Max Collins - True Detective

Two other plainclothes cops, neither of whom I recognized, were closer to us as we came into the hotel room: a stocky guy with a mustache, and a stocky guy without a mustache. The one with a mustache was near the door; the one without was over at the left, by the double bed, which had a cream-color bedspread and a nightstand with phone. Everybody looked at us — except the guy on the floor.

“Ness,” Miller said, something like surprise registering on the blank putty face, eyes wide behind the Coke-bottle lenses. “Heller? What the hell...?”

Eliot bent over the body. Eased him over, barely; put him back.

“Nydick,” he said to me. I was still over by the door. “I think he may be breathing, but it’s a habit he’s going to break real soon.” He looked at the cop near the phone. “Call an ambulance. Now!”

The cop did as he was told; in sotto voce, he could be heard asking the switchboard for Mount Sinai, the closest hospital.

Eliot rose, staying by the body. “How did it happen, Miller?”

“What jurisdiction you got here, Ness?”

“I have jurisdiction anywhere I damn well want it. This man was wanted for questioning in several federal matters, if it matters. How’d it happen, Miller?”

Miller put his gun on the dresser, under the Christmas tree, like a gift; it was the only one. He pointed at the open drawer, where a little .32 lay; the drawer was otherwise empty.

“He went for the gun,” he said, like the bad actor he was. “I had to shoot.”

“Three bullets in the back,” Eliot said. “That’ll slow a man down.”

Miller continued. “The boys came up and broke in and secured the suspect. I came up and sent the wife and kid out, and I read him the warrant. He grabbed it and tore it up.” He pointed. The warrant lay on the floor, not far from Nydick, torn in two.

I said, “Are you sure he didn’t try to eat it?”

Miller got a little red. “ You got no jurisdiction anywhere, Heller, so shut the hell up.”

Eliot said, “Then what happened?”

“He was sitting a few feet from that dresser. Then he turned and tried to reach in a dresser drawer for that pistol. I couldn’t take any chances. I fired and he fell.”

Eliot turned to the cop near me. “Why didn’t you just grab Nydick?”

The cop made a helpless, shrugging gesture. “I wasn’t close enough.” The other cop, having finished with his phone call, was staying in the background.

“How about you?” Eliot asked him. “Why didn’t you grab Nydick when he went for the gun?”

“I started to jump over the bed, but — Miller, he — already fired.”

Eliot glared at Miller. “Let’s step out in the hall.” He pointed a finger at first one, then the other cop. “You two stay put. Make sure your suspect doesn’t make a break for it.”

When we got out in the hall, the wife, being held by one arm by the cop in the brown suit, said, “What in God’s name happened in there?”

Eliot said, “Are you Mrs. Nydick?”

The woman lowered her head. “I’m Mrs. Long.”

Miller said, “That’s the name Nydick was registered under.”

Eliot said it again: “Are you Mrs. Nydick?”

She nodded, looking at the floor. “He’s... dead, isn’t he?”

“He’s been shot,” Eliot said. “It doesn’t look good for him.”

She kept nodding, kept looking at the floor. She didn’t ask to go in and be with her husband; she just nodded and looked at the floor. The boy started to cry. Nobody comforted him.

A few other guests were cracking their doors and peeking out. In a loud, firm voice, Eliot said, “This is a police matter — go about your business.” The doors closed.

Then he took Miller by the arm and led him down the hall and around a corner, glancing back at me to follow, which I did.

With a smile that was in no way friendly, he backed Miller up against the wall, gently.

“Didn’t you kill somebody else this year?” he asked.

Miller nodded. “A thief. I don’t like thieves. Nydick was a thief.”

“Ever meet Nydick before?”

“No.”

“He didn’t hold a gun on you and your partner Lang once?”

“No. That... story got around, but it was just a story. Nobody can...”

“What?”

Miller swallowed. “Nobody can prove it happened.”

“I see. Boy, the hoodlum squad’s going all out. First you and Lang nail Nitti. Now the notorious Nydick. What next?”

“We’re just doing our job, Ness.”

Eliot took him by one arm and squeezed and said, “Listen to me, you trigger-happy son of a bitch. I got my eye on you. You keep turning your job into a shooting gallery and I’m going to fall on you like a wall. Got me?”

Miller didn’t say anything, but he was shaking — it was barely perceptible, but he was shaking.

Eliot turned his back on him and started to walk away. Then he glanced back and said, “How long do you think your buddy Cermak is going to back you up on these pleasure cruises? The word’s out about Newberry offering fifteen grand for Nitti dead, you know. And if that wife of Nydick’s isn’t your girl friend, I’ll invite you over for Christmas dinner.”

Miller started to blink behind the glasses.

“Oh, by the way,” Eliot added. “Heller wasn’t here tonight. Neither one of you needs the stink that might raise, and Heller’s along innocently, just ’cause he happened to be with me. I’ll tell your boys, and you tell ’em, too. The civilians won’t remember how many cops they saw. Got it?” He turned to me. “Anything you care to add?”

I said, “Give me a minute with him alone, Eliot.”

He nodded and walked back around the corner and down the corridor.

Miller looked at me and tried to get a sneer going; he didn’t quite manage. “I don’t like the company you keep,” he said.

“Maybe you picked the wrong person to pull in out of a speakeasy to do your shit work for you.”

“What’s the idea of bringing Ness into this?”

“Ness has been in since the first day, but never mind. You and Lang should’ve told me about Newberry, Miller.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s just say if Nitti has a relapse and kicks the bucket, I’ll expect my five thousand. Give my love to Lang. Tell him when his finger heals to stick it.”

“You’re dead, Heller.”

“Sure, why not, what’s another body to a big-game hunter like you? Some free advice: I don’t know what you and Nydick’s little lady had going, but I don’t think she expected you to kill him. I hope you can get her to get her story together. You just got to start letting those close to you in on your plans, Miller. See you in court.”

I left him there to think about that and joined Eliot, who was waiting by the door that said exit over it.

“Take the stairs down,” he said. “Find your way home. The ambulance and reporters’ll be here anytime. You don’t need that kind of publicity.”

I grinned at him. “Don’t tell me Eliot Ness is helping cover something up?”

He laughed a little, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d been sickened by what he saw here tonight.

He said, “That guy really puts the ‘hoodlum’ into hoodlum squad, doesn’t he?”

And opened the door for me to leave.

Chicago is a city where rich and poor stand side by side, ignoring each other. Take the block where my office was. Starting at the deli on the corner and looking down toward Wabash, you’d see Barney’s blind pig, a pawnshop, a jewelry store, a flophouse, a sign advertising a palm reader one floor up — buildings wearing fire escapes on their faces like protective masks, looking out stoically on the iron beams of the El; not the classiest landscape in the world. But just around the corner from the deli, right before Binyon’s, was the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club, and across the street from Binyon’s was the Standard Club, the Jewish equivalent of the Union League. Some of the richest men in Chicago walked under the SC canopy into the gray, dignified Standard Club, while around the corner and down the block, winos slept it off in a “hotel for men only.”