Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Where’s that btard Martin?” he demanded of Jake. Not at all intimidated by the little strongarm man.

“He stepped out,” Jake said.

“Then I’ll wait. Till hell freezes over, if necessary.”

Judging by the weather, that wouldn’t be long.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Jake said, brushing by him. I followed.

“Who’s this?” Cooke said, meaning me. “A new member of your goon squad? Isn’t Fontana enough for you?”

Jake ignored that and I followed him down the steps to the street.

“He didn’t mean Carlos Fontana, did he?” I asked.

Jake nodded. His breath was smoking, teeth chattering. He wasn’t wearing a topcoat; we’d left too quick for such niceties.

“Fontana’s a pretty rough boy,” I said.

“A lot of people who was in bootlegging,” Jake said, shrugging, “had to go straight. What are you gonna do now?”

“I’ll use the phone booth in the drug store to get one of my ops out here to shadow Cooke. I’ll keep watch till then. He got enough of a look at me that I don’t dare shadow him myself.”

Jake nodded. “I’m gonna go call Martin.”

“And tell him to stay away?”

“That’s up to him.”

I shook my head. “Cooke seemed pretty mad.”

“He’s an asshole.”

And Jake walked quickly down to a parked black Ford coupe, got in, and smoked off.

I called the office and told my secretary to send either Lou or Frankie out as soon as possible, whoever was available first; then I sat in the Auburn and waited.

Not five minutes later a heavy-set, dark-haired man in a camel’s hair topcoat went in and up the union-hall stairs. I had a hunch it was Martin. More than a hunch: he looked well and truly pissed off, too.

I could smell trouble.

I probably should have sat it out, but I got out of the Auburn and crossed Roosevelt and went up those stairs myself. The secretary was standing behind the desk. She was scared shitless. She looked about an inch away from crying.

Neither man was in the anteroom, but from behind the closed door came the sounds of loud voices.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“That awful Mr. Cooke was in using Johnny…Mr. Martin’s telephone, in his office, when Mr. Martin arrived.”

They were scuffling in there, now.

“Any objection if I go in there and break that up?” I asked her.

“None at all,” she said.

That was when we heard the shots.

Three of them, in rapid succession.

The secretary sucked in breath, covered her mouth, said, “My God…my God.”

And I didn’t have a gun, goddamnit.

I was still trying to figure out whether to go in there or not when the burly, dark-haired guy who I assumed (rightly) to be Martin, still in the camel’s hair topcoat, came out with a blue-steel revolver in his hand. Smoke was curling out the barrel.

“Johnny, Johnny,” the secretary said, going to him, clinging to him. “Are you all right?”

“Never better,” he said, but his voice was shaking. He scowled over at me; he had bushy black eyebrows that made the scowl frightening. And the gun helped. “Who the hell are you?”

“Nate Heller. I’m a dick Jake Rubinstein hired to shadow Leon Cooke.”

Martin nodded his head back toward the office. “Well, if you want to get started, he’s on the floor in there.”

I went into the office and Cooke was on his stomach; he wasn’t dead yet. He had a bullet in the side; the other two slugs went through the heavy coat that had been slung over his arm.

“I had to do it,” Martin said. “He jumped me. He attacked me.”

“We better call an ambulance,” I said.

“So, then, we can’t just dump his body somewhere,” Martin said, thoughtfully.

“I was hired to shadow this guy,” I said. “It starts and ends there. You want something covered up, call a cop.”

“How much money you got on you?” Martin said. He wasn’t talking to me.

The secretary said, “Maybe a hundred.”

“That’ll hold us. Come on.”

He led her through the office and opened a window behind his desk. In a very gentlemanly manner, he helped her out onto the fire escape.

And they were gone.

I helped Cooke onto his feet.

“You awake, pal?”

“Y-yes,” he said. “Christ, it hurts.”

“Mount Sinai hospital’s just a few blocks away,” I said. “We’re gonna get you there.”

I wrapped the coat around him, to keep from getting blood on my car seat, and drove him to the hospital.

Half an hour later, I was waiting outside Cooke’s room in the hospital hall when Captain Stege caught up with me.

Stege, a white-haired fireplug of a man with black-rimmed glasses and a pasty complexion-and that Chicago rarity, an honest cop-was not thrilled to see me.

“I’m getting sick of you turning up at shootings,” he said.

“I do it just to irritate you. It makes your eyes twinkle.”

“ covereleft a crime scene.”

“I hauled the victim to the hospital. I told the guy at the drugstore to call it in. Let’s not get technical.”

“Yeah,” Stege grunted. “Let’s not. What’s your story?”

“The union secretary hired me to keep an eye on this guy Cooke. But Cooke walked in, while I was there, angry, and then Martin showed up, equally steamed.”

I gave him the details.

As I was finishing up, a doctor came out of Cooke’s room and Stege cornered him, flashing his badge.

“Can he talk, doc?”

“Briefly. He’s in critical condition.”

“Is he gonna make it?”

“He should pull through. Stay only a few minutes, gentlemen.”

Stege went in and I followed; I thought he might object, but he didn’t.

Cooke looked pale, but alert. He was flat on his back. Stege introduced himself and asked for Cooke’s story.

Cooke gave it, with lawyer-like formality: “I went to see Martin to protest his conduct of the union. I told Martin he ought to’ve obtained a pay raise for the men in one junkyard. I told him our members were promised a pay increase, by a certain paper company, and instead got a wage cut-and that I understood he’d sided with the employer in the matter! He got very angry, at that, and in a little while we were scuffling. When he grabbed a gun out of his desk, I told him he was crazy, and started to leave. Then…then he shot me in the back.”

Stege jotted that down, thanked Cooke and we stepped out into the hall.

“Think that was the truth?” Stege asked me.

“Maybe. But you really ought to hear Martin’s side, too.”

“Good idea, Heller. I didn’t think of that. Of course, the fact that Martin lammed does complicate things, some.”

“With all the heat on unions, lately, I can see why he lammed. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt Martin pulled the trigger. But who attacked who remains in question.”

Stege sighed. “You do have a point. I can understand Martin taking it on the lam, myself. He’s already under indictment for another matter. He probably just panicked.”

“Another matter?”

Stege nodded. “He and Terry Druggan and two others were indicted last August for conspiracy. Trying to conceal from revenue officers that Druggan was part owner of a brewery.”

Druggan was a former bootlegger, a West Side hood who’d been loosely aligned with such non-Capone forces as the Bugs Moran gang. I was starting to think maybe my old man wouldn’t have been so pleased by all this union activity.

“We’ll stake out Martin’s place,” Stege said, “for all the good it’ll do. He’s got a bungalow over on Wolcott Avenue.”

“Nice little neighbrhood,” I said.

“We’re in the wrong racket,” Stege admitted.

It was too late in the afternoon to bother going back to the office now, so I stopped and had supper at Pete’s Steaks and then headed back to my apartment at the Morrison Hotel. I was reading a Westbrook Pegler column about what a bad boy Willie Bioff was when the phone rang.