“No, but I can get it. Hold a second.”

A sweet union scam like the Circular Distributors had Outfit written all over it-and Captain Tubbo Gilbert, head of the State Prosecutor’s police, was known as the richest cop in Chicago. Tubbo was a bagman and police fixer so deep in Frank Nitti’s pocket he had Nitti’s lint up his nose.

Lou was back: “It’s at 7 North Racine. That’s Madison and Racine.”

“Well, hell-that’s spitting distance from Skid Row.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So that explains the scam-that ‘union’ takes hobos and makes day laborers out of them. No wonder they charge daily dues. It’s just bums handing out ad circulars….”

“I’d say that’s a good guess, Nate.”

I thanked Lou and went back to the booth where Barney was brooding about what a louse his friend Heller was.

“I got something to do,” I told him.

“What?”

“My kind of kaddish.”

Less than two miles from the prominent department stores of the Loop they’d been fleecing, the Circular Distributors Union had their headquarters on the doorstep of Skid Row and various Hoovervilles. This Madison Street area, just north of Greek Town, was a seedy mix of flophouses, marginal apartment buildings and storefront businesses, mostly bars. Union HQ was on the second floor of a two-story brick building whose bottom floor was a plumbing supply outlet.

I went up the squeaking stairs and into the union hall, a big high-ceilinged open room with a few glassed-in offices toward the front, to the left and right. Ceiling fans whirred lazily, stirring stale smoky air; folding chairs and cardtables were scattered everywhere on the scuffed wooden floor, and seated at some were unshaven, tattered “members” of the union. Across the far end stretched a bar, behind which a burly blond guy in rolled-up white-shirt sleeves was polishing a glass. More hobos leaned against the bar, having beers.