Max Collins - True Detective

“And the innocent doctor got arrested right along with the bad guys,” she said.

“Not exactly. This was Saint Valentine’s, 1929.”

Mary Ann didn’t play naïve; she knew what I meant.

“They killed him, Mary Ann,” I said. “He probably told the men with machine guns he wasn’t one of the gangsters; that he was just an optometrist. But they killed him anyway. He was there, and he got killed.”

Her eyes were damp. “Why are you saying these things, Nathan?”

We were on the verge of a scene.

“Hey,” I said, trying to shift gears, “I shouldn’t have got into this here. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to upset you, it just came out... but a picture’s starting to form, Mary Ann. A picture of your brother. And he isn’t looking too very smart.”

“For your information, my brother was an A student.”

“Mary Ann. There’s school, and there’s school. Like the hard-knocks kind. Your brother is a kid from Davenport, Iowa. He may have hung around with some bootleggers” — I’d been a little vague with her on this point not wanting to betray Traynor’s confidence — “but he was still a kid from the sticks.”

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to have a sick feeling, that’s all. Maybe it’s the meat loaf.”

“You’ve said all along you think Jimmy’s off somewhere... riding the rails, seeing the country.”

“I think he probably is. But he’s not seeing Chicago, or I’d probably turned him up by now. Some things bother me, Mary Ann. Like his hanging around with hoods, here in Davenport. And did you know your father gave him two hundred dollars for tuition to Palmer, which he pocketed and took with him to Chicago?”

She turned pale. “No. Jimmy didn’t tell me that.”

“He told you he was going to hop a freight, though, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“If he did, and if he had two hundred dollars on him, well... that worries me.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing. But if he made it to Chicago with his two hundred, I’ll eat another serving of this meat loaf.”

Her lower lip was trembling; I reached across and touched her hand.

“I’m sorry if I seem a bastard,” I said. “It’s just... I want you to be prepared, in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case you have to look at something without the rose-colored glasses on.”

She thought about that; she pushed the plate of liver away.

“Find him, Nathan,” she said. “Please.”

“I’m going to try.”

“Don’t try. Do it. Find him for me.”

“I can’t promise that.”

“You have to.”

“Okay. I promise. All right? Are you all right?”

She managed a smile. “Yes.”

“How about helping me find this brother of yours?”

“Sure,” she said.

She had arranged for me to talk to her brother’s journalism instructor at Augustana, across the river in Rock Island; it was a beautiful campus on a rolling green bluff and the building we entered didn’t have a single motto on its walls. But the matronly English literature instructor who also taught journalism had nothing illuminating to say about Jimmy, except that he was a fine writer and showed a lot of promise; that his marks in everything from literature to math were top-drawer. Nothing about Jimmy’s personal life; nothing in the subject matter of his stories for the school paper that reflected the interest in crime that Traynor had told me about.

Back in Davenport, we stopped at a market, then went back to her father’s modernistic castle, where I helped her in the kitchen, and she surprised her father with a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings, and she and I surprised each other by both being good cooks. I’d done a lot of cooking at home, growing up; and she’d been the only woman in this house for many a year. So we agreed to alternate days in the kitchen when we got married, though I silently promised myself to let her handle it, except for special occasions.

After dinner Mary Ann and her father, his arm around her, a gray-gloved hand gentle on her shoulder, went into his study. They asked me to join them, but I declined: this was a family moment, and I wasn’t family yet. Besides, I had an appointment.

Dutch Reagan was waiting for me in front of the Perry Apartments, wearing a sweater over a shirt and tie, and brown slacks. His hands were in his pockets and he was leaning back against the building; with his glasses and crew cut, he didn’t look like somebody who could get in a speakeasy, let alone give me a city-wide tour of ‘em. I pulled up and he got in.

“Right on time,” he said, with a ready smile.

“Take a look at this,” I said, and handed him my notepad, folded back to the page where I’d jotted down Traynor’s list of speaks. I pulled away from the curb.

“This is most of ‘em,” Reagan said. “Where’d you get this?”

“A reporter. Anything significant left out?”

“These are all mostly right downtown here. I’d suggest hitting the roadhouses, too.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Just a couple. But we better stick to drinking beer tonight, and one per place, or we’re not going to make it through the list. At least I won’t.”

Anyway he was honest about it.

“We’ll take it easy,” I assured him. “Are you a regular at any of these places?”

“I’ve been in most of ’em, once or twice.”

“Just once or twice, huh?”

“I didn’t say I was a drinking man, just Irish.”

“Is there a difference?”

“You got red hair, you tell me.”

I grinned at him. “I’m only half-Gaelic — you look like the full ticket.”

“Well, my dad puts it away pretty good — too good, actually. Most of my drinking’s been done on the fraternity back porch or in a parked car. Look, you may want to avoid the food in these joints. Most of ’em have to advertise they serve food, to stay open, you know.”

“That’s par for the course.”

“Well, I just thought I should warn you. You seem to be heading toward Mary Hooch’s, and I know a guy who ordered a sandwich there and when he took a bite, it bit him back.”

We hit the speaks downtown first, starting with the one on West Second Street run by the heavyset old lady known as Mary Hooch, a friendly old gal who looked like she could go a couple rounds with Barney. Her place, like most we went to, was a narrow hole in the wall with no sign out front, but otherwise running wide open. Legal sale of beer hadn’t hurt her business any — the dozen or so workingmen at the bar were putting away the specialty of the house: near beer spiked with alcohol, exceeding the legal 3.2 limit and then some.

“I know Jimmy,” Mary Hooch said. She had a puffy face with two beady eyes hiding in it and hair as frizzy as Joe Zangara’s. “Good kid. But I hear he took off for Chicago, long time ago.”

“Do you know any of his friends? Did anybody he hung out with hang out here?”

“Not to speak of.”

“If you know Jimmy, you ought to know his friends.”

“Everybody was his friend. All the fellas and gals.”

“Anybody here tonight, for instance?”

She looked around the room. “Not really. These guys are working stiffs, or out-of-work stiffs. Jimmy hung around with a different type.”

“If I offered you a fin would you get more specific?”

“I don’t think so. You’re a friendly fella, but you’re from out of town, right? I think I told you all I’m going to.”

It went like that everyplace: a joint on East Fourth, where the shrimp and oysters looked edible, and Reagan forgot his advice to me and had a basket of the former; another over a garage at West River Drive and Ripley, where sandwiches apparently more legitimate than Mary Hooch’s were being served; a place up on Washington Street that actually had a small sign out front (Yellow Dog) and sold German food. Bartenders remembered Jimmy, knew he hung around with some “locals,” but wouldn’t get specific about who. With one exception: Jack Wall, the manager of that place over the garage, a smooth, well-dressed guy with a Nitti-style pencil mustache and a shovel-jaw. The impression I got was that he was up high enough in the Tri-Cities liquor ring to talk more freely than the others, if he felt like it, which he did, when I explained I was a private op from Chicago working a missing persons case.