True Crime

by Collins, Max Allan

  “I didn’t. I been undercover looking for a runaway daughter. I fell in with a nest of thieves, you might say. I just shook loose from ’em this afternoon, and was on my way here to warn you, when I saw it was coming down early.”

  Cowley brushed a comma of brown hair back in place, and gave me a tight, one-sided smile. “Thanks, Heller. I’m glad you were here.”

  “It’s swell to be wanted.”

  Two beat cops, pulled away from their supper at a nearby restaurant no doubt, came running up.

  “What happened here?” one of them said.

  “We’re not sure just yet, officer,” Cowley said. “Possibly a kidnap attempt. There was some shooting—no one hurt on this end. I winged one of them. One car cut down Quincy, here, a Hudson dressed up like a state attorney’s car; the other, a black roadster, headed west on Adams. Three men in the Hudson, two dressed as cops. Two in the roadster. Several are public enemies. My associate, Agent Purvis, has the license plate numbers. Could one of you call that in to your radio cars? And the other maybe help us see if any of these citizens were injured?”

  The two cops nodded.

  Hoover came out of the building; his shakes were gone. He moved like a little Napoleon.

  He came up to me and demanded my resignation.

  I laughed in his face, as Cowley said, “He doesn’t work for the division, sir. He’s a private detective who happened upon this situation while undercover. You may owe him your life, Mr. Hoover. At the very least he prevented your kidnapping.”

  You might think that would’ve embarrassed him. Or that he’d be grateful. Or respond in some human manner.

  But he just gave me a cold fish look and then said to Cowley, “Are we pursuing them?”

  “We don’t have any men on hand, sir,” Cowley said. “Police radio cars have got it by now.”

  “Damn,” Hoover said. “Who were they?”

  Cowley let some air out. “Sir, just about everybody we’d like for breakfast. Pretty Boy Floyd and Creepy Karpis…”

  Hoover’s dark pupils lit up in the yolks of his eyes. “Do you know what we could make of that? If we could score a grand slam like that?”

  “I sure do,” Cowley said, wearily. “And wasn’t that Baby Face Nelson hanging out of the roadster?”

  That last was posed to me; I nodded.

  “And I think Fred Barker was driving,” Cowley continued. “I don’t know who the other one in the Hudson was…the one I winged. Do you, Heller?”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to love this, Cowley. Maybe we should get Purvis over here to have a piece of this.”

  Cowley squinted again. “What are you talking about?”

  “The guy you winged was a ghost. Ghost of a guy who got killed at the Biograph Theater not so long ago.”

  Hoover sneered. “This man is a lunatic!”

  Cowley wasn’t sure. He didn’t say anything, just looked at me.

  I said, “This time he really does have a new face.”

  Cowley’s mouth hung open; then he looked down at the pavement. He still had the tommy gun in his hand, but now it looked heavy.

  Hoover was pacing, rubbing his chin, thinking.

  Cowley looked up and, all business, said, “Keep that, uh…ghost to yourself for the time being, Heller. All right?”

  “Sure,” I shrugged.

  Hoover, not following any of that apparently, was giving me a long cold look.

  “If you were undercover,” he said, biting off each word, pointing a stubby finger at me, “and knew in advance of this scheme, it follows that you must know the getaway route, as well.”

  I glanced at my watch; they’d made their switch at the loading dock by now. They were probably heading down Van Buren. Not far from my office.

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said to Hoover.

  That was when the state attorney’s car pulled up and a confused-looking little man in a mustache and gray suit got out and said, “Sorry we’re late, Mr. Hoover. Uh, has there been some problem here?”

  Sam Cowley hid his smile behind his hand.

  I didn’t bother.

  41

  She was asleep when I got back to the office. She was still in her pink dress, on top of the covers. Sleeping on her side, knees up, dress too, milky underneath of thigh showing, hands clasped as if in prayer; her lips apart, looking soft, pliant, like a baby’s.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair; she stirred, smiling. Gradually she opened her eyes, just partway, but you could still get lost in ’em.

  “What—what time is it?” she asked.

  The office was dark but for the pulse of orange neon.

  “A little after eight,” I said.

  “Where have you been?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “What is?”

  “Supper.”

  That got a big smile out of her, a farm-girl smile those beestung lips seemed incapable of, only there she was doing it.

  She sat up, wide awake. “I don’t have any clothes—just what I’ve had on all day. And slept in.”

  “We’ll get you some things tomorrow. Smooth your dress out and bring your appetite.”

  “Well,” she said, and shrugged, and smiled, “okay.”

  She freshened up in my bathroom (the last girl in there was Polly Hamilton), and we walked downstairs, out into a cool summer night, the heat wave finally a memory, strolling hand in hand and around the corner to Binyon’s, where I bought her a T-bone steak with all the trimmings, which she gobbled down greedily. She hadn’t eaten in eight hours.

  Nor had I, but I didn’t have much of an appetite. I ordered coffee and ate a roll or two, to keep my stomach at bay. We didn’t talk much at dinner; she was busy eating, and I was busy wondering what the hell to do about her.

  Actually, I’d already done something about her, and that’s what was nagging me.

  After I gave him a statement at the division field office, Cowley had let me use the phone. I’d reversed the charges to call Joshua Petersen in De Kalb, at the number he’d provided. To tell him I had found his daughter.

  He’d shown no surprise, or joy; just relief, as he said, “That’s good news, Mr. Heller.”

  “She isn’t with Candy Walker anymore. He’s dead.”

  “Good,” he said.

  His voice had a flat, dry sound, like his soul needed rain.

  I said, “I’ve got her away from the ‘bad crowd’ she was running with, and she’s ready to make a new start. I just can’t guarantee you she’s going to be willing to do it your way.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Petersen, I’m saying I’ll bring your daughter to you—I think she’ll be willing to meet with you at least. But whether she’ll come home to stay or not is going to be up to her.”

  More silence; I waited, making him fill it.

  Finally he did, stoically: “I understand.”

  “She’s a big girl now, Mr. Petersen. She has a right to make her own way in the world. She needs to learn how, but that’s another story. Anyway, I’m going to be right there with her, and I don’t want you badgering her. I won’t abide any show of force on your part. If you can mend fences with her, fine. But if she doesn’t want to stay with you, she doesn’t stay. It’s that simple.”

  “All right.”

  “Okay. I just wanted that understood.”

  “It’s understood.”

  “And that bonus you promised me, I expect it whether she stays with you, or not.”

  “The thousand dollars is yours, Mr. Heller.”

  “I earned that money, Mr. Petersen. Like you said, I had to go among the wolves.”

  “The money’s yours, no argument. I’m grateful to you.”

  “Well, okay then,” I said. “Where shall we meet?”

  And we’d agreed on a time and place, the next afternoon; but this was tonight, and the girl across from me eating Mr. Binyon’s cheesecake was still calling me Jim.

  Someho
w I just couldn’t seem to level with her. Somehow I couldn’t make myself risk seeing disappointment, perhaps even loathing, in those wide-set big brown eyes.

  So by nine we were in my Murphy bed, just cuddling in the dark; I had pulled the shades so even the neon couldn’t get in.

  That way I wouldn’t have to see her eyes when I told her.

  “Sugar, remember when I told you I thought you ought to go home, and see your daddy?”

  “Yes. Aren’t we going tomorrow?”

  “I have to tell you something first. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about what was best for you, when I said that.”

  “Who were you thinking of?”

  “Me.”

  I waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

  So I went on. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. I’m not Jimmy Lawrence.”

  She still didn’t say anything; but she didn’t pull away from me, either. Stayed cuddled right up next to me. Her breathing easy, calm, regular.

  I said, “I’m the guy whose name is on the door. I’m Nathan Heller.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You know?”

  “I may be from the farm, Jim. Sorry—Nathan? But I wasn’t born in a barn.”

  “How…?”

  “When you were gone, I looked through the drawers in your desk and your file. I found snapshots of you and a pretty girl at the fair. And some clippings about a trial with your picture and your name under it.”

  “Hell. Why aren’t you mad?”

  “I am mad.” She said this like, pass the salt.

  “You don’t sound mad…”

  “I forgive you, Jim. Nathan.”

  “Nate, actually, but—”

  “I asked you before…Nate. I’ll ask you again. I’m with you, now—aren’t I?”

  “You’re with me. I’m right beside you, all the way.”

  “Then what does it matter what your name is, or why you came looking for me?”

  “You—you know I came looking for you? How did you figure that out?”

  “You had my picture in your desk. Did my husband hire you to find me?”

  “No, your father.”

  “Daddy gave you that picture?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He really wants to see me again?”

  “He does. He says his health is bad…”

  “He’s a lunger. Since the war.”

  “That’s what he told me. He says he’s got enough of a pension to get by on. He sold his farm, has a house in De Kalb—where you can stay if you want.”

  “My father sold his farm? I thought he’d never do that.”

  “Louise, he’s coming to the end of his road. He says all he wants in life at this stage is to have a second chance with you. Make it up to you, for how rough he treated you, growing up.”

  “He used to beat me with a belt.”

  “I know. And if you don’t want to go see him, you don’t have to.”

  “I don’t think I want to live with him. No matter what.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s like I told you before—we’ll get you set up in the city, here.”

  “As your secretary?”

  “If we can’t find you something better, why not? It wouldn’t pay much, but I hear the boss is a soft touch.”

  She snuggled to me. “I love the boss.”

  We made love.

  And the next afternoon I was back on the road in the Auburn, gratefully free of Burma Shave signs and hymns and the threat of hillbilly music. This time the female next to me was perky and fresh and young and not wearing a floral tent: first thing this morning I’d taken her to Marshall Field’s, and bought her a yellow-and-white frock with lace trim on the short sleeves and a little white collar. She’d have a whole new wardrobe tomorrow, after I got that grand from her old man.

  That was the only thing I’d kept from her: that I’d be getting a bonus today for delivering her. It probably wouldn’t have mattered to her, but who could tell? She wasn’t from Chicago.

  We took Highway 30 west for about an hour and then a sign said,

  WELCOME TO DE KALB—BARBED WIRE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Every place is the capital of something, I suppose. We drove through the quiet little town, a brick oasis in the desert of corn we’d been driving through, and on the northern edge, there it was: Hopkins Park, lushly wooded, rolling. Saturday afternoon, and crowded: picnic benches packed with families chowing down, like Ma Barker and the boys, some having to settle for their picnic basket on a checkered cloth on the ground, ants and all; a swimming pool with a diving board and bathhouse brimming with people, particularly kids, darting about in their bright-colored bathing trunks, making up one big erratically waving flag of summer. This was August, after all, school looming up head. Desperate days. Time running out.

  There was a band shell, and Louise and I walked around it; I slipped my hand in hers. If her father saw that, it might irritate him—the man he hired getting fresh with his daughter and so on. But she needed the support, and I gave it to her. Petersen was nothing to me except a thousand bucks, and a guy who used to beat his little girl.

  We were a little early. I bought some popcorn from an old man at a stand; we shared a bag, she and I, sitting on benches before the band shell, an audience of two, as if waiting for some show to start. You could hear the kids splashing, yelling, in the pool, though we were well away from it. Over at the left, under a tree, a young mother sat on the grass reading a romance magazine and keeping one eye on her little boy who was tossing a stick for his little terrier to retrieve.

  Louise said, “I hope I can make things right with my daddy, I’d like that. But I can tell you right now I want to go back to the city with you. I hope to make peace with my daddy—but I want you, Jim.”

  I smiled at her. “I’m not Jim, remember.”

  She smiled back. “You’re no gentleman, either.”

  It was the closest I ever heard her come to making a joke.

  Then she said, “You’ll always be Jim to me.”

  We sat on the bench, not holding hands now, but sitting close enough to touch, just barely, enjoying the sounds of the kids splashing and families picnicking and a dog barking and I was just checking my watch when a voice from behind us said, “Louise! Louise.”

  I glanced back and Petersen was standing there, in the grassy aisle, in the midst of all those empty benches; his eyes were sunken in his weathered face, red, from crying, and crazed, from…craziness?

  “Jesus,” I said.

  He was standing there in those same Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes he’d worn to my office, dark brown suit, light brown bow tie, shiny brown shoes, hands behind his back, leaning forward like a man about to fall on his face; the benches were on a gentle slope down to the band shell, which added to the effect. He had a whisper of a smile on his face. It made Karpis’ smile seem like the Mona Lisa.

  And Louise was screaming.

  Just like that night she woke up and saw me in bed next to her and screamed. Exactly like that.

  I tried to touch her shoulder, to calm her, but she slid off the bench, cutting her scream short, and stepped out in the aisle and faced him. They were maybe ten feet apart, and she pointed up at him, as if pointing at an animal in a cage, and said, “What are you doing here? You stay away from me….”

  “You shouldn’t have run off, Louise.” His voice as dry and cracked as parched earth.

  I got up and stood in the aisle next to her. “Mr. Petersen, you promised me…”

  She looked at me with her eyes so wide I could see the red lining them. “What did you call him?”

  “Mr. Petersen. Louise, your father’s obviously upset, so maybe we should just—”

  “My father! This isn’t my father!”

  Petersen’s smile was a wound in his face that wouldn’t heal. “I love you, Louise. I still love you.”

  “He’s my husband! That’s Seth!”

  He said, “But you shouldn’t have been ba
d.”

  “He lied to you! He knew I’d never come back if I knew it was him who hired you!”

  “I’m getting you out of here,” I said, and took her by the hand, as Seth said, “I’ll always love you, Louise,” and a big black pistol came out from behind his back and blew a hole through her.

  She swung in my arm like a rag doll, flung back by the impact. It pulled me down with her, my ears ringing from the gunshot; hit my head on the edge of a bench.

  I wasn’t out long but when I looked up Seth hovered over me, and her; I didn’t have my gun, but I’m not sure I’d have had the presence of mind to use it if I had.

  No matter. I looked up and Seth receded above me, his legs miles long, his head a tiny thing he was pointing the gun at, an old Army .45 revolver it must’ve been, and the muzzle flashed orange and my ears rang and his tiny head came apart in a red burst; then he fell like a tree, away from us, leaving a scarlet mist in the air where he’d stood.

  I heard screaming. Not Louise’s. She had a blossom of red below the white collar of her new yellow dress, and lay silent, staring. It was the mother under the nearby tree doing the screaming, on her feet now, holding her little boy to her, shielding her little boy from the sight, but not able to keep her own eyes off it. The terrier was yapping.

  I was just sitting there, spattered with their blood, the dead girl’s hand in mine.

  Just sitting right there beside her for a long time, looking at her. Her eyes staring up at the sky. Her eyes. As big and brown as ever; so wide-set you almost had to look at them one at a time. But they weren’t beautiful anymore. I didn’t want to dive in there anymore. She was no longer in them.

  So I closed them for her.

  V

  IEW FROM

  S

  ALLY

  R

  AND’S SUITE

  V

  IEW FROM

  S

  ALLY

  R

  AND’S SUITE

  42

  When I got to her suite, she was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb in white lounging pajamas, a cigarette in one too-casual hand. Her light brown hair was marcelled, her mouth startlingly red, her eyes startlingly blue under those long, long lashes.