Chicago Lightning

by Max Allan Collins

  Very brave or very dumb.

  “Then this wildcat of a woman, a blonde, came out and was swinging this blackjack around and was hitting Mr. Hoeh with it. Mr. Hoeh sort of stumbled and stopped fighting and the woman stepped to one side and the man with the gun shot Mr. Hoeh—twice! And then when Mr. Hoeh was on the sidewalk, bleeding, dying, that vixen kicked him! Kicked him right in the face!”

  “That is vicious. Tell me, when did you notice the blackjack?”

  “Oh, uh…well, right away, I guess. When she started swinging it.”

  “I was just wondering if the detectives you spoke to earlier had mentioned that the Tigress sometimes used a blackjack. Did you notice the blackjack at the time? Or when they mentioned this to you, did you remember you’d seen it?”

  She frowned. “Actually…I guess I just thought she was pounding on him. But on reflection, I was sure, pretty sure, she had a blackjack.”

  “What does a blackjack look like, anyway?”

  The light blue eyes froze behind the lenses. “Uh…well, it’s black, obviously. It’s a sort of wrench, isn’t it?”

  When I grew tired of talking to thesewitnesses who’d been played like a kazoo by the Detective Bureau, I had a Coke and a grilled cheese at the drug store on the corner of Austin Boulevard and Division. Then I called the First District Station to see if that dedicated little public servant Captain Stege was still in his office.

  He was, and I asked, “Was there anything in the reports about Hoeh having any facial injuries?”

  “Just minor stuff, from the scuffle with Dale, I understand.”

  “Then nobody kicked him in the face?”

  He grunted a laugh. “I saw that in the papers, some of the witnesses saying that. But, no, Heller, nobody kicked the old man. The two bullets were enough.”

  “Usually are. I read something about a cache of weapons being collected at the apartment where the dicks caught up with Dale and Eleanor. Was there a blackjack among the stuff?”

  “No. Pretty good arsenal, though—four revolvers and a shotgun.”

  Dale had said he was no saint.

  I went back to the office, not because I was as dedicated as Captain Stege, but owing to the fact that I lived there, with the Murphy bed to prove it. There was a Depression going on, as you may have heard, and I had an arrangement with the building’s owner to keep an eye on things at night in exchange for rent.

  That evening I needed to get over to the Century of Progress, where I was doing some security work—without the World’s Fair, my summer would have been a bust—and I was just getting ready to go when a knock rattled the pebbled glass of my door.

  “Come in,” I said, wondering what I’d done to deserve two clients in one day, but it wasn’t that at all.

  For a moment I thought Leo Minneci had escaped and come around, because this was a dark young man who resembled Minneci strongly. On a closer inspection, he was smaller and younger than Leo, without the flattened nose, and better dressed—white short-sleeved shirt, red tie, white summer slacks and white bluchers—also a boater-style straw hat, which was in his right hand.

  “I’m Tony Minneci,” he said. “Leo’s brother. I have something for you, Mr. Heller.”

  I gestured to the client’s chair and he came over and filled it.

  “This may seem a little strange,” he said. “I’m not here because of my brother.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m kind of mad at Leo. He got me in trouble.”

  Then I remembered—the car used in the robbery, whose license number had been reported by three or four witnesses, turned out to belong to Tony here, a University of Illinois student working as a grocery clerk for a summer job.

  “Leo asked to borrow my car that day,” his young doppelganger said, “but I said no. Then he took it, anyway.”

  “Did you know Leo was doing stick-ups? Is that why you didn’t want him using your wheels?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about that. It’s just my car, is all. Let him get his own car.” He got into his pocket and fished out some bills—twenties. He put five of them on my desk. That was a lot of cabbage for a college-kid grocery clerk to haul around. A well-dressed college-kid grocery clerk.

  He smiled shyly. “That’s to cover what you’re doing for Eleanor.”

  “You’re Leo’s brother, but you’re running an errand for Eleanor? Why?”

  “She’s a nice girl. She’s innocent in all this. We were friendly.”

  “You and Eleanor?”

  “No, all of us, Eleanor and George and Leo.”

  “This is the same Leo? Let-him-get-his-own-car Leo?”

  He shrugged. “I get along fine with my brother. We don’t agree on everything under the sun, but—”

  “What don’t you agree with? Him sticking up stores?”

  “Look, Mr. Heller, my brother may not be perfect, but he does his best to keep that wife of his happy. If he did do something he shouldn’t have, you can blame her for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a nag, that’s why. You should go talk to her. See for yourself. If you ask me…nothing.”

  “Make your point, Tony.”

  “They got two kids now, Mr. Heller, but she was a wild one, Tina. She got my brother in all kinds of scrapes, and then she trapped him, far as I’m concerned.”

  “How?”

  “Back when he was boxing and making good money, she got pregnant on purpose to bag him. If I was on this case? I’d see what her alibi was, the day of that robbery, and all those other robberies.”

  “Does your sister-in-law know you feel this way?”

  “No.” He shrugged again. “I’m nice to her. Leo asked me to keep an eye on her, and the two kiddies, make sure they’re okay. I’m on my way there now, as it happens.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, she’s broke. I’m gonna give her some grocery money.”

  “You are a nice guy, Tony. Why don’t we go over there together?”

  He frowned. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “She’s on my list to talk to. Maybe you could pave the way for me, a little.”

  “Well…okay. I don’t see why not. You’ll see, I don’t let it show, how I feel—my only interest is in those two little kids. My nephews.”

  “Sure. You have a car?”

  “Yeah.” He got to his feet and put the straw hat on. “You want a ride, Mr. Heller?”

  “No, I have the address. I’ll meet you over there.”

  The Minneci apartment was four handsomely furnished rooms over a florist shop on the corner of Madison and Homan. These were fairly nice digs, suggesting hubby Leo had been doing all right for his little family before the cops took him away.

  Tony Minneci introduced me as a private detective trying to help clear Leo. Tina Minneci—tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender—immediately warmed to me, and seemed genuinely bewildered that anyone could ever think her gentle, loving husband could have robbed or hurt anybody. (It would have been impolite to point out that gentle, loving Leo used to bash other guys’ brains out for a living.) She wore about a buck’s worth of cotton house dress, blue plaid with a ruffled collar, nicely feminine, and her narrow face would have been pretty with a little make-up and a good night’s sleep.

  She sat us down at a round wooden table in the kitchen; a highchair was shoved to one side. She had a pot of coffee going as well as a bottle of milk in a saucepan on the stove.

  We all had coffee while we sat and talked—quietly, because she had just put baby Jimmy down for the night.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said, almost whispering, “unless something wakes him—then look out!”

  I said, “You have another child, don’t you?”

  “Yes—Leo, Jr. He’s six. He’s been with his grandparents since…since Leo, Sr., went away. They have a nice flat on the West Side—Daddy has a little restaurant over there, and does pretty well.”

  “I see.”

/>   “Little Jimmy and I may be joining Leo, Jr. I may have to move back in with my folks—my rent here is due in a week and I’m flat broke.”

  I nodded toward the living room. “You have a pretty nice place here. This isn’t exactly a Hooverville.”

  “I know, but we didn’t have any money stashed away in the bank or under a pillow, either. Leo’s always been a good provider. He made a really decent living as a fighter, and when that dwindled, he always brought enough in to keep us comfortable.”

  “Where did he work?”

  “No one place, but he always had something going. He did day labor, sometimes he helped out at the gym where he used to train.”

  I kept my tone easy. “You don’t think that money could’ve come from…somewhere else?”

  Her eyes flared. “Mr. Heller, my husband is an honest man. He got in with a bad crowd, is all. I always thought George Dale was a slickster.”

  “What about Eleanor Jarman?”

  Mrs. Minneci gave up a benefit-of-the-doubt shrug. “She always seemed all right. She has two little ones of her own to look after, you know.”

  Tony sat forward; his straw boater was on the table next to his coffee cup like an upturned soup bowl. “Listen, I got some grocery money for you, Tina. Five bucks I squeezed out of my clerk job. If I go over there with you, I can get the employee discount.”

  Mrs. Minneci turned her dark eyes on me and explained: “The little grocery store where Tony works part-time is just a block from here…. You’re a sweetheart, Tony, but I can’t leave Jimmy here alone, and I’m not about to wake him.”

  “I can babysit,” I said, “if you’re not gone too long.”

  She beamed at me, then frowned with parental concern. “What would a nice young man like you know about taking care of a baby?”

  “This nice young man used to go out with a nice divorcee with three kids, two in diapers. I know all about changing ’em, and I wield a mean milk bottle, too.”

  Mrs. Minneci glanced at her brother-in-law, who shrugged and said, “Mr. Heller’s reliable. No worries. We can be over there and back in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  A small discussion (“Do you mind? Are you sure?”) followed, but finally dutiful Tony took the sister-in-law he claimed to despise—although I’d seen no sign of that—out the door and into the hall and down the stairs.

  The tricky part was that slumbering kid. Jimmy was in a crib in the bedroom where I needed to poke around. So I did my quietest, most careful work, and I’d like to say I was able to pull off the find because I was a real professional, but a blind man could have pawed around and come up with the stuff.

  Under the bed, in a trio of clothing boxes, were lovely fashions, long-sleeved wool and rabbit’s hair numbers, stylish with Ascot ties and metal buttons and all the most fashionable current touches. Stege had said the Blonde Tigress had helped herself to pretty things on the robberies, and these brand-new, never worn dresses certainly qualified.

  Most damning were two items dropped on top of the final box I opened, nestled on a long-sleeved rayon satin two-color frock with a bow at the neck: a blonde wig and a blackjack.

  Some things never go out of style.

  I thought about laying all this stuff out on the kitchen table, like a meal; but instead I just put the caboodle away and went out and helped myself to another cup of coffee. Something about the set-up made me think maybe I should have taken that bottle of warm milk out of that pan instead.

  They returned in just over twenty minutes, with their arms full of grocery sacks and Tina Minneci all smiles. She was saying, “I think I’ll have the folks send Leo, Jr., home for a few days. We can eat like a proper family again. How can I thank you, Tony?”

  Tony was all smiles, too, but his eyes kept flicking toward me expectantly. I pitched in with my hostess and her brother-in-law and helped unload the groceries sacks and turned the cupboard shelves from empty to full.

  Leaning back against the kitchen counter, looking happy and with a hint of how lovely she really could be, Tina Minneci said, “Any trouble with Jimmy?”

  “No,” I said. “Slept like a baby.”

  That made her laugh. “Shall we sit down, and I’ll try to answer the rest of your questions?”

  “I don’t have any more questions, thanks. You’ve been very gracious, Mrs. Minneci. Tony, isn’t it time we were going?”

  Tony nodded and we made our goodbyes and we started down the steps and I waited until we were two-thirds of the way before I tripped him and sent him rattling down those stairs in a pile of arms and legs until he knocked up against the closed door.

  I stood over him in the little entryway and he gazed up at me, astounded. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “That’s the clumsiest frame I ever saw.”

  He got to his feet, brushing off his white pants. He picked up his boater, which had cracked. “You busted my hat!”

  “I should bust more.”

  His chin stuck out at me. “Listen, my brother is a boxer. He’s taught me a thing or two. I can take a punch.”

  “Can you take a slap?” I asked, and slapped him four times, twice per cheek, ringing like gunshots in the stairwell.

  Then I grabbed him by the shirt front and slammed him into some little wall-mounted mailboxes, which probably hurt. He was crying.

  “I’ve seen low,” I said. “But framing your own sister-in-law…. Did Eleanor put you up to it?”

  “I’m not talking to you!”

  “Question is, am I talking to the cops?”

  “You work for us!”

  “Shut-up.” I shook my head. “Get the hell out of here. You make me sick.”

  He and his busted boater scooted out. Under normal circumstances, he might have been able to give me worse than I’d just dished out to him. But I had righteous indignation on my side, which I admit was something new.

  The next morning, Eleanor Jarman and I sat in the same interrogation room as before. Her arms were folded, her eyes cold, her mouth a wide tight line, straight as a ruler’s edge.

  My arms were folded, too, but I was smiling. “Here’s the deal. I keep the hundred. I intend to send thirty bucks of it to Minneci’s wife, to help out on her rent. But I keep the rest—you’re getting off cheap, because if I sold what I know to the papers, you’d really be sunk.”

  I had just filled her in on a bunch of stuff, including that I knew Leo’s brother was part of their little gang, possibly fencing boodle, certainly providing the car.

  She gave me a gray-eyed glare. “I ask my lawyer for the shiftiest private eye around, and you’re what he comes up with? A goody two-shoes?”

  “This isn’t about right or wrong. This is about me not being stupid. Scratch that—it’s about me not liking being taken for stupid. You and George and Leo have been knocking over little shops since, when? April, May?”

  She just shrugged.

  “The clothes I found under Mrs. Minneci’s bed were strictly fall and winter items.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “If I wanted to frame her, and had thnch of stolen summer frocks of my own, why didn’t I just have that dope Tony stick some of those under that bitch’s bed?”

  “Because you girls don’t wear the same size. She’s tall and skinny, you’re short and curvy. You had to frame her with clothing that would fit her—and that dope Tony, as you accurately put it, went out and bought new things…fall and winter items that just hit the stores.”

  “You said you found a blonde wig and a blackjack.”

  “Yeah. The wig was new, but the blackjack wasn’t. You really did go around terrorizing small merchants with that thing, didn’t you?”

  She sighed and her face softened. She unfolded her arms and put her hands on the scarred table and leaned forward. “Listen, Heller—dumbbell Tina wouldn’t’ve served any time. That was just to muddy the waters and help get me off—when the cops looked into it, she’d probably have alibis for some of those robberies, maybe including the Hoeh thing.”<
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  “Probably. Maybe.”

  “And as for waving around that blackjack? That was just theater. I never slugged anybody, I never kicked anybody. These are hard times, as you may have noticed, and these hands…” She held them up; they were cracked and almost arthritic-looking, fifty-year-old hands on a woman not thirty. “…these hands had done all the laundry they could take.”

  “But the cops wanted to make themselves look good, and the papers went along, turning you into a Tigress.”

  She smiled. “Hey, fella, I was a tigress, but that was part of the show. Scare ’em, rattle ’em, and get them to give up their money. And we lived pretty darn good these last few months.”

  “Until Gustav Hoeh didn’t cooperate.”

  Her smile faded. “I hate that. You can believe me or not believe me, I don’t give a damn. But the truth is, I never wanted anybody hurt. This was just about some fast, easy cash.”

  “That gun you hauled around in your bag for George—you never thought he’d use it?”

  “No. He’s a coward at heart.”

  “Hell, Eleanor. Don’t you know? That’s who uses guns.”

  Some of the details I never got. I was only on the case for two days, so I never found out exactly what hold Eleanor Jarman had over Tony Minneci, and I have no idea what became of Tina and her two boys after I sent the thirty-bucks rent money.

  On the witness stand, Eleanor wore a pretty blue frock (where had she picked that up, I wondered?) and told her sad tale of being an orphan and waiting tables and doing laundry. She denied knowing that Hoeh’s store was going to be robbed, while Dale had changed his story to put the blame on Minneci, who told a similar story with Dale cast as the heavy. Assistant State’s Attorney Crowley went after the death sentence for all three, but only George Dale got the chair; his last act, in April of 1934, was to write Eleanor a love letter.

  As for Eleanor, she Leo each got 199 years, a sentence designed to beat any reasonable chance of parole—and the longest stretch ever assigned a woman in Illinois.

  That should be the end of the story, but the Blonde Tigress had other ideas. For seven years Eleanor served her time at Joliet as (to quote the warden) “an industrious, obedient, and model prisoner in every respect.” Then, on the morning of August 8, 1940, she wore a guard’s dress stolen from a locker and used a rope fashioned from sheets to go over the ten-foot wall.