Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 by Chicago Confidential (v5.0) Read Free Book Online Page A

coincidence!”
    I still didn’t know what the first coincidence was.
    Now his eyes narrowed, in an approximation of thought. “What are you doin’ around these shabby digs, Nate?”
    The Barry Apartments were anything but shabby: this was as fashionable as Chicago neighborhoods got, and the Fischetti clan’s luxurious triplex penthouse had once been occupied by Mayor Thompson and Mayor Cermak…one at a time, of course.
    I gave him half a smile and said, “I was just bribing your doorman to see if I could come up and see you, without an appointment.”
    The doorman’s eyes widened with alarm.
    But Joey waved off my remark. “Ah, you don’t need to waste your money on that! Don’t take his money, George.”
    George swallowed and said, “No, sir,” and handed the twenty back.
    As I was returning the bill to my pocket, Joey slipped his arm around my shoulder and walked me a few steps down the sidewalk, for a little privacy; the baby Fischetti smelled like a Vitalis and Old Spice cocktail. “My brother’s been wanting to talk to you.”
    “Rocky or Charley?”
    “Charley. Rock’ll probably be in on it, though. See, I was supposed to call you, but I got busy making arrangements for Frank. That’s where I was headed, right now—paving the way for the Voice with Dave Halper, at the Chez Paree.”
    Dave Halper was one of the new owners of the club, which Mike Fritzel and Joe Jacobsen—the longtime hosts of a venue that had provided first breaks to the likes of Danny Kaye, Betty Hutton, and Danny Thomas—had sold to him last year. The Fischettis had an interest in this, the city’s biggest, biggest-time nitery: they owned the Gold Key Club, the Chez Paree’s backroom casino.
    “See, I kind of had to talk Dave into booking Frank,” Joey said.
    “Yeah, the kid’s career’s in a tailspin.”
    “Naw, Nate, it’s just a bump in the road.”
    I wasn’t going to argue the point. “Well, don’t let me keep you, Joey. I’ll be on my way, and you call my office, and we’ll—”
    But, oh fuck, now he was walking me back toward the apartment house. “Don’t be silly,” he was saying, squeezing my shoulder. “Seeing Halper can wait. Frank don’t open till Friday. Let’s go up and see Charley.”
    George got the door for us—I didn’t tip him—and Joey and I clip-clopped across the lavish lobby.
    “Would you do me a favor, Nate?”
    “Name it, Joey.”
    We stepped into the elevator, which was attended by a blue-uniformed guy with blue five o’clock shadow, a nose with minimal cartilage, cauliflower ears, and a bulge under his arm that wasn’t a tumor.
    Joey said to him, “I’m making a stop at Rocky’s floor.”
    “Yes, Mr. Fischetti,” the elevator man marble-mouthed.
    To me Joey whispered, “Don’t mention to Charley I just run into you by accident. I wanna tell him I called your office and you come around on purpose.”
    “Fine by me, Joey.”
    “Sometimes Charley thinks I’m a fuck-up, and it’s nice to show him I got organizational abilities. I’m doing more and more in the entertainment field, you know.”
    “Are you managing Frank?”
    He grinned, shrugged. “Not exclusive. Several people I know got a piece of Frank.”
    This did not surprise me. Since the decline of his career, Sinatra had been working mostly in mob rooms—Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club in Atlantic City; Moe Dalitz’s Desert Inn in Vegas; Ben Madden’s Riviera in New Jersey; and of course the Chez Paree here in Chicago.
    At the seventeenth floor, the uniformed thug deposited us in an entryway about the size of my first apartment. The plaster walls were light gray, and the penthouse door—and another around to the left labeled FIRE STAIRS—a deep charcoal. A few furnishings—a table with cut flowers in a white vase under a mirror, a golden Egyptian settee with a scarlet cushion—hugged the walls, and a sunburst clock opposite the penthouse door matched the sunburst doorbell, which Joey didn’t press—he