Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I smiled. It hurt. “You think you can take Dillinger alive?”

“I’m going to try. If Frank Nitti wants him dead, then Mr. Dillinger’s a man who may have some things I’d like to hear.”

He tipped his hat and was gone.

I wondered if I should have given him Lawrence’s address after all. Why bother? I’d been paid one hundred dollars by Frank Nitti to go to bed; and two East Chicago cops had given me some rubber-hose incentive to do just that. Cowley was on his way to meet with Anna Sage. She could tell him Lawrence’s address. She could get her blood money, and her free pass with the immigration department. Let her do it.

I had other things to do.

Like hurt.

I opened my eyes, one at a time. Sun was filtering in through sheer curtains. I was under the covers in Sally Rand’s bed in her air-cooled apartment; Sally was on top of the covers next to me, in white lounging pajamas, a pillow propped behind her as she smoked and read a magazine. Vanity Fair. This was, if memory served, Sunday; and she didn’t do a matinee on Sunday; local bluenoses wouldn’t let her get away with it.

I sat up in bed, slowly.

“Good morning,” Sally said, with a sideways glance and a wry little smile.

“Is that what it is? Morning, I mean?”

“For the next few minutes.”

“It’s almost noon?”

“Almost noon. How do you feel?”

“Different than yesterday.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Today my head hurts too.”

Her smile was a smart-aleck curve. “You shouldn’t have drunk all that rum last night.”

“It was your idea.”

“No, it wasn’t. You sent me out for it.”

“I did?”

“Yes — I merely suggested alcohol as an anesthetic. And you were too fussy to settle for something civilized, like gin. You made me go out and get rum.”

“I’m a sick boy. I deserve to be pampered.”

“And you deserve that hangover, too.” She put the cigarette out in the tray on her nightstand, flopped the magazine on her lap. “How else do you feel?”

I rotated my shoulders; lifted my legs. “About the same. Maybe a little better.”

She threw back the sheets.

“Well,” she said, “you seem to be changing color. For what it’s worth.”

The black-and-blue splotches on my legs had turned purple, with patches of yellow spreading within them. My skin looked like a suit in poor taste.

“Why don’t you go take a shower?” she said. “I’ll get some brunch going...”

I took her advice; cold first, then hot. I did feel better. I still ached, but it didn’t hurt just to breathe. Except for my head. Maybe that was it — maybe the hangover was distraction enough to make me forget the other aches. I got out of the shower and toweled off — and it didn’t hurt any worse than having somebody tear off one of my fingernails — and found a little can of tooth powder on the counter by the sink with a brand-new toothbrush. Brushing my teeth made me feel vaguely human again, and I wrapped a fresh towel around my middle and plodded back into the bedroom.

The new suit I’d bought with Nitti’s money was laid out there for me; also a shirt I’d bought, a hat, and socks and underwear, not new, but clean. I hadn’t brought any of this with me, so it looked like my friends had been taking care of me. I got into the underwear and pants and shirt and went to the kitchen, where she was making brunch. Scrambled eggs again, or actually an omelet with some diced vegetables and cheese. It reminded me a little of the side dish at Pete’s Steaks and I felt my stomach go queasy. But then I was all right, and I wouldn’t have said anything to her even if I wasn’t.

I took a seat at the table and she glanced over with a maternal smile. “Barney brought some of your things over,” she said.

“I don’t have many friends,” I said, “but I got the right friends.”

“You count me among them?”

“You and Barney are at the head of the list, today. If Barney hadn’t come in when those guys were dancing with me, I might be in traction right now.” I laughed, and it only hurt a little. “They didn’t exactly expect a world’s champion fighter to come to my rescue. The guy he lit into must have a swollen puss about now.”

“He really took care of ’em, huh?”

“He did all right for a lightweight. Anyway, it sent them running fast enough.”

“You know who they were?”

“Not their names. But they were East Chicago cops.”

“Cops?”

“Yeah — say, have you seen the papers today, been listening to the radio?”

She shrugged, stirring the eggs. “I have the Sunday Trib in the other room, if it’s the funnies you’re after.”

“I don’t follow the funnies. What about the radio?”

“I had the radio on, earlier. Why?”

“What’s in the news?”

“The heat. Real muggy out there today. It’s one hundred one point three degrees, last tally I heard. Seventeen died of heat prostration yesterday, and half a dozen more reported today already.”

“Nice to be inside where it’s cool.”

“Why’d you ask? It’s not the heat you’re interested in.”

“I thought there’d be something else in the headlines.”

“What?”

“Dillinger captured.”

She looked away from the pan she was cooking in to give me a wide-eyed, disturbed look.

“Nate — why don’t you find another way to make a living?”

“I considered nude ballet with a bubble, but it’s been taken.”

She crinkled her mouth and chin in mock-anger. “You’re dodging the issue. You’re an intelligent, capable man. Why do you sit in that shabby little office, doing shabby little work? Not to mention dangerous.”

I shrugged. Didn’t hurt much. Half a fingernail being torn off. I said, “My work isn’t usually dangerous. Don’t be deceived into thinking exciting things like these happen to me every week. Hard to believe as it may be, I never been worked over with a rubber hose before.”

She had turned away from me; she was easing the omelet out of the pan onto a plate. “A lot of people go through life without ever being ‘worked over’ with a rubber hose at all.”

“Think what they missed.”

She put the omelet down in front of me, with a side plate of toast. “You like some cottage fries with that?”

“No. This’ll be fine.”

“Coffee?”

“Orange juice’d be better.”

“I already squeezed some.” She got a small white pitcher out of a small white icebox and poured me a large clear glass, turning it orange. I sipped it and it tasted good; the feel of the pulp in my mouth was nice. The hangover seemed to be fading.

Just the same I said, “And a side order of aspirin?”

She smiled and nodded. “Comin’ right up.” The aspirin was on the kitchen counter; I took two with the last swallows of the orange juice.

Then she sat by me and said, her expression almost somber, “I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to you.”

“I wouldn’t like to see anything happen to you, either.”

“You live in your office, Nate. I saw it. You sleep in a Murphy bed.”

“I know guys who sleep in parks.”

“Don’t try to shame me — I’m no snob, you know that. I just know a real waste when I see one.”

“A real waste.”

“Yes. A waste of a mind, potentially of a life.”

“This omelet is very good. Sure you don’t want to give up show biz and marry me?”

She laughed, sadly. “You’re hopeless.”

“That’s what they tell me. Look, Sally — Helen — I only have one trade. It’s all I’m trained for, it’s all I know. And I really do have plans to live somewhere besides my office someday. I’ll have a good-size agency with operatives working under me, and a nice big office with a pretty secretary to fool around with while my wife raises little Nates and Helens at home.” That made her smile, not sadly. “It’s a shabby little office, because I’m just starting out, and this is the goddamn Depression , okay?”