Max Collins - Angel in black

Haskins, embarrassed, nodded, and was turning to take care of that when the Hat clutched him by the shoulder, saying, “Send them out to do something useful-let’s canvass the neighborhood for the woman who made the phone call, and perhaps locate someone else who may have seen something, anything… hmmm?”

“Yes.”

“And once you’ve done that, I want you to find some newspapers and cover up that poor girl’s body. With the sun coming out, we need to preserve the body from discoloration, for Ray Pinker and the coroner.”

Haskins looked up at the sky-the sun indeed was starting to poke its streaky fingers through the clouds-then nodded and scurried away.

Sighing, Harry the Hat-holding up a hand to freeze Brown in place (Simon says Stay!)-wandered over to where I was standing, in the street.

Sidling up me, the Hat said, “I don’t think the lieutenant understands the sacred nature of a crime scene.”

“The what?”

“Nate, it’s sacred, this ground… sacred and profane, yes… but mostly sacred. Murder is a marriage between victim and slayer-it’s a bond formed between two people that ties them together. It’s more binding than marriage, though… you can divorce a mate, you can even remarry a mate… but you can only murder somebody once.”

Was he needling me, with this marriage metaphor, after I mentioned the corpse reminded me of my wife?

But I said only, “That’s, uh, hard to argue with, Harry.”

He nodded toward the vacant lot, reached out a hand as if in benediction. “On that sacred ground, murderer and victim were together, one last time-even if he didn’t kill her, even if he only deposited the remains. And that nasty tableau, Nate, it’s a work of art, in the killer’s mind… and, frankly, in mine… it’s a reflection of his mind, his personality… That sacred ground contains all the clues and evidence we might need to solve this murder, or at least it did before that boob from University allowed reporters and cops and God knows who else to trample around on it.”

“That was some speech, Harry-but how do you know it’s a ‘he’?”

That made him wince in thought. “What do you mean, Nate?”

“You keep referring to the murderer as ‘he’… Couldn’t it be a ‘she’?”

“Look at that display, Nate-it’s a sex crime.”

“Lesbians kill people, too. You see any sign of semen?”

“She was washed clean of it.”

“How do you know? And, anyway-ever occur to you that that smile cut in her face might mean something nonsexual?”

The hooded eyes blinked. “Explain.”

I shrugged. “Back in Chicago, a corpse dumped with its mouth gashed, we’d read that as somebody who got rubbed out for talking too much… and left as an example.”

Now his eyes were wide; they stayed that way for a while. Then he said, as if bored to tears, “Interesting… You know, I really do respect you as a detective, Nate-these insights, I appreciate them.”

I couldn’t detect any sarcasm in that; but maybe I just wasn’t a good enough detective to do so.

He touched his hat brim in a tip-the-hat gesture and said, “Don’t forget to make that phone call to your friend Mr. Ness for me, now, hear?”

“Sure. I’ll call you.”

“I wish you would. I may have my hands full.”

He was just about to amble back to his partner when Fowley’s blue Ford rolled in. The little reporter in the tight hat and loose suit parked in the street and came over and grinned at Hansen.

“Not surprised to see you, here, Harry,” Fowley said. “This is gonna be a big one.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Richardson approved an extra.”

Hansen frowned. “You’re putting out an extra edition on a simple homicide?”

“You saw her-this is one homicide that ain’t simple. We’re gonna run with this, Harry… Don’t tell me you’d mind seein’ that popular feature ‘Mr. Homicide’ in the papers again?”

The Hat thought about that, just momentarily, and then stepped away from us and-in an uncharacteristic move from someone so softspoken-called out in a booming voice, “Would the members of the press mind converging? Thank you, gentlemen… thank you, Aggie…”

About a dozen representatives of the press-reporters and photographers-gathered around the Hat, the tired eyes in his hound-dog countenance almost shut as he made an announcement.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the Hat said. “I wanted to inform you of two facts. First, you’re all about to leave this crime scene; I don’t want the crime lab to have to conduct their investigation with you good people peeking over their shoulders, or making further contributions of flashbulbs and cigarette butts…”

A general rumbling of discontent passed through the little crowd.

“How are we supposed to get our information, Harry?” Aggie demanded.

“Through me,” the Hat said. “Exclusively through me. And if any of you attempt to go over my head, and get it from my boss, Captain Donahoe, or from the Chief himself, as some of you have been known to do… well then, I promise you, I will cut you off from any future information on this or any case… Good afternoon.”

The reporters dispersed, grumbling as they went; me, I was happy to be climbing into the Ford with Fowley behind the wheel.

“What took you so long, you prick?” I demanded.

He just grinned at me, a happy bulldog. “When I called Richardson, he told me to get the hell in and develop those negatives. That’s a switch, huh? Heller pictures in the paper, and no Heller in the pictures!”

That was just how I wanted it.

“You guys are really going with an extra on this?” I asked him, as he swung his car around, giving me a view of Lieutenant Haskins and a patrolman taking apart newspapers and covering the halved corpse.

“You bet your lily-white ass,” Fowley said. “The Examiner ’s gonna be all over this baby.”

I looked at the overlapping peaks of newsprint, covering her entirely, except for red-painted toenails-like Peggy’s-sticking out from under the pages.

“You already are,” I said.

Elizabeth Short-who I knew as Beth-had come into my life the previous October. I would be lying if I said she meant much more to me than any number of showgirls, waitresses, and secretaries with whom I’d had short-lived affairs. Beth was memorable chiefly because she resembled Peggy Hogan; otherwise, she was just another pretty young starry-eyed thing filled with dreams but no real plans.

As I attempt to share my memories of this ill-fated girl, please keep in mind that the several months prior to Peggy and me reconciling (and marrying) are something of a blur. Like many a spurned lover, I wallowed in self-pity, and when I got sick of that, I would turn to a bottle, and drink myself into a stupor.

Even my work, which I always relished, had become a mind-numbing bore. Due to extensive Chicago press coverage of my roles in such high-profile cases as the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Cermak assassination, and the Sir Harry Oakes murder, I had acquired a certain minor celebrity. This made it advisable for me to take initial meetings with clients-who sometimes wanted an autograph, and always wanted an assurance that the president of the A-1, Nathan Heller himself, would be handling their oh-so-vital retail-credit-check/divorce-case/personnel investigation, personally.

So I took these meetings, and my half a dozen operatives did the work. Most of them were, like me, ex-Chicago cops; the senior man was Lou Sapperstein, who took on the more challenging, which is to say rewarding and interesting, jobs.

Closing in on sixty, Lou-with bald pate, graying temples, bowtie, and tortoiseshell eyeglasses-looked more like an accountant than a private cop. Useful in shadow jobs, his appearance was deceiving: he was one lean, hard op, and little slipped past him-including my state of mind and lackluster performance.