Макс Коллинз - True Crime

“You know something, Captain... you pretend to hate me because I used to be a dirty cop. But that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is I exposed some dirty cops, and embarrassed you and yours.”

“Don’t be impertinent, or I’ll—”

“It’s just you and me in here, Stege. Maybe you ought to watch your mouth.”

He thought about that. Then said, “Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m just prepared to tell you to go to hell anytime I feel like it. Understood?”

He took in a deep breath and something like a smile crossed his thin, tight mouth. I had the damnedest feeling he respected what I’d just said. Whatever the case, he said, “Understood,” and took a folded sheet of paper out of his suit pocket and unfolded it and spread it out on the desk before me.

It was a Division of Investigation wanted poster for John H. Dillinger.

“Thought you might like this souvenir,” Stege said. “I’ll be cleaning out my desk, you know.”

I nodded. “Not much for the Dillinger Squad to do with Dillinger dead.”

“What were you doing there, Heller?”

He meant the Biograph, of course. I didn’t pretend I didn’t know that.

I said, “Trying to stop it.”

“ What ?”

I wished I hadn’t said it.

But I had, so I needed to elaborate. “It was a setup, designed to let the East Chicago cops execute their man without interference. I knew it, and tried to convince Cowley. I tried to convince Purvis, too. Actually, I think I convinced ’em both, but they weren’t able to stop it. If indeed they wanted to.”

“Damn!” Stege said, and slammed a hard tiny fist on my desk top. The ashtray jumped. And unless I missed my bet, so did Polly Hamilton in the toilet.

“Sorry, Captain — that’s the way I see it.”

He waved me off. Stood and paced. Then he came over and leaned one hand against the desk and gestured with the other.

“They came to my office, beginning of last week. Zarkovich and his captain. What’s his name?”

“O’Neill,” I said.

“O’Neill,” Stege repeated, like he was uttering an oath. “You know what the sons of bitches said?”

“No.”

“They told me they knew where Dillinger was. He was in Chicago, hiding out, and they could lead me to him. But there was one condition — one small proviso... we had to kill him.”

He drew in a breath and looked at me, his eyes popping a little, a vein by one eye pulsing. Silence filled the room; a very loud silence.

Then he said, “We, the Chicago Police Department’s Dillinger Squad, were to promise that we would ambush our man, execute him. Or no information from our brother officers from East Chicago would be forthcoming.” And under his breath: “Bastards.”

“And you threw ’em out on their butts.”

He nodded slowly. “I told ’em I’d give even John Dillinger a chance to surrender.”

“Over these last six months or so, you’ve said the opposite to the press.”

He sat back down. “Not really. I picked the best marksmen on the force for our squad, simply because these outlaws are trigger-happy. Fight fire with fire.”

“You said you wanted to either drive the Dillinger gang out of the state or bury ’em. And you said you preferred the latter.”

Oddly, he seemed almost embarrassed. “Hyperbole.”

“Captain, you should be a happy man. John Dillinger is dead. Your quarry’s been bagged... even if you didn’t bag him yourself.”

He took a cigar out of his inside pocket, bit off the end, lit it up. “Your sarcasm isn’t lost on me, Heller. If you’re saying I’m jealous of the federal boys landing my man, you’re as full of crap as a Christmas goose. I don’t care who gets these lice, just so long as they get got.”

“Then why aren’t you a happy man?”

He put the cigar in the ashtray without puffing it past getting it going. With a bleak expression, he said, “Police executions make me sick.”

“The guy on the receiving end doesn’t feel any too well, either.”

He ignored that. What he said next seemed more for his own benefit than mine. “I try to be a good cop in a town where it isn’t easy being one. There’s few towns more political, and there’s no town as under the influence of gangsters. But I still take pride in my work, in my town, because once in a while we succeed. We fly in the face of what people expect from us. But when cops shoot fugitives in cold damn blood, without even a nod toward capture, well it makes me sick, Heller. It makes me wonder what the hell country I’m living in; we’re no better than Hitler’s bully boys, are we.”

“It wasn’t Chicago cops who killed the man at the Biograph.”

“No, it was federal men, I know that.”

“I told you before it wasn’t federal men.”

“Oh?”

“Take a wild stab at what two individuals fired the killing shots.”

“Zarkovich and O’Neill did it themselves ?”

“Bingo, Captain. I’d give you a cigar but you already got one.”

“Damn. They were in with him, you know.”

“What?”

“That whole East Chicago crowd. Cops and politicians and judges. In with Dillinger. That’s what this is all about, really about. They wanted to silence him before he could spill the beans where Indiana corruption’s concerned. It all goes back to Crown Point.”

“The jail, you mean? Dillinger’s wooden-gun crash-out?”

Stege smiled his thin little smile again. “That was no wooden gun. Somebody smuggled it in to him. Somebody on the inside.”

“Who?”

“My sources say Zarkovich and a certain judge engineered it. I can’t prove it. Did you know that not long ago two East Chicago cops, two honest East Chicago cops, were investigating that very case, and during the course of it turned up dead alongside the road in their car? Fifteen minutes from their station house? With their guns tucked inside their coats? Never even went for ’em.”

“Cops killed by cops,” I said.

“So it would seem. What a world.”

I shook my head.

Stege wasn’t saying anything; he was, in fact, eyeing me suspiciously.

Slowly, he said, “You were part of it, weren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“There was money to be made in this. Graft money; mob money. Were you in bed with the East Chicago cops?”

“Please. Not on an empty stomach.”

Stege’s face was impassive, but his voice had an edge in it. “I know you, Heller. You were always for sale. You were always in it for yourself. You’re smooth in your way. You have a crude sort of wit. You almost fooled me. But I’m a cop with a cop’s instinct. And I think you and Zarkovich and O’Neill are bound up in this together. It doesn’t take me giving you the third degree to find that out.”

“You don’t have to give me the third degree at all. Zarkovich and O’Neill beat you to it.”

Stege laughed humorlessly. “Of course they did.”

“Not personally. They sent two of their strong-arms, and they fed me the goldfish.”

“Why?”

“Because I was trying to stop this from going down! And you can see how successful at it I was.”

Stege sighed coldly. “I don’t believe you. But I intend to investigate this matter thoroughly, and if I can nail those East Chicago cops to the wall, I will, so help me God.”

“Expose crooked cops, Captain? That’ll make the police look bad in the public’s eye. Are you sure you want to do that?”

He stood. “Your irony is heavy-handed, Heller. I’m unimpressed.”

I stood. “Did you ever see Sally Rand dance, Captain?”

“What? Uh, well... yes.”

“Were you impressed?” I was unbuttoning my shirt.

“What the hell are you doing?”