Target Lancer by Max Allan Collins

redolent of piss, shit, disinfectant, and urine cake, where nothing palatable got served up.
    So I gave it to him fairly straight. “Tom’s an old friend of mine. He said he’d been doing some PR work for you and some friends of yours. He’s an honest businessman, and when one of your guys asked him to make a money drop … he got understandably nervous.”
    “Why?” Indignant. Nostrils flaring. Fists clenched again. “Does he think we’re a bunch of fuckin’ crooks?”
    That was like Polly Adler saying, “What, do you think I run a whorehouse?”
    “It just wasn’t … business as usual,” I said, gesturing with an open, soothing hand. “He’s a straight citizen, Jim. He doesn’t usually go into strip clubs passing an envelope to the likes of Jack Ruby. Who, let’s face it, is a mobbed-up little piece of shit.”
    Rather than make Hoffa angry, this actually settled him down. The truth, oddly, did that sometimes. I had often been in a room of his sycophants and caught the moment in Hoffa’s eyes where he got fed up with having his dick stroked.
    The union boss hunched his shoulders like Jimmy Cagney in an old gangster movie—a familiar tic of his. “So, he come to you? For help.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you didn’t call me , or one of mine?”
    “What for? Your guy didn’t hide the fact the envelope was full of money. Probably ten grand. Tom was asked to hand it over to somebody in a strip club a block away from Skid Fucking Row. Tom and me go way back. He thought he might need a bodyguard. Wouldn’t you think the same?”
    Hoffa was squinting, considering that. “Like … should some asshole try to mug him or such shit.”
    “Exactly.”
    He raised his chin, looked down at me, which was tricky at his height. “You saw the transaction go down?”
    “I wouldn’t call it a transaction, Jim. Tom did what he was told—he handed off the envelope to Ruby. And he left.”
    He pointed at me with a blunt-tipped finger. “And your friend Tom—did you tell him later that you knew Ruby, and what his name was and so on?”
    “No! Why would I? All Tom wanted was to do you a favor and not get his ass handed to him, in the process. What’s wrong with that?”
    Hoffa thought about it.
    “Nothing,” he admitted.
    I shrugged. “It’s a coincidence that the guy picking up the envelope happened to be Ruby, who I happen to know.”
    “Happen to know how ?”
    “We go back to the West Side. Way back. He grew up with Barney Ross and me. His real name is Jake Rubinstein.”
    There was no question about Hoffa knowing Ruby. His box-seat pal Allen Dorfman’s father, Red, had taken over the Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union back in ’39, after that shooting Ruby had helped cover up. Right when the Teamsters stepped in and took over.
    Hoffa said, very low-key, “At the 606, did you speak to your old West Side buddy?”
    Surely he knew I had.
    “Yeah. Sat and talked with him a while. Nothing about the envelope he’d been handed. He didn’t indicate he knew I’d seen the handoff. Or even suspected my being at the club had anything to do with Tom.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    “This and that. Discussed which strippers he might want to book in his club. He has a club in Dallas, you know.”
    “And that’s it?”
    Should I tell him?
    I told him. “Funny thing was … he mentioned Cuba.”
    His eyes tightened. “Cuba?”
    “Yes … you know … how certain people have been helping certain other people with certain Cuban problems.…”
    Hoffa grunted something that was not exactly a laugh. “This Mongoose deal.”
    I hated that he knew the name of it. But I wasn’t surprised. He’d bragged to me before about helping Uncle Sam try to take Castro out. And he’d complained that “Booby” had cut him no slack for his patriotic efforts.
    He cocked his head, like a deaf guy trying to hear better. “So you just talked to Ruby a while, shot the shit, nothing else … memorable?”
    “Some kid