Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

“Would you like me to pass that along?”

A grimace drained all the boyishness from his face. “What’s wrong with you, Heller? Since when did you get moral? These gangsters are like women-they exist to be used.”

“Only the gangsters don’t discard as easily.”

“I ain’t worried.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “See, Heller, I’m a public figure-they don’t bump off public figures; it’s bad publicity.”

“Tell Mayor Cermak-he got hit in Florida.”

He blew me a Bronx cheer. “I’m gonna take a shower. You want a free meal down at the club, stick around…but leave the sermons to Billy Sunday, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I could hear him showering, singing in there, “All or Nothing at All.” Had we really been friends, once? I had a reputation as something of a randy son of a bitch myself; but did I treat woman like Clifton did? The thought make me shudder.

On the oblong glass coffee table before me, a white phone began to ring. I answered it.

“Pete?” The voice was low-pitched, but female-a distinctive, throaty sound.

“No, it’s a friend. He’s in the shower, getting ready for his show tonight.”

“Tell him to meet me out front in five minutes.”

“Well, let me check with him and see if that’s possible. Who should I say is calling?”

There was a long pause.

Then the throaty purr returned: “Just tell him the wife of a friend.”

“Sure,” I said, and went into the bathroom and reported this, over the shower needles, through the glass door, to Clifton, who said, “Tell her I’ll be right down.”

Within five minutes, Clifton-his hair still wet-moved quickly through the living room; he had thrown on the boating clothes from this afternoon.

“This won’t take long.” He flashed the boyish grin. “These frails can’t get enough of me.”

“You want me to leave?”

“Naw. I’ll set somethin’ up with her for later. I don’t think she has a friend, though-sorry, pal.”

“That’s okay. I try to limit myself to one doped-up doxy a day.”

Clifton smirked and waved at me dismissively as he headed out, and I sat there for maybe a minute, then decided I’d had it. I plucked my straw fedora off the coffee table and trailed out after him, hoping to catch up with him and make my goodbyes.

The night sky was cobalt and alive with stars, a sickle-slice of moon providing the appropriate deco touch. The sidewalk stretched out before me like a white ribbon, toward where palms mingled with street lights. A Buick was along the curb and Pete was leaning against the window, like a car hop taking an order.

That sultry, low female voice rumbled through the night like pretty thunder: “ For God’s sake, Pete, don’t do it! Please don’t do it! ”

As Pete’s response-laughter-filled my ears, I stopped in my tracks, not wanting to intrude. Then Pete, still chuckling, making a dismissive wave, turned toward me, and walked. He was giving me a cocky smile when the first gunshot cracked the night.

I dove and rolled and wound up against a sculpted hedge that separated Clifton’s apartment house from the hunk of geometry next door. Two more shots rang out, and I could see the orange muzzle flash as the woman shot through the open car window.

p height="0%" width="5%"›For a comic, Pete was doing a hell of a dance; the first shot had caught him over the right armpit, and another plowed through his neck in a spray of red, and he twisted around to face her to accommodate another slug.

Then the car roared off, and Pete staggered off the sidewalk and pitched forward onto the grass, like a diver who missed the pool.

I ran to his sprawled figure, and turned him over. His eyes were wild with dying.

“Them fuckin’ dames ain’t…ain’t so easy to discard, neither,” he said, and laughed, a bloody froth of a laugh, to punctuate his last dirty joke.

People were rushing up, talking frantically, shouting about the need for the police to be called and such like. Me, I was noting where the woman had put her last shot.

She caught him right below the belt.

After a long wait in a receiving area, I was questioned by the cops in an interview room at the Dade County Courthouse in Miami. Actually, one of them, Earl Carstensen-Chief of Detectives of the Miami Beach Detective Bureau-was a cop; the other guy-Ray Miller-was chief investigator for the State Attorney’s office.

Carstensen was a craggy guy in his fifties and Miller was a skinny balding guy with wirerim glasses. The place was air-conditioned and they brought me an iced tea, so it wasn’t exactly the third degree.

We were all seated at the small table in the soundproofed cubicle. After they had established that I was a friend of the late Pete Clifton, visiting from Chicago, the line of questioning took an interesting turn.

Carstensen asked, “Are you aware that ‘Peter Clifton’ was not the deceased’s real name?”

“I figured it was a stage name, but it’s the only name I knew him by.”

“He was born Peter Tessitorio,” Miller said, “in New York. He had a criminal background-two burglary raps.”

“I never knew that.”

Carstensen asked, “You’re a former police officer?”

“Yeah. I was a detective on the Chicago P.D. pickpocket detail till ’32.”

Miller asked, “You spent the afternoon with Clifton, in the company of two girls?”

“Yeah.”

“What are their names?”

“Peggy Simmons and Janet Windom. They live in an apartment house on Jefferson…I don’t know the address, but I can point you, if you want to talk to them.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“We’ve already picked them up,” Miller said. “They’ve been questioned, and they’re alibiing each other. They say they don’t know anybody who’d want to kill Clifton.”

“They’re just a couple of party girls,” I said.

Carstensen said, “We found a hypo and bottle of morphine in their apartment. Would you know anything about that?”

I sighed. “I noticed the tracks on the Simmons’ kid’s arms. I gave Pete hell, and he admitted to me he was giving them the stuff. He also indicated he had connections with some dope racketeer.”

“He didn’t give you a name?” Miller asked.

“No.”

“You’ve never heard of Leo Massey?”

“No.”

“Friend of Clifton’s. A known dope smuggler.”

I sipped my iced tea. “Well, other than those two girls, I don’t really know any of Clifton’s associates here in Miami.”

An eyebrow arched in Carstensen’s craggy puss. “You’d have trouble meeting Massey-he’s dead.”

“Oh?”

“He was found in Card Sound last September. Bloated and smellin’ to high heavens.”

“What does that have to do with Pete Clifton?”

Miller said, “Few days before Massey’s body turned up, that speedboat of his-the Screwball -got taken out for a spin.”

I shrugged. “That’s what a speedboat’s for, taking it out for a spin.”

“At midnight? And not returning till daybreak?”

“You’ve got a witness to that effect?”

Miller nodded.

“So Pete was a suspect in Massey’s murder?”

“Not exactly,” the State Attorney’s investigator said. “Clifton had an alibi-those two girls say he spent the night with ’em.”

I frowned in confusion. “I thought you had a witness to Clifton takin’ his boat out…”

Carstensen said, “We have a witness at the marina to the effect that the boat was taken out, and brought back-but nobody saw who the captain was.”

Now I was getting it. “And Pete said somebody must’ve borrowed his boat without his permission.”

“That’s right.”

“So, what? You’re making this as a gangland hit? But it was a woman who shot him.”