Max Collins - True Detective

When I did, he said, “I think the boys have had time enough for their smoke now, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

He got up and went to the door and called Miller and Mulaney back in; then, his upper lip pulled back over his teeth, a hand clutching his stomach, he excused himself and left the room again.

“Does he do that often?” I said.

Miller, who had resumed his post by the window, said, “He has to take a shit now and then. Don’t you, Heller?”

“Not every five minutes.”

Cermak came back in, sat down, seemed embarrassed, smiling, gesturing awkwardly. “Sorry about the interruptions. I got the trots to beat the band today. It’s my goddamn stomach. Ulcer or something. Colitis, gastritis, the docs call it. About as bad as goddamn kidney stones.”

“Your Honor...”

“Yes, Nate?”

I held the badge out toward him. “I can’t take this back.”

He didn’t understand for a second; it was as if he thought I were fooling. Then his smile fell like a cake, and his eyes could’ve turned Medusa to stone.

When I could see he wasn’t going to take the badge, I put it on the table, next to the bucket of ice and beer.

And now Cermak softened his gaze, like somebody fine-tuning a radio.

“Mr. Heller,” he began (not “Nate”), “what is it you want?”

“Out. That’s all. I don’t like killing people. I don’t like being used. By you, by your people. By anybody. Just because I helped you people cover up that fucking Lingle case, that doesn’t mean that every time there’s a dirty goddamn job to do, you go pull Heller in off the street.”

Cermak folded his hands across his troubled stomach. His expression was neutral. “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he said. “The Lingle case was prior to my administration, and it’s my understanding that the murderer was convicted and is serving his sentence right now.”

“Yeah. Right. Look. All I want to do is quit the force. That’s all I’m after.”

“Nate.” So it was “Nate” again. “We need to present a unified front on this matter. You killed a man. You have an inquest to attend, when? Day after tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. Morning.”

“If my people tell conflicting stories, it will reflect badly on me . On all of us. It will get very complicated. You are the only officer who killed anyone in that office, Nate. Surely you don’t want this to linger on, to fester in the public’s eye.”

The beers from Barney’s, and the one Touhy, were knocking at my bladder door. I asked if I could leave the room this time, and Cermak, looking weary (or pretending to — who knew with this guy?), assented, pointing, as if he hadn’t already made the direction of the bathroom perfectly clear.

I walked through a big fancy bedroom, where against one wall a rolltop desk was stuck, looking about as out of place here as me. But what really struck me as wrong were the three suitcases, the four boxes of personal papers and other work-type stuff, and the steamer trunk, all standing at the foot of the bed, like a crowd at a political rally. Cermak was going someplace.

I let the beer out, then came back and sat down.

“Taking a trip, Your Honor?”

Absently, he said, “Florida. Taking Horner down there.”

Horner was the recently elected governor of Illinois — one of Cermak’s more recent miracles: a Jew elected to the state’s highest office. It was a cinch Cermak wasn’t going along to help Horner write his inaugural address; they were probably going there to divy up patronage jobs.

“You don’t exactly travel light, do you?” I said.

Cermak looked at me, pulled away from whatever strategy he was forming to use on me, and said, “Oh, that. I’m moving out of here. I’ll be living in the Morrison Hotel after I get back.”

That’s where Barney lived; small world.

“Why? This is a terrific view.”

“There’s a penthouse bungalow on top of the Morrison, with a private elevator. The security’ll be better. I’m taking on a few extra bodyguards, too. You can’t wage war on the goddamn underworld without getting ’em irritated at you, you know,” and he gave out a forced chuckle.

“I’d imagine Nitti’s pissed off,” I admitted. Nitti was, after all, about the extent of this “war” Cermak kept talking about. The rest of the “war” seemed to be restricted to busting beer flats on the North Side, where private citizens were brewing suds in their apartments to make a few extra depression dollars.

“Yeah,” Cermak was saying, rather grandly, “they’re fitting me for a bulletproof vest. I think that’s going too far, but I suppose there is some small danger...”

What was he trying for now? My sympathy? Maybe I was supposed to admire him; or maybe this was a role he liked to play just for himself.

“I better be going, Your Honor,” I said, getting up.

He stood, too; put a hand on my arm. I could smell his breath; it smelled like Touhy’s beer, not surprisingly. But his expression was sober, somber. “What will you be saying at the inquest tomorrow?”

“The truth, I suppose.”

“Truth is relative. Even off the force, I can be of a little help to you, you know. Have you decided what line you’ll be going in?”

I shrugged. “I only have one trade.”

Cermak looked surprised; he took his hand off my arm. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a cop, a detective. I’m going private, that’s all.”

“Who with? Pinkerton’s? You got something lined up?”

“My own little agency.”

“I see.” He was smiling again; I didn’t like that. “When were you planning to get started?”

“Right away.”

He shook his head sadly, continuing to smile. “That’s a shame, really it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, the paperwork on these matters. A goddamn shame. The red tape. Sometimes an application for a license can be turned down for, oh, the most trivial of reasons. For no reason at all, actually.”

“So that’s how it is.”

He pointed a finger at me like a gun. “I’ll tell you how it is. You go out of the department under a cloud — you tie yourself up in a police scandal, where month upon month goes by, trial upon trial drags on, and you’re not going to get a private detective’s license, not till it’s over, maybe not till never. I won’t have to pull any strings to make that happen. You’ll have made it happen.”

I thought it over.

“You know I’m right,” he said.

I nodded. “Suppose I agree to corroborate Lang and Miller’s story.”

“You’ll have a license tomorrow.”

I thought some more. “When the trial comes up, suppose I double-cross you. Suppose I tell a different story. Like maybe the real one.”

Cermak beamed. “You wouldn’t do that. You’re not a stupid man. Licenses can get revoked for no good reason, too, you know. The Lord giveth and He taketh the hell away, too, Heller.”

For the first time, I realized, Miller was looking at me; his body was still turned toward the window, but his head was turned my way, casually.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Goddamnit.”

“Good.” He took his gaze off me. I felt he’d forgotten all about me already. He didn’t look at me as he said, “I think you know the way out,” and, with a faint grimace and with a hand on his stomach, went in the other room.

Miller took me back down the way we’d come in; you know — the scenic route between my hotel and Cermak’s: the alley. It was okay if you liked fire escapes, bricks and cement, and garbage. And Miller.

Who delivered me to the front door of the Adams and, hands in his topcoat pockets, eyes unfathomable behind the glasses, said, “So you ain’t as dumb as you look.”