City of Dark Corners

He continued pleading, “Show a man some compassion…”

“I’m a compassionate guy,” I said. “Tell me something I can use.”

“Like what? Prohibition’s going to end. There go the bootleggers. I wonder if booze will cost more or less?” He was hardly dressed for the chill, but he started sweating.

“That girl who fell off the train…”

He held out a shaking hand. “You got a smoke?”

I handed him a Chesterfield and my lighter.

After he handed back the lighter and took a long drag, I pressed him.

“What about the girl?”

“Word is she was murdered, cut up in pieces. This is your business.”

“What word? Where’d you hear that?”

“It’s on the street.”

“Whose street? Not mine.”

“Don’t do this.”

But I was going to do this. When he started to get out, I pulled him back in, hard, and slammed the door.

“Cop told me. You should know, too.”

“What cop, damn it?”

After a very long pause, he barely whispered, “Frenchy Navarre.”

“Tell me about Frenchy. What did he say, exactly?”

His eyes widened. “You want me to snitch on another cop?”

“I do.”

“You his buddy?”

I shook my head.

“I run errands for him sometimes. He gives me a few dollars. He mentioned the dead girl in passing, that’s all. Said I needed to stay away from the railroad yards, a maniac was loose.”

I wondered, not for the first time, if Frenchy was the maniac.

“What errands do you run?”

He rolled down the window and blew a plume of smoke outside. “Navarre is a bagman for the city commissioners and the cops. You ought to know that. And nobody messes with him. You ought to know that, too.”

So much to learn. I asked where he got the payoffs.

“Gus Greenbaum. He’s paying cops and the city commissioners to look the other way from his gambling wire and from bookies. Greenbaum and the Chicago mob have moved in. There’s so much money that sometimes Frenchy uses me. Don’t ask me where people get money to gamble in the Depression, but there’s a lot of it out there. Frenchy told me to stay away from the railroad.”

“Have you been breaking into boxcars? The bulls won’t like that if they catch you. And they will. They’ll remake your face with their billy clubs”

“No, I swear. I collect for Greenbaum south of the tracks, down in darktown.”