Макс Коллинз - True Crime

“No reason to involve the Chicago police? In the capture of John Dillinger, in Chicago? Novel approach, Cowley. How’d you arrive at this?”

“Too many crooked cops,” he said, and didn’t sound too convinced himself. “Don’t want somebody on the inside to tip Dillinger off.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Cowley.”

“Why not?”

“If he heard about your plan, he wouldn’t believe it.”

Silence; then a grunt.

I grunted back and hung up.

I felt Sally’s cool hand on my shoulder and I glanced back at her.

“It’s going to happen tonight?” she said.

“I think so.”

“And it’s really Dillinger?”

“It’s really Dillinger.”

“Come to bed.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep anymore.”

“Who said anything about sleep?”

Well, I was definitely feeling better; but the effort was enough to tire me out, and I fell asleep again. By the time I woke it was getting dark out.

“What time is it?”

Sally, rousing herself beside me, looked over at her clock. “A little after six.”

“I’m sleeping my life away.”

“You’re just recuperating. Nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Who’s feeling guilty? Say, don’t you have a show tonight?”

“Yeah — gotta leave in an hour or so.”

I threw the covers off. “Let’s go in the other room and listen to the radio till then.”

We sat in the living room and listened to WGN, which was broadcast out of this very hotel; Wayne King the Waltz King bored us till the news came on. The hot spell, and the deaths by heat prostration, was the big story.

“When did you change your mind?” Sally said.

“About what?”

“This guy not being Dillinger. Didn’t you think it wasn’t Dillinger, at first?”

I shrugged. “I just wasn’t sure. He looked a little like Dillinger. But not exactly like him.”

“Then why do you now think this is Dillinger?”

“Because Frank Nitti wants him dead.”

“I thought you said Dillinger and the Boys were friendly.”

“Well, they used to be, before Dillinger’s fun and games started bringing the heat down on ’em.”

“Would they kill a friend?”

“Anytime, sugar.”

“But why would his own lawyer betray him?”

“Piquett? Money. Fear of reprisal from his other, more powerful client... those Boys you mentioned.”

“It seems to me the lawyer and the Boys might try to find a way to get rid of Dillinger without killing him. Like shipping him off to Mexico or something.”

“No, honey, he’s just too famous for that. As long as he’s alive, they’d keep looking for...”

I thought a minute.

Sally said, “Something wrong?”

I said, “Don’t you get tired of being smarter than me?” and got up. Went back into the bedroom and dressed.

She stood in the doorway and watched me. She was still in the lounging pajamas, and lounged against the door.

“What did I say?” she asked.

“You said this guy might not be Dillinger,” I said.

“And?”

“And he might not be.”

I kissed her on the cheek and left, moving faster than the pain.

A large homemade map of the Marbro Theater and its surrounding area, grease pencil on butcher paper, was pinned to the wall behind Cowley’s desk, which was in the opposite corner from Purvis’ currently empty one. A dozen or so agents in shirt sleeves and shoulder holsters were milling around the big open office, some of them sitting on the edges of desks, many of them smoking, the electric fans pushing the smoke around. Windows were open to let smoke out and let the cool night air in, only there wasn’t any cool air, just night. The college-boy agents had been here most of the day, waiting for Anna Sage to call.

I pulled up a chair, tossed my hat on the desk. My suitcoat, which I’d been lugging over my shoulder, I draped across my lap. “No call yet?”

Cowley’s gray face lifted from the cup of coffee he’d been staring into; his expression was one of frustration, but his eyes were just plain weary. He was in shirt sleeves and striped tie and shoulder holster.

“Worse than that,” he said. “She did call.”

“Hell! When?”

“A little after five.”

“What’s happened since then?”

He swallowed some coffee. “Nothing much yet. We had to send somebody over to the Biograph.”

“The Biograph? Why?”

Heavy sigh. “When she called she said Dillinger was there, at her apartment, and that they’d be leaving in five minutes — for either the Marbro or the Biograph. She wasn’t sure which.”

“Shit. The Biograph. That’s some wild card to get played this late in the game. What did you do?”

He told me. He’d quickly sent two men to the Biograph on the North Side to reconnoiter; they’d returned with notes on entrances and exits. A special agent had accompanied Zarkovich to the Marbro; and Purvis and another agent were staking out the Biograph. Each pair was to have one of its men phone in every few minutes with a report.

That had been an hour and a half ago.

“That’s a long five minutes,” I said, “especially if they’re going to the Biograph, walking from Anna’s apartment — the theater’s just around the corner from there, you know.”

“I know,” Cowley said glumly.

“Looks like it’s not going down tonight.”

“Looks like.”

“Just as well.”

“Why?”

“I’ve had some second thoughts about whether Jimmy Lawrence is really Dillinger.”

Cowley sighed again and looked upward, as if he would’ve thrown his arms in the air, if he’d had the energy. “You’re not going into that old song and dance again. What does it take to convince you, Heller?”

“Quite a bit, before I go pulling a trigger on a guy.”

“We’re not pulling a trigger on anybody — not unless he forces us to. And if it isn’t Dillinger, we’ll straighten it out after we’ve made the collar.”

“I thought you were going to supervise this yourself and make sure nobody got trigger-happy. Being a trained detective, I can tell right away you’re here sitting at a desk.”

He patted the air with his free hand, as he sipped his coffee. “I will supervise the capture. Don’t worry about that. When they spot Dillinger, I’ll be called and go straight to whichever theater it is.”

“They won’t take him as they see him go in?”

“Probably not.”

“ Probably not?”

“With only two men at each site, we’d prefer to wait till our entire contingent has converged on the one correct theater.”

“Then what? Take him after he’s inside the dark theater?”

“Possibly. But only if there’s an open seat behind him and we could grab him from behind.”

I shook my head. “Not in this heat. There isn’t an empty seat in any air-cooled movie house in town, tonight.”

Cowley shrugged with his eyebrows. “Then we take him when he comes out.”

“Anna and Polly are with him?”

“The Sage woman and Miss Hamilton, yes.”

“Is Polly in on it?”

“We’ve been dealing with Mrs. Sage.”

“You mean Purvis has. You haven’t even met her.”

He scratched the side of his head, where it went from brown to gray. Didn’t look at me. “That’s right. But it’s not pertinent.”

“I think you should be very careful, if this does fall into place tonight. Particularly if you’re planning to let the East Chicago boys come along. Will they be a part of your ‘contingent’? All six of ’em?”

Stone-faced, Cowley just looked at me; then, slowly, reluctantly, he nodded.