Max Collins - True Detective

All I knew was when I went to the station after the shooting, I wrote out my report and gave it to the lieutenant, who read it over and said, “This won’t be necessary,” and wadded it up and tossed it in the wastebasket. And said, “Miller’s doing the talking to the press. You just keep your mouth shut.” I didn’t say anything, but my expression amounted to a question, and the lieutenant said, “This comes from way upstairs. If I were you, I’d keep my trap shut till you find out what the story’s going to be.”

Well, I’d seen Miller’s story by now — it was in the papers, too — and it was a pretty good story, as stories went; it didn’t have anything to do with what happened in Nitti’s office, but it’d look swell in the true detective magazines, and if they made a movie out of it with Jack Holt as Miller and Chester Morris as Lang and Boris Karloff as Nitti, it’d be a corker. It had Nitti stuffing the piece of paper in his mouth, and Lang trying to stop him, and Nitti drawing a gun from a shoulder holster and firing; and I was supposed to have fired a shot into Nitti, too. And of course one of the gangsters made a break for it out the window, and I plugged him. Frank Hurt, the guy’s name was — nice to know, if anybody ever wanted the names of people I killed. I was a regular six-gun kid; maybe Tom Mix should’ve played me.

It was a real publicity triumph, made to order for His Honor.

Only I was gumming it up. Today I told the lieutenant I was quitting; I tried to give him my badge, but he wouldn’t take it. He had me talk to the chief of detectives, who wouldn’t take my badge, either. He sent me over to City Hall where the chief himself talked to me; he, also, didn’t want my badge. Neither did the deputy commissioner. He told me if I wanted to turn my badge in, I’d have to give it to the commissioner himself.

The commissioner’s office was adjacent to Mayor Cermak’s, whose door was not open this afternoon. It was about three-thirty; I’d been trying to give my badge away since nine.

The large reception room, where a male secretary sat behind a desk, was filled with ordinary citizens with legitimate gripes, and none of them had a prayer at getting in to see the commissioner. A ward heeler from the North Side went in right ahead of me and, without a glance at the poor peons seated and standing around him went to the male secretary with a stack of traffic tickets that needed fixing, which the secretary took with a wordless, mild smile, stuffing them in a manila envelope that was already overflowing, which he then filed in a pigeonhole behind the desk.

The male secretary, seeing me, motioned toward a wall where all the chairs were already taken.

I said, “I’m Heller.”

The secretary looked up from his paper work as if goosed, then pointed to a door to his right; I went in.

It was an anteroom, smaller than the previous one, but filled with aldermen, ward heelers, bail bondsmen, even a few ranking cops including my lieutenant, who when he saw me motioned and whispered, “Get in there.”

I went in. There were four reporters in chairs in front of the commissioner’s desk; the room was gray, trimmed in dark wood; the commissioner was gray. Hair, eyes, complexion, suit; his tie was blue, however.

He was referring to daily reports on his desk, and some Teletype tape, but what the subject was I couldn’t say, because when he saw me, the commissioner stopped in midsentence.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the reporters, their backs to me, none yet noticing my presence. “I’m going to have to cut this short... My Board of Strategy is about to convene.”

The Board of Strategy was a “kitchen cabinet” made up of police personnel who gathered in advisory session. I wasn’t it, though I had a feeling the commissioner and I were about to convene.

Shrugging, the reporters got up. The first one who turned toward me was Davis, with the News, who’d talked to me more than once on the Lingle case.

“Well,” he grinned, “it’s the hero.” He was a short guy with a head too big for his body. He wore a brown suit and a gray hat that didn’t go together and he didn’t give a shit. “When you going to brag to the press, Heller?”

“I’m waiting for Ben Hecht to come back to Chicago,” I said. “It’s been downhill for local journalism ever since he left.”

Davis smirked; the others didn’t know me by sight, but Davis saying my name had clued them in. But then when Davis wandered out without pursuing it, they followed. I had a feeling they’d be waiting for me when I left, though; Davis, anyway.

I stood in front of the commissioner’s desk. He didn’t rise. He did smile, though, and gestured toward one of the four vacated chairs; his smile was like plaster cracking.

“We’re proud of you, Officer Heller,” he said. “His Honor and I. The department. The city.”

“Swell.” I put my badge on his desk.

He ignored it. “You will receive an official commendation; there will be a ceremony at His Honor’s office tomorrow morning. Can you attend?”

“I got nothing planned.”

He smiled some more; it was a smile that had nothing to do with pleasure or happiness or even courtesy. He folded his hands on the desk and it was like he was praying and strangling something simultaneously.

“Now,” he said slowly, carefully, looking at the badge on his desk out of the corner of an eye. “What’s this nonsense about you... leaving us.”

“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I’m quitting.”

“That is quite ridiculous. You’re a hero, Officer Heller. The department is granting you and Sergeants Lang and Miller extra compensation for meritorious service. The city council, today, voted you three the city’s thanks as heroes. The mayor has hailed you publicly for helping score a major victory in the war on crime.”

“Yeah, it was a great show, all right. But two things fucked it up.”

He squirmed visibly at having the word “fuck” said in his office, and by a subordinate; this was 1932 and school children weren’t using the word at the dinner table yet, so it still had mild shock value.

“Which are?” he said, struggling for dignity.

“First, I killed somebody, and I wasn’t planning to kill anybody yesterday afternoon. Let alone a kid. Nobody seems too concerned about him, though. Nitti’s boys say he has no relatives in the city. Claim he’s from the old country, an orphan. But that’s all they claim; they aren’t claiming the body. That goes into potter’s field. Just another punk. Only I put him there. And I don’t like it.”

The smile was gone now; a straight line took its place, a pursed straight line. “I understand,” the commissioner said, “you weren’t so self-righteous one other time.”

“That’s right. I helped cover something up, and it got me some money and a promotion. I’m from Chicago, all right. But awhile back I decided there’s a line I don’t go over anymore. And Miller and Lang forced me over that line yesterday.”

“You said two things.”

“What?”

“You said two things got... gummed up. What’s the second?”

“Oh.” I smiled. “Nitti. We went up there to kill him yesterday. I didn’t know that, but that’s what we were up there for. And he fooled all of us. He didn’t die. He’s in the hospital right now, and it’s beginning to look like he’s going to pull through.”

Nitti had been taken to the hospital at Bridewell Prison, but his father-in-law, Dr. Gaetano Ronga, had him transferred to Jefferson Park Hospital, where Ronga was a staff physician. Ronga had already issued statements to the effect that Nitti would live, barring unforeseen complications.

The commissioner stood; he wasn’t very tall. “Your allegations are unfounded. The address at the Wacker-LaSalle Building was believed to be the headquarters for the old Capone gang, now under Frank Nitti’s leadership.”