Max Collins - Chicago Lightning

After the August 4 hold-up of a clothing shop near Oak Park-and the murder of its seventy-year-old proprietor-sometime waitress Eleanor Jarman, her live-in guy George Dale, and Dale’s ex-fighter buddy Leo Minneci had been identified as the perpetrators and brought in by two top Detective Bureau dicks.

“Well, she’s guilty as sin, isn’t she?” I asked him cheerfully. “Maybe you can arrange for her to sit on her boyfriend’s lap when they fry him, and save the state on its electricity bill.”

“Nate, I think she’s being railroaded. These characters Dale and Minneci are stick-up guys, sure, and there’s no doubt Dale pulled the trigger on the old boy. But Eleanor’s just the girl friend. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Are they being tried separately?”

“No, but each has separate representation from the Public Defender’s office.”

I was shaking my head. “If she’s innocent in this, why was she charged? Didn’t Tuohy and Glass make the arrest? They’re as close to real detectives as the police department gets.”

“Nate, you know about this clean-up and crackdown campaign that’s going on. When did you ever hear of somebody getting arrested for murder in this town and then have the trial go on the same damn month?”

“Okay, you stumped me. But I-”

“Think it through, Nate. This is about the papers looking for a hot story, and what’s better than a sexy baby leading her ‘gang’ on a bunch of robberies?”

I shifted in my chair. “Listen, I don’t care if she’s guilty or not guilty. I’d be glad to work for you, Sam, if you were a real criminal lawyer with some scratch to spend.”

“That’s the good part about all this press nonsense, Nate. Think about the publicity! There’s no bigger story right now.”

“Then I’m right-there isn’t any money in this.”

“Actually, pal, there is.”

That got my attention, but I said, “Don’t call me ‘pal.’ Makes me nervous. When do I ever see you, Sam, when we aren’t in a courtroom?”

“Nate, if you take this case, you can peddle your story to one of the papers afterwards, with my blessing. And I’ve got a true detective magazine that’ll pay even better. That’ll beat any of your five-dollar-a-day action, any time.”

“That’s ten and expenses, and what do you have in mind?”

“Just meet with my client. See if she doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

“So then you have no case?”

“…I have no case. I need you to go get me one.”

If I was the private eye who cleared the Blonde Tigress, I’d be in demand with every criminal lawyer in town.

“I can meet with her,” I said, “any time today.”

Now a guy can get some pretty funny thoughts sometimes. And by funny, I mean stupid. But while I’d been around, I was only twenty-eight, and I couldn’t keep from wondering if some exotic, erotic encounter might not occur between the Blonde Tigress and me, behind the closed door of that First District Station interrogation room. The matron standing guard would hear the muffled sounds and wonder what might be happening in there, between the curvaceous blonde gun moll and that handsome six-footer with the reddish brown hair, and dare she interrupt?

I was expecting the combination Jean Harlow and Mata Hari that the papers had been pumping, and in my defense I must say that they’d taken some fairly fetching photos of Eleanor Jarman. And the woman seated at the scarred table in a brick-walled enclosure whose windows were barred and throwing appropriately moody shadows-was certainly attractive, albeit in a quiet, modest, even mousy way.

Her hair was not tawny, at least not by my standards-more a dishwater blonde, curling-ironed locks framing her heart-shaped face. I’d call her pretty, or anyway pretty enough, with big gray eyes that dominated her face and a nice mouth, full lips lightly rouged. Prisoners awaiting trial were allowed street clothes-in this case, a simple white dress with angular blue stripes and a white collar with a bow, the stripes giving the faintest unintentional prison-uniform touch. She had a nice hea but “voluptuous” was torturing a point.

She gave me a big smile and stood and held her hand out for me to shake. The smile was disarming-I might have been a brother she hadn’t seen for some time.

“Thank you for this, Mr. Heller,” she said warmly, as I took a chair at the table, her at the end, me alongside.

“I haven’t agreed to take the job, Mrs. Jarman,” I said, and took my hat off and tossed it on the table. “I said I’d have a talk with you and see.”

Her smile remained but she put the teeth away and nodded. “It’s because Mr. Backus can’t afford to hire you. But what if I could?”

“Could what?”

“Afford to hire to you.”

I squinted at her. “How could you afford to hire a private detective if you can’t afford your own lawyer?”

She shrugged and half a smile lingered. “That was strategy, Mr. Heller. I could’ve hired a lawyer, not an expensive one, but I do have some money salted away. It’s just, well…”

And I got it.

“If you could hire a criminal attorney,” I said, “it would make you look more like a criminal. Somebody pulling off heists all summer could afford counsel. Smart.”

“I’m not rich. But I could offer you one hundred dollars.”

“I charge ten a day and expenses. That’ll take you a fair way.”

“Fine. I’ll have it sent over to your office.”

“You’re not what I expected.”

She grinned. “Not a Tigress?”

“Not the femme fatale the papers paint, and not the victim Sam Backus would make you, either.”

“What, then?”

“A smart, resourceful cookie.”

“Thanks. Could I call you something besides ‘Mr. Heller’?”

“Sure. Nate’ll do. And I’ll call you Eleanor.”

They had provided a pitcher of ice water and I served us up some. The breezy afternoon was making its way through windows that were open onto their bars.

“Do you need to hear my story, Nate, before you say yes?”

“I want to hear your story, but I already said yes to your hundred dollars.”

She had a whole repertoire of smiles, and she gave me another one, a chin-crinkler. But the gray eyes had a sadness that fit neither her happy kisser nor her business-like brain.

She started with the story of her life, which didn’t take long, because it wasn’t much of one. She was from Sioux City, Iowa, daughter of immigrant German parents who died in a flu epidemic when she was fourteen, just the right age to start working as a waitress in a joint near the stockyards. She married Leroy Jarmanwho told her she deserved better, and gave her two sons and put her to work as a laundress. Earlier this year, after Jarman took a powder, she moved to Chicago, where she continued to do laundry in her little apartment while taking care of her two boys. A neighbor introduced her to George Dale, and her life changed.

“George never said what he did for a living,” she told me. “I always figured it was something a little shady, but hell, I ran a beer flat in Sioux City, so who was I to talk? Anyway, he always had plenty of dough and we lived in nice apartments.”

Then she got to the meat of the matter: the crime.

She and her boy friend George and George’s friend Leo were on their way to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. They were running early and decided to stop and do a little shopping; George had spotted the clothing store sign and pulled in, saying he needed some shirts. They had all three gone inside.

“George was talking to Mr. Hoeh up in front,” she said. Her eyes were not on me; they seemed to be staring into her memory. “The old man was getting shirts from behind the counter and laying boxes out for George to see. Leo wasn’t interested, and just hanging by the door. I was in the back of the store, looking at ties and other boys clothing-my sons are nine and eleven-and was caught up in making some selections.” Now she looked at me, gray eyes wide and earnest. “Then I heard the sound of a scuffle.”