Max Collins - Neon Mirage

When all three witnesses had gone, promising to meet with Drury and Pete again when the detectives had suspect pictures for them to sort through, I leaned back in the wooden chair and admitted to the two tough cops that these witnesses weren’t all that bad.

“I got one more to round up,” Pete said. “We gonna have some depth on our bench.”

Drury said, “Pete, I don’t know how to thank you. I’d have been lost, trying to work down here without your help.”

“My pleasure. I don’t like it when those Outfit bums come shooting up my beat. I don’t like those Outfit bums, period. Do you fellas have any idea how bad the dope problem is gettin’ down here? Not a week goes by we don’t haul in a dozen kids, eighteen years old, sixteen years old, some of ’em been on dope two or three years already. I know where the dope comes from. So do you, Lt. They’re preyin’ on us-ain’t it bad enough you got sixteen or twenty families living in a three-flat building, children sleeping four to a bed, in rat-crawlin’ firetraps? A man can’t find decent quarters for his family, can’t stretch a few dollars from his menial damn job to provide food for ’em. Kids playin’ in garbage-filled alleys, dirt and filth. And Jake Guzik sends his poison down here so these people can flee into some reefer dream, or stick a needle in themself and go hide in their minds, and pretty soon they’re pawning what little they own and after that they’re pulling stickups, whatever it takes to get the stuff. Bill, you want my help, going up against these Outfit bums, you got my help. Any time. Any day.”

Drury was smiling tightly, drinking that in. Me, I was drinking in the beer. That kind of idealistic talk was fine, in the bar room; in real life, it tended to get you killed.

Up toward the front, at the bar, two colored men were starting to push each other around. A couple of working stiffs in overalls, good size men, both a little drunk at this point.

It was starting to get loud, when Pete got up and said, “Pardon,” and took out his long-barreled, pearl-handled, nickel-plated.357 and strode up there.

“Who started this?” he demanded.

Behind the counter, the bartender was leaning against his boxes, smiling. He had a gold tooth.

The two men looked at Pete with wide eyes-they obviously recognized him, and just as obviously hadn’t realized he was in the place-and simultaneously pointed each to the other.

He swung the.357 sideways into the gut of the man at his right and with his left connected with the chin of the other. Both men were soon on the dirty wooden floor, one rubbing his chin, the other doubled over.

“No fighting,” Pete told them, and put his gun away and came back to us and said he had to be going.

What a coincidence.

So did we.

By the following Saturday a lot had happened and nothing had happened.

I did some time at Meyer House on Ragen’s door each day, but mostly turned it over to O’Toole and Pelitier, with Sapperstein doing a turn or two, as well. It was a round-the-clock vigil, so some of my boys put in long hours. The police kept three men on at all times, one outside patrolling Lake Park Avenue, another by the fire escape window, and one more sharing the corridor outside Ragen’s room with an A-1 man.

We got along with the cops just fine-we were all ex-Chicago P.D. ourselves-but of course didn’t trust them far as we could throw ’em. Like I said, we were all ex-Chicago P.D. ourselves.

The fire escape had a landing at each Meyer House floor, trimmed in flowers and plants, making for a regular balcony; Tuesday morning, I’d noticed men in pale green blousy shirts and pants, like pajamas, standing on every level.

“What the hell’s that about?” I asked the cop on guard there. “Can’t you keep that fire escape clear?”

“Aw, I kinda feel sorry for the poor bastards,” the cop said.

They were psyche ward patients, it turned out. The first floor of Michael Reese, where the lobby once was as lavish as that of the finest hotel, had been converted to a psychiatric unit in ’39. Some patients were allowed out in the enclosed yard of Meyer House, where they sat in chairs and/or wandered about the small area facing Lake Park Avenue. Hollow-eyed zombies, most of them.

I knew all about it. I’d done some time in a psyche hospital myself, during the war.

“Yeah, you’re right-let ’em enjoy themselves,” I said. “But if you see anybody on those landings who isn’t a psyche patient, clear ’em the hell off immediately. And nobody on this landing at all, or I’ll hand your ass to Drury. I don’t care if it’s Freud and his favorite patient.”

“Okay, Mr. Heller.”

I talked to Drury every day, to see how the investigation was going. The green truck, it turned out, had been stolen last March; the FBI had lent its fingerprint experts to help dust the vehicle, but nothing came of it. Nor did anything come of the gray sedan with Indiana plates, the license number of which no witness seemed to have gotten. Two-Gun Pete did manage to “round up” his fourth witness, a newsboy (possibly the one I bought those papers from, to soak up Ragen’s blood); and Drury had gone down to Bronzeville and questioned him, and was satisfied another good witness had been found. Early next week the four would be gathered at the Central Police Station to start going through pictures.

Drury had been less than successful with his frontal attack on the Outfit: Guzik, Serritella and the rest were all kicked loose after questioning. Serritella had been badly embarrassed, however, as Drury-around midnight, Monday night, fresh from his St. Hubert’s bust of Guzik-had taken several squads of coppers to surround the home of the First Ward Republican Committeeman (and former State Senator). It got a lot of play in the papers, making Serritella look like the front man for gangsters that he was. Unlike Guzik, though, Serritella submitted to a lie detector test, and passed with flying colors, where complicity in the Ragen shooting was concerned.

At the same time, Mayor Kelly ordered a crackdown on local gambling, handbooks especially; Police Commissioner Prendergast called it “the greatest gambling cleanup” in the city’s history. I figured it’d last maybe a week. Possibly even two.

Ragen’s family made appearances throughout the week, with all the children, including the three married daughters, putting in regular visits, though Mrs. Ragen herself wasn’t seen much from Wednesday on, stopping by during regular visiting hours for an hour or so; she’d collapsed at home on Tuesday after an anonymous phone call came in, a gruff male voice saying, “Tell your old man to get out of the racing business or get fitted for a coffin.” Ellen Ragen was (as her husband put it) “a hypertension blood-pressure individual” and her doctor wanted her to stay in bed, and not answer the phone.

Peggy had stopped going into the office and was keeping her aunt company, playing nurse, although a private nurse was on hand as well; consequently I’d only talked to Peggy a few times since Monday night, mostly over the phone, though tonight, Saturday, we had a date. In the meantime, I had put an op on the Ragen’s Seeley Avenue home, too.

Jim, Jr., had taken over the business reins in his father’s absence, but to his credit he’d managed to come around every day during visiting hours. He seemed shaken and was not really holding up all that well, but hid it from his pop pretty much-of course, his pop wouldn’t have wanted to recognize that, anyway.

I had the enormous pleasure, on Wednesday, of giving the bum’s rush to Wilbert F. Crowley, assistant to State’s Attorney Tuohy. Confiding in the State’s Attorney’s Office was like putting up a billboard in Cicero. The staff at Michael Reese, as well as the two Ragen family physicians attending Jim, were going along with me on keeping the cops and such away from him. We’d put word in to the local FBI office that they would be hearing from us-but kept it strictly “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”