Last year, though, Nolan had returned to the Chicago area, thinking that after sixteen years the feud with Charlie was past history. That led to the first of his two injuries: one of Charlie’s men had spotted Nolan in Cicero and tagged him with a bullet. Later, Nolan and Charlie met for a meeting of truce, in which Nolan agreed to pay Charlie a set amount of money to repay past damages. The treaty was signed but broken by Charlie, and that had led to Nolan’s second and near-fatal trial by gunfire.
And then, after months holed-up recuperating, word filtered down to Nolan that the Family wanted to send a representative to meet with him. The representative was to be Felix, counselor in the Family, a lawyer with a single client. Sending the legal arm of the Family meant reconciliation was not only possible, but imminent.
Which was beautiful, because Nolan had nearly four hundred thousand dollars and the inclination to set himself up in business with a restaurant or nightclub or both, but he wanted all past wounds with the Family to be healed before making a move.
Nolan had conferred with the man named Felix in a room in a motel at the LaSalle-Peru exit on Interstate 80. Felix had said, “We want to thank you, Mr. Nolan.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “What for?”
“For exposing that idiot for the idiot he was.”
“Charlie, you mean.”
“Yes,” Felix had said. Felix was a small man, about five-four. His hair was gray and modishly long and his face was gray and he wore a well-cut gray suit and a tie the color of peaches. Felix could have been thirty or he could have been fifty or anywhere along the road between.
“You said ‘was,’ ” Nolan said.
“That’s right. Charlie is no longer a problem.”
“You mean Charlie’s dead.”
“Excuse my euphemism. Force of habit. Charlie is most certainly dead.”
“Maybe we ought to have a moment of silence or something.”
“The news hasn’t broken yet,” Felix said, pleasantly, “but you should be seeing something about the tragic event in the papers and on television this evening and tomorrow morning — though a ‘gangland leader’ who dies in an automobile mishap does not make nearly as good copy as one who dies by the gun.”
Nolan began to understand Felix’s friendly attitude. Nolan knew that the Family in Chicago had been much torn with political maneuvering within ranks, as for several years now the Chicago Boss of All Bosses had been living in Argentina in self-imposed exile to avoid prosecution on a narcotics charge. With the top seat vacant but still unattainable, underboss Charlie was the man with most authority, though even he was not wholly in command, as the exiled overlord had (perhaps unwisely) spread his authority out among a number of men, unwilling to see anyone gain total control. Nolan looked at Felix and realized that the lawyer was representing an anti-Charlie faction, which had apparently won their power struggle, having just pulled a relatively bloodless coup.
Which was no doubt supported by members on the executive council of the national organization of Families, who sympathized with these younger, anti-Charlie forces in the Chicago outfit. The sympathy was a chauvinistic one, as the other Families throughout the nation weren’t nearly as strong as Chicago. New York alone had five weaker, sometimes warring Families to Chicago’s powerful, monolithic one. Dumping Charlie would further destroy the strong center of power in the windy city, spreading the biggest Family in the country out among younger, less dominant gang leaders. It was all very similar to chess, or Cold War politics.
“I think we could find a place for you in the Family, Mr. Nolan,” Felix was saying.
“Like you found a place for Charlie?”
“Please. I would hope we’re here in mutual friendship, and good will.”
“Anybody who tells me Charlie is dead is a friend of mine.”
“I must say you exposed him ingeniously, and I’m sure if I knew all the details, every twist and turn of the scheme, I’d be all the more impressed.”
What Felix was referring to was something Nolan had done to countercheck Charlie in case of a double cross. When Charlie had agreed to make peace with Nolan — for a price — Nolan had included “bait money” in with the payoff, that being the marked bills from a recent bank job. Nolan’s intention had been to see if Charlie stuck by his word, and then if so, tell him about the marked bills. Charlie hadn’t, and months later, when one of the Family fences had tried to circulate those bills for Charlie, bad things started happening. Lawyers and judges-on-the-take got the trouble cleared up, but the anti-Charlie forces in the Family (with the support of the national Executive Council of Families, no doubt) had evidently seized upon the incident to depose the longtime under-boss, since Charlie’s dealings with Nolan had been behind Family backs and in violation of several council rulings. It had all worked pretty much as Nolan had intended it to.
“What about the others?” Nolan asked. “Werner? Tillis?”
