Max Allan Collins
Chicago Lightning

KADDISH FOR THE KID

The first operative I ever took on, in the A-1 Detective Agency, was Stanley Gross. I hadn’t been in business for even a year-it was summer of ’33-and was in no shape to be adding help. But the thing was-Stanley had a car.

Stanley had a ’28 Ford coupe, to be exact, and a yen to be a detective. I had a paying assignment, requiring wheels, and a yen to make a living.

So it was that at three o’clock in the morning, on that unseasonably cool summer evening, I was sitting in the front seat of Stanley’s Ford, in front of Goldblatt’s department store on West Chicago Avenue, sipping coffee out of a paper cup, waiting to see if anybody came along with a brick or a gun.

I’d been hired two weeks before by the manager of the downtown Goldblatt’s on State, just two blocks from my office at Van Buren and Plymouth. Goldblatt’s was sort of a working-class Marshall Field’s, with six department stores scattered around the Chicago area in various white ethnic neighborhoods.

The stores were good-size-two floors taking up as much as half a block-and the display windows were impressive enough; but once you got inside, it was like the push carts of Maxwell Street had been emptied and organized.

I bought my socks and underwear at the downtown Goldblatt’s, but that wasn’t how Nathan Heller-me-got hired. I knew Katie Mulhaney, the manager’s secretary; I’d bumped into her, on one of my socks and underwear buying expeditions, and it blossomed into a friendship. A warm friendship.

Anyway, the manager-Herman Cohen-had summoned me to his office where he filled me in. His desk was cluttered, but he was neat-moon-faced, mustached, bow-(and fit-to-be-) tied.

“Maybe you’ve seen the stories in the papers,” he said, in a machine-gun burst of words, “about this reign of terror we’ve been suffering.”

“Sure,” I said.

Goldblatt’s wasn’t alone; every leading department store was getting hit-stench bombs set off, acid sprayed over merchandise, bricks tossed from cars to shatter plate glass windows.

He thumbed his mustache; frowned. “Have you heard of ‘Boss’ Rooney? John Rooney?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s secretary of the Circular Distributors Union. Over the past two years, Mr. Goldblatt has provided Rooney’s union with over three-thousand dollars of business-primarily to discourage trouble at our stores.”

“This union-these are guys that hand out ad fliers?”

“Yes. Yes, and now Rooney has demanded that Mr. Goldblatt order three hundred of our own sales and ad people to join his union-at a rate of twenty-five cents a day.”

My late father had been a diehard union guy, so I knew a little bit about this sort of thing. “Mr. Cohen, none of the unions in town collect daily dues.”

“This one does. They’ve even been outlawed by the AFL, Mr. Heller. Mr. Goldblatt feels Rooney is nothing short of a racketeer.”

“It’s an extortion scam, all right. What do you want me to do?”

“Our own security staff is stretched to the limit. We’re getting some support from State’s Attorney Courtney and his people. But they can only do so much. So we’ve taken on a small army of nightwatchman, and are fleshing out the team with private detectives. Miss Mulhaney recommended you.”

Katie knew a good dick when she saw one.

“Swell. When do I start?”

“Immediately. Of course, you do have a car?”

Of course, I lied and said I did. I also said I’d like to put one of my “top” operatives on the assignment with me, and that was fine with Cohen, who was in a more-the-merrier mood, where beefing up security was concerned. Stanley Gross was from Douglas Park, my old neighborhood. His parents were bakers two doors down from my father’s bookstore on South Homan. Stanley was a good eight years younger than me, so I remembered him mostly as a pestering kid.

But he’d grown into a tall, good-looking young man-a brown-haired, brown-eyed six-footer who’d been a star football and basketball player in high school. Like me, he went to Crane Junior College; unlike me, he finished.

I guess I’d always been sort of a hero to him. About six months before, he’d started dropping by my office to chew the fat. Business was so lousy, a little company-even from a fresh-faced college boy-was welcome.

We’d sit in the deli restaurant below my office and sip coffee and gnaw on bagels and he’d tell me this embarrassing shit about my being somebody he’d always looked up to.

“Gosh, Nate, when you made the police force, I thought that was just about the keenest thing.”

He really did talk that way-gosh, keen. I told you I was desperate for company.

He brushed a thick comma of brown hair away and grinned in a goofy boyish way; it was endearing, and nauseating. “When I was a kid, coming into your pop’s bookstore, you pointed me toward those Nick Carters, and Sherlock Holmes books. Gave me the bug. I had to be a detective!”

But the kid was too young to get on the force, and his family didn’t have the kind of money or connections it took to get a slot on the PD.

“When you quit,” he said, “I admired you so. Standing up to corruption-and in this town! Imagine.”

Imagine. My leaving the force had little to do with my “standing up to corruption”-after all, graft was high on my list of reasons for joining in the first place-but I said nothing, not wanting to shatter the child’s dreams.

“If you ever need an op, I’m your man!”

He said this thousands of times in those six months or so. And he actually did get some security work, through a couple of other, larger agencies. But his dream was to be my partner.

Owning that Ford made his dream come temporarily true.

For two weeks, we’d been living the exciting life of the private eye: sitting in the coupe in front of the Goldblatt’s store at Ashland and Chicago, waiting for window smashers to show. Or not.

The massive graystone department store was like the courthouse of commerce on this endless street of storefronts; the other businesses were smaller-re-sale shops, hardware stores, pawn shops, your occasional Polish deli. During the day things were popping here. Now, there was just us-me draped across the front seat, Stanley draped across the back-and the glow of neons and a few pools of light on the sidewalks from streetlamps. “You know,” Stanley said, “this isn’t as exciting as I pictured.”

“Just a week ago you were all excited about ‘packing a rod.’”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“That’s right.” I finished my coffee, crumpled the cup, tossed it on the floor.

“I guess a gun is nothing to feel good about.”

“Right again.”

I was stretched out with my shoulders against the rider’s door; in back, he was stretched out just the opposite. This enabled us to maintain eye contact. Not that I wanted to, particularly.

“Nate…if you hear me snoring, wake me up.”

“You tired, kid?”

“Yeah. Ate too much. Today…well, today was my birthday.”

“No kidding! Well, happy birthday, kid.”

“My pa made the keenest cake. Say, I…I’m sorry I didn’t you invite you or anything.”

“That’s okay.”

“It was a surprise party. Just my family-a few friends I went to high school and college with.”

“It’s okay.”

“But there’s cake left. You want to stop by pa’s store tomorrow and have a slice with me?”

“We’ll see, kid.”

“You remember my pa’s pastries. Can’t beat ’em.”

I grinned. “Best on the West Side. You talked me into it. Go ahead and catch a few winks. Nothing’s happening.”

And nothing was. The street was an empty ribbon of concrete. But about five minutes later, a car came barreling down that concrete ribbon, right down the middle; I sat up.

“What is it, Nate?”

“A drunk, I think. He’s weaving a little….”

It was a maroon Plymouth coupe; and it was headed right our way.

“Christ!” I said, and dug under my arm for the nine millimeter.

The driver was leaning out the window of the coupe, but whether man or woman I couldn’t tell-the headlights of the car, still a good thirty feet away, were blinding.

The night exploded and so did our windshield.

Glass rained on me, as I hit the floor; I could hear the roar of the Plymouth’s engine, and came back up, gun in hand, saw the maroon coupe bearing down on us, saw a silver swan on the radiator cap, and cream colored wheels, but people in the car going by were a blur, and as I tried to get a better look, orange fire burst from a gun and I ducked down, hitting the glass-littered floor, and another four shots riddled the car and the night, the side windows cracking, and behind us the plate glass of display windows was fragmenting, falling to the pavement like sheets of ice.

Then the Plymouth was gone.

So was Stanley.

The first bullet must have got him. He must have sat up to get a look at the oncoming car and took the slug head on; it threw him back, and now he still seemed to be lounging there, against the now-spiderwebbed window, precious “rod” tucked under his arm; his brown eyes were open, his mouth too, and his expression was almost-not quite-surprised.

I don’t think he had time to be truly surprised, before he died.

There’d been only time enough for him to take the bullet in the head, the dime-size entry wound parting the comma of brown hair, streaking the birthday boy’s boyish face with blood. Within an hour I was being questioned by Sgt. Charles Pribyl, who was attached to the State’s Attorney’s office.l was a decent enough guy, even if he did work under Captain Daniel “Tubbo” Gilbert, who was probably the crookedest cop in town. Which in this town was saying something.

Pribyl had a good reputation, however; and I’d encountered him, from time to time, back when I was working the pickpocket detail. He had soft, gentle features and dark alert eyes. Normally, he was an almost dapper dresser, but his tie seemed hastily knotted, his suit and hat looked as if he’d thrown them on-which he probably had; he was responding to a call at four in the morning, after all.

He was looking in at Stanley, who hadn’t been moved; we were waiting for a coroner’s physician to show. Several other plainclothes officers and half a dozen uniformed cops were milling around, footsteps crunching on the glass-strewn sidewalk.

“Just a kid,” Pribyl said, stepping away from the Ford. “Just a damn kid.” He shook his head. He nodded to me and I followed him over by a shattered display window.

He cocked his head. “How’d you happen to have such a young operative working with you?”

I explained about the car being Stanley’s.

He had an expression you only see on cops: sad and yet detached. His eyes tightened.

“How-and why-did stink bombs and window smashing escalate into bloody murder?”

“You expect me to answer that, Sergeant?”

“No. I expect you to tell me what happened. And, Heller-I don’t go into this with any preconceived notions about you. Some people on the force-even some good ones, like John Stege-hold it against you, the Lang and Miller business.”

They were two crooked cops I’d recently testified against.

“Not me,” he said firmly. “Apples don’t come rottener than those two bastards. I just want you to know what kind of footing we’re on.”

“I appreciate that.”

I filled him in, including a description of the murder vehicle, but couldn’t describe the people within at all. I wasn’t even sure how many of them there were.

“You get the license number?”

“No, damnit.”

“Why not? You saw the car well enough.”

“Them shooting at me interfered.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. Shit. Too bad you didn’t get a look at ’em.”

“Too bad. But you know who to go calling on.”

“How’s that?”

I thrust a finger toward the car. “That’s Boss Rooney’s work-maybe not personally, but he had it done. You know about the Circular Union and the hassles they been giving Goldblatt’s, right?”

Pribyl nodded, somewhat reluctantly; he liked me well enough, but I was a private detective. He didn’t like having me in the middle of police business.

“Heller, we’ve been keeping the union headquarters under surveillance for six weeks now. I saw Rooney there today, myself, from the apartment across the way we rented.”

“So did anyone leave the union hall tonight? Before the shooting, say around three?”

He shook his head glumly. “We’ve only been maintaining our watch during department-store business hours. The problem of night attacks is where hired hands like you come in.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “I won’t blame you if you don’t blame me.”

“Deal.”

“So what’s next?”

“You can go on home.” He glanced toward the Ford. “We’ll take care of this.”

“You want me to tell the family?”

“Were you close to them?”

“Not really. They’re from my old neighborhood, is all.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” He patted my shoulder. “Go home.”

I started to go, then turned back. “When are you going to pick up Rooney?”

“I’ll have to talk to the State’s Attorney, first. But my guess? Tomorrow. We’ll raid the union hall tomorrow.”

“Mind if I come along?”

“Wouldn’t be appropriate, Heller.”

“The kid worked for me. He got killed working for me.”

“No. We’ll handle it. Go home! Get some sleep.”

“I’ll go home,” I said.

A chill breeze was whispering.

“But the sleep part,” I said, “that I can’t promise you.”

The next afternoon I was having a beer in a booth in the bar next to the deli below my office. Formerly a blind pig-a speakeasy that looked shuttered from the street (even now, you entered through the deli)-it was a business investment of fighter Barney Ross, as was reflected by the framed boxing photos decorating the dark, smoky little joint.

I grew up with Barney on the West Side. Since my family hadn’t practiced Judaism in several generations, I was shabbes goy for Barney’s very Orthodox folks, a kid doing chores and errands for them from Friday sundown through Saturday.

But we didn’t become really good friends, Barney and me, till we worked Maxwell Street as pullers-teenage street barkers who literally pulled customers into stores for bargains they had no interest in.

Barney, a roughneck made good, was a real Chicago success story. He owned this entire building, and my office-which, with its Murphy bed, was also my residence-was space he traded me for keeping an eye on the place.come alongas his nightwatchman, unless a paying job like Goldblatt’s came along to take precedence. The lightweight champion of the world was having a beer, too, in that back booth; he wore a cheerful blue and white sportshirt and a dour expression.

“I’m sorry about your young pal,” Barney said.

“He wasn’t a ‘pal,’ really. Just an acquaintance.”

“I don’t know that Douglas Park crowd myself. But to think of a kid, on his twenty-first birthday…” His mildly battered bulldog countenance looked woeful. “He have a girl?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Poor little bastard. When’s the funeral?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going, aren’t you?”

“No. I don’t really know the family that well. I’m sending flowers.”

He looked at me with as long a face as a round-faced guy could muster. “You oughta go. He was working for you when he got it.”

“I’d be intruding. I’d be out of place.”

“You should do kaddish for the kid, Nate.”

A mourner’s prayer.

“Jesus Christ, Barney, I’m no Jew. I haven’t been in a synagogue more than half a dozen times in my life, and then it was social occasions.”

“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a Jew, with that Irish mug of yours your ma bequeathed you…but you’re gonna have a rude awakening one of these days, boyo.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s plenty of people you’re just another ‘kike’ to, believe you me.”

I sipped the beer. “Nudge me when you get to the point.”

“You owe this kid kaddish, Nate.”

“Hell, doesn’t that go on for months? I don’t know the lingo. And if you think I’m putting on some fuckin’ beanie and…”

There was a tap on my shoulder. Buddy Gold, the bartender, an ex-pug, leaned in to say, “You got a call.”

I went behind the bar to use the phone. It was Sergeant Lou Sapperstein at Central HQ in the Loop; Lou had been my boss on the pickpocket detail. I’d called him this morning with a request.

“Tubbo’s coppers made their raid this morning, around nine,” Lou said. Sapperstein was a hardnosed, balding cop of about forty-five and one of the few friends I had left on the PD.

“And?”

“And the union hall was empty, ’cept for a bartender. Pribyl and his partner Bert Gray took a whole squad up there, but Rooney and his boys had flew the coop.”

“Fuck. Somebody tipped them.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Yeah. Surprised I expected the cops to play it straight for a change. You wouldn’t have the address of that union, by any chance?”

“No, but I can get it. Hold a second.”

A sweet union scam like the Circular Distributors had Outfit written all over it-and Captain Tubbo Gilbert, head of the State Prosecutor’s police, was known as the richest cop in Chicago. Tubbo was a bagman and police fixer so deep in Frank Nitti’s pocket he had Nitti’s lint up his nose.

Lou was back: “It’s at 7 North Racine. That’s Madison and Racine.”

“Well, hell-that’s spitting distance from Skid Row.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So that explains the scam-that ‘union’ takes hobos and makes day laborers out of them. No wonder they charge daily dues. It’s just bums handing out ad circulars….”

“I’d say that’s a good guess, Nate.”

I thanked Lou and went back to the booth where Barney was brooding about what a louse his friend Heller was.

“I got something to do,” I told him.

“What?”

“My kind of kaddish.”

Less than two miles from the prominent department stores of the Loop they’d been fleecing, the Circular Distributors Union had their headquarters on the doorstep of Skid Row and various Hoovervilles. This Madison Street area, just north of Greek Town, was a seedy mix of flophouses, marginal apartment buildings and storefront businesses, mostly bars. Union HQ was on the second floor of a two-story brick building whose bottom floor was a plumbing supply outlet.

I went up the squeaking stairs and into the union hall, a big high-ceilinged open room with a few glassed-in offices toward the front, to the left and right. Ceiling fans whirred lazily, stirring stale smoky air; folding chairs and cardtables were scattered everywhere on the scuffed wooden floor, and seated at some were unshaven, tattered “members” of the union. Across the far end stretched a bar, behind which a burly blond guy in rolled-up white-shirt sleeves was polishing a glass. More hobos leaned against the bar, having beers.

I ordered a mug from the bartender, who had a massive skull and tiny dark eyes and a sullen kiss of a mouth.

I salted the brew as I tossed him a nickel. “Hear you had a raid here this morning.”

He ignored the question. “This hall’s for union members only.”

“Jeez, it looks like a saloon.”

“Well, it’s a union hall. Drink up and move along.”

“There’s a fin in it for you, if you answer a few questions.”

He thought that over; leaned in. “Are you a cop#8221;

“No. Private.”

“Who hired you?”

“Goldblatt’s.”

He thought some more. The tiny eyes narrowed. “Let’s hear the questions.”

“What do you know about the Gross kid’s murder?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Was Rooney here last night?”

“Far as I know, he was home in bed asleep.”

“Know where he lives?”

“No.”

“You don’t know where your boss lives.”

“No. All I know is he’s a swell guy. He don’t have nothin’ to do with these department store shakedowns the cops are tryin’ to pin on him. It’s union-busting, is what it is.”

“Union busting.” I had a look around at the bleary-eyed clientele in their patched clothes. “You have to be a union, first, ‘fore you can get busted up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means this is a scam. Rooney pulls in winos, gets ’em day-labor jobs for $3.25 a day, then they come up here to pay their daily dues of a quarter, and blow the rest on beer or booze. In other words, first the bums pass out ad fliers, then they come here and just plain pass out.”

“I think you better scram. Otherwise I’m gonna have to throw you down the stairs.”

I finished the beer. “I’m leaving. But you know what? I’m not gonna give you that fin. I’m afraid you’d just drink it up.”

I could feel his eyes on my back as I left, but I’d have heard him if he came out from around the bar. I was starting down the stairs when the door below opened and Sgt. Pribyl, looking irritated, came up to meet me on the landing, half-way. He looked more his usual dapper self, but his eyes were black-bagged.

“What’s the idea, Heller?”

“I just wanted to come bask in the reflected glory of your triumphant raid this morning.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means when Tubbo’s boys are on the case, the Outfit gets advance notice.”

He winced. “That’s not the way it was. I don’t know why Rooney and Berry and the others blew. But nobody in our office warned ’em off.”

“Are you sure?”

He clearly wasn’t. “Look, I can’t have you messing in this. We’re on the damn case, okay? We’re maintaining surveillance from across the way…that’s how we spotted you.”

“Peachy. Twenty-four surveillance, now?”

“No.” He seemed embarrassed. “Just day shift.”

“You want some help?”

“What do you mean?”

“Loan me the key to your stakeout crib. I’ll keep nightwatch. Got a phone in there?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll call you if Rooney shows. You got pictures of him and the others you can give me?”

“Well….”

“What’s the harm? Or would Tubbo lower the boom on you, if you really did your job?”

He sighed. Scratched his head and came to a decision. “This is unofficial, okay? But there’s a possibility the door to that apartment’s gonna be left unlocked tonight.”

“Do tell.”

“Third-floor-301.” He raised a cautionary finger. “We’ll try this for one night…no showboating, okay? Call me if one of ’em shows.”

“Sure. You tried their homes?”

He nodded. “Nothing. Rooney lives on North Ridgeland in Oak Park. Four kids. Wife’s a pleasant, matronly type.”

“Fat, you mean.”

“She hasn’t seen Rooney for several weeks. She says he’s away from home a lot.”

“Keeping a guard posted there?”

“Yeah. And that is twenty-four hour.” He sighed, shook his head. “Heller, there’s a lot about this case that doesn’t make sense.”

“Such as?”

“That maroon Plymouth. We never saw a car like that in the entire six weeks we had the union hall under surveillance. Rooney drives a blue LaSalle coupe.”

“Any maroon Plymouths reported stolen?”

He shook his head. “And it hasn’t turned up abandoned, either. They must still have the car.”

“Is Rooney that stupid?”

“We can always hope,” Pribyl said.

I sat in an easy chair with sprung springs by the window in room 301 of the residential hotel across the way. It wasn’t a flophouse cage, but it wasn’t a suite at the Drake, either. Anyway, in the dark it looked fine. I had a flask of rum to keep me company, and the breeze fluttering the sheer, frayed curtains remained unseasonably cool.

Thanks to some photos Pribyl left me, I now knew what Rooney looked like: a good-looking, oval-faced smoothie, in his mid-forties, just starting to lose his dark, slicked-back hair; his eyes were hooded, his mouth soft, sensual, sullen. There were also photos of bespectacled, balding Berry and pockmarked, cold-eyed Herbert Arnold, V.P. of the union.

But none of them stopped by the union hall-only a steady stream of winos and bums went in and out.

Thenhe ound seven, I spotted somebody who didn’t fit the profile.

It was a guy I knew-a fellow private op, Eddie McGowan, a Pinkerton man, in uniform, meaning he was on nightwatchman duty. A number of the merchants along Madison must have pitched in for his services.

I left the stakeout and waited down on the street, in front of the plumbing supply store, for Eddie to come back out. It didn’t take long-maybe ten minutes.

“Heller!” he said. He was a skinny, tow-haired guy in his late twenties with a bad complexion and a good outlook. “What no good are you up to?”

“The Goldblatt’s shooting. That kid they killed was working with me.”

“Oh! I didn’t know! Heard about the shooting, of course, but didn’t read the papers or anything. So you were involved in that? No kidding.”

“No kidding. You on watchman duty?”

“Yeah. Up and down the street, here, all night.”

“Including the union hall?”

“Sure.” He grinned. “I usually stop up for a free drink, ’bout this time of night.”

“Can you knock off for a couple of minutes? For another free drink?”

“Sure!”

Soon we were in a smoky booth in back of a bar and Eddie was having a boilermaker on me.

“See anything unusual last night,” I asked, “around the union hall?”

“Well…I had a drink there, around two o’clock in the morning. That was a first.”

“A drink? Don’t they close earlier than that?”

“Yeah. Around eleven. That’s all the longer it takes for their ‘members’ to lap up their daily dough.”

“So what were you doing up there at two?”

He shrugged. “Well, I noticed the lights was on upstairs, so I unlocked the street level door and went up. Figured Alex…that’s the bartender, Alex Davidson…might have forgot to turn out the lights, ’fore he left. The door up there was locked, but then Mr. Rooney opened it up and told me to come on in.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He was feelin’ pretty good. Looked like he was workin’ on a bender. Anyway, he insists I have a drink with him. I says, sure. Turns out Davidson is still there.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. So Alex serves me a beer. Henry Berry-he’s the union’s so-called business agent, mousy little guy with glasses-he was there, too. He was in his cups, also. So was Rooney’s wife-she was there, and also feeling giddy.”

I thought about Pribyl’s description of Mrs. Rooney as a matronly woman with four kids. “His wife was there?”

“Yeah, the luctiff.”

“Lucky?”

“You should see the dame! Good-lookin’ tomato with big dark eyes and a nice shape on her.”

“About how old?”

“Young. Twenties. It’d take the sting out of a ball and chain, I can tell you that.”

“Eddie…here’s a fin.”

“Heller, the beer’s enough!”

“The fin is for telling this same story to Sgt. Pribyl of the State’s Attorney’s coppers.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“But do it tomorrow.”

He smirked. “Okay. I got rounds to make, anyway.”

So did I.

At around eleven fifteen, bartender Alex Davidson was leaving the union hall; his back was turned, as he was locking the street-level door, and I put my nine-millimeter in it.

“Hi, Alex,” I said. “Don’t turn around, unless you prefer being gut-shot.”

“If it’s a stick-up, all I got’s a couple bucks. Take ’em and bug off!”

“No such luck. Leave that door unlocked. We’re gonna step back inside.”

He grunted and opened the door and we stepped inside.

“Now we’re going up the stairs,” I said, and we did, in the dark, the wooden steps whining under our weight. He was a big man; I’d have had my work cut out for me-if I hadn’t had the gun.

We stopped at the landing where earlier I had spoken to Sgt. Pribyl. “Here’s fine,” I said.

I allowed him to face me in the near-dark.

He sneered. “You’re that private dick.”

“I’m sure you mean that in the nicest way. Let me tell you a little more about me. See, we’re going to get to know each other, Alex.”

“Fuck you.”

I slapped him with the nine millimeter.

He wiped blood off his mouth and looked at me with hate, but also with fear. And he made no more smart-ass remarks.

“I’m the private dick whose twenty-one-year-old partner got shot in the head last night.”

Now the fear was edging out the hate; he knew he might die in this dark stairwell.

“I know you were here with Rooney and Berry and the broad, last night, serving up drinks as late as two in the morning,” I said. “Now you’re going to tell me the whole story-or you’re the one who’s getting tossed down the fucking stairs.”

He was trembling, now; a big hulk of a man trembling with fear. “I didn’t have anything to do with the murder. Not a damn thing!”

“Then why cover for Rooney and the rest?”

“You saw what they’re capable of!”

“Take it easy, Alex. Just tell the story.”

Rooney had come into the office about noon the day of the shooting; he had started drinking and never stopped. Berry and several other union “officers” arrived and angry discussions about being under surveillance by the State’s Attorney’s cops were accompanied by a lot more drinking.

“The other guys left around five, but Rooney and Berry, they just hung around drinking all evening. Around midnight, Rooney handed me a phone number he jotted on a matchbook, and gave it to me to call for him. It was a Berwyn number. A woman answered. I handed him the phone and he said to her, ‘Bring one.’”

“One what?” I asked.

“I’m gettin’ to that. She showed up around one o’clock-good-looking dame with black hair and eyes so dark they coulda been black, too.”

“Who was she?”

“I don’t know. Never saw her before. She took a gun out of her purse and gave it to Rooney.”

“That was what he asked her to bring.”

“I guess. It was a .38 revolver, a Colt I think. Anyway, Rooney and Berry were both pretty drunk; I don’t know what her excuse was. So Rooney takes the gun and says, ‘We got a job to pull at Goldblatt’s. We’re gonna throw some slugs at the windows and watchmen.’”

“How did the girl react?”

He swallowed. “She laughed. She said, ‘I’ll go along and watch the fun.’ Then they all went out.”

Jesus.

Finally I said, “What do you did do?”

“They told me to wait for ’em. Keep the bar open. They came back in, laughing like hyenas. Rooney says to me, ‘You want to see the way he keeled over?’ And I says, ‘Who?’ And he says, ‘The guard at Goldblatt’s.’ Berry laughs and says, ‘We really let him have it.’”

“That kid was twenty-one, Alex. It was his goddamn birthday.”

The bartender was looking down. “They laughed and joked about it till Berry passed out. About six in the morning, Rooney has me pile Berry in a cab. Rooney and the twist slept in his office for maybe an hour. Then they came out, looking sober and kind of…scared. He warned me not to tell anybody what I seen, unless I wanted to trade my job for a morgue slab.”

“Colorful. Tell me, Alex. You got that girl’s phone number in Berwyn?”

“I think it’s upstairs. You can put that gun away. I’ll help you.”

It was dark, but I could see his face well enough; the big man’s eyes looked damp. The fear was gone. Something else was in its place. Shame? Something.

We went upstairs, he unlocked the union hall and, under the bar, found the matchbook with the number written inside: Berwyn 2981.

“You want a drink before you go?” he asked.

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ll pass.”

I went back to my office to use the reverse-listing phone book that told me Berwyn 2981 was Rosalie Rizzo’s number; and that Rosalie Rizzo lived at 6348 West 13^th Street in Berwyn.

First thing the next morning, I borrowed Barney’s Hupmobile and drove out to Berwyn, the clean, tidy Hunky suburb populated in part by the late Mayor Cermak’s patronage people. But finding a Rosalie Rizzo in this largely Czech and Bohemian area came as no surprise: Capone’s Cicero was a stone’s throw away.

The woman’s address was a three-story brick apartment building, but none of the mailboxes in the vestibule bore her name. I found the janitor and gave him Rosalie Rizzo’s description. It sounded like Mrs. Riggs to him.

“She’s a doll,” the janitor said. He was heavy-set and needed a shave; he licked his thick lips as he thought about her. “Ain’t seen her since yesterday noon.”

That was about nine hours after Stanley was killed.

He continued: “Her and her husband was going to the country, she said. Didn’t expect to be back for a couple of weeks, she said.”

Her husband.

“What’ll a look around their apartment cost me?”

He licked his lips again. “Two bucks?”

Two bucks it was; the janitor used his passkey and left me to it. The well-appointed little apartment included a canary that sang in its gilded cage, a framed photo of slick Boss Rooney on an end table, and a closet containing two sawed-off shotguns and a repeating rifle.

I had barely started to poke around when I had company: a slender, gray-haired woman in a flowered print dress.

“Oh!” she said, coming in the door she’d unlocked.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Who are you?” Her voice had the lilt of an Italian accent.

Under the circumstances, the truth seemed prudent. “A private detective.”

“My daughter is not here! She and her-a husband, they go to vacation. Up north some-a-where. I just-a come to feed the canary!”

“Please don’t be frightened. Do you know where she’s gone, exactly?”

“No. But…maybe my husband do. He is-a downstairs….”

She went to a window, threw it open and yelled something frantically down in Italian.

I eased her aside in time to see a heavy-set man jump into a maroon Plymouth with a silver swan on the radiator cap, and cream colored wheels, and squeal away.

And when I turned, the slight gray-haired woman was just as gone. Only she hadn’t squealed.

The difference, this timewas a license number for the maroon coupe; I’d seen it: 519-836. In a diner I made a call to Lou Sapperstein, who made a call to the motor vehicle bureau, and phoned back with the scoop: the Plymouth was licensed to Rosalie Rizzo, but the address was different-2848 South Cuyler Avenue, in Berwyn.

The bungalow was typical for Berwyn-a tidy little frame house on a small perfect lawn. My guess was this was her folks’ place. In back was a small matching, but unattached garage, on the alley. Peeking in the garage windows, I saw the maroon coupe and smiled.

“Is Rosalie in trouble again?”

The voice was female, sweet, young.

I turned and saw a slender, almost beautiful teenage girl with dark eyes and bouncy, dark shoulder-length hair. She wore a navy-blue sailor-ish playsuit. Her pretty white legs were bare.

“Are you Rosalie’s sister?”

“Yes. Is she in trouble?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I just know Rosalie, that’s all. That man isn’t really her husband, is he? That Mr. Riggs.”

“No.”

“Are you here about her accident?”

“No. Where is she?”

“Are you a police officer?”

“I’m a detective. Where did she go?”

“Papa’s inside. He’s afraid he’s going to be in trouble.”

“Why’s that?”

“Rosalie put her car in our garage yesterday. She said she was in an accident and it was damaged and not to use it. She’s going to have it repaired when she gets back from vacation.”

“What does that have to do with your papa being scared?”

“Rosalie’s going to be mad as H at him, that he used her car.” She shrugged. “He said he looked at it and it didn’t look damaged to him, and if mama was going to have to look after Rosalie’s g.d. canary, well he’d sure as H use her gas not his.”

“I can see his point. Where did your sister go on vacation?”

“She didn’t say. Up north someplace. Someplace she and Mr. Riggs like to go to, to…you know. To get away?”

I called Sgt. Pribyl from a gas station where I was getting Barney’s Hupmobile tank re-filled. I suggested he have another talk with bartender Alex Davidson, gave him the address of “Mr. and Mrs. Riggs,” and told him where he could find the maroon Plymouth.

He was grateful but a little miffed about all I had done on my own.

“So much for not showboating,” he said, almost huffily. “You’ve found everything but the damn suspects.”

“They’ve gone up north somewhere,” I said.

“Where up north?”

“They don’t seem to’ve told anybody. Look, I have a piece of evidence you may need.”

“What?”

“When you talk to Davidson, he’ll tell you about a matchbook Rooney wrote the girl’s number on. I got the matchbook.”

It was still in my pocket. I took it out, idly, and shut the girl’s number away, revealing the picture on the matchbook cover: a blue moon hovered surrealistically over a white lake on which two blue lovers paddled in a blue canoe-Eagle River Lodge, Wisconsin.

“I suppose we’ll need that,” Pribyl’s voice over the phone said, “when the time comes.”

“I suppose,” I said, and hung up.

Eagle River was a town of 1,386 (so said the sign) just inside the Vilas County line at the junction of US 45 and Wisconsin State Highway 70. The country was beyond beautiful-green pines towering higher than Chicago skyscrapers, glittering blue lakes nestling in woodland pockets.

The lodge I was looking for was on Silver Lake, a gas station attendant told me. A beautiful dusk was settling on the woods as I drew into the parking of the large resort sporting a red city-style neon saying, DINING AND DANCE. Log-cabin cottages were flung here and there around the periphery like Paul Bunyan’s tinker-toys. Each one was just secluded enough-ideal for couples, married or un-.

Even if Rooney and his dark-haired honey weren’t staying here, it was time to find a room: I’d been driving all day. When Barney loaned me his Hupmobile, he’d had no idea the kind of miles I’d put on it. Dead tired, I went to the desk and paid for a cabin.

The guy behind the counter had a plaid shirt on, but he was small and squinty and Hitler-mustached, smoking a stogie, and looked more like a bookie than a lumberjack.

I told him some friends of mine were supposed to be staying here.

“We don’t have anybody named Riggs registered.”

“How ’bout Mr. and Mrs. Rooney?”

“Them either. How many friends you got, anyway?”

“Why, did I already catch the limit?”

Before I headed to my cabin, I grabbed some supper in the rustic restaurant. I placed my order with a friendly brunette girl of about nineteen with plenty of personality, and make-up. A road-company Paul Whiteman outfit was playing “Sophisticated Lady” in the adjacent dance hall, and I went over and peeked in, to look for familiar faces. A number of couples were cutting a rug, but not Rooney and Rosalie. Or Henry Berry or Herbert Arnold, either. I went back and had my green salad and fried trout and well-buttered baked potato; I was full and sleepy when I stumbled toward my guest cottage under the light of a moon that bathed the woods ivory.

Walking along the path, I spotted something: snuggled next to one of the secluded cabins was a blue LaSalle coupe with Cook County plates.

Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy. I walked briskly back to the lodge check-in desk and batted the bell to summon the stogie-chewing clerk.

“Cabin seven,” I said. “I think that blue LaSalle is my friends’ car.”

His smirk turned his Hitler mustache Chaplinesque. “You want I should break out the champagne?”

“I just want to make sure it’s them. Dark-haired doll and an older guy, good-looking, kinda sleepy-eyed, just starting to go bald?”

“That’s them.” He checked his register. “That’s the Ridges.” He frowned. “Are they usin’ a phony name?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

He squinted. “You sure they’re friends of yours?”

“Positive. Don’t call their room and tell ’em I’m here, though-I want to surprise them….”

I knocked with my left hand; my right was filled with the nine millimeter. Nothing. I knocked again.

“Who is it?” a male voice said gruffly. “What is it?”

“Complimentary fruit basket from the management.”

“Go away!”

I kicked the door open.

The lights were off in the little cabin, but enough moonlight came in with me through the doorway to reveal the pair in bed, naked. She was sitting up, her mouth and eyes open in a silent scream, gathering the sheets up protectively over white skin, her dark hair blending with the darkness of the room, making a cameo of her face. He was diving off the bed for the sawed-off shotgun, but I was there to kick it away, wishing I hadn’t, wishing I’d let him grab it so I could have had an excuse to put one in his forehead, right where he’d put one in Stanley’s.

Boss Rooney wasn’t boss of anything, now: he was just a naked, balding, forty-four year-old scam artist, sprawled on the floor. Kicking him would have been easy.

So I did; in the stomach.

He clutched himself and puked. Apparently he’d had the trout, too.

I went over and slammed the door shut, or as shut as it could be, half-off its hinges. Pointing the gun at her retching naked boy friend, I said to the girl, “Turn on the light and put on your clothes.”

She nodded dutifully and did as she was told. In the glow of a nightstand lamp, I caught glimpses of her white, well-formed body as she stepped into her step-ins; but you know what? She didn’t do a thing for me.

“Is Berry here?” I asked Rooney. “Or Arnold?”

“N…no,” he managed.

“If you’re lying,” I said, “I’ll kill you.”

The girl said shrilly, “They aren’t here!”

“You can put your clothes on, too,” I told Rooney. “If you have another gun hidden somewhere, do me a favor. Make a play for it.”

His hooded eyes flared. “Who the hell are you?”

“The private cop you didn’t kill the other night.”

He lowered his gaze. “Oh.”

The girl was sitting on the bed, weeping; body heaving.

“Take it easy on her, will you?” he said, zipping his fly. “She’s just a kid.”

I was opening a window to ease the stench of his vomit. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll say kaddish for her.”

I handcuffed the lovebirds to the bed and called the local law; they in turn called the State Prosecutor’s office in Chicago, and Sergeants Pribyl and Gray made the long drive up the next day to pick up the pair.

It seemed the two cops had already caught Henry Berry-a tipster gave them the West Chicago Avenue address of a second-floor room he was holed up in.

I admitted to Pribyl that I’d been wrong about Tubbo tipping off Rooney and the rest about the raid.

“I figure Rooney lammed out of sheer panic,” I said, “the morning after the murder.”

Pribyl saw it the same way.

The following March, Pribyl arrested Herbert Arnold running a northside handbill distributing agency.

Rooney, Berry and Rosalie Rizzo were all convicted of murder; the two men got life, and the girl twenty years. Arnold hadn’t been part of the kill-happy joyride that took Stanley Gross’ young life, and got only one to five for conspiracy and extortion.

None of it brought Stanley Gross back, nor did my putting on a beanie and sitting with the Gross family, suffering through a couple of stints at a storefront synagogue on Roosevelt Road.

But it did get Barney off my ass.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While Nathan Heller is a fictional character, this story is based on a real case-names have not been changed, and the events are fundamentally true; source material included an article by John J. McPhaul and information provided by my research associate, George Hagenauer, who I thank for his insights and suggestions on this story and all the others in this collection.