Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I followed ’em to North Lincoln Avenue — just a block or so from Anna’s — and they got out of the cab. As I drove by I saw that, not ten feet away from them, two uniformed cops were standing on the corner, talking. Lawrence didn’t even glance their way. A squad car went by just after I parked, and it swung around to pick up one of the cops, and Lawrence and Polly, strolling along now, didn’t seem to notice or care. If this Lawrence was Dillinger, he was one cool customer.

But apparently not so cool, on this blistering day, to be able to resist the strawberry sundaes he and Polly ate, in lieu of lunch, at the soda fountain next to Biograph Billards. Here they split up, with Polly beaming at him and giving him a peck on the cheek; off she went, presumably to shop — North Lincoln being a nifty little shopping area.

I stayed with Lawrence. I hung a loose tail on him — if this really was Dillinger, he’d be picking up on me any time now, unless I was very careful. After all, he might be armed — though I didn’t see how: he had no coat on, and there was no gun bulge in any of the pockets of his yellow slacks.

Whoever he was, he got his hair cut at the Biograph Barber Shop; and then went across to the Biograph Theater and in the door just to the right of the marquee. Visiting his bookmaker, no doubt — there’d been a bookie joint operating in the loft over that theater for years.

A few minutes later he came out and walked down the street to a haberdashery, the Ward Mitchell Company, where he bought a striped shirt. This I’d glimpsed through the storefront window, and was on my way across the street, to maintain my tail at a distance, and almost missed it when Lawrence came out of the store and bumped into a beat cop who was walking by, swinging his stick.

Lawrence dropped his package, and the bull helped him pick it up and they smiled and nodded to each other and walked on.

The hell with it, I thought, and went to my car and headed back to the Loop. That flatfoot sure didn’t think Lawrence was Dillinger, and Lawrence didn’t exactly wet his pants on bumping into the law, either. Hell with it.

By four that afternoon I was sitting in a booth in Barney Ross’ Cocktail Lounge, having a beer. Ceiling fans whirred overhead and, with the beer, made the heat almost seem to go away. It was a long, narrow, dark room with a bar against one long wall, a small dance floor at the far end, a few tables by the dance floor, and booths lining the walls. There were framed photos of fighters everywhere, and not just Barney — King Levinsky, Jackie Fields, Benny Leonard, among others. Barney himself was rarely around the place, these days — too public a figure for it, and Pian and Winch, his mother-hen managers, didn’t like him owning a bar, let alone hanging around in one. Barney had a wholesome reputation going for him, and counted plenty of kids among his fans, so him lending his name to the place was bad enough, much less actually being there.

And he was busy. Not just with the fight game, but speaking at civic functions (hearing a Barney Ross speech was a pleasure I’d somehow managed to avoid) and generally being Chicago’s favorite son.

So when Barney surprised me and walked up to the booth, I asked him for his autograph and he told me where to go and grinned and sat across from me, and watched with envy as I drank my beer.

“Where’s Pearl?” I asked him.

“State Street.”

Like Polly, Pearl had gone shopping.

“How’s that case coming?” he asked me.

“Private dicks don’t work on cases. Lawyers work on cases. Sherlock Holmes works on cases.”

“Oh, yeah? So what are you working on?”

“A job. At least I was.”

“Oh. The one from the other night.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“You wrap it up, or what?”

“What. I’m thinking about tossing in the towel on this one.”

“Happens to the best of us,” he shrugged, waving for his bartender, an ex-heavyweight named Buddy Gold, to come over. He asked Buddy to bring him a glass of soda water.

“I did what my client paid me to,” I said. Adding, “Even though he lied to me.”

“Doesn’t sound to me like you tossed in the towel.”

“This has gone past the job itself into something else. Something maybe worth serious dough — but I’m not sure I want any part of it.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be the finger man. A guy’d probably die because of me.”

Barney studied me close, to see if I was leading him around the bend.

I said, “A wanted man, you understand. A bad guy. But he would probably die.”

He knew I was serious now. He said, “Nate, uh...”

“What?”

“Why don’t you take a pass on this one — whatever it is.”

“That’s good advice.”

“You don’t need the grief, mentally.” He said mentally like mently.

“I know.”

“You still carrying the gun?”

He meant the automatic that my father had killed himself with.

“I don’t carry it often. But I still got it.”

“It’s what you carry when you feel you need to carry a gun, though.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

His soda water came; he sipped it; smiled.

“Good,” he said.

I smiled at him. I knew what he meant.

A big tall man in a natty dark suit and a gray snap-brim hat was asking a question of Buddy Gold at the bar. Buddy pointed over to us, and the man — a dark, handsome guy in his late thirties — ambled over.

“Another fan,” Barney muttered under his breath.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Mr. Heller,” the man said, nodding to me. “I don’t believe we’ve met. But I’m—”

“I know who you are, Sergeant Zarkovich,” I said. “No, we haven’t met, exactly, but you were pointed out to me several times in East Chicago. This is Barney Ross. Join us, if you like.”

He smiled; it was a winning smile, I’d have liked him immediately if I hadn’t known him to be the crookedest cop in East Chicago. Which was going some.

He said, “I recognized you, of course, Mr. Ross,” and he tipped his hat, “and it’s a real honor to meet you. I saw you take Canzoneri. I won a half a C, thanks to you.”

The big man was still standing there, so Barney, smiling back at him, said, “Thanks. Do join us, why don’t you?”

“No, thanks. And I apologize for busting in. I just wondered if I could have a little of Mr. Heller’s time... in private... when you two men are through talking. I can wait over at the bar...”

He was smooth, I had to give him that. But seeing him here was giving me a sick feeling.

He was the cop in East Chicago who the madams paid off every month; he was the bagman, the collector, who Anna Sage would’ve had dealings with. Would’ve, hell — that was where I’d seen him, where he’d been pointed out to me — in East Chicago, at the Kostur Hotel.

“Don’t be silly,” Barney said, “join us — have a beer on the management.”

“Well, okay,” Zarkovich said, his smile turning shy. Aw shucks, the bagman said.

He scooted in on Barney’s side, dwarfing the champ.

“I knew you had Canzoneri,” he told Barney. “I wasn’t worried a second.”

“You were the only one, then,” Barney said. “That was too close to call. They didn’t even consider me champ in NYC, till I beat their boy on his home ground.”

“And gave him a good licking.”

Barney made an embarrassed face; but he enjoyed the attention. He was a good guy, but he was human.

“Tried like hell to knock him out,” Barney said, almost apologetically. “Son of a gun just wouldn’t go down.”

“Look, Zarkovich,” I said, leaving off the “Sergeant.” Annoyed with all this small talk. “If you got business with me, let’s go upstairs to my office.”