Littell put the note in an envelope and added five hundred dollars. Lenny said the junket tour had concluded–Sal should be back at home.
Kemper Boyd always said SEDUCE YOUR INFORMANTS WITH MONEY.
Littell called the Speedy-King Messenger Service. The dispatcher said he’d send a courier right over.
o o o
Mad Sal was prompt Littell pushed his rye and beer aside.
They had the whole row of tables to themselves. The college kids at the bar wouldn’t be able to hear them.
Sal sat down across from him. His flab rolls jiggled and hiked his shirt up over his belly button.
He said, “So?”
Littell pulled his gun and held it in his lap. The table covered him.
“So what did you do with that five hundred?”
Sal picked his nose. “I got down on the Blackhawks versus the Canadiens. Ten o’clock tonight that five hundred is a thousand.”
“You owe Giancana eleven thousand more than that.”
“So who the fuck told you?”
“A reliable source.”
“You mean some Fed snitch cocksucker. You’re a Fed, right? You’re too candy-ass looking to be anything else, and if you was CPD or the Cook County Sheriff’s, I’d’ve bought you off by now, and I’d be fucking your wife and cornholing your snotnose little boy while you was off at work.”
“You owe Giancana twelve thousand dollars that you don’t have. He’s going to kill you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You killed a colored boy named Maurice Theodore Wilkins.”
“That accusation is stale bread. It is fucking rebop you got out of some file.”
“I just turned an eyeball witness.”
Sal dug into his ears with a paper clip. “That is horse pucky. Feds don’t investigate nigger homicides, and a little birdie told me that that kid was killed by an unknown assailant in the basement of the church rectory he stole from. The birdie said the assailant waited for the priests to go to a ball game, and then he cut the nigger boy up with a chainsaw after he made the nigger boy blow him. The birdie said there was lots of blood, and the assailant took care of the stink with altar wine.”
Kemper Boyd always said NEVER SHOW FEAR OR DISGUST.
Littell laid a thousand dollars on the table. “I’m prepared to pay off your debt. In two or three installments, so Giancana won’t suspect anything.”
Sal grabbed the money. “So I take it, so I don’t take it. For all I know, Mo might decide to whack me ‘cause he’s jealous of my good looks.”
Littell cocked his gun. “Put the money down.”
Sal did it. “So?”
“So are you interested?”
“So if I’m not?”
“So Giancana clips you. So I put out the word that you killed Tony Iannone. You’ve heard the rumors–Tony got whacked outside a homo joint. Sal, you’re an open book. Jesus, ‘blow’ and ‘cornhole.’ I think you developed a few habits in Joliet.”
Sal ogled the cash. Sal smelled like tobacco sweat and Aqua Velva lotion.
“You’re a loan shark, Sal. What I’m asking for won’t be too far out of line.”
“S-s-so?”
“So I want to get at the Teamsters’ Pension Fund. I want you to help me push somebody up the ladder. I’ll find a man with a pedigree looking for a loan, and you help me set him up with Sam and the Fund. It’s that simple. And I’m not asking you to snitch anybody.”
Sal ogled the money.
Sal popped sweat.
Littell dropped three thousand dollars on the pile.
Sal said, “Okay.”
Littell said, “Take it to Giancana. Don’t gamble with it.”
Sal gave him the bah-fungoo sign. “Stow the lecture. And remember I fucked your mother, which makes me your daddy.”
Littell stood up and roundhoused his revolver. Mad Sal caught the barrel square in the teeth.
Kemper Boyd always said COW YOUR INFORMANTS.
Sal coughed up blood and gold fillings. Some kids at the bar watched the whole thing, bug-eyed.
Littell stared them down.
22
(Miami, 2/4/59)
The boat was late.
U.S. Customs agents crowded the dock. The U.S. Health Service had a tent pitched in the parking lot behind it.
The refugees would be X-rayed and blood-tested. The contagious ones would be shipped to a state hospital outside Pensacola.