Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Did I really,” he said dryly. It wasn’t a question.

“Your scenario needed one more rewrite. First you told the cops you slept at the apartment over the cafe Saturday night, bolting the door around midnight, accidentally locking Thelma out. But later you admitted seeing Thelma the next morning, around breakfast time-at the bungalow .”

His smile quivered. “Perhaps I slept at the apartment, and went up for breakfast at the bungalow.”

“I don’t think so. I think you killed her.”

“No charges have been brought against me. And none will.”

I looked at him hard, like a hanging judge passing sentence. “I’m bringing a charge against you now. I’m charging you with murder in the first degree.”

His smile was crinkly; he stared into the redness of his drink. Smoke from his cigarette-in-holder curled upward like a wreath. “Ha. A citizen’s arrest, is it?”

“No. Heller’s law. I’m going to kill you myself.”

He looked at me sharply. “What? Are you mad…”

“Yes, I’m mad. In sense of being angry, that is. Sometime, within the next year, or two, I’m going to kill you. Just how, I’m not just sure. Might be me who does it, might be one of my Chicago pals. Just when, well…perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps a month from tomorrow. Maybe next Christmas. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You can’t be serious…”

“I’m deadly serious. Right now I’m heading home to Chicago, to mull it over. But don’t worry-I’ll be seeing you.”

And I left him there at the bar, the glass of bloody Mary mixing itself in his hand.

Here’s what I did to Warren Eastman: I hired Fred Rubinski to spend two weeks shadowing him. Letting him see he was being tailed by an ugly intimidating-looking bastard, which Fred was. Letting him extrapolate from this that I was, through my surrogate, watching his every move. Making him jump at that shadow, and all the other shadows, too.

Then I pulled Fred off Eastman’s case. Home in Chicago, I slept with my gun under my pillow for a while, in case the director got ambitious. But I didn’t bother him any further.

The word in Hollywood was that Eastman was somehow-no one knew exactly how, but somehow-dirty in the Todd murder. And nobody in town thought it was anything but a murder. Eastman never got another picture. He went from one of the hottest directors in town, to the coldest. As cold as the weekend Thelma Todd died.

The Sidewalk Cafe stopped drawing a monied, celebrity crowd, but it did all right from regular-folks curiosity seekers. Eastman made some dough there, all right; but the casino never happened. A combination of the wrong kind of publicity, and the drifting away of the high-class clientele, must have changed Lucky Luciano’s mind.

Within a year of Thelma Todd’s death, Eastman was committed to a rest home, which is a polite way of saying insane asylum or madhouse. He was in and out of such places for the next four years, and then, one very cold, windy night, he died of a heart attack.

Did I keep my promise? Did I kill him?

I like to think I did, indirectly. I like to think that Thelma Todd got her money’s worth from her chauffeur/bodyguard, who had not been there when she took that last long drive, on the night her sad blue eyes closed forever.

I like to think, in my imperfect way, that I committed the perfect crime.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have taken liberties in this story based on the probable murder of actress Thelma Todd, changing some names and fictionalizing extensively. A number of books dealing with the death of Thelma Todd were consulted, but I wish in particular to cite Marvin J. Wolf and Katherine Mader, authors of Fallen Angels (1986).

Nineteen-thirty-six began for me with a missing persons case. It didn’t stay a missing persons case long, but on that bitterly cold Chicago morning of January 3rd, all Mrs. Peacock knew was that her doctor husband had failed to come home after making a house call the night before.

It was Saturday, just a little past ten, and I was filling out an insurance adjustment form when she knocked. I said come in, and she did, an attractive woman of about ive in an expensive fur coat. She didn’t look high-hat, though: she’d gone out today without any make-up on, which, added to her generally haggard look, told me she was at wit’s end.

“Mr. Heller? Nathan Heller?”

I said I was, standing, gesturing to a chair across from my desk. My office at the time was a large single room on the fourth floor of a less than fashionable building on the corner of Van Buren and Plymouth, in the shadow of the El. She seemed a little posh to be coming to my little one-man agency for help.

“Your name was given to me by Tom Courtney,” she said. “He’s a friend of the family.”

State’s Attorney Thomas J. Courtney and I had crossed paths several times, without any particular mishap; this explained why she’d chosen the A-1 Detective Agency, but not why she needed a detective in the first place.

“My husband is missing,” she said.

“I assume you’ve filed a missing person’s report.”

“Yes I have. But I’ve been told until twenty-four hours elapse, my husband will not be considered missing. Tom suggested if my concern was such that I felt immediate action warranted, I might contact you. Which I have.”

She was doing an admirable job of maintaining her composure; but there was a quaver in her voice and her eyes were moist.

“If you have any reason to suspect a kidnapping or foul play,” I said, keeping my voice calm and soft, to lessen the impact of such menacing words, “I think you’re doing the right thing. Trails can go cold in twenty-four hours.”

She nodded, found a brave smile.

“My husband, Silber, is a doctor, a pediatrician. We live in the Edgewater Beach Apartments.”

That meant money; no wonder she hadn’t questioned me about my rates.

“Last evening Betty Lou, our eight year-old, and I returned home from visiting my parents in Bowen. Silber met us at Union Station and we dined at little restaurant on the North Side-the name escapes me, but I could probably come up with it if it proves vital-and then came home. Silber went to bed; I was sitting up reading. The phone rang. The voice was male. I asked for a name, an address, the nature of the business, doing my best to screen the call. But the caller insisted on talking to the doctor. I was reluctant, but I called Silber to the phone, and I heard him say, ‘What is it?…. Oh, a child is ill? Give me the address and I’ll be there straight away.’”

“Did your husband write the address down?”

She nodded. “Yes, and I have the sheet right here.” She dug in her purse and handed it to me.

In the standard barely readable prescription-pad scrawl of any doctor, the note said: “G. Smale. 6438 North Whipple Street.”

“Didn’t the police want this?”

She shook her head no. “Not until it’s officially a missing persons case they don’t.”

“No phone number?”

“My husband asked for one and was told that the caller had no phone.”

“Presumably he was calling on one.”

She shrugged, with sad frustration. “I didn’t hear the other end of the conversation. All I can say for certain is that my husband hung up, sighed, smiled and said, ‘No rest for the wicked,’ and dressed. I jotted the information from the pad onto the top of the little Chicago street guide he carries, when he’s doing house calls.”

“So he never took the original note with him?”

“No. What you have there is what he wrote. Then Silber kissed me, picked up his black instrument bag and left. I remember glancing at the clock in the hall. It was 10:05 p.m.”