Chicago Lightning : The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

by Collins, Max Allan

  “George never said what he did for a living,” she told me. “I always figured it was something a little shady, but hell, I ran a beer flat in Sioux City, so who was I to talk? Anyway, he always had plenty of dough and we lived in nice apartments.”

  Then she got to the meat of the matter: the crime.

  She and her boy friend George and George’s friend Leo were on their way to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. They were running early and decided to stop and do a little shopping; George had spotted the clothing store sign and pulled in, saying he needed some shirts. They had all three gone inside.

  “George was talking to Mr. Hoeh up in front,” she said. Her eyes were not on me; they seemed to be staring into her memory. “The old man was getting shirts from behind the counter and laying boxes out for George to see. Leo wasn’t interested, and just hanging by the door. I was in the back of the store, looking at ties and other boys clothing—my sons are nine and eleven—and was caught up in making some selections.” Now she looked at me, gray eyes wide and earnest. “Then I heard the sound of a scuffle.”

  “Was the old boy still behind the counter?”

  “No, he was coming around after George, who was heading out.”

  “Leaving you in back of the store?”

  “No, that’s the other thing that alerted me that something was wrong—George was calling, ‘Eleanor! Hurry!’”

  “What did you think was happening?”

  “Honestly, I had no idea. I guess I thought the old man had gone off his rocker or something. Leo was there at the door, holding it open, but Mr. Hoeh was attacking George. Then all of sudden George had this gun….”

  “You didn’t know George had a gun?”

  She shook her head. “And the old man wrestled with George, had a hold of his wrist and twisted the thing around, and it went off!”

  “And the old boy got hit?”

  “No! Leo did—in his hand, his left hand I think. Leo yelled something like, ‘Jesus, George, you shot me!’ Then George shoved Mr. Hoeh away, and I was coming up from the back of the shop now, and I followed them out onto the sidewalk—I was the last one out, kind of trailing the old man, who was all over George. Why did he do that? He knew George had a gun!”

  I shrugged. “It was his store. A guy his age, builds a business, he might do anything to defend it. Go on.”

  “I know Mr. Hoeh was old, but he was big and tough, slugging and swinging, and I almost jumped on his back, trying to pull him off George, trying to stop this.”

  “You must’ve have known it was a hold-up by now.”

  She shook her head firmly. “No. I wasn’t thinking, not rationally, anyway. It was all so fast. I just knew George was in trouble and this crazy old man was attacking him.”

  “All right. What happened then?”

  She swallowed; no smiles now. “The old man shoved me away. That’s when George shot him. Twice.”

  I drew in a breath; I let it out. “And Mr. Hoeh died before he made it to the hospital.”

  “I know.” She was shaking her head, eyes glued to the scarred table top. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea George was some kind of…stick-up man. But I can’t believe he did that, with me along.”

  “You’d never been along before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “They say something like sixty witnesses have identified you and George and Leo in a whole slough of other robberies. Thirty-some?”

  “I don’t care what they say. These witnesses are only saying what the police tell them to. Do you think they had us stand in the show-up line? No. Hell, no. They’d haul their witnesses into the women’s cell block and point at me and say, ‘That’s her, isn’t it? The Tigress?’ And I’ll bet they’ve done the same kind of thing with George and Leo.”

  “That’s not a point I’d care to argue. You’re not saying that this was a spur of the moment thing for George, that he suddenly decided to become a stick-up artist on his way to a Cubs game? He didn’t grow that gun.”

  She got out another smile: a bitter one. “No. I understand that now. I believe George and Leo have been at this a long time. George had been throwing a lot of money around and that’s where it came from, obviously. They saw an opportunity with that old man alone in that shop, and they took it—putting me in this fix.”

  “You’re not saying there’s another ‘Tigress’ working with George and Leo?”

  “Why not? And, anyway, I’m no ‘Tigress,’ and if there is a real female accomplice, she probably isn’t, either.”

  I frowned at her. “You think George has another girl friend who goes out on robberies with him?”

  “No. But Leo might.”

  “Is Leo married?”

  “Yeah. Does that mean he can’t have a girl friend?”

  “If it did,” I said, and grinned at her, “I’d be out of business.”

  “It’s also possible,” she said, “that George and Leo pulled some robberies, but on their own. Without a female accomplice, and we’re taking the blame for some other bunch.”

  “You each have your own lawyers.”

  “Yeah. Our stories don’t exactly jibe. Leo says he had no idea George was going to pull a robbery at that haberdashery. George says there wasn’t any robbery.”

  “Then why did George have the gun?”

  She held her hands up in surrender. “I think it was the old man’s. Look, they don’t exactly let me talk to George and Leo. You’ll have to ask them, if you can…. Well, Nate? Do you think you can help?”

  “I’ll give it a hundred bucks worth of college try,” I said.

  “Do you believe my version of what happened?”

  “I don’t exactly believe you. But I don’t exactly disbelieve you, either. I’ll keep an open mind. How’s that?”

  “That’s the best I could hope for,” she said, and offered me her hand to shake.

  The handshake lingered and her gray eyes sent me the tiniest signal that her gratitude might be shown in ways beyond that hundred bucks.

  Which is as close as my Tigress daydream came to playing out.

  In the hallway of the First District Station, a new modern facility, I encountered an old-fashioned cop—Captain John Stege, who greeted me much as I’d expect: “What the hell are you doing here, Heller?”

  Stege was a fiftyish fireplug with a round white face and round black-rimmed glasses. He was in shirtsleeves and a blue bow tie, which was about as casual as he ever got, a revolver on his hip.

  “Fine, Captain,” I said. “How are you?”

  The owlish cop frowned at me. “Get your ass in my office.”

  I was an irritant to Stege because I confused him: when I’d been on the Detective Bureau, not so long ago, I’d ratted out some corrupt coppers, which he considered disloyal of me, and yet he was one of the most honest flatfeet on the force.

  I sat across his desk from him. The office was as small and clean and compact as he was. He just looked at me, asking no question but clearly expecting an answer.

  “I’m doing a job for Sam Backus,” I said.

  “Since when does the Public Defender’s office have money to hire investigators?”

  “Since never.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m doing it out of a sense of public duty.”

  His tiny eyes tightened behind the lenses. “Hell—not the Tigress? That’s it, isn’t it? You figure you can peddle your story to the papers!”

  “I don’t care what anybody says. You’re a detective.”

  The door to the office was open. I was sitting there with my hat on. He told me to close the door and take off my hat. I did so. What was this about?

  “I’m glad you’re on it,” Stege said.

  “What?”

  “Something smells about that case.”

  “Oh, you mean like taking witnesses down to the cell block and pointing to the suspect, in lieu of a line-up?”

  He tasted his mouth and it obviously wasn’t a pleasant flavor. “Something like that. This clean-up campaign, I
never saw so many corners cut. If I can help you, let me know. I mean, keep it on the q.t.—but let me know.”

  “This is so sudden, Captain.”

  “Don’t get cute. It’s just that lately I feel like we’re working for these yellow damn journalists—trying to make ourselves look good instead trying to do our jobs.”

  I sat forward. “They’re taking this to trial right away. I could use some help.”

  “All right.” Stege squinted at me meaningfully. “But don’t ask to see the files—I won’t go sneaking around on honest cops. Anyway, the papers told the story accurately enough, if you take out the ‘Tigress’ hooey.”

  “Do you think Dale and Minneci were part of this stick-up gang hitting small merchants on the West and Northwest Sides?”

  “They could be. And so could that woman, for that matter. There’s definitely been a rash of robberies where two men and a woman go in to a store, once they’ve established no other customers are around. They’d make a lot of noise, one of the men and the woman, too, yelling and threatening and even shoving, waving a gun and a blackjack around.”

  “That’s not a stupid approach.”

  “You don’t think sticking up innocent merchants is stupid, Heller?”

  “Sure. My old man ran a bookshop on the West Side, remember? Anybody kills a shop owner for what’s in his till, I’d like to take their tonsils out with a penknife. But by making a big commotion, intimidating their victim? It can make turn the whole thing into a big blur. Hard to get a good identification out of somebody who’s been put through that. What was the woman’s role?”

  Stege shrugged. “Like I said, she was part of the show. Apparently she’d come in with a big handbag and the man would dip into it and that’s where the gun came from. She was the one waving the blackjack around, and some victims claimed they’d been struck by it.”

  “They’d clean out the cash drawer?”

  “Yeah, and sometimes help themselves to some merchandise. This woman, in clothing shops with female apparel, she’d pick herself out some pretty things and take ’em along.”

  “Women do love to shop.”

  Stege grimaced; helping me was hard on him. “I don’t want you bothering the dicks on this case. They’re good boys. I’m afraid all this pressure for arrests and publicity may have got the better of ’em, is all.”

  “I won’t even talk to them,” I said. “Who I want to talk to are the Tigress’s little cubs—George Dale and Leo Minneci.”

  The little round-faced copper nodded and reached out his pudgy little fingers for the phone.

  Within an hour I was sitting in another interrogation room, smaller but also with brick walls, barred windows and a scarred table. I might have still been at the First District Station, but I wasn’t: this was the Cook County Jail on Dearborn, and a cell block guard was ushering in the first name on my dance card: George Dale.

  Dale was tall, maybe six two, a good-looking guy with an athletic build; he had a certain Lothario look undercut by thinning brown hair. Dale was in a white shirt, open at the collar, and brown suit pants with dark shoes and white socks.

  The guard deposited him across the table from me. Dale wasn’t in handcuffs or leg irons or anything—just a big guy with a friendly face, unless you knew how to read the coldness of his dark eyes. And I did. I was glad I wasn’t packing my nine millimeter, because this character could have made a reasonable go of taking it off me.

  “What’s the idea?” Dale asked. “Where’s my lawyer? If I’m talking to another copper, I want my lawyer.”

  “My name’s Heller, private operative. Working for your sweetheart’s attorney.”

  He sat forward, some life coming into the hard eyes. “How is Eleanor? Is she doing all right?”

  “She’s sweating the hot seat like you are. I think I can help get her out of this, if you can confirm she wasn’t an accomplice.”

  “She’s innocent as a newborn baby!”

  “Well, let’s not get carried away, George….”

  “Look, Heller, I’m no stick-up man. I’m a gambler. I make my money on dice and poker, you ask around. This is all just a terrible misunderstanding. An accident.”

  “An accident.”

  “Yeah. That old man was crazy! I wanted to buy some shirts, and I wanted ’em in quantity—said I’d buy half a dozen if he’d give me a decent discount. He said his price was firm and I tried to haggle and he just shook his head and gave me a nasty look. I had this box of shirts in my hands, and he yanked it away, and I yanked back, and he shoved me, and I shoved him back.”

  “Across the counter, this is?”

  “Yeah!”

  “He was seventy, wasn’t he?”

  “So they say, but he was a wild man! After I shoved him, he pulled the gun out from under the counter and came around and chased me, waving the thing. It was, you know, close quarters, and I tried to grab it away from him, and it went off and shot Leo through the hand. Then we ran out on the street—Eleanor was in back of the store and came running up behind us. The old fellow and me, we were struggling over the gun, and Eleanor was pounding him on the back, and he kind of tossed her off, like you’d toss off a kid that jumped you. Then the gun just…went off.”

  “Just went off. Twice.”

  “Well…yeah. I was scared. He was vicious.”

  “Okay, George. Maybe we should start over.”

  He shook his head. “Look, I didn’t pull any stick-up. They found fourteen bucks in the cash drawer, you know.”

  “Right. But you had a roll of bills in your pocket adding up to three hundred bucks.”

  “That was my money! I don’t deny I shot the old man. But it was an accidental type thing.”

  “George. Don’t kid a kidder—you’re a seasoned stick-up artist, and you stopped at that clothing store for a smash and grab.”

  He just sat there, the eyes going hard again. “I don’t say I’m a saint. But Eleanor was never in on anything illegal I ever done, and these witnesses that say we were some kind of gang, the three of us, it’s a goddamn lie. The cops are just looking to clear a bunch of robberies off their books, in one fell swoop.”

  “The three of us, you said. Where does Minneci figure in?”

  “He was just along for the ride. I’m sorry he got his hand shot up.”

  “Going to the Cubs game.”

  “Right.”

  I didn’t press. The story held water like a paper sack, but it was close enough to Eleanor’s to make them both look credible. Of course, they’d known for several days that the cops were after them and had had time to get their stories straight before getting hauled in.

  Leo Minneci was a dark, handsome guy, or anyway handsome if you didn’t mind the cauliflower ears and the flattened nose. I never met him before, but I remembered him from his pug days—he’d been a pretty fair heavyweight, going up against Tuffy Griffiths and other headliners.

  He wore a blue workshirt, sleeves rolled up, and blue jeans with his left hand bandaged. He had a confused expression, like a stranger had called to him from across the street.

  Seated opposite me, he asked, “What’s this about? You another cop?”

  “I’m a private dick working for Eleanor Jarman’s attorney. I’d like to get your version of what happened at that clothing shop.”

  He shrugged. “Listen, I’m one of them victims of circumstance you hear about.”

  “Really. I always wanted to meet one of those.”

  “This has nothing to do with me. It’s Dale and that dame of his. I was just riding with them to a ball game. We was running a little early, and I said I could use a shirt and we stopped at that place. We were only in there a coupla minutes before Dale pulled a gun and stuck up the old guy. I tried to keep George from shooting the geezer and I, you know, wrestled with him, and the thing went off and…” He raised his bandaged mitt. “…got a bullet through the hand.”

  “Did Eleanor know anything about the stick-up?”

  He shook hi
s head. “I think it was, what you call it, spur of the moment on George’s part. Look, I got a wife and two kids. I do all right with day labor, and I wouldn’t risk putting them in a bad spot.”

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just gathering information, Leo. Don’t get jumpy.”

  “It’s Tina. You want the address?”

  I wrote that down.

  I left the jail feeling better about my client. George Dale might or might not be a stick-up artist, and Leo Minneci might or might not be his accomplice; but their stories both put Eleanor Jarman on the sidelines.

  I talked to half a dozen of the merchants on the witness list. Advertising that I was working for the Tigress would have turned them into clams, so I would just tell them I was a detective, and flash my little private investigator’s badge, and that’d do the trick.

  Mrs. Swan G. Swanson (no joke) was typical. She was the proprietor of a little gift shop across from the clothing store on West Division Street. This was a busy shopping area, the treetops of fashionable, sleepy Oak Park visible above the bustle of commerce and traffic on this late afternoon.

  She was about sixty-five, five foot five in heels and maybe one-hundred-and-sixty pounds that still had some shape to them, well-served by a cotton dress with white polka dots on dark blue; with that pretty face highlighted by nice light blue eyes behind round wire-framed glasses, she was who you hoped your wife would turn out to be at that age.

  “Detective Heller,” she said, in a whispery soprano, “it was one of the most vicious things I ever saw.”

  “I know you’ve been over this several times, but I’m new on the case. Don’t spare the details.”