I stood, he stood again, and we had another handshake, and I went quickly out. At first I was pissed off, although relieved; but then the humor of it hit me.
The other shoe had finally dropped.
I’d thought Fischetti, Giancana, and company had too easily accepted at face value my assurances not to help Kefauver. I mean, hell — I was Bill Drury’s friend and almost partner! Yet there’d been no intimidation — just one bribe, from Tubbo, nothing from the Outfit itself.
Until this Sunday evening screening of
This had all been just another scam, courtesy of the mob and that poker-playing ape back there. Sinatra was a friend of the Chicago/Nevada gambling interests, after all; they wouldn’t want to insult him, not directly. And me, better to keep me a friendly nonwitness.
So they had reached out to Senator Joe McCarthy, that great Red-hunting all-American boy, to squeeze Frankie and me into silence.
No silence right now: I was laughing, loud and hard, and it was echoing through the rotunda of the S.O.B., filling the hollow, hallowed halls, startling the guard.
The flight from D.C. took maybe three hours, the bag handlers at Midway managed not to lose my suitcase, the ride to the Loop clocked thirty-eight minutes, and I was back in my suite at the St. Clair before noon on Monday.
Unfortunately, I was alone: no sign of my new roommate.
Not only was Jackie Payne absent from my apartment, so were her things — the clothes she’d hung in my bedroom closet, her toiletries, suitcases, everything. Gone. Like she’d never been here...
...except for the lingering fragrance of Chanel No. 5., in the bedroom particularly.
I got the front desk on the phone and asked the clerk to round up Hannan, the house dick. Hannan sometimes did jobs for me, and he was supposed to have been doing me a favor, while I was away.
Leaving Jackie even for twenty-four hours had been problematic. we’d spent Saturday together, mostly at my suite, loving each other, me assuring her that I was going to get her the best help for her problem. We’d gone to a picture show — a matinee of
“I’m afraid of him,” she’d said.
We were in bed, and the only light was courtesy of the lakefront and the moon through the window; she was nestled against me, her face against my chest. I was fooling with her hair, scratching and rubbing her scalp.
“No need,” I said, lying only a little. “Rocco’s going to have to watch himself where we’re both concerned.”
She looked up at me, eyes a-glimmer with worry. “Why do you think that?”
“His brother Charley will keep him in line. Baby, Charley knows I’m capable of dishing out the same kind of... medicine as his brother. And one thing these goombahs don’t want right now is bad publicity.”
“Bad publicity...?”
“I’m the friend and associate of an ex-cop who’s going to testify against them in this crime inquiry. The curtain on that roadshow is going up soon — probably after the election, but soon — and the Fischettis of this world... the smart ones, anyway... don’t want the papers filled with stuff out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie.”
“You mean — they have to behave themselves?”
“That’s right.” If they were smart — but Rocco wasn’t smart; Charley had to be smart enough for both of them... which was the catch I didn’t explain to her.
So I had, seemingly, soothed her nerves and eased her fears; but I needed to take other steps, to soothe and ease my own.
Hannan had agreed to keep an eye on my suite and the precious contents therein; he and the night dick — Goorwitz, who also did occasional jobs for the A-l — would make sure she wasn’t disturbed. Both were reliable, at least as far as ex-cops went, and could handle themselves with Rocco should he, or any underling, come around. Hannan, in particular, was a hardcase, an ex-GI who survived the Battle of the Bulge.
I was pacing when knuckles rapped on my door; the peephole revealed red-headed, freckle-faced, blue-eyed Hannan, in a rumpled brown suit and brown felt fedora.
He stepped inside, saying, “She went out this morning. I saw her, and stopped her.”
“Stopped her?”
“In the lobby — a bellboy paged me, to let me know what was going on... I mean, that she had called down to get help with her luggage.”
At my directive, Hannan had alerted the staff to inform him of Jackie’s movements, and he’d shown around a picture of Rocco — which I’d plucked from Jackie’s wallet in her purse — so that clerks, bellboys, elevator attendants, and cleaning ladies would be on the lookout for that ugly face as well.
