

Did he mean at the 606 Club? Or the Silver Frolics? I couldn’t be sure.

So I said, “You mean, at that strip joint.”

“Yeah. Man, I hope that Wilson character don’t close it down. The Frolics is the only decent tits-and-ass palace in Chicago, should you want to take some business associate somewhere classy.”

Okay. So he was referring to my more recent conversation with Ruby.

His eyebrows raised and his voice took on an avuncular tone. “Nate, you got kind of rough with him, I hear.”

“I slapped him a couple times, but only after he threw a punch at me. Why, is he a friend of yours?”

That could have been taken two ways: a made Cosa Nostra guy; or … a friend.

“He’s one of our boys,” Rosselli said, with a flip of the other diamond-heavy hand. “Small fry, not even a soldier, just a … what do the spooks say? Asset.”

That CIA jargon, coming from Rosselli, was a little disconcerting. Not as disconcerting as having Chuckie and Mad Sam show up for you at your house; but disconcerting enough.

“So he threw a punch,” I said, shrugging, “and I slapped him. My read was, he’s a scrapper, and better to embarrass him than start a goddamn brouhaha.”

Rosselli was nodding. “That was probably wise. He’s an emotional little firecracker. He left this morning, by the way-back in Dallas by now. I mention him only because of this embarrassment with your client. The press agent from Milwaukee?”

The “embarrassment” was apparently Tom Ellison’s murder.

He spoke softly, his mellow voice soothing, friendly. “Listen, I’m aware he come to you for help, because of that money he had to pass along. You played bodyguard and that was that. Ruby being there, recognized by you, that maybe made somebody think a simple little handoff got turned into something … complicated.”

This was an admission that Tom indeed had become a loose end that got tied off.

“Nothing was complicated,” I said, “till somebody stabbed Tom Ellison in his hotel room.”

“I understand the Chicago PD says it was a hooker done it, or maybe some bar pickup. A bedroom boost that got out of hand.”

“Could be that.”

“But you don’t think so. Are you poking around because this Elliot was your friend?”

“Ellison, and no, John, I’m looking into it because the widow hired me to.”

The blue-gray eyes were narrow. “And just how are you poking around?”

His fresh Smirnoff on ice arrived.

“I’m not seeing how this is your business, John.”

“Humor me. I take an interest in my friends, Nate, particularly friends I’m involved with in, you know, various endeavors.”

I took that to mean Operation Mongoose.

“We’re looking into the victim’s private life,” I said, “and his business life, in Milwaukee mostly.”

“What have you turned up?”

I shook my head. “Too early. I may get a report tomorrow. We did some checking at the Pick, and some other hotels, to see if there’s a robbery ring using a female shill. Nothing on that yet, either.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sipped more Smirnoff. “I don’t see any problem with any of that.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Let it play out, and then tell the widow that you’ve done everything you could, send her a bill, and go find yourself other clients.”

“I would do that anyway, John. For a minute I thought you were saying I shouldn’t look into this killing.”

His gaze was thoughtful now. “No, I think you should. The police are as usual too hasty in their thinking, and you have a widow with her doubts … let’s assuage her.”

He did come up with the occasional five-buck word. Too much time in Hollywood.

“Then I don’t see what you’re asking,” I said, but really I did. “And I don’t know why you would send Dracula and Frankenstein over to see me, unless maybe you just dig Halloween.”

But really I did.

Rosselli said, “I don’t want you, and I don’t want any of your people, looking into anything having to do with Jimmy’s connection to him.”

He meant Hoffa’s connection to Ellison, of course.

“And,” the Silver Fox went on, “no digging whatsoever into anything related to the kind of business dealings that I am engaged in. And Mooney.”

The business dealings meant anything Outfit, and Mooney meant Giancana, the man he answered to.

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said.

“Good. Because the ramifications, they would stink on ice. And I don’t mean to threaten. To my knowledge, nobody thinks of you as a loose end, and won’t unless you start acting like one. And maybe I should apologize for insulting your intelligence by sending Chuckie and Sam around, to get your attention.”

“Well, they got it.”

“Just the same, I do apologize. The thing is, this could come back on us. And by us, I mean us … as in me and you and people we deal with. Jack Ruby, in particular. That envelope. You don’t want to know what that was about. Maybe I don’t even know what it was about. But that’s a door you cannot fucking open.”

“Okay,” I said.

I hadn’t asked “Why,” but he answered that question anyway: “It just might touch on a certain operation, Nate, a snake-killer-type operation? And we don’t want any of our connections to those kind of activities getting public scrutiny. Understood?”

“Sure.”

“Then we’re in agreement?”

“Yeah. I’ll let the Ellison investigation die a natural death.”

“You do that, and maybe you’ll be the one handed the next envelope of cash. How would you like that?”

What I would have liked was never sitting down again with the fucking likes of Johnny Rosselli. Years and years of having to deal with these Outfit psychopaths was wearing me the fuck down, and never seeing any of them again was my fondest desire.

“That would be nice,” I said.

His chicken cacciatore arrived. It smelled fantastic, but right now that marinara sauce reminded me a little too much of blood, draped as it was over dead chicken.

He asked, “I wish you would join me. Just have some minestrone soup. That won’t spoil your supper.”