Max Collins - True Detective

It surprised him, anyway, and knocked his hat off. It didn’t hurt him much, but it did give me time to take the automatic out from under my other pillow and show him, and Jeff.

They were tough guys; probably as tough as Miller and Lang, maybe tougher.

But they had woken up a guy in his sleep who had been pushed once too often in too short a time, and I must’ve had a look on my face that said they might die, because they put their hands up and Mutt said, “Heller! Please. This ain’t that way. We ain’t even armed.”

That didn’t sound right.

“It’s true,” Jeff said. “Can I take my coat off?”

I was off the bed now, standing on the floor; the wood was cold against my bare feet.

“Slip out of it” — I nodded — “but nice and easy. I haven’t killed anybody all day. Help me keep it that way.”

Jeff slipped out of the coat, no tricks at all, and held his dark gray suitcoat open and there was no shoulder holster.

“You do what he did,” I told Mutt.

Mutt slipped out of his topcoat; his suit was a blue pinstripe, but there seemed to be no gun under there, either. I had them both put their hands against the wall, or actually one of them put his hands against the door, because there wasn’t wall space enough in that room for two people to be frisked against any one wall; and, standing there in my underwear, I frisked them, and they were clean.

“Sit on the bed,” I told them.

They sat on the bed.

“Tell me what this is about,” I said, and got my pants on, taking my time, keeping the gun on them, buttoning my fly one-handed.

“Mr. Nitti wants to see you,” Mutt said.

“Oh, really? Isn’t he a little under the weather to be having visitors?”

Jeff said, “He’s gonna be okay. No thanks to you coppers.”

I motioned with both hands, including the one with the gun in it. “Hey. I’m not a copper anymore. And I wasn’t in on it.”

“You was there,” Jeff said accusingly.

“And that was the extent of it,” I said.

“Maybe so,” Mutt said, “but Mr. Nitti wants to see you.”

“So you come break in my apartment and put the muscle on me.”

Mutt pursed his lips and moved his head from side to side slowly. “We got the key from the guy at the desk. It only cost a buck. You got great security here, pal.”

“It’s okay, I’m moving tomorrow. You boys can go now. Tell Mr. Nitti I’ll talk to him when he’s feeling better.”

Mutt said, “This is a friendly gesture. He just wants to talk. That’s why we didn’t come heeled.”

I thought about that.

“I still don’t like it,” I said.

“Look,” Mutt continued, “you know if Mr. Nitti wants to see you, Mr. Nitti’s gonna see you. Why not do it now, when you got a gun on us, and when he’s on his back in a hospital bed?”

I nodded. “Good point. Car downstairs?”

Jeff smiled a little. “You bet.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get my shoes and socks and shirt on.”

They watched me dress; it wasn’t that easy to do while keeping a gun on ’em, but I did it and Mutt sat in back of the big black Lincoln with me, as we took Monroe Street over to the near West Side, to Jefferson Park Hospital.

There were four more guys in topcoats and hats in the corridor on the third floor where Nitti had his private room. The lighting in the corridor was subdued — it was roughly three in the morning now and I saw no doctors and only one nurse, a woman about thirty-five, stocky, dark-haired, scared shitless. Nitti’s room was halfway down the corridor, and I stood outside with Jeff while Mutt went in.

Mutt didn’t come out: a doctor did. A rather distinguished-looking man in his late fifties or early sixties, short, medium build with a paunch, gray-haired with a gray mustache. He had a near-frown on his face when our eyes met; he didn’t approve of my being here, I could tell already. In fact I could tell he didn’t approve of me, period.

“I consider this ill-advised,” he said, as if my being here was my idea. I told him it wasn’t.

“Frank being here is your idea, though, isn’t it?” he snapped, in a whisper.

“Actually, no,” I said. “I got pulled into this by the short hair.”

“You’re the one who killed the boy.”

I nodded.

He sighed. “My son-in-law insists on seeing you.”

“You’re Dr. Ronga?”

“That’s right.” He didn’t offer a hand to shake; I thought it best not to offer mine. “I wouldn’t have agreed to this at all if I couldn’t see that Frank might get agitated if we refused him, and he does not need to get agitated right now.”

“He is going to live?”

“No thanks to you people, I would say he is. I would say he’s got as much chance to live as you do to drive back across town safely.”

I glanced sideways at Jeff. “That could depend on who’s driving, Doc.”

Ronga said, “Frank needs rest and quiet. Absence of worry and shock.” He pointed a finger at me. “Which might open the wounds and cause a hemorrhage — if that happens it could prove fatal.”

“Doctor, I have no intention of agitating Mr. Nitti. I promise. Whether or not Mr. Nitti has any intention of agitating me is another story.”

Ronga gave out a terse, humorless laugh and held out an open, yet somehow contemptuous, hand in a gesture that said, Go on in.

I went in.

Nitti was sitting up in bed; his reading lamp was on, otherwise the room was dark. He wasn’t hooked up to tubes or anything, but he didn’t look well; he was even paler than usual and seemed to have lost about fifteen pounds since I saw him last — yesterday. He gave me a little smile; it was so little his mouth curved but his mustache didn’t.

“’Cusa me if I don’t get up,” he said. His voice was soft, but there was no tremor in it.

“It’s okay, Mr. Nitti.”

“Make it ‘Frank.’ We’re going to be friends, Heller.”

I shrugged. “Then make it ‘Nate.’”

“Nate.”

Mutt was standing on the other side of Nitti’s bed; he came around to me before I could approach Nitti’s bedside, and said, in an almost gentle way, “You’re going to have to let me have your gun.”

“This isn’t a great place for a scene, pal.”

“There’s six of us here, Heller, me and five guys out in the hall, plus I think Dr. Ronga would be willin’ to take your appendix out with a pocketknife.”

I gave him the gun.

Nitti made a little gesture that meant I was to sit down in the chair that had been provided for me next to his bed.

I sat. Seeing him up close, he didn’t look any worse. He was bandaged around the throat, from the slug he took in the neck, and he didn’t seem to be able to move his head, so my chair was seated at an angle where he didn’t have to.

“You didn’t know, did you?” Nitti said.

“I didn’t know,” I said, and I told him how Miller and Lang had picked me up at that speak and brought me along for the ride, without telling me the score.

“Bastards,” he said. His mouth was a line. He looked at me; his eyes were calm. “I’m told you quit the department.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’ve had it with those sons of bitches.”

“You were the one that got an ambulance called. Those bastards woulda let me bleed awhile.”

“I suppose.”

“Since you quit, that means what? What are you gonna say at my trial? They’ll try me for shooting that prick bastard Lang, you know.”

“I know.”

“You read that load of baloney in the papers that Miller’s giving out? Is that the story they’re going with?”

“More or less, I guess.”

“You going along with it?”

“I’m going to have to, Frank.”