Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

I’d guessed as much. “I didn’t know. I don’t mean to be a scavenger, Miss O’Meara, but life can do that to you. The Angles ain’t high society.”

“You were talking to that man all afternoon.”

“Harold Wilson. Sure. Nice fella.”

“Ma’s signing up policies on him.”

“That’s right. You know about that, do you?”

“I know more than you know. If you knew what I knew, you wouldn’t be so eager to sleep with that cow.”

“Now, let’s not be disrespectful…”

“To you or the cow?…. Mr. O’Hara, you seem like a decent enough sort. Careful what you get yourself into. Remember how my papa died.”

“No one ever told me,” I lied.

“He got run down by a car. I think he got pushed.”

“Really? Who’d do a thing like that?”

The voice behind us said, “This is cozy.”

She was in the doorway, Katie, in a red Kimono with yellow flowers on it; you could’ve rigged out a sailboat with all that cloth.

“Mr. O’Hara helped me tidy up,” Maggie said coldly. No fear in her voice. “I offered him coffee.”

“Just don’t offer him anything else,” Katie snapped. The green eyes were har20;jade.

Maggie blushed, and rose, taking her empty cup and mine and depositing them awkwardly, clatteringly, in the sink.

In bed, Katie said, “Good job today with our investment, Bill.”

“Thanks.”

“Know what Harold Wilson’s worth, now?”

“No.”

“Ten thousand…. Poor sad soul. Terrible to see him suffering like that. Like it’s terrible for us to have to wait and wait, before we can leave all this behind.”

“What are you sayin’, love?”

“I’m sayin’, were somebody to put that poor man out of his misery, they’d be doin’ him a favor, is all I’m sayin’.”

“You’re probably right, at that. Poor bastard.”

“You know how cars’ll come up over the hill…25 thStreet, headin’ for the bridge? Movin’ quick through this here bad part of a town?”

“Yeah, what about ’em?”

“If someone were to shove some poor soul out in front of a car, just as it was coming up and over, there’d be no time for stoppin’.”

I pretended to digest that, then said, “That’d be murder, Katie.”

“Would it?”

“Still…You might be doin’ the poor bastard a favor, at that.”

“And make ourselves $10,000 richer.”

“…. You ever do this before, Katie?”

She pressed a hand to her generous bare bosom. “No! No. But I never had a man I could trust before.”

Late the next morning, I met with Eliot in a back booth at Mickey’s, a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall saloon a stone’s throw from City Hall. He was having a late breakfast-a bloody Mary-and I had coffee.

“How’d you get away from Kathleen O’Meara?” he wondered. He looked businesslike in his usual three-piece suit; I was wearing a blue number from the Frank O’Meara Collection.

“She sleeps till noon. I told her daughter I was taking a walk.”

“Long walk.”

“The taxi’ll be on my expense account. Eliot, I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. She sent the forms in and paid the premiums on Harold Wilson, and she’s talking murder all right, but if you want to catch her in the act, she’s plannin’ to wait at least a month before we give Harold a friendly push.”

“That’s a long time for you to stay undercover,” Eliot admitted, stirring his bloody Mary with its celery stalk. “But it’s in my budget.”

I sighed. “I never knew being a city employee could be so exhausting.”

“I take it you and Katie are friendly.”

“She’s a ride, all right. I’ve never been so disgusted with myself in my life.”

“It’s that distasteful?”

“Hell, no, I’m having a whale of time, so to speak. It’s just shredding what little’s left of my self-respect, and shabby little code of ethics, is all. Banging a big fat murdering bitch and liking it.” I shuddered.

“This woman is an ogre, no question…and I’m not talking about her looks. Nate, if we can stop her, and expose what’s she done, it’ll pave the way for prosecuting the other women in the Natural Death, Inc., racket…or at the very least scaring them out of it.”

That evening Katie and I were walking up the hill. No streetlights in this part of town, and no moon to light the way; lights in the frame and brick houses we passed, and the headlights of cars heading toward the bridge, threw yellow light on the cracked sidewalk we trundled up, arm in arm, Katie and me. She wore a yellow peasant blouse, always pleased to show off her treasure chest, and a full green skirt.

“Any second thoughts, handsome?”

“Just one.”

She stopped; we were near the rise of the hill and the lights of cars came up and over and fell like prison searchlights seeking us out. “Which is?”

“I’m willing to do a dirty deed for a tidy dollar, don’t get me wrong, love. It’s just…didn’t your husband die this same way?”

“He did.”

“Heavily insured and pushed in front of his oncoming destiny?”

There was no shame, no denial; if anything, her expression-chin high, eyes cool and hard-spoke pride. “He did. And I pushed him.”

“Did you, now? That gives a new accomplice pause.”

“I guess it would. But I told you he cheated me. He salted money away. And he was seeing other women. I won’t put up with disloyalty in a man.”

“Obviously not.”

“I’m the most loyal steadfast woman in the world…’less you cross me. Frank O’Meara’s loss is your gain…if you have the stomach for the work that needs doing.”

A truck came rumbling up over the rise, gears shifting into low gear, and for a detective, I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know we’d been shadowed; but we had. We’d been followed, or anticipated; to this day I’m not sure whether she came from the bushes or behind us, whether fate had helped her or careful planning and knowledge of her mother’s ways. Whatever the case, Maggie O’Meara came flying out of somewhere, hurling her skinny stick-like arms forward, shoving the much bigger woman into the path of the truck.

Katie had time to scream, and to look back at the wild-eyed smiling face of her daughter washed in the yellow headlights. The big rig’s big tires rolled over her, her girth presenting no problem, bones popping like twigs, blood streaming like water.

The trucker was no hit-and-skip guy. He came to a squealing stop and hopped out and trotted back and looked at the squashed shapeless shape, yellow and green clothing stained crimson, limbs, legs, turned to pulp, head cracked like a melon, oozing.

I had a twinge of sorrow for Katie O’Meara, that beautiful horror, that horrible beauty; but it passed.

“She just jumped right out in front of me!” the trucker blurted. He was a small, wiry man with a mustache, and his eyes were wild.

I glanced at Maggie; she looked blankly back at me.

“I know,” I said. “We saw it, her daughter and I…poor woman’s been despondent.”

I told the uniform cops the same story about Katie, depressed over the loss of her dear husband, leaping in front of the truck. Before long, Eliot arrived himself, topcoat flapping in the breeze as he stepped from the sedan that bore his special EN-1 license plate.

“I’m afraid I added a statistic to your fatalities,” I admitted.

“What’s the real story?” he asked me, getting me to one side. “None of this suicide nonsense.”

I told Eliot that Katie had been demonstrating to me how she wanted me to push Harold Wilson, lost her footing and stumbled to an ironic death. He didn’t believe me, of course, and I think he figured that I’d pushed her myself.