Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

Tony Minneci introduced me as a private detective trying to help clear Leo. Tina Minneci-tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender-immediately warmed to me, and seemed genuinely bewildered that anyone could ever think her gentle, loving husband could have robbed or hurt anybody. (It would have been impolite to point out that gentle, loving Leo used to bash other guys’ brains out for a living.) She wore about a buck’s worth of cotton house dress, blue plaid with a ruffled collar, nicely feminine, and her narrow face would have been pretty with a little make-up and a good night’s sleep.

She sat us down at a round wooden table in the kitchen; a highchair was shoved to one side. She had a pot of coffee going as well as a bottle of milk in a saucepan on the stove.

We all had coffee while we sat and talked-quietly, because she had just put baby Jimmy down for the night.

“He’s a good boy,” she said, almost whispering, “unless something wakes him-then look out!”

I said, “You have another child, don’t you?”

“Yes-Leo, Jr. He’s six. He’s been with his grandparents since…since Leo, Sr., went away. They have a nice flat on the West Side-Daddy has a little restaurant over there, and does pretty well.”

“I see.”

“Little Jimmy and I may be joining Leo, Jr. I may have to move back in with my folks-my rent here is due in a week and I’m flat broke.”

I nodded toward the living room. “You have a pretty nice place here. This isn’t exactly a Hooverville.”

“I know, but we didn’t have any money stashed away in the bank or under a pillow, either. Leo’s always been a good provider. He made a really decent living as a fighter, and when that dwindled, he always brought enough in to keep us comfortable.”

“Where did he work?”

“No one place, but he always had something going. He did day labor, sometimes he helped out at the gym where he used to train.”

I kept my tone easy. “You don’t think that money could’ve come from…somewhere else?”

Her eyes flared. “Mr. Heller, my husband is an honest man. He got in with a bad crowd, is all. I always thought George Dale was a slickster.”

“What about Eleanor Jarman?”

Mrs. Minneci gave up a benefit-of-the-doubt shrug. “She always seemed all right. She has two little ones of her own to look after, you know.”

Tony sat forward; his straw boater was on the table next to his coffee cup like an upturned soup bowl. “Listen, I got some grocery money for you, Tina. Five bucks I squeezed out of my clerk job. If I go over there with you, I can get the employee discount.”

Mrs. Minneci turned her dark eyes on me and explained: “The little grocery store where Tony works part-time is just a block from here…. You’re a sweetheart, Tony, but I can’t leave Jimmy here alone, and I’m not about to wake him.”

“I can babysit,” I said, “if you’re not gone too long.”

She beamed at me, then frowned with parental concern. “What would a nice young man like you know about taking care of a baby?”

“This nice young man used to go out with a nice divorcee with three kids, two in diapers. I know all about changing ’em, and I wield a mean milk bottle, too.”

Mrs. Minneci glanced at her brother-in-law, who shrugged and said, “Mr. Heller’s reliable. No worries. We can be over there and back in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

A small discussion (“Do you mind? Are you sure?”) followed, but finally dutiful Tony took the sister-in-law he claimed to despise-although I’d seen no sign of that-out the door and into the hall and down the stairs.

The tricky part was that slumbering kid. Jimmy was in a crib in the bedroom where I needed to poke around. So I did my quietest, most careful work, and I’d like to say I was able to pull off the find because I was a real professional, but a blind man could have pawed around and come up with the stuff.

Under the bed, in a trio of clothing boxes, were lovely fashions, long-sleeved wool and rabbit’s hair numbers, stylish with Ascot ties and metal buttons and all the most fashionable current touches. Stege had said the Blonde Tigress had helped herself to pretty things on the robberies, and these brand-new, never worn dresses certainly qualified.

Most damning were two items dropped on top of the final box I opened, nestled on a long-sleeved rayon satin two-color frock with a bow at the neck: a blonde wig and a blackjack.

Some things never go out of style.

I thought about laying all this stuff out on the kitchen table, like a meal; but instead I just put the caboodle away and went out and helped myself to another cup of coffee. Something about the set-up made me think maybe I should have taken that bottle of warm milk out of that pan instead.

They returned in just over twenty minutes, with their arms full of grocery sacks and Tina Minneci all smiles. She was saying, “I think I’ll have the folks send Leo, Jr., home for a few days. We can eat like a proper family again. How can I thank you, Tony?”

Tony was all smiles, too, but his eyes kept flicking toward me expectantly. I pitched in with my hostess and her brother-in-law and helped unload the groceries sacks and turned the cupboard shelves from empty to full.

Leaning back against the kitchen counter, looking happy and with a hint of how lovely she really could be, Tina Minneci said, “Any trouble with Jimmy?”

“No,” I said. “Slept like a baby.”

That made her laugh. “Shall we sit down, and I’ll try to answer the rest of your questions?”

“I don’t have any more questions, thanks. You’ve been very gracious, Mrs. Minneci. Tony, isn’t it time we were going?”

Tony nodded and we made our goodbyes and we started down the steps and I waited until we were two-thirds of the way before I tripped him and sent him rattling down those stairs in a pile of arms and legs until he knocked up against the closed door.

I stood over him in the little entryway and he gazed up at me, astounded. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“That’s the clumsiest frame I ever saw.”

He got to his feet, brushing off his white pants. He picked up his boater, which had cracked. “You busted my hat!”

“I should bust more.”

His chin stuck out at me. “Listen, my brother is a boxer. He’s taught me a thing or two. I can take a punch.”

“Can you take a slap?” I asked, and slapped him four times, twice per cheek, ringing like gunshots in the stairwell.

Then I grabbed him by the shirt front and slammed him into some little wall-mounted mailboxes, which probably hurt. He was crying.

“I’ve seen low,” I said. “But framing your own sister-in-law…. Did Eleanor put you up to it?”

“I’m not talking to you!”

“Question is, am I talking to the cops?”

“You work for us!”

“Shut-up.” I shook my head. “Get the hell out of here. You make me sick.”

He and his busted boater scooted out. Under normal circumstances, he might have been able to give me worse than I’d just dished out to him. But I had righteous indignation on my side, which I admit was something new.

The next morning, Eleanor Jarman and I sat in the same interrogation room as before. Her arms were folded, her eyes cold, her mouth a wide tight line, straight as a ruler’s edge.

My arms were folded, too, but I was smiling. “Here’s the deal. I keep the hundred. I intend to send thirty bucks of it to Minneci’s wife, to help out on her rent. But I keep the rest-you’re getting off cheap, because if I sold what I know to the papers, you’d really be sunk.”

I had just filled her in on a bunch of stuff, including that I knew Leo’s brother was part of their little gang, possibly fencing boodle, certainly providing the car.