Chicago Lightning : The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

by Collins, Max Allan

  But it took a while. A most frail-looking Dr. Alice was carried into the courtroom on the opening day of the trial; still playing for sympathy in the press, I figured.

  Then, after eight days of evidence, Dr. Alice had an apparent heart seizure, when the prosecution hauled the blood-stained examination table into court. A mistrial was declared. When she recovered, though, she got a brand-new one. The press milked the case for all its worth; public opinion polls in the papers indicated half of Chicago considered Dr. Alice guilty, and the other half thought her innocent. The jury, however, was unanimous—it took them only fifteen minutes to find her guilty and two hours to set the sentence at twenty-five years.

  Earle didn’t attend the trial. They say that just as Dr. Alice was being ushered in the front gate at the Woman’s Reformatory at Dwight, Illinois, an unshaven, disheveled figure darted from the nearby bushes. Earle kissed his mother goodbye and she brushed away his tears. As usual.

  She served thirteen years, denying her guilt all the way; she was released with time off for good behavior. She died on July 4, 1955, in a nursing home, under an assumed name.

  Earle changed his name, too. What became of him, I can’t say. There were rumors, of course. One was that he had found work as a garage mechanic.

  Another was that he had finally re-married—a beautiful redhead.

  Dr. Catherine Wynekoop did not change her name, and went on to a distinguished medical career.

  And the house at 3406 West Monroe, the Death Clinic, was torn down in 1947. The year Dr. Alice was released.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Research materials for this fact-based story include “The Wynekoop Case” in The Chicago Crime Book (1947) by Craig Rice; “Who Killed Rheta Wynekoop?” by Harry Read in Real Detective magazine, April 1934; and “The Justice Story,” a 1987 New York Daily News column by Joseph McNamara.

  She was the first movie star I ever worked for, but I wasn’t much impressed. If I were that easily impressed, I’d have been impressed by Hollywood itself. And having seen the way Hollywood portrayed my profession on the so-called silver screen, I wasn’t much impressed with Hollywood.

  On the other hand, Thelma Todd was the most beautiful woman who ever wanted to hire my services, and that did impress me. Enough so that when she called me, that October, and asked me to drive out to her “sidewalk café” nestled under the Palisades in Montemar Vista, I went, wondering if she would be as pretty in the flesh as she was on celluloid.

  I’d driven out Pacific Coast Highway that same morning, a clear cool morning with a blue sky lording it over a vast sparkling sea. Pelicans were playing tag with the breaking surf, flying just under the curl of the white-lipped waves. Yachts, like a child’s toy boats, floated out there just between me and the horizon. I felt like I could reach out for one, pluck and examine it, sniff it maybe, like King Kong checking out Fay Wray’s lingerie.

  “Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Café,” as a billboard on the hillside behind it so labeled the place, was a sprawling two-story hacienda affair, as big as a beached luxury liner. Over its central, largest-of-many archways, a third-story tower rose like a stubby lighthouse. There weren’t many cars here—it was approaching ten a.m., too early for the luncheon crowd and even I didn’t drink cocktails this early in the day. Not and tell, anyway.

  She was waiting in the otherwise unpopulated cocktail lounge, where massive wooden beams in a traditional Spanish mode fought the chromium-and-leather furnishings and the chrome-and-glass-brick bar and came out a draw. She was a big blonde woman with more curves than the highway out front and just the right number of hills and valleys. Wearing a clingy summery white dress, she was seated on one of the bar stools, with her bare legs crossed; they weren’t the best-looking legs on the planet, necessarily. I just couldn’t prove otherwise. That good a detective I’m not.

  “Nathan Heller?” she asked, and her smile dimpled her cheeks in a manner that made her whole heart-shaped face smile, and the world smile as well, including me. She didn’t move off the stool, just extended her hand in a manner that was at once casual and regal.

  I took the hand, not knowing whether to kiss it, shake it, or press it into a book like a corsage I wanted to keep. I looked at her feeling vaguely embarrassed; she was so pretty you didn’t know where to look next, and felt like there was maybe something wrong with looking anywhere. But I couldn’t help myself.

  She had pale, creamy skin and her hair was almost white blonde. They called her the ice-cream blonde, in the press. I could see why.

  Then I got around to her eyes. They were blue of course, cornflower blue; and big and sporting long lashes, the real McCoy, not your dimestore variety. But they were also the saddest eyes I’d ever looked into. The smile froze on my face like I was looking at Medusa, not a twenty-nine year-old former six-grade teacher from Massachusetts who won a talent search.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. Then she patted the stool next to her.

  I sat and said, “Nothing’s wrong. I never had a movie star for a client before.”

  “I see. Thanks for considering this job—for extending your stay, I mean.”

  I was visiting L.A. from Chicago because a friend—a fellow former pickpocket detail dick—had recently opened an office out here in sunny Southern Cal. Fred Rubinski needed an out-of-towner to pose as a visiting banker, to expose an embezzler; the firm had wanted to keep the affair in-house.

  “Mr. Rubinski recommended you highly.” Her voice had a low, throaty quality that wasn’t forced or affected; she was what Mae West would’ve been if Mae West wasn’t a parody.

  “That’s just because Fred hasn’t been in town long enough to make any connections. But if Thelma Todd wants me to consider extending my stay, I’m willing to listen.”

  She smiled at that, very broadly, showing off teeth whiter than cameras can record. “Might I get you a drink, Mr. Heller?”

  “It’s a little early.”

  “I know it is. Might I get you a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Anything special?”

  “Anything that doesn’t have a little paper umbrella in it is fine by me…. Make it rum and Coke.”

  “Rum and Coke.” She fixed me up with that, and had the same herself. Either we had similar tastes or she just wasn’t fussy about what she drank.

  “Have you heard of Lucky Luciano?” she asked, returning to her bar stool.

  “Heard of him,” I said. “Haven’t met him.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  I shrugged. “Big-time gangster from back east. Runs casinos all over southern California. More every day.”

  She flicked the air with a long red fingernail, like she was shooing away a bug. “Well, perhaps you’ve noticed the tower above my restaurant.”

  “Sure.”

  “I live on the second floor, but the tower above is fairly spacious.”

  “Big enough for a casino, you mean.”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding. “I was approached by Luciano, more than once. I turned him away, more than once. After all, with my location, and my clientele, a casino could make a killing.”

  “You’re doing well enough legally. Why bother with ill?”

  “I agree. And if I were to get into any legal problems, that would mean a scandal, and Hollywood doesn’t need another scandal. Busby Berkley’s trial is coming up soon, you know.”

  The noted director and choreographer, creator of so many frothy fantasies, was up on the drunk-driving homicide of three pedestrians, not far from this café.

  “But now,” she said, her bee-lips drawn nervously tight, “I’ve begun to receive threatening notes.”

  “From Luciano, specifically?”

  “No. They’re extortion notes, actually. Asking me to pay off Artie Lewis. You know, the bandleader?”

  “Why him?”

  “He’s in Luciano’s pocket. Gambling markers. And I used to go with Artie. He lives in San Francisco, now.”

&n
bsp; “I see. Well, have you talked to the cops?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get Artie in trouble.”

  “Have you talked to Artie?”

  “Yes—he claims he knows nothing about this. He doesn’t want my money. He doesn’t even want me back—he’s got a new girl.”

  I’d like to see the girl that could make you forget Thelma Todd.

  “So,” I said, “you want me to investigate. Can I see the extortion notes?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her white blonde curls like the mop of the gods, “that’s not it. I burned those notes. For Artie’s sake.”

  “Well, for Nate’s sake,” I said, “where do I come in?”

  “I think I’m being followed. I’d like a bodyguard.”

  I resisted looking her over wolfishly and making a wise-crack. She was a nice woman, and the fact that hers was the sort of a body a private eye would pay to guard didn’t seem worth mentioning. My fee did.

  “Twenty-five a day and expenses,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. “And you can have any meals you like right here at the Café. Drinks, too. Run a tab and I’ll pick it up.”

  “Swell,” I grinned. “I was wondering if I’d ever run into a fringe benefit in this racket.”

  “You can be my chauffeur.”

  “Well…”

  “You have a problem with that, Mr. Heller?”

  “I have a private investigator’s license, and a license to carry a gun…in Illinois, anyway. But I don’t have a chauffeur’s license.”

  “I think a driver’s license will suffice.” Her bee-stung lips were poised in a kiss of amusement. “What’s the real problem, Heller?”

  “I’m not wearing a uniform. I’m strictly plainclothes.”

  She smiled tightly, wryly amused, saying, “All right, hang onto your dignity…but you have to let me pay the freight on a couple of new suits for you. I’ll throw ’em in on the deal.”

  “Swell,” I said. I liked it when women bought me clothes.

  So for the next two months, I stayed on in southern Cal, and Thelma Todd was my only client. I worked six days a week for her—Monday through Saturday. Sundays God, Heller and Todd rested. I drove her in her candy-apple red Packard convertible, a car designed for blondes with wind-blown hair and pearls. She sat in back, of course. Most days I took her to the Hal Roach Studio where she was making a musical with Laurel and Hardy. I’d wait in some dark pocket of the sound studio and watch her every move out in the brightness. In a black wig, lacy bodice, and clinging, gypsy skirt, Thelma was the kind of girl you took home to Mother, and if Mother didn’t like her, to hell with Mother.

  Evenings she hit the club circuit, the Trocadero and the El Mocambo chiefly. I’d sit in the cocktail lounges and quietly drink and wait for her and her various dates to head home. Some of these guys were swishy types that she was doing the studio a favor appearing in public with; a couple others spent the night.

  I don’t mean to tell tales out of school, but this tale can’t be told at all unless I’m frank about that one thing: Thelma slept around. Later, when the gossip rags were spreading rumors about alcohol and drugs, that was all the bunk. But Thelma was a friendly girl. She had generous charms and she was generous with them.

  “Heller,” she said, one night in early December when I was dropping her off, walking her up to the front door of the Café like always, “I think I have a crush on you.”

  She was alone tonight, having played girl friend to one of those Hollywood funny boys for the benefit of Louella Parsons and company. Alone but for me.

  She slipped an arm around my waist. She had booze on her breath, but then so did I, and neither one of us was drunk. She was bathed gently in moonlight and Chanel Number Five.

  She kissed me with those bee-stung lips, stinging so softly, so deeply.

  I moved away. “No. I’m sorry.”

  She winced. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m the hired help. You’re just lonely tonight.”

  Her eyes, which I seldom looked into because of the depth of the sadness there, hardened. “Don’t you ever get lonely, you bastard?”

  “Never,” I said.

  She drew her hand back to slap me, but then she just touched my face, instead. Gentle as the ocean breeze, and it was gentle tonight, the breeze, so gentle.

  “Goodnight, Heller,” she said.

  And she slipped inside, but left the door slightly ajar.

  “What the hell,” I said, and I slipped inside, too.

  An hour later, I drove her Packard to the garage that was attached to the bungalow above the restaurant complex; to do that I had to take Montemar Vista Road to Seretto Way, turning right. The Mediterranean-style stucco bungalow, on Cabrillo, like so many houses in Montemar Vista, climbed the side of the hill like a clinging vine. It was owned by Thelma Todd’s partner in the Café, movie director/producer Warren Eastman. Eastman had an apartment next to Thelma’s above the restaurant, as well as the bungalow, and seemed to live back and forth between the two.

  I wondered what the deal was, with Eastman and my client, but I never asked, not directly. Eastman was a thin, dapper man in his late forties, with a pointed chin and a small mustache and a window’s peak that his slick black hair was receding around, making his face look diamond shaped. He often sat in the cocktail lounge with a bloody Mary in one hand and a cigarette in a holder in the other. He was always talking deals with movie people.

  “Heller,” he said, one night, motioning me over to the bar. He was seated on the very stool that Thelma had been, that first morning. “This is Nick DeCiro, the talent agent. Nick, this is the gumshoe Thelma hired to protect her from the big bad gambling syndicate.”

  DeCiro was another darkly handsome man, a bit older than Eastman, though he lacked both the mustache and receding hairline of the director. DeCiro wore a white suit with a dark sportshirt, open at the neck to reveal a wealth of black chest hair.

  I shook DeCiro’s hand. His grip was firm, moist, like a fistful of topsoil.

  “Nicky here is your client’s ex-husband,” Eastman said, with a wag of his cigarette-in-holder, trying for an air of that effortless decadence that Hollywood works so hard at.

  “Thelma and me are still pals,” DeCiro said, lighting up a foreign cig with a shiny silver lighter that he then clicked shut with a meaningless flourish. “We broke up amicably.”

  “I heard it was over extreme cruelty,” I said.

  DeCiro frowned, and Eastman cut in glibly, “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Heller. Besides, you have to get a divorce over something.”

  “But then you’d know that in your line of work,” DeCiro said, an edge in his thin voice.

  “Don’t knock it,” I said with my own edge. “Where would your crowd be without divorce dicks? Now, if you gents will excuse me…”

  “Heller, Heller,” Eastman said, touching my arm, “don’t be so touchy.”

  I waited for him to remove his hand from my arm, then said, “Did you want something, Mr. Eastman? I’m not much for this Hollywood shit-chat.”

  “I don’t like your manner,” DeCiro said.

  “Nobody does,” I said. “But I don’t get paid well enough for it to matter.”

  “Heller,” Eastman said, “I was just trying to convince Nicky here that my new film is perfect for a certain client of his. I’m doing a mystery. About the perfect crime. The perfect murder.”

  “No such animal,” I said.

  “Oh, really?” DeCiro said, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Murder and crime are inexact sciences. All the planning in the world doesn’t account for the human element.”

  “Then how do you explain,” Eastman said archly, “the hundreds of murders that go unsolved in this country?”

  “Policework is a more exact science than crime or murder,” I admitted, “but we have a lot of bent cops in this world—and a lot of dumb ones.”

 
; “Then there are perfect crimes.”

  “No. Just unsolved ones. And imperfect detectives. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  That was the most extensive conversation I had with either Eastman or DeCiro during the time I was employed by Miss Todd, though I said hello and they did the same, now and then, at the Café.

  But Eastman was married to an actress named Miranda Diamond, a fiery Latin whose parents were from Mexico City, even if she’d been raised in the Bronx. She fancied herself as the next Lupe Velez, and she was a similarly voluptuous dame, though her handsome features were as hard as a gravestone.

  She cornered me at the Café one night, in the cocktail lounge, where I was drinking on the job.

  “You’re a dick,” she said.

  We’d never spoken before.

  “I hope you mean that in the nicest way,” I said.

  “You’re bodyguarding that bitch,” she said, sitting next to me on a leather and chrome couch. Her nostrils flared; if I’d been holding a red cape, I’d have dropped it and run for the stands.

  “Miss Todd is my client, yes, Miss Diamond.”

  She smiled. “You recognize me.”

  “Oh yes. And I also know enough to call you Mrs. Eastman, in certain company.”

  “My husband and I are separated.”

  “Ah.”

  “But I could use a little help in the divorce court.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Photographs of him and that bitch in the sack.” She said “the” like “thee.”

  “That would help you.”

  “Yes. You see…my husband has similar pictures of me, with a gentleman, in a compromising position.”

  “Even missionaries get caught in that position, I understand.” I offered her a cigarette, she took it, and I lit hers and mine. “And if you had similar photos, you could negotiate yourself a better settlement.”

  “Exactly. Interested?”

  “I do divorce work—that’s no problem. But I try not to sell clients out. Bad for business.”

  She smiled; she put her hand on my leg. “I could make it worth your while. Financially and…otherwise.”