Chicago Lightning

by Max Allan Collins

  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 Plymout
h 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….”