Max Collins - Target Lancer

“No thanks, John.”

He began to eat. His manners weren’t bad. No speaking with his mouth full, and frequent pauses to dab off red sauce with his white napkin.

“Nate, I can give you some nice reassurance, in the middle of this awkward unpleasantness tonight. I can tell you that there’s a change coming. Everything that you helped put in motion on our Miami trip, there at the Fontainebleau, it’s all coming to fruition. Great fucking things are coming, and you made it possible.”

I finished my rum cooler.

“That sounds swell,” I said. “But I do have to make one small point.”

“What’s that?”

“If Chuckie or Mad Sam show up on my doorstep again-alone or separate-I’ll just fucking shoot them. And whoever sent them. I may not be as cold-blooded as Nicoletti, or as screwy as Mad Sam, but people who cross me have been known to not be around anymore.”

That didn’t anger him. “You do have that reputation. But, Nate, remember … we are not adversaries. We are in this together. And if you don’t like this shit? May I remind you? You called me .”

Yes I had.

Goddamnit.

On my way out, I waved to Chuckie and Mad Sam, who were standing at the bar. Sam grinned and waved and Chuckie nodded. I lingered outside for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if the pair would come out to follow me. They didn’t.

Which was a relief, because had they done so, there might have been a gunfight, after all.

And as I drove back to Old Town, despite all the provocative and intimidating things Rosselli had said, all I could think of was a point I’d been careful never to raise with him.

That Mad Sam’s renowned weapon of choice was an ice pick, and that he would be plenty strong enough to pierce a guy’s sternum with one.

Friday, November 1, 1963

Sitting surveillance on a street as busy as Division has its hazards, not the least of which is finding a decent goddamn parking place. Though it wasn’t ideal, each team watching that Victorian rooming house between the drugstore and the record shop was sharing the same spot, vacating it when each new team showed up. And feeding the same damn meter.

Eben Boldt and I, having taken the first shift yesterday afternoon, were taking this next afternoon shift as well. We were in a different Secret Service vehicle today, so as not to repeat ourselves-a navy-blue ’62 Chrysler-and had traded in suits for casual attire, zippered Windbreakers, sport shirts, chinos, sneakers. I’d skipped shaving today, in case we ever moved from vehicular surveillance to on foot. In the latter instance, looking somewhat scruffy could be useful.

We came on at two P.M., and the team we spelled said the two Cubans hadn’t come out yet today. The team before them saw the subjects enter the rooming house at one A.M., after a night of bar-hopping in the neighborhood, reported by the team before that. The night on the town did not involve the two white subjects, unseen as yet anywhere except on those Justice Department surveillance photos.

I was behind the wheel. Eben was watching the rooming house perhaps a little too intently.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re a chocolate guy in a vanilla part of town. Don’t advertise you’re casing that place. Somebody might call a cop.”

He frowned over at me in irritation, then thought it over. “Good point. Maybe I should check around back.”

I shook my head. “Their car’s in front. We checked that alley yesterday and there’s nowhere to park behind there, without blocking the way. Sit tight. Or, anyway … sit loose.”

“Okay, Nate.”

Here I was in my late fifties, successful, even relatively famous, pulling down high five figures (after expenses), owner of a detective agency with offices in three major cities, with money in the bank, a town house in Old Town, all my hair, all my teeth, and no medical problems except a few lingering scraps of shrapnel from bullets in various fleshy parts of my anatomy. What the hell was I doing at this late date sitting surveillance?

On the other hand, the President of these United States was due in town in twenty hours, and waiting for him was an unofficial reception committee of assorted malcontents with high-power rifles. So I would just have to put up with the indignity.

Last night, after I got back from Agostino’s, Helen was a wreck, anxious as hell, flying into tears when I stepped through the door of the downstairs apartment. She kissed me and kissed me and kissed me some more, and pulled me down to the carpet where suddenly my underwear and pants were around my ankles, her dress pulled up and her panties pulled down, and we were screwing there, rug burn be damned, and it was frantic and quick and intense, and the best time I’d had all week.

We were both too old to be embarrassed about such impulsive behavior, but we did take time to pull ourselves together. We shared a shower upstairs, purely cleansing, put on fresh clothes, and made our way to the Erie Cafe on Wells. We’d discussed Riccardo’s, but after Agostino’s and Johnny Rosselli, I was no longer in the mood for Italian.

Helen and I ordered the Erie Cafe house specialty-a seven-inch-thick broiled steak with their special steak sauce. Rare, which we would share.

“Those men,” Helen said, “they looked … awful. That one looked like the wild man from Borneo escaped from a circus.”

This was the first she’d directly mentioned Chuckie and Mad Sam. I explained that the gentleman who’d summoned me had sent them to make a point, and that everything was fine now.

Her head tilted, and her gray-blue eyes took on a sad tinge. “Will you always have to deal with those kind of people in your work?”

“Probably till I retire. You deal with a lot of them, yourself.”

She shrugged. “What can I do? They own the venues, and pay me to share my talents. I suppose in a way the same is true with you.”

“I try not to work for them.”

“Will you ever?”

“What, work for them again?”

“Retire, one of these days? As Sophie Tucker puts it.”

“I think so. I’m feeling like I’ve about had all the fun I can stand. I’ll probably go to sixty-five or so. I’m hoping when Sam gets out of college, he’ll take over the business. If he wants to. How about you, Helen? Great as you look, how long can you shake your … fans?”

“Maybe not much longer,” she admitted with a shrug. “Who knows? Maybe it’s time that you and I…”

A waiter brought us Poncinos-rum in very hot coffee with a lemon twist.

“You and I what?” I asked, after a sip of the deadly stuff.

Her smile twitched and seemed to be thinking about what it wanted to settle into. What it decided on was warm and lovely.

“Nate … we’ve been friends a long time. I have a kid, you have a kid. We have both been around and then some.”

“No argument.”

“I’m not sure we’ve ever exactly been in love. I’m not sure we haven’t been, either. And we’ve both had busted marriages, me more than my share. Still … maybe we should start thinking about, well … I mean, old age is coming, my darling.”

“Some mornings, it’s here.” I saluted her with my Poncino. “If that was a proposal of marriage, I’m in.”

She smiled. Patted my hand. “Maybe I’m just feeling sentimental. Maybe I’m feeling knocked around after a week of hustling from club to club trying to wrangle a booking out of guys younger than me. They look at me like … like I’m the Statue of Liberty or something.”

“Hey, sooner or later everybody visits the Statue of Liberty. And you did get booked.”

“Yes. At a strip club. And a strip club that is probably about to get itself shut down by the law, and in Chicago yet. Look, light of my life. Assuming the Frolics is still open in January, I’ll be back in town, and maybe I can borrow that downstairs apartment again, and upstairs bedroom, too. And we can pick this conversation up where it left off.”