Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going, aren’t you?”

“No. I don’t really know the family that well. I’m sending flowers.”

He looked at me with as long a face as a round-faced guy could muster. “You oughta go. He was working for you when he got it.”

“I’d be intruding. I’d be out of place.”

“You should do kaddish for the kid, Nate.”

A mourner’s prayer.

“Jesus Christ, Barney, I’m no Jew. I haven’t been in a synagogue more than half a dozen times in my life, and then it was social occasions.”

“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a Jew, with that Irish mug of yours your ma bequeathed you…but you’re gonna have a rude awakening one of these days, boyo.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s plenty of people you’re just another ‘kike’ to, believe you me.”

I sipped the beer. “Nudge me when you get to the point.”

“You owe this kid kaddish, Nate.”

“Hell, doesn’t that go on for months? I don’t know the lingo. And if you think I’m putting on some fuckin’ beanie and…”

There was a tap on my shoulder. Buddy Gold, the bartender, an ex-pug, leaned in to say, “You got a call.”

I went behind the bar to use the phone. It was Sergeant Lou Sapperstein at Central HQ in the Loop; Lou had been my boss on the pickpocket detail. I’d called him this morning with a request.

“Tubbo’s coppers made their raid this morning, around nine,” Lou said. Sapperstein was a hardnosed, balding cop of about forty-five and one of the few friends I had left on the PD.

“And?”

“And the union hall was empty, ’cept for a bartender. Pribyl and his partner Bert Gray took a whole squad up there, but Rooney and his boys had flew the coop.”

“Fuck. Somebody tipped them.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Yeah. Surprised I expected the cops to play it straight for a change. You wouldn’t have the address of that union, by any chance?”

“No, but I can get it. Hold a second.”

A sweet union scam like the Circular Distributors had Outfit written all over it-and Captain Tubbo Gilbert, head of the State Prosecutor’s police, was known as the richest cop in Chicago. Tubbo was a bagman and police fixer so deep in Frank Nitti’s pocket he had Nitti’s lint up his nose.

Lou was back: “It’s at 7 North Racine. That’s Madison and Racine.”

“Well, hell-that’s spitting distance from Skid Row.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So that explains the scam-that ‘union’ takes hobos and makes day laborers out of them. No wonder they charge daily dues. It’s just bums handing out ad circulars….”

“I’d say that’s a good guess, Nate.”

I thanked Lou and went back to the booth where Barney was brooding about what a louse his friend Heller was.

“I got something to do,” I told him.

“What?”

“My kind of kaddish.”

Less than two miles from the prominent department stores of the Loop they’d been fleecing, the Circular Distributors Union had their headquarters on the doorstep of Skid Row and various Hoovervilles. This Madison Street area, just north of Greek Town, was a seedy mix of flophouses, marginal apartment buildings and storefront businesses, mostly bars. Union HQ was on the second floor of a two-story brick building whose bottom floor was a plumbing supply outlet.

I went up the squeaking stairs and into the union hall, a big high-ceilinged open room with a few glassed-in offices toward the front, to the left and right. Ceiling fans whirred lazily, stirring stale smoky air; folding chairs and cardtables were scattered everywhere on the scuffed wooden floor, and seated at some were unshaven, tattered “members” of the union. Across the far end stretched a bar, behind which a burly blond guy in rolled-up white-shirt sleeves was polishing a glass. More hobos leaned against the bar, having beers.

I ordered a mug from the bartender, who had a massive skull and tiny dark eyes and a sullen kiss of a mouth.

I salted the brew as I tossed him a nickel. “Hear you had a raid here this morning.”

He ignored the question. “This hall’s for union members only.”

“Jeez, it looks like a saloon.”

“Well, it’s a union hall. Drink up and move along.”

“There’s a fin in it for you, if you answer a few questions.”

He thought that over; leaned in. “Are you a cop#8221;

“No. Private.”

“Who hired you?”

“Goldblatt’s.”

He thought some more. The tiny eyes narrowed. “Let’s hear the questions.”

“What do you know about the Gross kid’s murder?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Was Rooney here last night?”

“Far as I know, he was home in bed asleep.”

“Know where he lives?”

“No.”

“You don’t know where your boss lives.”

“No. All I know is he’s a swell guy. He don’t have nothin’ to do with these department store shakedowns the cops are tryin’ to pin on him. It’s union-busting, is what it is.”

“Union busting.” I had a look around at the bleary-eyed clientele in their patched clothes. “You have to be a union, first, ‘fore you can get busted up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means this is a scam. Rooney pulls in winos, gets ’em day-labor jobs for $3.25 a day, then they come up here to pay their daily dues of a quarter, and blow the rest on beer or booze. In other words, first the bums pass out ad fliers, then they come here and just plain pass out.”

“I think you better scram. Otherwise I’m gonna have to throw you down the stairs.”

I finished the beer. “I’m leaving. But you know what? I’m not gonna give you that fin. I’m afraid you’d just drink it up.”

I could feel his eyes on my back as I left, but I’d have heard him if he came out from around the bar. I was starting down the stairs when the door below opened and Sgt. Pribyl, looking irritated, came up to meet me on the landing, half-way. He looked more his usual dapper self, but his eyes were black-bagged.

“What’s the idea, Heller?”

“I just wanted to come bask in the reflected glory of your triumphant raid this morning.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means when Tubbo’s boys are on the case, the Outfit gets advance notice.”

He winced. “That’s not the way it was. I don’t know why Rooney and Berry and the others blew. But nobody in our office warned ’em off.”

“Are you sure?”

He clearly wasn’t. “Look, I can’t have you messing in this. We’re on the damn case, okay? We’re maintaining surveillance from across the way…that’s how we spotted you.”

“Peachy. Twenty-four surveillance, now?”

“No.” He seemed embarrassed. “Just day shift.”

“You want some help?”

“What do you mean?”

“Loan me the key to your stakeout crib. I’ll keep nightwatch. Got a phone in there?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll call you if Rooney shows. You got pictures of him and the others you can give me?”

“Well….”

“What’s the harm? Or would Tubbo lower the boom on you, if you really did your job?”

He sighed. Scratched his head and came to a decision. “This is unofficial, okay? But there’s a possibility the door to that apartment’s gonna be left unlocked tonight.”

“Do tell.”

“Third-floor-301.” He raised a cautionary finger. “We’ll try this for one night…no showboating, okay? Call me if one of ’em shows.”

“Sure. You tried their homes?”

He nodded. “Nothing. Rooney lives on North Ridgeland in Oak Park. Four kids. Wife’s a pleasant, matronly type.”

“Fat, you mean.”

“She hasn’t seen Rooney for several weeks. She says he’s away from home a lot.”