Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I said, “I’m going to tell you what I think is going on here. It’s my best educated guess. And it’s just between you and me. Agreed?”

He nodded.

I told him, briefly, about the traveling salesman who’d come to me. About tailing Polly Hamilton and Jimmy Lawrence. About Anna Sage. Everything that led up to my seeing Purvis.

“And contacting Purvis was my function in this,” I said. “A private detective working on a domestic case who just happens to stumble onto Dillinger. Much better than an East Chicago cop like Zarkovich making first contact — the corruption on the East Chicago force makes the Chicago cops look like priests. You guys knew of Zarkovich’s reputation, and wouldn’t have liked the smell of this, if he’d initiated it. Yesterday you said straight out you’d rather deal with me than him, and that you liked the idea of having me — honest ol’ me — as an independent, outside, corroborating source.”

Cowley was nodding again, slowly. “No doubt about it. You gave the Dillinger story credibility.”

“Agreed. Now, anybody else in my shoes would’ve gone to Captain Stege, rather than Purvis. Stege has a solid name in this town, whereas Purvis’s been a joke since Little Bohemia. But my past differences with Stege — well known to just about everybody — made it easy to predict I wouldn’t go to him with the information. And if I had, I’d probably got tossed out on my ass.”

“You sound as if you think there’s a... conspiracy, here. That somebody consciously selected you for this. To put all this in motion.”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know who selected me for my role. Piquett, probably. But it’s obvious who gave the go-ahead for the overall plan.”

“ Who ?”

I told him about my meeting with Nitti.

“If the Outfit wants Dillinger dead,” Cowley said, “why not just kill him, if they know where’s he hiding?”

“Well, they’ve obviously known that from the start. Nothing happens on the North Side that Frank Nitti doesn’t know about. And Dillinger’s hidden out on the North Side any number of times, over the course of a year.”

“Which would mean...”

“Which would mean he did so with Nitti’s knowledge — and, most likely, blessing.”

“You think Dillinger is connected to the Outfit, then.”

I shrugged. It hurt. “Only loosely. Only in the ways I outlined to Nitti. Baby Face Nelson is a former Capone torpedo, remember. They aren’t in the same organization, but they’re members of the same club.”

“Make your point.”

“Nitti made it: ‘It’s better for some people to be dead.’ Dillinger’s at the end of his string. But he’s got a reputation for not shooting it out with the cops, and after all his jailbreaks, security next time’ll be tight. Johnny won’t be doing any more crashing out.”

“Then it’s a simple case of ‘he knows too much.’”

I nodded. It hurt. “That’s why they wanted Purvis in on it. Because Purvis would agree to something Stege never would: to shoot Dillinger on sight. After all, your boss Hoover gave the go-ahead on that. Fuck capture. Kill him.”

Cowley looked bleakly into his coffee.

“It’s Syndicate all the way, Cowley. Anna Sage is a madam — and the Syndicate always has a piece of every brothel in any city of any size at all. Zarkovich has connections to the Capone crowd going back ten years, and is a bagman between the brothels and various crooks, some of ’em political, some of ’em Syndicate. Louis Piquett is in the Syndicate’s pocket, enough so to betray his own client, it would seem. Do I have to spell it out for you? Frank Nitti has set you up to kill Dillinger for him.”

Cowley’s face seemed impassive, but there was anger in his eyes. In his voice, too: “Why, damnit? Why don’t they just kill him themselves ?”

“Why send a man when you can get a boy to do the job?”

“Don’t be cute.”

I gestured with one hand. It hurt. “That’s Nitti’s style. It’s the Cermak kill all over again. The world thinks a ‘demented bricklayer’ tried to kill FDR in Miami last year, and ‘accidentally’ killed the mayor of Chicago instead. But you and I know that Cermak and Nitti were blood enemies, and little Joe Zangara was a one-man Sicilian suicide squad, sent to take His Honor out. Which he did.”

Cowley said nothing; his face looked like it was made out of gray putty.

“Don’t stir up the heat, that’s Nitti’s motto. He learned the lesson early on that Capone learned too late — he learned how nervous the public gets when you go around having massacres on Saint Valentine’s Day. So let a would-be presidential assassin ‘miss’ and shoot ‘Ten Percent’ Tony Cermak instead. So let Melvin Purvis, G-man, courageously blow off John Dillinger’s head and make the kind of headlines the public’ll eat up.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“Not to mention how Dillinger’s outlaw cronies might react to one of their own being murdered by the mob; who needs a bloody shooting war breaking out with the likes of Baby Face Nelson and the Barker boys? That’s a battle Nitti could obviously win, but at a high cost — lives of his men, bad publicity — why bother risking it?”

“Enough, Heller.”

“Face it, Cowley. You’re being used.”

“Stop it.”

“Well, actually, it’s Purvis they’re using. He’s dependable. After all, Capone and Nitti used him to put Roger Touhy in Joliet, already.”

“Touhy was guilty.”

“Of a lot of things, but not the kidnapping you guys prosecuted him for.”

“I disagree.”

“It’s a free country, Cowley. You’re like the rest of us — operating of your own free will. It’s not like you’re a puppet or anything.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I know. But the way the Syndicate manipulates you feds is pretty funny. Do you really think Jelly Nash was ‘accidentally’ shot at the Kansas City Massacre? Sure — him and Mayor Cermak. Innocent victims.”

“You’re full of crap on a lot of this, Heller. You really are.”

“Maybe. But not on Dillinger. I’m on the money, there.”

Cowley’s coffee cup was empty; he held it by the china handle and tapped it nervously on the table. “Maybe you are. But it doesn’t make any difference.”

“It doesn’t?”

Cowley shook his head slowly. “Dillinger is public enemy number one. He has to be stopped. And where the information comes from that helps us stop him — whoever it is behind the scenes helping us get him — doesn’t matter. What matters, when you’re going after someone like Dillinger, is getting him. Nothing else.”

“I see. You don’t mind owing a debt of gratitude to Frank Nitti.”

“I don’t know that I do.”

“You heard what I said...”

Cowley grimaced. “Yes, and it makes a lot of sense. It just might be true. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Because Dillinger has caused your Division of Investigation so much grief, given you so much embarrassment, that you have to get him, whatever it costs.”

Cowley, with sadness in his eyes, said, “That’s exactly right.”

That’s when I decided not to give him Jimmy Lawrence’s address. That’s when I decided not to play, anymore. To do what Nitti wanted me to. To do what the East Chicago boys wanted me to. Stay home. Stay in bed.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Cowley said. He rose. “I’ll find my way out.”

He went out into the living room but then, suddenly, he was back in the doorway. With a small smile as inscrutable as a Chinaman’s, he said, “You just may be surprised how this turns out.”

“Why’s that, Cowley?”

“Purvis won’t be alone. I’ll be there, too, when we get Dillinger. And I’m not trigger-happy. And I’m also not inclined to keep deals with crooked cops who insist on me shooting the man they finger for me.