Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I took the shirt off and shined the lamp on me.

Stege said, “My God... they did feed you the goldfish.”

“Yes they did.”

He sat back down. So did I, after I put my shirt on.

I told him most of it — with the exception of meeting Nitti face-to-face; I kept my thoughts about the Outfit’s connections to Dillinger on a theoretical level. And, for the moment, I left out my notion that the dead man might not be Dillinger; one step at a time, after all.

He took out a small pad and wrote down the names Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton; he’d heard about two women being with Dillinger at the theater, but the feds had refused to give the names even to the Chicago cops.

I told him how I’d been chosen for my role at least partially because I would take my information to the feds, rather than the cops, since I was on the outs with the local P.D. — particularly the head of their Dillinger Squad, one Capt. John Stege.

“So even I played an unwitting role in this farce,” Stege said.

“Just some more heavy-handed irony,” I said, “only I can’t claim it as mine.”

He stood slowly; he seemed beaten down.

“There’s something else,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t think the dead man is Dillinger.”

Stege gave me a look like I was a candidate for the loony bin. “Don’t be ridiculous — one of my men has already been to the morgue and shook hands with the corpse. It’s Dillinger all right.”

“It doesn’t look like Dillinger.”

“Plastic surgery,” Stege said, repeating the by-now-familiar litany.

“This whole elaborate setup might’ve been staged to put a patsy in Dillinger’s place, and let the real Dillinger ride off into the sunset.”

“Poppycock.”

“Well, if you feel that strongly about it, Captain...”

“No,” Stege said, shaking his head solemnly, “John Dillinger’s dead. No getting around that. But I aim to find out who put him on the spot...and that includes those crooked East Chicago bastards and Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton.”

“Be my guest.”

He walked toward the door and I followed him. We stopped by the door to the bathroom.

“Is this the commode?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I use it?”

“It’s out of order. Best I can do is a chamber pot.”

“Ah, never mind. It’ll keep. Thanks for the information, Heller. Thanks for the names of the two women. Very helpful. We’ll want to talk to them as soon as possible.”

“Right.”

I opened the door for him and, as an afterthought, he turned and offered me his hand. Surprised, I shook it.

Then he walked like a little general down the hall with the burly plainclothes man in attendance. Off to do battle with the East Chicago police; and to find a bathroom.

I closed and locked the door. Opened the bathroom door and Polly Hamilton, fists on her hips, was burning at me.

“You gave him my name!”

“Did you think it was going to be a secret? The dead man had your picture in his watch, you know.”

“I–I forgot he had that picture...”

“Well, you were at the scene when he was killed. Lots of people saw you. Come on out of that bathroom, Polly.”

She did. She looked forlorn. But pretty.

“I can’t go home. They’ll be waiting.”

“Face the music, or better, go see the feds. They’ll probably shield you.”

She looked up and her eyes did a little dance, like maybe she was remembering something Anna Sage told her along the same lines.

Then she got angry with me, or mock-angry. There was some coquettishness in it.

“Why did you tell him all that?” she wanted to know.

“He’s a cop and he asked me.”

“Oh, you’re such a shit.”

“I thought you had special memories of our night together?”

That made her smile; I still liked her smile.

“I need a place to stay,” she said. “No one would think of looking for me here...”

I was tempted. I admit I was tempted.

But I said, “Try the YWCA,” and pushed her out the door. Hoping Stege was long gone by now.

Before I shut the door she stuck her tongue out at me, and said, “Fuck you.” A strange combination of childishness and adultness. Or is that adultery?

Then I went back to the desk and sat. Looked at the federal wanted poster for Dillinger spread out there, where Stege had left it. His irony was a little heavy-handed, too. Looked at my watch. It was after one.

I called her anyway.

“Helen,” I said into the phone. “Did I wake you? Is that offer for me coming over tonight still open?”

“Yes,” Sally said.

The next afternoon, around three, I was sitting in my shirt sleeves having a bagel and a glass of cold milk in the deli-restaurant below my office. Milk was almost never my drink of choice, but coffee was out of the question — the day was steaming hot, so who the hell needed coffee?

I hadn’t been upstairs yet, having just got back from Sally’s. She’d been good to me last night — we didn’t talk at all; in fact, we didn’t do anything except sleep together — just sleep. And it was exactly what I needed.

What I didn’t need this afternoon was a reporter, but suddenly that’s exactly what I had: Hal Davis, of the Daily News , a little guy with a big head — by which I don’t mean he was conceited: he had a big head, literally, a size too big for his smallish frame. He stood grinning in front of me in shirt sleeves and bow tie and gray hat. He was one of those guys who would always seem to be about twenty-two years old. He was easily forty.

“I been looking for you,” he said.

“Sit down, Davis, you’re making me nervous.”

He sat. “You’re a hard man to find.”

“You seem to’ve found me.”

“Pretty wild carryings-on at the morgue last night.”

“I saw the papers.”

He told me about it anyway. “I don’t know how the word got out so fast, but there they were, before the body was even cold, swarming like flies. Couple thousand sweaty souls crow-din’ around the morgue like they were waiting for Sally Rand to go on.”

He meant nothing personal by that; Sally and I hadn’t made the gossip columns yet.

“And that son of a bitch Parker scooped us all,” he said, shaking his head with admiration.

He meant Dr. Charles D. Parker, one of numerous assistants to the coroner’s pathologist, J. J. Kearns. Parker, however, also happened to be a stringer for the Trib , covering hospitals and the morgue for ’em. Somehow Parker had got tipped to the shooting early enough on to be able to beat the body to the morgue, where he wheeled a receiving cart up to the door and waited for John Dillinger to arrive.

Soon the meat wagon delivered Dillinger — and exclusive Trib coverage of the morgue end of the story — to Parker.

“Got to hand it to that bastard,” Davis conceded. “Hell of a piece of work.”

I took a bite of bagel.

Davis cleared his throat. “I hear you were at the Biograph last night.”

“So were a lot of people.”

“Garage mechanics sitting on their stoop and old ladies hanging out their windows ’cause of the heat. Not trained observers like you, Heller. Your version of the shooting could be a corker.”

“Gee whiz, aw shucks. I’m real flattered, Davis. Now can I finish my bagel?”

“Hell, I’ll buy you another! How ’bout giving me your eyewitness account. For old times’ sake.”

“What old times are those? When you dredged up the Lingle case in your coverage of my part in the Nitti hit? Get fucked, Davis.”