Chicago Lightning : The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

by Collins, Max Allan

  They thanked me for my help, told me to stick around for the inquest on Tuesday, and turned me loose. I got in my rental Ford and drove to the Biltmore, went up to my room, ordered a room service supper, and gave Frank Nitti a call.

  “So my name didn’t come up?” Nitti asked me over the phone.

  “No. Obviously, I didn’t tell ’em you hired me to come down here; but they didn’t mention you, either. And the way they were giving out information, it would’ve come up. They got a funny way of interrogating you in Florida—they spill and you listen.”

  “Did they mention a guy named McGraw?”

  “No, Frank. Just this Leo Massey.”

  “McGraw’s a rival dope smuggler,” Nitti said thoughtfully. “I understand he stepped in and took over Massey’s trade after Massey turned up a floater.”

  “What’s that got to do with Clifton?”

  “Nothin’ much—just that my people tell me McGraw’s a regular at the Chez Clifton. Kinda chummy with our comical late friend.”

  “Maybe McGraw’s the potential investor Clifton was talking about—to take your place, Frank.”

  Silence. Nitti was thinking.

  Finally, he returned with, “Got another job for you, Nate.”

  “I don’t know, Frank—I probably oughta keep my nose clean, do my bit at the inquest and scram outa this flamingo trap.”

  “Another three C’s in it for you, kid—just to deliver another message. No rush—tomorrow morning’ll be fine.”

  Did you hear the one about the comic who thought he told killer jokes? He died laughing.

  “Anything you say, Frank.”

  Eddie McGraw lived at the Delano, on Collins Avenue, the middle of a trio of towering hotels rising above Miami Beach like Mayan temples got out of hand. McGraw had a penthouse on the eleventh floor, and I had to bribe the elevator attendant to take me there.

  It was eleven a.m. I wasn’t expecting trouble. My nine millimeter Browning was back in Chicago, in a desk drawer in my office. But I wasn’t unarmed—I had the name Frank Nitti in my arsenal.

  I knocked on the door.

  The woman who answered was in her late twenties—a brunette with big brown eyes and rather exaggerated features, pretty in a cartoonish way. She had a voluptuous figure, wrapped up like a present in a pink chiffon dressing gown.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Is Mr. McGraw home?”

  She nodded. The big brown eyes locked onto me coldly, though her voice was a warm contralto: “Who should I say is calling?”

  “I’m a friend of Pete Clifton’s.”

  “Would you mind waiting in the hall?”

  “Not at all.”

  She shut the door, and a few seconds later, it flew back open, revealing a short but sturdy looking guy in a red sportshirt and gray slacks. He was blond with wild thatches of overgrown eyebrow above sky-blue eyes; when you got past a bulbous nose, he kind of looked like James Cagney.

  “I don’t do business at my apartment,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and raspy. He started to shut the door and I stopped it with my hand.

  He shoved me, and I went backward, but I latched onto his wrist, and pushed his hand back, and pulled him forward, out into the hall, until he was kneeling in front of me.

  “Frank Nitti sent me,” I said, and released the pressure on his wrist.

  He stood, ran a hand through slicked back blond hair that didn’t need straightening, and said, “I don’t do business with Nitti.”

  “I think maybe you should. You know about Pete’s killing?”

  “I saw the morning paper. I liked Pete. He was funny. He was an all right guy.”

  “Yeah, he was a card. Did he by any chance sell you an interest in the Chez Clifton?”

  McGraw frowned at me; if he’d been a dog, he’d have growled. “I told you…what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Heller. Nate Heller.”

  “I don’t do business at my apartment. My wife and me, we got a life separate from how I make my living. Got it?”

  “Did Pete sell you an interest in the Chez Clifton?”

  He straightened his collar, which also didn’t need it. “As a matter of fact, he did.”

  “Then you were wrong about not doing business with Frank Nitti.”

  McGraw sneered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Mr. Nitti would like to discuss that with you himself.” I handed him a slip of paper. “He’s in town, at his estate on Di Lido Island. He’d like to invite you to join him there for lunch today.”

  “Why should I?”

  I laughed once, a hollow thing. “Mr. McGraw, I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t put your hands on me again. I’m just delivering a message. But I will tell you this—I’m from Chicago, and when Frank Nitti invites you for lunch, you go.”

  McGraw thought about that. Then he nodded and said, “Sorry about the rough stuff.”

  “I apologize for bothering you at home. But you don’t keep an office, and you’re unlisted.”

  “Yeah, well, nature of my business.”

  “Understood.”

  I held out my hand. He studied it for a moment, then shook it.

  “Why don’t you give Mr. Nitti a call, at that number, and confirm your luncheon engagement.”

  He nodded and disappeared inside the apartment.

  Half an hour later, I knocked on the door again. Returning had cost me another fin to the elevator boy.

  Mrs. McGraw, still in her pink chiffon robe, opened the door and said, “I’m afraid my husband has stepped out.”

  “I know he has,” I said, brushing past her into the apartment, beautifully appointed in the usual Miami-tropical manner.

  “Leave at once!” she demanded, pointing past the open door into the hall.

  “No,” I said, and shut the door. “I recognized your voice, Mrs. McGraw. It’s very distinctive. I like it.”

  “What are you talking about?” But her wide eyes and the tremor in her tone told me she was afraid she already knew.

  I told her, anyway. “I’m the guy who answered the phone last night, at Pete’s. That’s when I first heard that throaty purr of yours. I also heard you warn him—right before he turned his back on you and you shot him.”

  She was clutching herself, as if she were cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave!”

  “I’m not going to stay long. Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn around and put your hands on that door.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m gonna frisk you, lady. I don’t figure you have a gun hidden away on you, but I’d like to make sure.”

  “No!”

  So I took her by the wrist, sort of like I had her husband, and twisted her arm around her back and shoved her against the door. I frisked her all over. She was a little plump, but it was one of the nicer frisks I ever gave.

  No gun—several concealed weapons, but no gun.

  She stood facing me now, her back to the door, trembling. “Are you…are you a cop?”

  “I’m just a friend of Pete’s.”

  She raised a hand to her face, fingers curling there, like the petals of a wilting flower. “Are you here to turn me in?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Now she looked at me in a different way, something flaring in her dark eyes. “Oh. You’re here to…deal.”

  “Maybe. Can we sit down over there?” I gestured to the living room—white walls, white carpet, glass tables, white chairs and couch, a white fireplace with a big mirror with flamingos etched in it.

  I took an easy chair across from the couch, where she sat, arms folded, legs crossed—nice legs, muscular, supple, tan against the pink chiffon. She seemed to be studying me, trying to get a bead on me.

  “I’d like to hear your side of it.”

  Her chin titled. “You really think you can make a positive identification, based just on my voice?”

  “Ask Bruno Hauptmann. He went to the ch
air on less.”

  She laughed but it wasn’t very convincing. “You didn’t see me.”

  “Do you have an alibi? Is your husband in on it?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Your side of it. Let’s have it.”

  She looked at the floor. “Your…friend…was a terrible man.”

  “I noticed.”

  That surprised her. Looking right at me, she asked, “You did?”

  “Pete used women like playthings. They weren’t people to him. Is that what he did to you?”

  She nodded; her full mouth was quivering—if this was an act, it was a good one.

  Almost embarrassed, she said, “I thought he was charming. He was good-looking, clever and…sexy, I guess.”

  “You’ve been having an affair with him.”

  One nod.

  Well, that didn’t surprise me. Just because McGraw was his business partner, and a hood at that, wouldn’t stop Pete Clifton from going after a good-looking doll like Mrs. McGraw.

  “Can I smoke?” she asked. She indicated her purse on the coffee table. I checked inside it, found no gun, plucked out the pack of Luckies—Pete’s brand—and tossed it to her. Also her lighter.

  “Thanks,” she said, firing up. “It was just…a fling. Stupid goddamn fling. Eddie was neglecting me, and…it’s an old story. Anyway, I wanted to stop it, but…Pete wanted more. Not because…he loved me or anything. Just because…do you know what he said to me?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “He said, ‘Baby, you’re one sweet piece of ass. You don’t have to like me to satisfy me.’”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t know if I’m following this. If you wanted to break it off, how could he—”

  “He blackmailed me.”

  “With what? He couldn’t tell your husband about the affair without getting himself in a jam.”

  She heaved a sigh. “No…but Pete coulda turned my husband in for…for something he had on him.”

  And now I knew.

  Clifton had loaned McGraw the Screwball for disposal of the body of Leo Massey, the rival dope smuggler, which put Clifton in a position to finger McGraw.

  “Okay,” I said, and stood.

  She gazed up at me, astounded. “What do you mean…‘okay’?”

  “Okay, I understand why you killed him.”

  I walked to the door, and she followed, the sound of her slippers whispering through the thick carpet.

  She stopped me at the door, a hand on my arm; she was very close to me, and smelled good, like lilacs. Those brown eyes were big enough to dive into.

  Her throaty purr tickled the air between us. “You’re not going to turn me in?”

  “Why should I? I just wanted to know if there were any ramifications for my client or me, in this thing, and I don’t see any.”

  “I thought Pete was your friend.”

  “Hell, he was your lover, and look what you thought of him.”

  Her eyes tightened. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing. You had a good reason to do it. I heard you warn him.”

  “You’re very kind….” She squeezed my arm, moved closer, to where her breasts were pressed gently against me. “My husband won’t be home for a while…we could go to my bedroom and—”

  I drew away. “Jesus, lady! Isn’t screwin’ around what got you into trouble in the first place?”

  And I got the hell out of there.

  I said just enough at the inquest to get it over with quick, and was back in Chicago by Wednesday night.

  I don’t know whether Frank Nitti and Eddie McGraw wound up doing business together. I do know the Chez Clifton closed down and re-opened under another name, the Beach Club. But Nitti put his Di Lido Island estate up for sale and sold it, shortly after that. So maybe he just got out while the getting was good.

  Mrs. McGraw—whose first name I never knew—was never charged with Pete Clifton’s murder, which remains unsolved on the Miami Beach P.D.’s books. The investigation into the Clifton killing, however, did lead the State Attorney’s Office to nailing McGraw on the Massey slaying; McGraw got ninety-nine years, which is a little much, considering all he did was kill another dope smuggler. The two party girls, Peggy and Janet, were charged with harboring narcotics, which was dropped in exchange for their cooperation in the McGraw/Massey inquiry.

  Pete Clifton really was a prick, but I always thought of him, over the ensuing years, when so many dirty-mouthed comics—from Lenny Bruce to George Carlin—made it big.

  Maybe Clifton got the last laugh, after all.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This work of fiction is based on a real case, but certain liberties have been taken, and some names have been changed. George Hagenauer uncovered this little-known incident in the life of Frank Nitti.

  When the cute high school girl, screaming bloody murder, came running down the steps from the porch of the brown-brick two-story, I was sitting in a parked Buick reading The Racing News.

  At ten after eleven in the a.m., Chicago neighborhoods didn’t get much quieter than Englewood, and South Elizabeth Street on this sunny day in May, 1945, ran to bird chirps, muffled radio programs and El rattle. A banshee teenager was enough to attract the attention of just about anybody, even a drowsy detective who was supposed to be watching the very house in question.

  A guy in tee-shirt and suspenders, mowing the lawn next-door, got to her just before me.

  “Sally, honey, calm down,” the guy said.

  “Bob, Bob, Bob,” she said to her neighbor.

  His name, apparently, was Bob. Like I said, I’m a detective.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” I asked the girl.

  She was probably sixteen. Blonde hair bounced off her shoulders, and with those blue eyes and that heart-shaped face, she would have been a knockout if she hadn’t been devoid of make-up and wearing a navy jumper that stopped midcalf, abetted by a white blouse buttoned to her throat.

  “It’s…it’s Mother,” she said, and in slow motion she turned toward the narrow front of the brick house and pointed, like the Ghost of Christmas Future indicating Scrooge’s gravestone.

  “Look at me,” I said, and she did, mouth and eyes twitching. “I’m a policeman. Tell me what happened.”

  “Something…something terrible.”

  Then she pushed past me, and sat on the curb and buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Bob, who was bald and round-faced and about forty, said, “You’re a cop?”

  “Actually, private. Is that kid named Vinicky?”

  “Yes. Sally Vinicky—she goes to Visitation High. Probably home for lunch.”

  That explained the prim get-up: Visitation was a Catholic all-girl’s school.

  Another neighbor was wandering up, a housewife in an apron, hair in a net, eyes wide; she had flecks of soap suds on her red hands. I brought her into my little group.

  “My name is Heller,” I said. “I’m an investigator doing a job for that girl’s father. I need one of you to look after Sally…ma’am? Would you?”

  The woman nodded, then asked, “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m going in that house and find out. Bob, call the Englewood Station and ask them to send a man over.”

  “What should I tell them?”

  “What you saw.”

  As the housewife sat beside the girl on the curb and slipped an arm around her, and Bob headed toward the neighboring house, a frame bungalow, I headed up the steps to the covered porch. The girl had left the door open and I went on in.

  The living room was off to the left, a dining room to the right; but the living room got my attention, because of the dead woman sprawled on the floor.

  A willowy dame in her mid-thirties and blue-and-white floral dress, Rose Vinicky—I recognized her from the photos her husband had provided—lay on her side on the multi-color braided rug between an easy chair and a spinet piano, from which Bing Crosby smiled at me off a sheet music cover, “I Can’t Begi
n to Tell You.” Not smiling back, I knelt to check her wrist for a pulse, but judging by the dark pool of blood her head rested in, I was on a fool’s errand.

  Beyond the corpse stood a small table next to the easy chair with a couple of magazines on it, Look, Life. On the floor nearby was a cut-glass ashtray, which the woman presumably had knocked off when she fell forward, struck a vicious blow from behind. A lipstick-tipped cigarette had burned itself out, making a black hole in the braiding of the rug. I wasn’t sure whether she’d been reaching for the smoke when the killer clubbed her, or whether she’d gone for the table to brace her fall.

  With her brains showing like that, though, she was probably already unconscious or even dead on the way down.

  She looked a little like her daughter, though the hair was darker, almost brunette, short, tight curls. Not pretty, but attractive, handsome; and no mid-length skirt for Rose: she had liked to show off those long, slender, shapely legs, which mimed in death the act of running away.

  She’d been a looker, or enough of one, anyway, to make her husband suspect her of cheating.

  I didn’t spend a lot of time with Rose—she wasn’t going anywhere, and it was always possible her killer was still around.

  But the house—nicely appointed with older, in some cases antique furniture—was clear, including the basement. I did note that the windows were all closed and locked, and the back door was locked, too—with no signs of break-in. The killer had apparently come in the front door.

  That meant the murder took place before I’d pulled up in front of the Vinicky home around ten. I’d seen no one approach the house in the little more than an hour my car and ass had been parked across the way. It would’ve been embarrassing finding out a murder had been committed inside a home while I was watching it.

  On the other hand, I’d been surveilling the place to see with whom the woman might be cheating when here she was, already dead. Somehow that didn’t seem gold-star worthy, either.

  I had another, closer look at the corpse. Maybe she hadn’t been dead when she fell, at that—looked like she’d suffered multiple blows. One knocked her down, the others finished her off and opened up her skull. Blood was spattered on the nearby spinet, but also on the little table and even the easy chair.