Chicago Confidential

The janitor was skinny, but he had a round piggy face; a balding guy in his forties in wireframe glasses and bib overalls, he had his workshoe-shod feet up on the scarred desktop as he sat reading the Police Gazette with Jane Russell on the cover. A cup of pencils (perhaps abandoned by a blind beggar), several empty pop bottles, and wadded-up balls of grease-spotted brown sandwich paper were the extent of the work spread out on the desk.

At first I didn’t think he’d heard me come in, but then he chimed out, in a whiny tenor, “Didn’t you see the sign? No soliciting.”

“I’m here about the guy in your basement,” I said.

The magazine dropped to his lap. His pig’s nose twitched and so did his buck-toothed mouth; his eyes — a rather attractive china blue, in the midst of all that homeliness — were as round and hard as marbles. But there was fear in them.

“Nobody in the basement,” he said.

“Sure there is,” I said, and tossed a fin on the desk.

He just looked at it; after a while, he blinked a few times.

“I’m not from the cops,” I said, “and I’m not a Fischetti boy. The guy in the basement? I’m his boss.”

And I tossed an A-1 Detective Agency business card his way. He took his feet off the desk and sat forward and studied the card, which he held in two hands, like a Treasury agent examining a counterfeit bill.

Then I plucked the card back — it was nothing I wanted to leave lying around the Fischetti homestead — and said, “Just point me, and there’s another fivespot in it for you, on my way out.”

“I could really get in trouble, you know.”

“How much is my op paying you?”

“Don’t you know? You’re his boss.”

“I’m the boss, but he’s kind of his own man. What’s he paying you?”

The janitor shrugged. “Ten bucks a day. Plus the original C note.”

“And you do know who lives on the top floor of this joint?”

His lips farted. “Sure I know.”

I shook my head. Some people didn’t put much of a premium on their own skins. “Yeah, you could really get in trouble... Point me.”

There, amid the labyrinth of pipes and ductwork and the typical junk accumulated in any basement, under the open beams of the low ceiling, in a pool of light provided by a bare hanging bulb, at an old battered table, wearing a dark blue vested suit with gray pinstripes (jacket draped over his chair), his back to the wall, sat former police lieutenant William Drury, like a man preparing to eat a meal. With the exception of a thermos of coffee, the array of items spread out on the table before him, however, wasn’t my idea of nourishment: a .38 revolver; a sawed-off shotgun; a notebook; assorted pencils; his gray homburg; and two suitcase-style Revere tape recorders trailing wires that disappeared into the ductwork. The reels of one of the sleek white machines in the hard-shell brown carrying cases were turning, the other two spools staring up at me like big plastic eyeglasses, the machine not recording, at the moment.

He had headphones on, but arranged to leave an ear uncovered; so he’d heard me approach — his right hand hovered over the .38 — then smiled in chagrined relief when he saw it was me. And the hand moved away from the gun.

For a guy five foot nine, broad-shouldered Bill Drury had incredible physical presence. But the dark blue eyes, which had always danced with intelligence and good humor, were pouchy now, and the dimpled jutting chin sat on a second, softer one. His complexion had a grayish cast, and his dark thinning hair — combed over ineffectively — was touched with gray; and that ready smile seemed strained.

“I guess if somebody’s gotta nail me,” Drury said, sheepish, “I’d rather it was you.”

“Christ, Bill,” I said, shaking my head. I felt woozy, like all the blood had drained out of me; my stomach was turning flip flops. “You’re going to get yourself killed, this time. Worse, you’re going to get me killed.”

He waved that off, made a dismissive face. “The Outfit doesn’t kill cops.”

“Fuck me! We’re not cops. I haven’t been a cop since 1932! And you, Bill — you’re not a cop, either. Not anymore.”

His eyes tightened. “I will be again. I will be, Nate.”

“How, by illegal wiretap?” I was still shaking my head. I gestured to the machines on the table. “Why two recorders, Bill?”

“I’ve got the phone line tied into this one,” he said, nodding toward the Revere at his left, “and this other one I can switch between various rooms in the three apartments.”

I noticed a small black metal box with several knobs, and said, “The recorders I recognize — they’re the A-1’s. When Lou said you’d checked them out, I figured you were up to something like this. But who made you the gizmo? Somebody on Kefauver’s staff?”

“I’m not working for the Kefauver Committee, Nate. This is strictly my own show.”

“No, Bill. This is the A-1’s show — you’re my operative, and those are my machines. You get busted by the cops, or the Fischettis, I get to take the ride with you... whether it’s to the station house or a ditch.”

He was shaking his head. “Nate, I’d never let that happen.”