Max Collins - True Detective

“Enough,” Eliot said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. “Brother. You’ve really hit the big time, haven’t you, Nate?”

“The biggest,” I said, filing my shorts away. “Everybody in town is trying to hire me or bribe me, shut me up or make me talk. I’m popular.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Did you know General Dawes and me were thick?”

“Yeah?”

I held up crossed fingers. “Like this. Guess which one I am. He wants me to tell the truth on the stand, when Nitti’s trial comes up.”

Eliot thought about that. “He wants you to sell Cermak out, you mean?”

“Yowsah.”

Eliot took his hat off and tossed it on the desk. “Well, Cermak is making the wrong kind of headlines.”

I nodded. “Don’t want to scare potential fairgoers off, you know.”

“The fair is Dawes’ baby, remember. Him and his brother Rufus, who’s the president of the thing. You mean to say, he came right out and asked you...”

“Not really. My uncle Louis had to explain it to me. Dawes is a walking garden of platitudes; I needed a translator.”

Eliot smiled. “I’ve met him a couple of times. Didn’t make much of an impression on me.”

“Don’t you know he’s the guy who got Capone?”

“What? What am I, chopped liver?”

“You were Dawes’ tool, my boy.”

“Sure,” he said, his smile turning to a smirk.

I decided not to pursue the issue; why burst his bubble?

I had asked him to come over here — it wasn’t much of a walk from the Transportation Building — to show him my office and to allow him to speak freely, without the other prohibition agents at his office overhearing. I wanted to find out about the Nydick inquest, at which he’d been a witness this morning.

“It was a circus,” Eliot said, disgustedly. “The second inquest this week where the coroner sat in judgment of the actions of police officers who, officially, are deputy coroners. Sometimes I think the reason justice is blind is ’cause it’s looking the other way.”

They had started out at the morgue and moved to the Park Row Hotel where the crime was reenacted — theoretically for the sake of the jurors, but really for the press photogs. (Eliot said this with an uncharacteristic disdain for publicity; on the other hand, this publicity wasn’t his.) Mrs. Nydick’s attorney had charged that the shooting was unjustified, and that no revolver had been in the dresser drawer before the hoodlum squad entered to arrest her (now-deceased) husband. Miller had to fend off the attorney’s questions about possible animosity toward Nydick, but the coroner put an early end to that, saying that if the attorney was going to be belligerent, he wouldn’t be allowed to cross-examine witnesses at all. Miller was exonerated.

“What do you make of it?” I asked.

Eliot shrugged elaborately. “I think the wife set her husband up for her boyfriend Miller to collar, but Miller, on his own initiative, decided to take the opportunity to bump the husband off. And I think the wife took that less than kindly, and sicced her attorney on Miller.”

“She might’ve done that just to make herself look good,” I said. “It makes the cover-up look more legit to have some of these questions raised and quashed, you know.”

He nodded. “You may be right. And she may not be his girl friend at all. We’re just guessing. At any rate, Miller planted the gun.”

“If all the guns Lang and Miller planted bore fruit,” I said, “we’d be picking bullets off trees.”

“Ain’t it the truth. The other detectives seemed embarrassed, testifying. I think they felt taken, like you did.”

“You don’t think they were in on it?”

“Naw. I think Miller planted the thirty-two in the drawer with his back to them. That’s my guess, anyway.”

“It’s as good as any,” I admitted.

Eliot looked around. “It’s a nice office. Bigger than mine.”

“Well, you don’t live in yours.”

“True. Why’d you give up your room at the Adams?”

“It was getting old, living in the lap of luxury.” I explained my night-watchman arrangement with Barney.

“Sounds like a good deal for both of you,” Eliot nodded. He reached into an inside pocket. “Say, I’ve already talked to this guy, and he may have something for you.” He handed me a slip of paper across the desk.

I read it aloud. “Retail Credit Company.” There was a name and a number, too, and an address in the Jackson Park area.

“Real glamorous work,” he said. “All the pavement-pounding a man could hope for. Checking credit ratings, investigating insurance claims. You know — exciting stuff.”

“I appreciate this, Eliot.”

He shrugged. “What about Sunday?”

“What about it?”

“Christmas, Nate. How about having Christmas dinner with Edna and me.”

“Yeah, well that’s awful nice of you, but I don’t celebrate Christmas, particularly. I’m sort of a Jew, remember?”

“You don’t, so why should I? Come on over. We got a huge turkey and only a handful of relatives. Plenty of room for an honest private detective.”

“And for me?”

“And for you. And why not bring Janey?”

“Can I call you later? If Janey’s already got something planned, then...”

“I understand.” He stood; pointed a finger at me. “But if she doesn’t, you better both be there.”

“Okay. You rushing off, already?”

“I got a press conference this afternoon. We’re announcing raids for New Year’s Eve. Assuring the public that we’re arresting only owners, not patrons.”

“It’ll probably be legal next New Year’s, you know.”

“I know, and it’s fine with me. But till then, I got to at least go through the motions.” He had his hat and coat on now. “Let me know if you change your mind about Christmas.”

“I will.”

“Good. I got a real nice lump of coal for you, tied with a big red ribbon.”

The office was a little cold; the radiator behind my desk seemed largely ornamental. “I think that may come in handy.”

“It might,” he smiled, waved, went out.

I called the Retail Credit Company in Jackson Park and arranged with the manager, a Mr. Anderson, for a meeting next Monday afternoon. He was friendly, glad to hear from me, expected my call — Eliot had really laid some groundwork for me, and that was a nice Christmas present; even better than the coal he’d promised. Then I called the phone company to see if my agency could still get into the ’33 phone book, and made it just under the wire. A-1 Detective Agency, Nathan Heller, President. The A-1 should get me listed first in the Yellow Pages, and that alone could bring in some clients.

And I called the other agencies in town to let them know I was in business, and that I could handle their overflow at a reasonable rate: ten dollars a day and expenses. That appealed to a couple of the medium-size agencies, where there were three or four operatives, and occasionally the work load did get too big for them to handle. My rate for the general public would be twenty dollars a day plus expenses, though I didn’t plan to post it; better to size a client up and slide the rate up or down, as traffic would allow — in times like these, down was where most of the sliding would be, I supposed.

This took the better part of the afternoon, and at four I got a small suitcase with some toiletries, a change of underwear, a clean shirt, and my relatively clean navy pinstripe, and went over to the Morrison Hotel, to the traveler’s lounge, where I showered and shaved, leaving the suitcase and dirty clothes in a locker, before heading over to City Hall to meet Janey.

By that time it was five and already getting dark; the neons gave off a funny, halfhearted glow in the dusk, an effect amplified by the mist, which was what the cloudy day had decided to give us instead of rain or snow. Christmas was looking to be gloomy and wet, not cheery and white. The streets were filled with rush-hour traffic as I walked the concrete canyons to City Hall; once there, I stood within the high marble lobby waiting for Janey, watching city employees get out of there as fast as possible — all of ’em except Janey, of course.