Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook

by Collins, Max Allan

  The burly bare-chested cop helped me settle the boy in the rider’s seat. “I’ll run over home, and call in, and get my buggy, and meet you over at Edgewater.”

  “Thanks. You know, I used to work traffic in the Loop.”

  “No kiddin’. Small world.”

  I had cuffs in the glove box; I cuffed the unconscious kid’s hands behind him, in case he was faking it. I looked at the pleasant-faced cop. “Look—if anything comes of this, you got a piece of the reward action. It’ll be just between us.”

  “Reward action?”

  I put a hand on his hairy shoulder. “Chet—we just caught the goddamn Lipstick Killer.”

  His jaw dropped and I got in and pulled away, while he ran off, looking in those trunks of his like somebody in a half-assed track meet.

  Then I pulled over around a corner and searched the kid. I figured there was no rush getting him to the hospital. If he died, he died.

  He had two five-hundred-buck postal savings certificates in a pocket of his leather jacket. In his billfold, which had a University of Chicago student ID card in the name Jerome C. Lapps, was a folded-up letter, typed. It was dated last month. It said:

  Jerry—

  I haven’t heard from you in a long time. Tough luck about the jail term. You’ll know better next time.

  I think they’re catching up to me, so I got to entrust some of my belongings to you. I’ll pick these suitcases up later. If you get short of cash, you can dip into the postal certificates.

  I appreciate you taking these things off my hands when I was being followed. Could have dumped it, but I couldn’t see losing all that jewelry. I’ll give you a phone call before I come for the stuff.

  George

  I was no handwriting expert, but the handwritten signature sure looked like Lapps’ own cramped handwriting from the inside cover of his calculus book.

  The letter stuck me immediately as a lame attempt on the kid’s part to blame the stolen goods stashed in his dorm room on some imaginary accomplice. Carrying it around with him, yet—an alibi in his billfold.

  He was stirring.

  He looked at me. Blinked. His lashes were long. “Who are you, mister? Where am I?”

  I threw a sideways forearm into his stomach and doubled him over. He let the air out with a groan of pain that filled the car and made me smile.

  “I’m somebody you tried to shoot, is who I am,” I said. “And where you are is up shit creek without a paddle.”

  He shook his head, licked his lips. “I don’t remember trying to shoot anybody. I’d never do a thing like that.”

  “Oh? You pointed a revolver at me, and when it wouldn’t shoot, you hurled it at me. Then you jumped me. This just happened, Jerry.”

  A comma of greasy black hair fell to his forehead. “You…you know my name? Oh. Sure.” He noticed his open billfold on the seat next to us.

  “I knew you before I saw your ID, Jerry. I been on your trail all day.”

  “I thought you cops worked in pairs.”

  “I don’t work for the city. Right now, I’m working for the Robert Keenan family.”

  He recognized the name—anybody in Chicago would have—but his reaction was one of confusion, not alarm, or guilt, or anything else I might have expected.

  “What does that have to do with me, mister?”

  “You kidnapped their little girl, Jerry—you strangled her and then you tried to fuck her and then you cut her in pieces and threw the pieces in the sewer.”

  “What…what are you…”

  I sidearmed him in the stomach again. I wanted to shove his head against the dash, but after those blows to the skull with that flowerpot, it might kill him. I wasn’t particularly interested in having him die in my car. Get blood all over my new Plymouth. Peg would have a fit.

  “You’re the Lipstick Killer, Jerry. And I caught you going up the back stairs, like the cheap little sneak thief you are.”

  He looked down at his lap, guiltily. “I didn’t kill those women.”

  “Really. Who did?”

  “George.”

  The letter. The alibi.

  “George,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “George did it.”

  “George did it.”

  “Sometimes I went along. Sometimes I helped him prepare. But I never did it. George did.”

  “Is that how you’re going to play it?”

  “George did it, mister. George hurt those women.”

  “Did George jack off the floor, or did you, Jerry?”

  Now he started to cry.

  “I did that,” he admitted. “But George did the killings.”

  “JoAnn Keenan too?”

  Lapps shook his head; his face glistened with tears. “He must have. He must have.”

  14

  Cops in uniform, and plainclothes too, were waiting at the hospital when I deposited Lapps at the emergency room. I didn’t talk to the kid after that, though I stuck around, at the request of a detective from Rogers Park.

  The word spread fast. Dickinson, when he called it in, had spilled the Lipstick Killer connection. The brass started streaming in, and Chief of Detectives Storm took me off to one side and complimented me on my fine work. We decided that my visit to Lapps’ dorm room would be off the record for now; in the meantime, South Side detectives were already on the scene making the same discoveries I had, only with the proper warrants.

  I got a kick out of being treated like somebody special by the Chicago police department. Storm and even Tubbo Gilbert were all smiles and arms around my shoulder, when the press showed, which they quickly did. For years I’d been an “ex-cop” who left the force under a cloud in the Cermak administration; now, I was a “distinguished former member of the Detective Bureau who at one time was the youngest plainclothes officer on the force.”

  It soon became a problem, having the emergency area clogged with police personnel, politicians, and reporters. Lapps was moved upstairs, and everybody else moved to the lobby.

  Dickinson, when he’d gone home, had taken time to get out of his trunks and into uniform, which was smart; the flashbulbs were popping around the husky, amiable patrolman. We posed for a few together, and he whispered to me, “We done good.”

  “You and your flowerpot.”

  “You’re a hell of cop, Heller. I don’t care what anybody says.”

  That was heartwarming.

  My persistent pal Davis of the News was among the first of the many reporters to arrive and he buttonholed me with an offer of a grand for an exclusive. Much as I hated to, I had to turn him down.

  From his expression you’d think I’d poleaxed him. “Heller turning down a payoff? Why?”

  “This is too big to give to one paper. I got to let the whole world love me this time around.” Most of the reward money—which was up to forty grand, now—had been posted by the various newspapers (though the city council had anted up, too) and I didn’t want to alienate anybody.

  “It’s gonna be months before you see any of that dough,” Davis whined. “It’s all contingent upon a conviction, you know.”

  “I know. I can wait. I’m a patient man. Besides, I got a feeling the A-1 isn’t going to be hurting for business after this.”

  Davis smirked. “Feelin’ pretty cocky aren’t you? Pretty smug.”

  “That’s right,” I said, and brushed by him. I went to the pay phones and called home. It was almost ten, but Peg usually stayed up at least that late.

  “Nate! Where have you been…it’s almost…”

  “I know. I got him.”

  “What?”

  “I got him.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I love you,” she said.

  That beat reward money all to hell.

  “I love you, too,” I said. “Both of you.”

  I was slipping out of the booth when Lt. Kruger shambled over. His mournful-hound puss was twisted up in a grin. He extended his hand and we shook vigorously.

&
nbsp; He took my arm, spoke in my ear. “Did you take a look at the letter in Lapps’ billfold?”

  I nodded. “It’s his spare tire of an alibi. He told me ‘George’ did the killings. Is he sticking to that story?”

  Kruger nodded. “Only I don’t think there is a George.”

  “Next you’ll be spoiling Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for me.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he’s up to.”

  “Oh? What is he up to, lieutenant?”

  “I think it’s a Jekyll and Hyde routine.”

  “Oh. He’s George, only he doesn’t know it. Split personality. There’s a post-war scam for you.”

  Kruger nodded. “Insanity plea.”

  “The papers will love that shit.”

  “They love the damnedest things.” He grinned again. “Tonight they even love you.”

  Chief of Detective Storm came and found me, shortly after that, and said, “There’s somebody who wants to talk to you.”

  He led me back behind the reception counter to a phone, and he smiled quietly as he handed me the receiver. He might have been presenting an award of valor.

  “Nate?” the voice said.

  “Bob?”

  “Nate. God bless you, Nate. You found the monster. You found him.”

  “It’s early yet, Bob. The real investigation has just started…”

  “I knew I did the right thing calling you. I knew it.”

  I could tell he was crying.

  “Bob. You give Norma my love.”

  “Thank you, Nate. Thank you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Thanks, Bob. Good night.”

  I gave a few more press interviews, made an appointment with Storm to come to First District Station the next morning and give a formal statement, shook Kruger’s hand again, and wandered out into the parking lot. Things were winding down. I slipped behind the wheel of Plymouth and was about to start the engine when I saw the face in my rearview mirror.

  “Hello, Heller,” the man said.

  His face was all sharp angles and holes: cheekbones, pock-marks, sunken dead eyes, pointed jaw, dimpled chin. His suit was black and well tailored—like an undertaker with style. His arms were folded, casually, and he was wearing kid gloves. In the summer.

  He was one of Sam Flood’s old cronies, a renowned thief from the 42 gang in the Patch. Good with a knife. His last name was Morello.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “Drive a while.”

  His first name was George.

  15

  “Sam couldn’t come himself,” George said. “Sends his regards, and apologies.”

  We were on Sheridan, heading toward Evanston.

  “I was going to call Sam when I got home,” I said, watching him in the rearview mirror. His eyes were gray under bushy black brows; spooky fucking eyes.

  “Then you did make it to the kid’s pad, before the cops.” George sighed; smiled. A smile on that slash of a craggy face was not a festive thing.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you got what Sam wants?”

  “I do.”

  “The photo?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s swell. You’re all right, Heller. You’re all right. Pull over into the graveyard, will you?”

  Calvary Cemetery was the sort of gothic graveyard where Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein’s monster might go for a stroll. I pulled in under the huge limestone archway and, when George directed, pulled off the main path onto a side one, and slowed to a stop. I shut the engine off. The massive granite wall of the cemetery muffled the roar of traffic on Sheridan; the world of the living seemed suddenly very distant.

  “What’s this about, George?” At Statesville, they say, where he was doing a stretch for grand theft auto, George was the prison shiv artist; an iceman whose price was five cartons of smokes, for which an individual who was annoying you became deceased.

  Tonight George’s voice was pleasant; soothing. A Sicilian disc jockey. “Sam just wants his photo, that’s all.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Heller—what’s it to you?”

  “I’d rather turn it over to Sam personally.”

  He unfolded his arms and revealed a silenced Luger in his gloved right hand. “Sam says you should give it to me.”

  “It’s in the trunk of the car.”

  “The trunk?”

  “I had the photo in my coat pocket, but when I realized cops were going to be crawling all over, I slipped it in an envelope in my trunk, with some other papers.”

  That was the truth. I did that at the hospital, before I took Lapp inside.

  “Show me,” George said.

  We got out of the car. George made me put my hands up and, gun in his right hand, he calmly patted me down with his left. He found the nine millimeter under my arm, slipped it out, and tossed it gently through the open window of the Plymouth onto the driver’s seat.

  Calvary was a rich person’s cemetery, with mausoleums and life-size statues of dear departed children and other weirdness, all casting their shadows in the moonlight. George kept the gun in hand, but he wasn’t obnoxious about it. I stepped around back of the Plymouth, unlocked the trunk, and reached in. George took a step forward. I doubled him over with the tire iron, then whacked the gun out of his hand, and swung the iron sideways against his cheek as he began to rise up.

  I picked up his Luger and put a knee on his chest and the nose of the silenced gun against his bloody cheekbone. I would have to kill him. There was little doubt of that. His gray eyes were narrowed and full of hate and chillingly absent of fear.

  “Was killing me Sam’s idea, or yours?”

  “Who said anything about killing you?”

  I forced the bulky silenced nose of the gun into his mouth. Time for the Chicago lie-detector test.

  Fear came into his eyes, finally.

  I removed the gun, slowly, not taking any teeth, and said, “Your idea or Sam’s?”

  “Mine.”

  “Why, George?”

  “Fuck you, Heller.”

  I put the gun in his mouth again.

  After I removed it, less gently this time, cutting the roof of his mouth, he said through bloody spittle, “You’re a loose end. Nobody likes loose ends.”

  “What’s it to you, George?”

  He said nothing; he was shaking. Most of it was anger. Some of it was fear. An animal smell was coming up off him.

  “I said, what’s it to you, George? What was your role in it?”

  His eyes got very wide; something akin to panic was in them.

  And then I knew.

  Don’t ask me how, exactly, but I did.

  “You killed her,” I said. It was part question, part statement. “You killed Sam’s girlfriend. For Sam?”

  He thought about the question; I started to push the gun back in his mouth and he began to nod, lips kissing the barrel. “It was an accident. Sam threw her over, and she was posing a problem.”

  I didn’t ask whether that problem was blackmail or going to the press or cops or what. It didn’t much matter.

  “So he had you hit her?”

  “It was a fuck-up. I was just suppose to put the fear of God in her and get that fucking picture.”

  I pressed the gun into his cheek; the one that wasn’t bloody. “That kid—Lapps…he was your accomplice?”

  “No! I didn’t know who the hell he was. If we knew who he was, we coulda got that photo a long time ago. Why the fuck you think you were hired?”

  That made sense; but not much else did. “So what was the deal, George?”

  His eyes tightened; his expression said: You know how it is. “I was slapping her around, trying to get her to tell me where that picture was. I’d already tossed the place, but just sorta half-ass. She was arrogant. Spitting at me. All of a sudden her throat got cut.”

  Accidents will happen. “How did that kid get the photo album, then?”

  “I heard something at the wi
ndow; I looked up and saw this dark shape there, out on the fire escape…thought it was a cop or something.”

  The black leather jacket.

  “I thought fuck it and cut out,” he said. “The kid must’ve come in, stole some shit, found that photo album someplace I missed, and left with it and a bunch of other stuff.”

  But before that, he washed the victim’s wounds and applied a few bandages.

  “What about the second girl?” I demanded. “Margaret Johnson? And the Keenan child?”

  “I had nothing to do with them crimes. You think I’m a fuckin’ psycho?”

  I thought that one best left unanswered.

  “George,” I said calmly, easing the gun away from his face, “you got any suggestions on how we can resolve our differences, here? Can you think of some way both of us can walk out of this graveyard tonight?”

  He licked his lips. Smiled a ghastly, blood-flecked smile. “Let bygones be bygones. You don’t tell anybody what you know—Sam included—and I just forget about you working me over. That’s fair. That’s workable.”

  I didn’t see where he got the knife; I hadn’t seen a hand slip into a pocket at all. He slashed through my sleeve, but didn’t cut me. When I shot him in the head, his skull exploded, but almost none of him got on me. Just my gun hand. A limestone angel, however, got wreathed in blood and brains.

  I lifted up off him and stood there panting for a while. The sounds of muted traffic reminded me there was a world to go back to. I checked his pockets, found some Camels, and lit one up; kept the pack. Then I wiped my prints off his gun, laid it near him, retrieved my tire iron, put it back in the trunk, which I closed up, and left him there with his peers.

  16

  The phone call came late morning, which was a good thing: I didn’t even make it into the office till after ten.

  “You were a busy fella yesterday, Heller,” Sam Flood’s voice said cordially.

  “I get around, Sam.”

  “Papers are full of you. Real hero. There’s other news, though, that hasn’t made the papers yet.”