True Crime

by Collins, Max Allan

  “I’m disappointed,” she told me. “He didn’t look like his pictures in the paper. He looked like any other dead guy. But what the heck—I think I’ll get back in line and go through just once more.”

  “Good idea,” I said, and we burst out through the door into the hot, fresh air. The guy in the orange cap and orange tie was back with a fresh tray of ice and juice. I couldn’t help myself: I bought a cup and swigged it down. It was cool and tasted good. Spending time in a morgue can make you appreciate the little things.

  I was walking toward where my coupe was parked when a father, gesturing with one hand, the other on the shoulder of a weeping eleven-year-old boy, walked briskly by, saying, “Now I wanted you to see that as a moral lesson, Tim—it’s like Melvin Purvis says: Crime don’t pay, remember that!”

  The father held one of the bloody swatches of handkerchief as he gestured.

  I kept that in mind as I drove to the Banker’s Building, where I hoped Purvis and Cowley would both still be on hand.

  24

  They seemed almost glad to see me.

  Cowley, in a brown baggy suit, was standing over by nattily dressed Purvis, seated behind his big glass-topped desk, and they looked toward me as I came in, followed me with their eyes as I approached them. There was no college boy in the receptionist’s slot this time to try to stop me—it was nearly six and most of the desks in the big office were empty, the windows half-open, letting in some warm but anyway fresh air and a glimpse of the day dying out there.

  I stood across from Purvis and pushed my hat back on my head; I was still in shirt sleeves—sweaty ones, by now. I probably didn’t smell any better than the rest of the crowd at the morgue.

  I said, “Looks like things have settled down around this joint.”

  Cowley found an uneasy smile for me. “You should’ve seen it this morning. Real madhouse.”

  Purvis mustered an unconvincing smile, and stood. “Nice of you to stop by, Mr. Heller,” he said in that faintly Southern drawl, as if he’d requested this visit. He gestured with an open hand back toward where I’d come in. “Let’s step into the conference room down the hall, for a chat….”

  I didn’t see why not.

  We sat, the three of us, with me in the middle, at one side of a long table for twelve in a big room that had a few smaller tables, apparently used for interrogation, along the wall by the windows. Through the windows I could see the Rookery just across the alley, looking enigmatically on. The Rookery was an early near-skyscraper, whose eleven stories had an oddly moorish ornamentation that made it stand out among its newer, taller, sleeker neighbors and its older, more staid, stodgy ones, too.

  Speaking of staid and stodgy, Cowley started in. “I haven’t seen you quoted in the press as yet.”

  “You will.”

  Purvis, on the other side of me, spit out the words; his cordial pose hadn’t lasted long. “What have you said?”

  I scooted my chair back so that I could look at both of them, undercutting the double-teaming routine they were trying to pull. I gave them a brief rundown on what I’d told Davis, and they seemed relieved, and relieved was what they should be: it was a whitewash, after all.

  Purvis said, “You didn’t mention Anna Sage? Or Polly Hamilton?”

  “No. But I did tell Stege their names, when he came to see me last night.”

  Cowley looked momentarily glum, but said, “We know. We’ve dealt with that.”

  “Oh really?”

  Purvis said, “Stege was questioning Anna at the Sheffield Avenue Station this afternoon, but we sent our men to pick her up.” A thin smile flitted across thin lips. “We told ’em it was a federal job and squelched the interrogation. She’s in federal custody, now. Protective.”

  “She’s in jail?”

  “No,” Cowley said. “We’re just looking out for her.”

  “What about Polly?”

  “Her too,” Purvis said, nodding.

  “I notice you’ve kept their names out of the papers. You think that’s going to last?”

  Purvis smirked. “Not since you gave the women’s names to Stege. Once the Chicago cops have it, the papers soon will, too. Those louts would sell their grandmother for a cup of java.”

  I couldn’t help smiling; when Purvis tried to talk tough, it was kind of pitiful. I said, “You shouldn’t worry. You boys are getting good press on this.”

  Cowley was impassive, but Purvis had a smug, tight little smile.

  I decided to wipe it off his face by saying, “You are aware by now that you killed the wrong man, aren’t you?”

  Purvis threw his hands in the air and said, “Jesus! Not that again!” Cowley just sat shaking his head, like I was a promising student who continually disappointed him.

  “I don’t plan to go to the papers with it,” I said. “I plan to stick to the version I gave Davis. I was just curious if you guys finally copped to what you’ve done—which is do Dillinger and Nitti a favor and kill some ringer for ’em, and get the heat off.”

  Cowley brushed a comma of brown hair off his forehead, but it only fell back again. He said, “If you believe this to be true, why keep it to yourself? Why not go to the papers? You might make some tidy pocket change off it.”

  Purvis glared at Cowley for having suggested that.

  I said, “I’m keeping it to myself because Frank Nitti might not like it if I didn’t. And because whoever that poor shmuck in front of the Biograph is—or was—doesn’t much matter, at this point. He’s dead. I saw it coming, and would’ve liked to stop it from happening. But I wasn’t up to the job. So be it. Best of luck to all concerned.”

  Purvis got up, paced for a moment, then went over to the open window and looked out at the Rookery, hands in pockets. “I don’t get you, Heller. You’re not a stupid man. Yet you seriously entertain such a stupid goddamn fantasy. We killed a ‘ringer’! Utter rubbish.” He turned and looked at me with a painfully earnest expression. “How in God’s name could that have been anyone else but John Dillinger last night?”

  Without malice, I said, “You were so eager for it to be him, it didn’t have to be.”

  He strode over to me, hands still in pockets; he seemed a little boy playing man. “What the hell’s your meaning?”

  With malice, I said, “Listen to me the first time I say something, Little Mel—then you won’t have to ask me to repeat it four times.”

  His marionette features took on a hurt, angry cast and he told me to go hell and walked briskly toward the door.

  “I have a train to catch,” he said. “I don’t have time for your nonsense.”

  He was opening the door when I said, “I can prove it wasn’t Dillinger, Melvin.”

  That caught his attention.

  “I really can, Mel,” I said. “But if you have a train to catch…”

  He shut the door and walked back. Sat down next to Cowley. Both men looked at me with doubting, but troubled, expressions.

  “I was just at the morgue,” I said. “I got a good look at the body, and a good look at the autopsy report.”

  That angered Purvis. “How did you manage…”

  I rubbed my thumb and fingers together, in the money gesture. Purvis fell silent and Cowley winced and nodded and I went on.

  “The man Zarkovich and O’Neill shot was approximately Dillinger’s height and weight. He was a little shorter and a little heavier than the real McCoy, but within an inch and ten pounds, so what the hell. Facially he doesn’t resemble Dillinger much, but certain scars indicate a face-lift, so plastic surgery might explain that. But how do you explain the eyes?”

  “The eyes?” Purvis said.

  “Yeah—the eyes have it, you know. And the corpse has brown eyes. I saw it for myself, last night; and that’s what the autopsy report says, too. Brown eyes.”

  “So?” Cowley said.

  “Dillinger has gray eyes.”

  Purvis said, “If the corpse has brown eyes, Dillinger has brown eyes, because that corpse is D
illinger. This is ridiculous. I really do have a train to catch.” He stood again. “You fill Cowley in on your fantasy, if you like, Heller—I have neither the stomach nor time for it.”

  “Sit down, Melvin,” I said. “You’re going to hear this, or I’ll find somebody else to tell it to.”

  He sat.

  “There was also a birthmark, a mole, missing on the body—right between the eyes—and several scars from bullet wounds and a scar on the lip were also not there.”

  “Plastic surgery,” Cowley offered.

  Cockily, Purvis said, “We know for a fact that Dillinger had plastic surgery just within this past month or so. This afternoon agents from this office picked up two of the ring involved in Dillinger’s several face-lift operations—Louis Piquett’s personal private investigator, and the doctor who performed the operation. And this office will be making more arrests in the days to come.”

  That sounded like a fucking press release. I said so.

  “You’re an annoying man,” Purvis said, his Southern sense of manners apparently infringed.

  “If Dillinger did have plastic surgery this past month or so,” I said, “how could he be completely healed so soon? The skin on his upper lip would at least look pink, for instance. Nothing looked pink about that stiff, believe me.”

  Purvis was shaking his head, scowling. “Where are you getting your ‘facts’? Newspaper files? What description are you going by? What’s the basis of your comparison? Get serious, Heller.”

  I took a folded-up piece of paper out of my front right pants pocket and spread it out on the table.

  “Division of Investigation identification order number twelve-seventeen,” I said, pointing to the federal wanted poster for John Dillinger. “Given to me by my friend Captain John Stege as a souvenir of this little episode.”

  Both Purvis and Cowley just stared blankly at the poster. Purvis was swallowing, like his mouth was suddenly dry.

  I said, “And as you well know, the physical description of the fugitive on this ID order is detailed and exact. Notice the eye color listed: gray.”

  Cowley gestured toward the paper, as if afraid to touch it. “This is what you compared the autopsy report to?”

  “Yes, and if any reporter in town gets ahold of that report, and does the same thing, some very messy questions are likely to get asked.”

  Purvis looked at the poster with wide, empty eyes; he too didn’t touch it. Just stared at it.

  “You may be lucky,” I said. “The newshounds seem satisfied with the abbreviated report Kearns read into the record at the inquest. So far, apparently, nobody has thought to bribe a peek at the actual report—except me.”

  Purvis started to say something dismissive, but I interrupted. “There’s more, gentlemen. Your corpse has some things Dillinger did not have—a tattoo on the right forearm; scars from bullet wounds in places Dillinger never got shot; black hair, not brown; thin, arching eyebrows instead of bushy straight ones; and a tooth—the top right incisor, to be exact.”

  Purvis was shaking his head again, but slowly, now. “This is ridiculous. Sheerly ridiculous. You’re basing this on an autopsy conducted in a carnival atmosphere…and comparing that report to data gathered from hither and yon, over the years, on a fugitive.”

  Cowley, bleakly, said, “Mel, much of the ID order description comes from Dillinger’s Navy records, remember?”

  “Right,” I said. “And the Navy physical he got was surely pretty accurate.”

  Defensive, Purvis said, “How can you know that? Were you there?”

  “No I wasn’t, and maybe you’re right. Maybe the Navy doctor was drunk that day. But the coroner’s pathologist, Kearns, isn’t a drinking man. That autopsy was carefully handled, despite the ghoulish goings-on at the morgue. Kearns is a top doc; he’s done every major murder in Chicago from Bobby Franks to the Saint Valentine’s crowd. And he was assisted in this by another doctor, and a medical stenog was recording everything. This was not your typical Cook County foul-up.”

  “Ridiculous,” Purvis said, softly.

  “I’ll tell you something else the dead man had that Dillinger didn’t: a bum ticker.”

  Cowley sat up straight. “What?”

  “A bum ticker. The corpse had a rheumatic heart condition. He’d had it a long time, since he was a kid. How could he have passed the Navy physical with that? How could he have played baseball like he did? Not to mention certain other strenuous activities he’s been involved in this past year or so.”

  Cowley finally picked up the wanted poster and glanced at it.

  “Maybe,” he said, “his heart condition was something he knew about but kept to himself. Maybe it was what made him live the reckless way he did.”

  “It won’t wash,” I said. “That’s some other guy on that slab down there at the morgue.”

  “Who then?” Purvis demanded.

  I shrugged. “Maybe he is a guy named Jimmy Lawrence. One of Anna Sage’s pimps from East Chicago or something. Most likely he’s a small-timer on the run who had some plastic surgery a while back and was hiding out, with the help of some friends. Or some people he thought were friends. When Frank Nitti needed a patsy to stand in for Dillinger, this poor shmuck got elected.”

  Purvis stood again; paced with his hands in his pockets, checking his wristwatch now and again, nervously. He said, “Nitti. You see Nitti under every bed. I don’t see him even vaguely figuring in this. Not vaguely…”

  I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Anna Sage is a madam and connected to the mob. Zarkovich has Capone ties going way back, and probably engineered the Crown Point escape for Dillinger. Even the Biograph theater has Nitti’s name on it—there’s been a bookie joint over the theater for years and, hell, Nitti’s got a lock on the movie projectionist’s union, so what better place to rub out the patsy?”

  Cowley, his face ashen, his eyes haunted, said, “Why did you do it, Heller? Why’d you go to the morgue? Why are you stirring things up?”

  “It’s something you two wouldn’t understand. It’s called being a detective.”

  Purvis laughed humorlessly. “Very funny,” he said, and stopped to look out at the Rookery, then at his watch.

  Cowley said, “You had this theory, and you just had to see if it was right. You just had to know.”

  I shrugged, said, “Yeah, I suppose. I had to know.”

  “Did you ever go to college?”

  “For a while.”

  “Did you take any science?”

  What the hell was this about? “Some,” I said.

  Cowley leaned forward, hands folded, and tried to look fatherly, wise. “Did you learn anything about what happens when a scientist goes looking for a certain answer, when he should just be looking?”

  “You’re saying I was predisposed to finding out this guy wasn’t Dillinger.”

  Cowley nodded.

  “Hell, I wish the guy was Dillinger. I’d feel like less of a chump. It would mean a couple of corrupt East Chicago cops used me to help put public enemy number one on the spot, for the reward money. I wouldn’t be nuts about that either, but it’s better than helping set up some poor dope for a bullet or two so John Dillinger can drink tequila and lay Mexican broads into his old age in peace. No, Dillinger’s eyes are gray, the dead guy’s are brown. And so on. Better face up, boys.”

  Purvis whirled and pointed a finger at me, like I was a suspect he was interrogating; he was trying for a dramatic moment, but it didn’t play. He said, “Suppose you’re right. Suppose there was some grain of truth in this nonsense you’re peddling. What do we do about it?”

  I shrugged again. “Announce your mistake. It’d be embarrassing—the headlines are half ‘Dillinger Dead,’ half ‘Purvis Hero.’ It wouldn’t be easy. It’d be embarrassing as hell. Little Bohemia was a spring picnic compared to this.”

  Purvis lifted his chin, looked down his nose at me. Small guys like to do that, sometimes, when you’re sitting and they’re standing. He said, “
Why should I buck the tide? If the corpse has been identified as Dillinger, why should I think otherwise? The fingerprints match up, after all, and—”

  “That does have me stumped,” I admitted. “But I noticed the prints didn’t get entered as evidence at the inquest. Some agent just testified they matched up, right? So who took em?”

  “Uh, took what?” Purvis said.

  “The prints, man! Which of your men took the prints?”

  Purvis and Cowley exchanged looks; I couldn’t read the meaning.

  Cowley said, “It was done by some Chicago police officer, at the morgue last night.”

  “Chicago police officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, East Chicago?”

  “No. Chicago.”

  “Do you know the cop’s name?”

  Both men shrugged.

  “Let me get this straight—there’s been absolutely no Chicago police involvement in the case whatsoever up till this point, then suddenly it’s not one of your men, but a Chicago cop who takes the prints. A nameless Chicago cop, at that.”

  This time only Cowley shrugged. “It was at the Cook County Morgue. What can I say?”

  “Why don’t you go down and take another set of prints while you still can?”

  “What for?” Purvis said, irritably.

  Cowley shook his head. “I think it’s too late. I think Dillinger’s father has come from Indiana for the body. They’re supposed to’ve shut down that show at the morgue by now, and turned Dillinger over to—”

  “Well, hell, go to Indiana, then. Catch up with Dillinger Senior before the burial. Save yourself exhumation expense. Check the prints.”

  “Why bother?” Purvis said.

  “Why bother? Because as somebody said—I think it was you, a couple of hundred times—the Chicago cops would sell their grandmother out for a cigar. Or words to that effect.”

  Purvis looked at his watch. Then, suddenly civil again, he said, “I have to stop back at my apartment for my luggage, before I get that train. I’ll have to leave you gentlemen, now.” He walked to the door, turned and said, “See you in a few days, Sam. Mr. Heller, thanks for sharing your theories with us. Interesting if farfetched, but we do appreciate that you’re otherwise keeping them to yourself. Good evening.”