“Robinson will see you at eleven-thirty at the Stevens,” Lou said. “Suite 1014. Any objections?”
“No. Thank you for setting it up.” I returned to my mail and then looked up and Lou, bright-eyed behind the tortoise-shells, was staring at me.
“Are you still here?” I asked.
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what’s up with Tubbo — spill!”
I filled him in, and showed him the envelope of money.
“You’re keeping that?” Lou asked, mildly surprised.
“Hell yes. I wasn’t going to testify, anyway.”
His eyes were wide, his brow tense. “Well, Christ — thanks for making me party to a bribe.”
I shrugged. “In that case, this never happened, and this two grand goes into my pocket, and not the A-1 account, out of which you get a share.”
Sapperstein smirked. “You’re funnier than Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.”
“All of them? Anyway, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and now it has.”
“What other shoe?”
I leaned back, rocking in the chair. “It was too easy, yesterday, with Fischetti.”
“How so?”
“Charley just asked me not to testify, and I said don’t worry about it, and that was it.
He frowned — and with that bald head, the frown went way back and never seemed to stop. “You’re not going to sell Drury out, are you?”
I almost threw a paperweight at him. “What the fuck kind of thing is that to say? I got lines I don’t cross, for Chrissake!”
He got up, patting the air with both palms. “I know, Nate, I know, I’m sorry... It’s just — after all these years, I still have trouble keeping track of what they are, exactly.”
And he went out.
The Stevens Hotel was hardly an out-of-the-way hole-in-the-wall where an investigator might discreetly interview informants. On Michigan Avenue between Balbo and Eighth, overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan, the massive, rococo hotel was the world’s largest, with its three thousand rooms, twenty-five stories and four finger-like skyscraper towers.
Still, it made some sense, Kefauver’s team camping out, here. Uncle Sam had a relationship with the Stevens, which had been used by the military during the war, for offices, training, and even billeting. And with all these rooms, all this activity — who knew how many conventions and conferences were going on in the hotel right now? — anybody could get lost in the crowd, or at least have an excuse for being here.
Though the Stevens was only a four-block walk from the Monadnock, a light rain encouraged me to hop a cab, which dropped me at the Michigan Avenue entry. A corridor of store-front windows opened into a two-story, ornate lobby bordered by yawningly wide staircases, leading to ballrooms and, no kidding, an ice-skating rink. Shaking the drizzle from my fedora, I strolled on into the vast white chamber, a world of marble pilasters, luxurious Louis XVI furnishings, and fluffy clouds drifting on a high, carved-plaster, gold-trimmed ceiling’s painted sky — what better setting for Chicago gangsters?
The elevators were to the left of the check-in counter, near an elegant sitting area of round button-tufted couches and overstuffed chairs. I spotted a small man in a brown suit and green snapbrim, seated in a chair between a couple of potted ferns, legs crossed exposing diamond-pattern socks over brown tasseled loafers. Though his identity was hidden by the
When I turned my back to this possible sentry — or spy — I continued to watch him in the polished bronze elevator door, to see if he peeked out over or around that sports section. He did not. Maybe I was just being paranoid — but that was okay, because I was, after all, a professional paranoid.
When I got off on the tenth floor, a short, burly-looking little guy — snappy, in a well-cut blue suit with blue-and-red striped tie and gray feathered hat — was waiting to get on. His hair was black and his eyes were like black buttons in a rumpled oval face made round by five o’clock-shadowed jowls.
I knew him and he knew me — and we both froze there, long enough for him to miss the elevator. We understood at once why we both were on the tenth floor of the Stevens.
“Well, hello, Jake,” I said, and offered my hand.
Jake Rubinstein’s grip was firm, but his smile wasn’t. “Been a long time, Nate. Since before the war, right?”
“Right. I thought you were in Dallas.”
“Yeah, yeah I still am.” He hitched his shoulders, Cagney-style, only without the confidence. “I had, uh... business back here.”
We both knew what kind of business — the Kefauver variety — but that went unstated.
Jake punched the DOWN button, and said, “So is Barney in town?”
“No, he and Cathy are in L.A. They got remarried.”
“Ah, that’s great. I heard he shook that monkey off his back. That’s great, too. Gutsy little bastard.”
