Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

Cohen shifted his weight. “Listen, you and me, we never had no problems, right?”

“Right.”

“And you know your partner, Fred and me, we’re pals.”

“Sure.”

“So I figured I’d throw some work your way.”

“Like what, Mick?”

He was sitting sideways on the couch, to look at me better; his hands were on his knees. “I’m gettin’ squeezed by a pair of vice cops-Delbert Potts and Rudy Johnson, fuckers’ names. They been tryin’ to sell me recordings.”

“Frankie Laine? Vaughn Monroe?”

“Very funny-these pricks got wire recordings of me, they say, business transactions, me and who-knows-who discussing various illegalities…I ain’t heard anything yet. But they’re trying to shake me down for twenty gee’s-this goes well past the taste they’re gettin’ already, from my business.”

Now I understood why he was whispering, and why the radio was blasting.

“We’re not talking protection,” I said, “but straight blackmail.”

“On the nose. I want two things, Heller-I want my home and my office, whadyacallit, checked for bugs…”

“Swept.”

“Huh?”

“Swept for bugs. That’s what it’s called, Mick.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I want-part of what I want. I also want to put in my own wiretaps and bugs and get those two greedy bastards on my recordings of them shakin’ me down.”

“Good idea-create a standoff.”

He twitched a smile, apparently pleased by my approval. “You up for doing that?”

“It’s not my speciality, Mick-but I can recommend somebody. Guy named Vaus, Jim Vaus. Calls himself an ‘electronics engineering consultant.’ He’s in Hollywood.”

Tdark eyes tightened but retained their deer-in-the-headlights quality. “You’ve used this guy?”

“Yeah…well, Fred has. But what’s important is: the cops use him, too.”

“They don’t have their own guy?”

“Naw. They don’t have anybody like that on staff-they’re a backward bunch. Jim’s strictly freelance. Hell, he may be the guy who bugged you for the cops.”

“But can he be trusted?”

“If you pay him better than the LAPD-which won’t be hard-you’ll have a friend for life.”

“How you wanna handle this, Nate? Through your office, or will this, what’s-his-name, Vaus, kick back a little to you guys, or-”

“This is just a referral, Mick, just a favor…I think I got one of his cards….”

I dug the card out of my wallet and gave it to Cohen, whose big brown eyes were dancing with sugarplumbs.

“This is great, Nate!”

I felt relieved, like I’d dodged a bullet: I had helped Cohen without having to take him on as a client.

So I said, “Glad to have been of service,” and began to get up, only Cohen stopped me with a small but firm hand on my forearm.

Bing Crosby was singing “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” on the radio-casual and easygoing and loud as hell.

“What’s the rush, Nate? I got more business to talk.”

Sitting back down, I just smiled and shrugged and waited for the pitch.

It was a fastball: “I need you should bodyguard me.”

“Jesus, Mick, with guys like Stompanato and Niccoli around? What the hell would you need me for?”

He was shaking his head; he had a glazed expression. “These vice cops, they got friends in the sheriff’s office. My boys been gettin’ rousted regularly-me, too. Half the time when we leave this place, we get shoved up against the wall and checked for concealed weapons.”

“Oh. Is that what happened to Happy Meltzer?”

“On the nose again! Trumped-up gun charge. And these vice cops are behind it-and maybe Jack Dragna, who’s in bed with the sheriff’s department. Dragna would like nothin’ better than to get me outa of the picture, without makin’ our mutual friends back east sore.”

“Hell, Mick, how do you see me figuring in this?”

“You’re a private detective-licensed for bodyguard work. Licensed to carry a weapon! Shit, man, I need somebody armed standin’ at my side, to keep me from gettin’ my ass shot off! Just a month ago, somebody took a blast at me with a shotgun, and then we found a bomb under my house, and…”

He rattled on, as I thought about his former bodyguard, Hooky Rothman, getting his face shot off, in that posh shop just beyond the metal-lined door.

“I got friends in the Attorney General’s office,” he was saying, “and they tell me they got an inside tip that there’s a contract out on yours truly-there’s supposed to be two triggers in from somewheres on the east coast, to do the job. I need somebody with a gun, next to me.”

“Mickey,” I said, “I have to decline. With all due respect.”

“You’re not makin’ me happy, Nate.”

“I’m sorry. I’m in no position to help out. First off, I don’t live out here, not fulltime, anyway. Second, I have a reputation of mob connections that I’m trying to live down.”

“You’re disappointing me….”

“I’m trying to get my branch office established out here, and you and Fred being friends-you hanging out at Sherry’s-that’s as far as our relationship, personal or professional, can go.”

He thought about that. Then he nodded and shrugged. “I ain’t gonna twist your arm…. Two grand a week, just for the next two weeks?”

That might have tempting, if Cohen hadn’t already narrowly escaped half a dozen hit attempts.

“You say you got friends in the Attorney General’s office?” I asked.

“Yeah. Fred Howser and me are like this.” He held up his right hand, forefinger and middlefinger crossed.

If the attorney general himself was on Cohen’s pad, then those wire recordings the vice cops had might implicate Howser….

“Mick, ask Howser to assign one of his men to you as a bodyguard.”

“A cop?”

“Who better? He’ll be armed, he’ll be protecting a citizen, and anyway, a cop to a hoodlum is like garlic to a vampire. Those triggers’ll probably steer clear, long as a state investigator is at your side.”

Cohen was thinking that over; then he began to nod.

“Not a bad idea,” he said. “Not a bad idea at all.”

I stood. “No consulting fee, Mick. Let’s stay friends-and not do business together.”

He snorted a laugh, stood and went over and shut off the radio, cutting off Mel Torme singing “Careless Hands.” Then he walked me to the steel-lined door and-when I extended my hand-shook with me.

As I was leaving, I heard him, in the private bathroom off his office, tap running, as he washed up-removing my germs.

I had a couple stops to make, unrelated to the Cohen appointment, so it was late afternoon when I made it back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Entering my bungalow-nothing fancy, just a marble fireplace, private patio and furnishings no more plush than the palace at Versailles-I heard something…someone…in the bedroom. Rustling around in there.

My nine millimeter was in my suitcase, and my suitcase was in the bedroom. And I was just about to exit, to find a hotel dick or maybe call a cop, when my trained detective’s nose sniffed a clue; and I walked across the living room, and pushed the door open.

Didi Davis gasped; she was wearing glittery earrings-just glittery earrings, and the Chanel Number Five I’d nosed-and was poised, pulling back the covers, apparently about to climb into bed. She looked like a French maid who forgot her costume.

“I wanted to surprise you,” she said. She was a lovely brunette, rather tall-maybe five nine-with a willowy figure that would have seemed skinny if not for pert breasts and an impertinent dimpled behind. She was tanned all over. Her hair was up. It wasn’t alone.

“I thought you were working at Republic today,” I said, undoing my tie.