Chicago Page 12
He had proposed to her. He had understood her demur as a merely formal statement, for he knew she loved him.
The problem to which neither needed to allude was his religion.
He supposed that her family would, if not embrace, likely accept him after a time, and after a conversion to Catholicism. He considered such conversion a price, but a small price for the possession of the girl. And he felt that he would be as true to the Catholic as he had been to the Protestant faith, which is to say not much at all.
He knew that his obeisance to its laws and strictures, whatever they might be, would be complete, if not sincere, and whose business was that but his?
But she was dead, and who had killed her? For, however he understood it, whether accident or warning, her death must have been intended as a message to him—for who was the girl? Some lovely, some angelic, kind, and perfect being—not only incapable of having done harm, but too young to have accomplished any; unacquainted with evil until the moment of her death.
“Save for the sin of fornicating,” Mike said, grasping to adopt some, as he imagined, Catholic formulation for their illicit love. But why the attack? Whom was the attack against?
If it was against himself, why had it failed? And, having failed, why was it not repeated?
Was it against the girl, as a warning to Mike or as a rebuke? For what?
He had spent his still-lucid moments considering the permutations. Her own family, or friends, had they been sent to murder him, would have done so.
He thought he had offended no power in Chicago sufficiently to require his death; not City Hall, not O’Banion and the North Side, nor Capone and the South Side.
But could it have been someone sent from downstate angered by his reportage? Such would most likely have been indicted not only by him, but by all the Chicago papers. Then why would he be singled out?
If it was not a warning to him, nor a penalty he had invoked, why had the murderer come? What good was a warning, or penalty, if the connection to him was unclear?
He’d thought, for the first drunken month, that her family had killed the girl because of its shame. Then his drunken reason cleared to the extent allowing him to see this as a Sicilian, but not an Irish, solution. The Sicilians, he knew, appreciated revenge not only as an art, but as a sacrament. He knew of the young Sicilian swain, in East Chicago, who had been discovered in bed with his fourteen-year-old cousin. She had had her throat cut, the boy forced to watch, and then emasculated, the Sicilians excising his penis, and leaving his testicles. This, it was explained to Mike, was the time-honored formula.
But Annie was Irish; their traditional response was to kill the man, and entomb the girl in a convent.
But if Mike was not the target, it must have been the girl. For what crime? For certainly, it had been none of hers. Whose crime, then? Her family? Who were they? Simple florists.
“Dion O’Banion?” he thought. “Why? The Irish are his own, and the folks of The Beautiful, his people. Al Capone and the Sicilians? Why? Because he’s a brute?”
Those who considered Mr. Brown merely a brute had overlooked the truest cruelty of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: that the seven against the wall worked for O’Banion, a florist, and Capone had had them excised on his biggest day of the year.
The truest cruelty was irony, Mike thought, but where was the irony here?
Chapter 17
The memo had come “From the Desk of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Publisher, Chicago Tribune, World’s Greatest Newspaper.” It read, Stolen Limousines Human Interest.
Parlow twisted it into a spill, lit it, and applied the burning memo to his pipe.
“. . . won’t draw,” he said.
“It won’t draw,” he repeated, “the stem’s broken.” He leaned toward Mike Hodge.
Mike was seated across from him in their preferred side booth at the Sally Port.
“The limousines aren’t news,” Parlow said. “The pipe is news. The limousines aren’t even human interest—are you listening to me?”
“I am a sick sonofabitch,” Mike said.
“Yes?” Parlow said.
“The one thing. In which I could lose myself—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Parlow said.
“—in my life—”
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” Parlow said.
“—was the Irish girl.”
“Yeah. Well, she’s dead. So find something else, as it ain’t funny anymore. You bore me,” Parlow said. “And I am sure you also, as you put it, ‘lost yourself’ in the joys of aviation. Up above the ‘clouds,’ and so on. Taking the lives of those who, but for a geographical accident, might have been your brothers.”
Two fellows from the American came by, and started to slide into the booth. “‘Fireman, save my child,’ the broad yells, fourth floor, tosses the baby to the fireman, he catches it, how? In his turn-out coat, held with his comrade. Kid bounces: into the arms of, who’s standing by . . . ?”
“His uncle,” Parlow said. “His father. Marie of Rumania and her pet dog Fluff.”
“HIS FUCKEN MOTHER,” the man said. “His mother.”
“His mother? Threw the kid, ran down, and caught it?” Parlow said.
“It wasn’t his mother threw it, it was—”
“His aunt?”
“They said it was his aunt. It was the cooze his father was fucking. The father? Brought the kid along, ‘Lay on the sofa, don’t move for half an hour.’”
“It had been his mother,” Parlow said, “she tossed him down, you’re right, ran down to catch him, she would have been better off, lug the kid down with her.”
“They told me, it’s his aunt, so there it is,” the man said.
“Who set the fire?” Mike asked.
“Ah,” Parlow said, “there’s the interesting thing . . .”
Later they sat alone at Hop Li’s. “The problem with the Chinks,” Parlow said, “is that you cannot close the joint.
“Nighthawks,” Parlow said, “cops, nurses, newsghouls, compositors, ink on their hands.” He inclined his head at the men coming off the night shift. They were generally large and gray, Slavic looking. Many wore coveralls beneath their street jackets. Many still wore the square-folded newsprint hat the making of which was the first skill any of them learned, as youths, their first day on the job.
“Ink on their fingers, ink in their blood,” Parlow said. Mike had been silent for the last hour. Parlow drank hooch from the small porcelain cups and smoked his pipe.
Mike looked at him. “I taught her ‘The Sheik of Araby,’” he said. “The real version.”
“The real version?” Parlow said. Mike nodded. “That’s an honor,” Parlow said, “to’ve been the first to have taught her the song. Yeaaah, you can’t close the joint.”
“You want to go home, go home,” Mike said.
“This is my home,” Parlow said.
“Yeah, I taught her,” Mike said, “‘The Sheik of Araby.’”
“I’m sure you did,” Parlow said.
“Sing it with me,” Mike said.
Parlow sat silent.
“Fucken Clem . . . ?” Mike said. “Valentino? Did he, for the love of Christ, die in vain? Broads, threw themselves off the second-story window, slit their wrists, the blood ran—n’you won’t sing ‘The Sheik of Araby’ . . . ?”
“Mike,” Parlow said, “you want to jump off into your nut bag, imitate a drunk, and so on, your own business. It, however, is a load of bullshit. What are you now, ‘abashed’?”
Mike waved his hand for one more round. The waiter nodded and started toward the bar.
“Or, I tell you what,” Parlow said, “how about you write ‘How many have to die, weep weep.’ You want to do that one?”
Mike looked at him. “How many have to die of what?” he said.
“The fuck do I care,” Parlow said. “I have no sympathy for you in the first place.”
“The fuck you don’t,” Mike said.
Mike shook his head.
“This is called grief,” Parlow said. “It is, by custom, you remember, suffered in, and only expressed by, silence. So, this bullshit about ‘The Sheik’ is not your pure D grief, but funny voices. Hiding what-could-it-be?”
“What?”
“You tell me.”
“What?”
“You tell me.”
“Shame.”
“That’s right,” Parlow said. “Shame that you can’t shut up. Jesus Christ. Shut up or do something about it. Or blow your brains out. I no longer care.”
The new drinks arrived. Parlow and Mike both watched the waiter as he served them. Both admired his absence of falsity in the presence of guilt. Parlow nodded at Mike, to say, You see? Mike nodded back.
“Well then,” Parlow said.
“Shame because I got her killed,” Mike said.
Parlow shrugged.
“Did I get her killed?”
“How the fuck do I know?” Parlow said. “We don’t know: who he was, whom he was gunning for, or what price glory?”
Mike downed his drink, took Parlow’s, and drank that, too. Parlow raised the teapot to refill the cups, and found it empty. “Would somebody, for the love of Christ, just bring the bottle?” Parlow said. “. . . Fucken Chinks.”
Poochy walked in, reading a newspaper. He put his camera case down on the bar, and waved his finger for a drink. He saw Parlow and Mike and came to their table, pointing at the paper.
“Did you hear about the broad caught the kid?” he said. “Mike?”
“Poochy,” Mike said. “Poochy. The story you have read is bullshit. The broad, first of all, threw the kid, was not his aunt, but the father’s doxy; second of all, no infant’s going to survive a four-story fall, however firemen stretch out their overcoat. Third of all, whyn’t they use the net? And, and, the true story, given the above, the wife came, her husband is fucking some girl upstairs, why is she there, if not to set the fire? And finally, it never happened.”
“How do you know it never happened?” Poochy asked.
“Because,” Mike said, “Fitzgerald and Ross, from the American, came in all ‘reporting’ it and so on, didn’t smell like smoke.”
“You’ve just broken my heart,” Parlow said.
Poochy shook his head in sadness. “Show me one thing that’s on the level,” he said.
Mike took the paper. “Page eight,” Poochy said.
“Page eight? You’re reading something’s on page eight?”
“I turned to it by accident,” Poochy said.
Mike opened the paper and read. “‘Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi.’ Who wrote this shit . . . ?”
Parlow leaned over to read the byline. “Fitzgerald,” he said.
“‘Out of Africa Always Something New, as Tacitus said. And as we, now, say of our own Africa of the South Side—State Street, Thirty-Third Street, our sepia Broadway known as “The Stroll.” Early this morning, firemen responded to . . .’”
“It wasn’t Tacitus,” Parlow said.
“Who was it?” Mike said.
“How the fuck would I know?” Parlow said.
“‘Yea, south of that equator which is Madison Street, life, at its fullest . . .’” Mike continued reading. “Nothing about the aunt,” he said, “or whoever it was on the fourth floor.”
“Maybe they just did it to sell papers,” Parlow said.
Mike put the paper down and stared.
“Yeah, that’s a life, ain’t it?” he said.
Parlow said, “Something on your mind?”
“I need to talk to somebody,” Mike said.
“And who would that be?” Parlow said.
Mike said, “I need to talk to the Italians.”
Chapter 18
It was long and widely acknowledged that Parlow knew everyone. He had, as he put it, “a three-cornered connection” with the Italians; he was “an associate member” of the Japanese community, and as such was acquainted with the Chinese through a shared affection for “things Oriental,” or “opium.”
When Mike first saw the pipe and bowl, at Parlow’s flat, he’d said, “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Show me the man content to slog through life on the natch,” Parlow had said, “but, having shown me, let us leave him and find more congenial companions.”
In what he characterized as his “sadly infrequent debauches,” he had, as he said, “mingled with the great and near great, in that atmosphere of love on the hip. Love untrammeled, unknown and unknowable to those stuck, straight-up, and confused, upon this shithole.”
Mike had said, “This, then, accounts for your lack of ambition,” and Parlow had said, “Let us say ‘it contributes.’”
Among his boon companions were several users and suppliers from the South Side.
Parlow, on Mike’s behalf, had requested an interview with “someone in power” from his friends on the South Side; and Mike was invited to drop by their headquarters, the Metropole Hotel, at four p.m.
In the slack time the waiters were preparing for the dinner crowd. A shirt-sleeved man was tuning the grand piano in the hotel lobby.
Mike was walked to the dining room entrance and frisked quite thoroughly by a small, slim, and vicious-looking man. His overcoat and hat were taken, and he was passed into the dining room.
“Keep your hands on the table,” the man said. Two middle-aged men in shirt-sleeves sat at a corner booth, going through a ledger. A third man sat alone in the next booth, eating a pastry and sipping espresso.
Mike approached the banquette, and the older, heavier man looked at him. “Siddown,” he said.
Mike sat in the dining chair across from the two men. The older of the two was Jake Guzik, head bookkeeper of the Capone Mob. “We know who you are,” Guzik said. “We’re sorry for your loss. We assume that’s why you’re here. We understand that you may want, what is it? Information . . . ? Revenge?”
Mike started to speak. The man raised his hand. “And it benefits, of course, no one for you to go around half-cocked.”
From the corner of his eye Mike saw the slim man, now standing at the bar, his eyes lightly but definitely fixed on Mike.
“I appreciate you seeing me,” Mike said.
“We didn’t do it,” Guzik said. Mike nodded. “Was that your question?” Mike shrugged.
“Look,” Guzik said, “look: do you see what a perfect position, you understand, your question might put us in? Bring him a cuppa coffee . . . ,” he called. The bartender, across the room, poured a cup and carried it, on a saucer, to their table.
“We could tell you anything—you fly off, and take out somebody we’d like gone, which, you understand, is for us, a gimme. Or, we point you toward whom-it-may-be, and you take after him in print, making his life difficult. We could do that.”
“Why don’t you?” Mike said. “Why would you do anything for me?”
“Because,” Guzik said, “you make people laugh, how ’bout that?
“Who might also respect, some people, that you are a straight shooter, and that you fought in France.” Guzik cleared his throat. “And wrote about the All Saints fire.”
“Who shot the Irish girl?” Mike said.
“It’s a violent city,” Guzik said.
“You saying you don’t know who shot her?”
“That’s the legitimate question,” the man said, “given that we had you to the meeting. The embarrassing answer is: that’s correct.”
Mike shrugged. “Thank you,” he said.
“That’s alright,” the man said. “Two things we hope,” he said, “is that you find peace, and that you don’t do anything foolish.”
The bodyguard motioned Mike back to the dining room door. Mike stood and walked out p
ast Al Capone, finishing his meal in the adjoining booth. Each mimed ignorance of the other’s existence.
“Well,” Peekaboo said, “they could’ve, easy enough, put you on the send, kill somebody. But they turned that card faceup, why?”
“They wanted me to believe them.”
“That’s right,” Peekaboo said. “So the question is: other than what they said was true, where’s their advantage?”
“I can’t see it,” Mike said.
“Neither can I,” Peekaboo said. “Maybe it’s true. Unless they just felt sorry for you. I don’t know, they confessed to ignorance, which is weakness, what they saying is, ‘I been there, too.’ Which is an offer of sympathy.”
“I, uh . . . ,” Mike said.
“Well, we know they’re sentimental,” Peekaboo said.
“Most crooks are,” Mike said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Peekaboo said. “When it costs them nothing. But show me someone is sentimental about their own, their own wretchedness.”
“And what is the cure for wretchedness?” Mike said.
“We were down south?” Peekaboo said. “Yeah,” she said, “we were down south and they took my brother out. The thing in those days was stump hanging. They would take and nail a man’s privates, or, as we say, ‘dick and balls,’ to a stump. Using, it came to hand, a rusty spike. A railroad spike . . .”
She looked down at Mike, who nodded slightly.
“. . . railroad spike, drive it in with a sledgehammer, an’ leave him there. ’N’ go off. Either leaving him there to die, or, the case may be, his friends come to him, aft they left, to cut him loose.” She looked at the window, and scratched a fingernail through the frost on the pane.
“I always thought,” she said, “worst thing was, his friends coming up, man, overcome with shame, how would he take it, accepting their aid, which was to emasculate him, cut him free—he wanted was to die.