Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook

by Collins, Max Allan

  “Listen,” he said, “sorry to bother you, but I’ve been thinking, and something did jog loose, finally.”

  “Swell! What?”

  “There was this kid I busted a few years back. He was nice-looking, dark-haired, but kind of on the hoody side, though he had a good family. His dad was a security guard with a steel mill. Anyway, the boy was a good student, a bright kid—only for kicks, he stole. Furs, clothes, jewelry, old coins, guns.”

  “You were working out of Town Hall Station at the time?”

  “Yeah. All his robberies were on the North Side. He was just thirteen.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Then this was a while ago.”

  “Yeah, but I busted him again, on some ten burglaries, two years ago. He’s agile, Nate—something of human fly, navigating ledges, fire escapes…going in windows.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, he did some time at Gibault.” That was a correctional institution for boys at Terre Haute. “But supposedly he came out reformed. He’s a really good student—so good, at seventeen, he’s a sophomore in college.”

  “At the University of Chicago?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Drury said. “And guess what his part-time job is?”

  “Delivery boy,” I said.

  “What a detective you are,” Drury said.

  Jerome Lapps, precocious seventeen-year-old sophomore science student, resided at a dormitory on the University of Chicago campus.

  On the phone Drury had asked, “You know where his folks live?”

  “What, you take me for a psychic?”

  “You could’ve tripped over this kid, Nate. The Lapps family lives in Lincolnwood.”

  He gave me the address; not so far from Peg and me.

  Sobering as that was, what was more interesting was that the kid lived at school, not home; even during summer session. Specifically, he was in Gates Hall on the Midway campus.

  The Midway, a mile-long block-wide parkway between 59th and 60th, connected Washington and Jackson parks, and served to separate Hyde Park and the University eggheads from the real South Side. Just beyond the Midway were the Gothic limestone buildings and lushly landscaped acres of the university. At night the campus looked like another world. Of course, it looked like another world in the daylight, too.

  But this was night, and the campus seemed largely deserted. That was partly summer, partly not. I left the Plymouth in a quadrangle parking lot and found my way to the third floor of Gates Hall, where I went to Lapps’ room and knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. The door was locked.

  A student well into his twenties—probably a vet on the GI Bill—told me where to find the grad student who was the resident assistant in charge of that floor.

  The resident assistant leaned against the doorjamb of his room with a bottle of beer in his hand and his shirt half tucked in. His hair was red, his eyes hooded, his mouth smirky. He was perhaps twenty years old.

  “What can I do for you, bud?” the kid asked.

  “I’m Jerry Lapps’ uncle. Supposed to meet him at his room, but he’s not in.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You got a key? I’d like to wait inside.”

  He shrugged. “Against the rules.”

  “I’m his uncle Abraham,” I said. And I showed him a five-dollar bill. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

  The redheaded kid brightened; his eyes looked almost awake. He snatched the five-spot and said, “Ah. Honest Abe. Jerry mentioned you.”

  He let me into Lapps’ room and went away.

  Judging by the pair of beds, one against either wall, Jerome Lapps had a roommate. But the large single room accommodated two occupants nicely. One side was rather spartan and neat as a boot-camp barracks, while across the room an unmade bed was next to a plaster wall decorated with pictures of baseball players and heartthrob movie actors. Each side of the room had its own writing desk, and again, one was cluttered, while the other was neat.

  It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicion that the messy side of the room belonged to the seventeen-year-old. Inside the calculus text on the sloppy desk, the name Jerome C. Lapps was written on the flyleaf in a cramped hand. The handwriting on a notepad, filled with doodles, looked the same; written several times, occasionally underlined, were the words: “Rogers Park.”

  Under Jerome C. Lapps’ bed were three suitcases.

  In one suitcase were half of the panties and bras in the city of Chicago.

  The other suitcase brimmed with jewelry, watches, two revolvers, one automatic, and a smaller zippered pouch of some kind, like an oversize shaving kit. I unzipped it and recoiled.

  It was a medical kit, including hypos, knives, and a surgical saw.

  I put everything back and stood there and swallowed and tried to get the image of JoAnn Keenan’s doll-like head out of my mind. The best way to do that was to get back to work, which I did, proceeding to the small closet on Jerome’s side of the room. On the upper shelf I found a briefcase.

  I opened it on the neater bed across the way. Inside were several thousand bucks in war bonds and postal savings certificates. He’d apparently put any cash he’d stolen into these, and any money from fenced goods, although considering that well-stuffed suitcase of jewelry and such, I couldn’t imagine he’d bothered to fence much if any of what he’d taken.

  As typically teenager-sloppy as his side of the dorm room was, Jerry had neatly compartmentalized his booty: ladies underwear in one bag; jewelry and watches in another; and paper goods in the briefcase. Included in the latter were clipped photos of big-shot Nazis. Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels.

  Jerry had some funny fucking heroes.

  Finally, in the briefcase, was a photo album. Thumbing through it, I saw photos of an attractive woman, frequently in a bathing suit and other brief, summer apparel. There was also a large photo of the same woman with a ferret-faced male friend in a nightclub setting; you could see a table of men sitting behind them as well, clearly, up a tier. A sweet and tender memento of Caroline Williams and Sam Flood’s love affair.

  I removed the photo, folded it without creasing it, and slipped it into my inside suit coat pocket. I put the photo album back, closed up the briefcase, and was returning it to the upper shelf of the closet when the dorm-room door opened.

  “What the hell are you doing?” a male voice demanded.

  I was turning around and slipping my hand under my jacket to get at my gun, at the same time, but the guy reacted fast. His hand must have hit the light switch, because the room went black and I could hear him coming at me, and then he was charging into me.

  I was knocked back into the corner, by the many-paned windows, through which some light was filtering, and I saw a thin face, its teeth clenched, as the figure pressed into me and a single fist was smashing into my stomach, powerfully.

  The damn guy was almost sitting on me, and I used all my strength to lift up and lift him off, heaving him bodily onto the floor. He was scrambling to his feet when I stuck the nine millimeter in his face and said, “Don’t.”

  Somebody hit the lights.

  It was the redheaded dorm assistant. Even drunk, he didn’t like the looks of this.

  Neither did I: the guy in front of me was not Jerome Lapps, but a slender, towheaded fellow in his midtwenties. The empty sleeve of his left arm was tucked into a sport-coat pocket.

  I was a hell of a tough character: I’d just bested a cripple. Of course, I had to pull a gun to do it.

  “What the hell…” the redheaded kid began. His eyes were wide at the sight of the gun in my hand. The one-armed guy in front of me seemed less impressed.

  “Police officer,” I said to the redhead. “Go away.”

  He swallowed, nodded, and went.

  “You’re Jerome’s roommate?” I asked the one-armed fellow.

  “Yeah. Name’s Robinson. Who are you? You really a cop?”

  “I run a private agency,�
� I said. “What branch were you in?”

  “Army.”

  I nodded. “Marines,” I said. I put the gun away. “You got a smoke?”

  He nodded; with the one hand he had left, he got some Chesterfields out of his sport-coat pocket. Shook one out for me, then another for himself. He put the Chesterfields back and got out a silver Zippo. He lit us both up. He was goddamn good with that hand.

  “Thank God them bastards left me with my right,” he grinned sheepishly.

  He sat on his bed. I sat across from him on Lapps’.

  We smoked for a while. I thought about a punk kid cutting out pinups of Hitler while sharing a room with a guy who lost an arm over there. I was so happy I’d fought for the little fucker’s freedoms.

  “You’re looking for Jerry, aren’t you?” he asked. His eyes were light blue and sadder than a Joan Crawford picture.

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head. “Figured that kid would get himself into trouble.”

  “You roomed with him long?”

  “Just for summer session. He’s not a bad kid. Easy to get along with. Quiet.”

  “You know what he’s got under his bed?”

  “No.”

  “Suitcases full of stolen shit. If you need a new wristwatch, you picked the right roomie.”

  “I didn’t know he was doing anything like that.”

  “Then what made you think he was going to get himself in trouble?”

  “That black leather jacket of his.”

  “Huh?”

  He shrugged. “When he’d get dressed up like a juvie. That black leather jacket. Dungarees. White T-shirt. Smoking cigarettes.” He sucked on his own cigarette, shook his head. “He’d put that black leather jacket on, not every night, more like every once in a while. I’d ask him where he was going. You know what he’d say?”

  “No.”

  “On the prowl.”

  I thought about that.

  “Is his black leather jacket hanging in that closet you were lookin’ in?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then guess where he is right now.”

  “On the prowl,” I said.

  He nodded.

  12

  Now I was on the prowl.

  I went up Lakeshore, turned onto Sheridan, and followed it up to the Loyola El stop. The notepad on Lapps’ desk had sent me here, to Rogers Park, the northernmost neighborhood in Chicago; beyond was Evanston. Here, in a three-block-wide and fourteen-block-long band between the lake and the El tracks was the middle-class residential area that would suit the kid’s MO.

  Lapps seemed partial to a certain type of building; according to Drury, many of the boy’s burglaries were pulled off in tall, narrow apartment buildings consisting of small studio apartments. Same was true of where the two women who’d been killed had lived, and Katherine Reynolds, too.

  First I would look for the dark-haired, black-leather-jacketed Lapps around the El stops—he had no car—and then I would cruise the side streets off Sheridan, looking in particular for that one type of building.

  Windows rolled down, half-leaned out, I crawled slowly along, cutting the Plymouth’s headlights as I cruised the residential neighborhoods; that way I didn’t announce myself, and I seemed to be able to eyeball the sidewalks and buildings better that way. Now and then another car blinked its brights at me, but I ignored them and cruised on through the unseasonably cool July night.

  About two blocks down from the Morse Avenue business district, on a street of modest apartment buildings, I spotted two guys running back the direction I’d come. The one in the lead was a heavyset guy in his T-shirt; close on his heels was a fellow in a plaid shirt. At first I thought one was chasing the other, but then it was clear they were together, and very upset.

  The heavyset guy was slowing down and gesturing with open hands. “Where d’he go? Where d’he go?”

  The other guy caught up to him and they both slowed down; in the meantime, I pulled over and trotted over to them.

  “The cops, already!” the heavyset guy said joyously. He was a bald guy in his forties; five o’clock shadow smudged his face.

  I didn’t correct their assumption that I was a cop. I merely asked, “What gives, gents?”

  The guy in the plaid shirt, thin, in his thirties, glasses, curly hair, pointed at nothing in particular and said, in a rush, “We had a prowler in the building. He was in my neighbor’s flat!”

  “I’m the janitor,” the fat guy said, breathing hard, hands on his sides, winded. “I caught up to the guy in the lobby, but he pulled a gun on me.” He shook his head. “Hell, I got a wife in the hospital, and three kids, that all need me unventilated. I let ’im pass.”

  “But Bud went and got reinforcements,” the thin guy said, taking over, pointing to himself, “and my wife called the cops. And we took chase.”

  That last phrase almost made me smile, but I said, “Was it a dark-haired kid in a black leather jacket?”

  They both blinked and nodded, properly amazed.

  “He’s going to hop the El,” I said. I pointed to the thin guy. “You take the Morse El stop, I’ll…”

  A scream interrupted me.

  We turned toward the scream and it became a voice, a woman’s voice, yelling, “He’s up there!”

  We saw her then, glimpsed between two rather squat apartment houses: a stout, older woman, lifting her skirts almost daintily as she barreled down the alley. I ran back there; the two guys were trailing well behind, and not eagerly. A lame horse could have gained the same lead.

  The fleeing woman saw me, and we passed each other, her going in one direction, me in the other. She looked back and pointed, without missing a step, saying, “Up on the second-floor porch!” Then she continued on with her escape. It would have been a comic moment, if the alley hadn’t been so dark and I hadn’t been both running and scrambling for my nine millimeter.

  I slowed to face the backyard of a two-story brick building and its exposed wooden back stairways and porches. Despite what the fleeing woman had said, the second-floor porch seemed empty, though it was hard to tell: it was dark back here, the El tracks looming behind me, casting their shadow. Maybe she meant the next building down….

  As I was contemplating that, a figure rose on the second-floor porch and pointed a small revolver at me and I could see the hand moving, he was pulling the trigger, but his gun wasn’t firing, wasn’t working.

  Mine was. I squeezed off three quick rounds and the latticework wood near him got chewed up, splinters flying. I didn’t know if I’d hit him or not, and didn’t wait to see; I moved for those steps, and bolted up one flight, and was at the bottom of the second when the figure loomed up above me, at the top of the stairs, and I saw him, his pale handsome face under long black greasy hair, his black leather jacket, his dungarees, and he threw the revolver at me like a baseball, and I ducked to one side, and swung my nine millimeter up just as he leaped.

  He knocked me back before I could fire, back through the railing of the first-floor porch, snapping it into pieces like so many matchsticks, and we landed in a tangle on the grass, my gun getting lost on the trip. Then he was on top of me, like he was fucking me, and he was a big kid, powerful, pushing me down, pinning me like a wrestler, his teeth clenched, his eyes wide and maniacal.

  I heaved with all my strength and weight and pitched him off to one side, but he didn’t lose his grip on me, and we rolled, and I was on top now, only he hadn’t given up, he hadn’t let go, he had me more than I had him and that crazed, glazed look on his face scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t punch him, even though I seemed to have the advantage, couldn’t get my arms free, and he rocked up, as if he wanted to take a bite out of my face.

  I was holding him down, but it was a standoff at best.

  Then I sensed somebody coming up—that janitor and his skinny pal, maybe.

  But the voice I heard didn’t belong to either of them: “Is that the prowler?”

  Still gripp
ing my powerful captive by his arms, I glanced up and saw hovering over us a burly guy in swimming trunks holding a clay flowerpot in his hands.

  “That’s him,” I said, struggling.

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” the burly guy said, and smashed the flowerpot over the kid’s head.

  13

  On the third smack, the flowerpot—which was empty—shattered into fragments and the kid’s eyes rolled back and went round and white and blank like Orphan Annie’s, and then he shut them. Blood was streaming down the kid’s pale face. He was ruggedly handsome, even if Cornell Wilde was stretching it.

  I got off him and gulped for my breath and the guy in his bathing trunks said, “Neighbors said a cop was after a prowler.”

  I stuck my hand out. “Thanks, buddy. I didn’t figure the cavalry would show up in swim trunks, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  His grasp was firm. He was an affable-looking, open-faced, hairy-chested fellow of maybe thirty-five. We stood over the unconscious kid like hunters who just bagged a moose.

  “You a cop?”

  “Private,” I said. “My name’s Nate Heller.”

  He grinned. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Bill Drury’s pal, aren’t you? I’m Chet Dickinson—I work traffic in the Loop.”

  “You’re a cop? What’s that, summer uniform?”

  He snorted a laugh. “I live around here. My family and me was just walking back from a long day at the beach, when we run into this commotion. I sent Grace and the kids on home and figured I better check it out. Think we ought to get this little bastard to a hospital?”

  I nodded. “Edgewater’s close. Should we call for an ambulance? I got a car.”

  “You mind? The son of a bitch could have a concussion.” He laughed again. “I saw you two strugglin’, and I grabbed that flowerpot off a windowsill. Did the trick.”

  “Sure did.”

  “Fact, I mighta overdid it.”

  “Not from my point of view.”

  After Dickinson had found and collected the kid’s revolver and contributed his beach towel to wrap the kid’s head in, we drunk-walked Lapps to my car.