Chicago Lightning : The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

by Collins, Max Allan

  As it turned out, Mrs. Overell was able to provide a snapshot, filched from her daughter’s room, of both Louise and her beau. They were in swimsuits, at the beach on towels, leaning back on their elbows smiling up at the camera.

  Louise had a nice if faintly mocking, superior smile—not exactly pretty, and indeed round-faced, but not bad; and she was, as that ex-gob had so succinctly put it, built like a brick shithouse. This girl had everything Jane Russell did except a movie contract.

  As for Bud, he was blond, boyish, rather round faced himself, with wire-rimmed glasses and a grin that somehow lacked the suggestion of cunning his girl friend’s smile possessed. He had the slender yet solid build so often seen in Navy men.

  I spent another hour or so in Pasadena, which had a sleepy air of prosperity spawned by the many resort hotels, the formidable buildings, the pretentious homes, the bounteous foliage. The North Fair Oaks section did seem to have more than its share of colored residents, but this was still nicer than anywhere I’d ever lived. With the help of a service station attendant—the private detective’s best friend in a strange city—I located the home of Dr. Joseph Stomel, married to Bud’s mother, Wilhilmina. But I had no intention of talking to anyone there, as yet. This was strictly a point of reference for the eventual tailing of Gollum.

  That was Friday, and between the college and the Pasadena run, I’d earned my hundred bucks. I spent all day Saturday with my wife, and friends, enjoying our premature summer vacation.

  Then I went back to work Saturday night, though I looked like a tourist in my blue sportshirt and chinos. The camera I had with me was no tourist’s Brownie, however, rather a divorce dick’s Speed Graphic loaded with infrared film and the world’s least conspicuous flash.

  It was around ten o’clock when I turned right off State Highway 55, my rental Ford gliding across the low-slung spit over the mouth of an inlet of landlocked Newport Bay, dotted by sails, glistening with moonbeams, dancing with harbor lights. Seaside cottages clustered along the bay shore, but grander dwellings perched on islands in the lagoon-like bay, California-style Riviera-worthy stucco villas, a suitable backdrop for the fleet of yachts and other pleasure crafted moored here.

  My behind was moored in a booth in the Beachfront Cafe, a chrome-heavy diner with a row of windows looking out on the dock and the peaceful, soothing view of lights twinkling and pleasure crafts bobbing on the moon-washed water. I ate a cheeseburger and fries and sipped coffee as I kept watch; I had a perfect view of the sleek cruiser, the Mary E. A few lights were on in the boat, and occasional movement could be made out, but just vague shapes. No different than any number of other boats moored here, gently rocking.

  Overell had told me that he and his wife would be entertaining their daughter and her beau aboard the cruiser, having dinner, talking out their problems, perhaps even coming to some sort of understanding. What I had in mind was to follow the young lovers when they left this family powwow.

  Since Bud lived at home with his mom, I figured the couple would either go to some lover’s lane to park, or maybe hit a motel. Either way, my Speed Graphic would collect the evidence needed to nail Bud for statutory rape. It’s not elegant, but it’s a living.

  Around eleven I spotted them, coming down a ladder, stepping onto the swaying dock: Bud and Louise. Hazel-haired, taller than I’d imagined her, she did have an admirable top-heavy figure, which her short-sleeved pale blue sweater and darker blue pedal pushers showed off nicely. Bud wore a yellow sportshirt and brown slacks, and they held hands as they moved rather quickly away from the boat.

  I was preparing to leave the cafe and follow them up to the parking lot, and Bud’s car—Mrs. Overell had given me the make and color, and I’d already spotted it, a blue Pontiac convertible, pre-war, battered but serviceable—only, they threw me a curve in addition to Louise’s.

  The couple were heading up the ramp toward the cafe!

  Absurdly, I wondered if they’d made me—impossible, since they hadn’t seen me yet—and I hunkered over my coffee as the lovebirds took a couple of stools at the counter, just about opposite my window booth.

  At first they were laughing, at some private joke; it seemed rather forced—were they trying to attract attention?

  Then they both ordered burgers and fries and sat there talking, very quietly. Even a trained eavesdropper like me couldn’t pick up a word. Perhaps they’d had a rough evening with her folks, because periodically one would seem to be comforting the other, stroking an arm, patting a shoulder, reassuringly.

  What the hell was going on? Why did they need a burger, when presumably that luxury cruiser had a well-stocked larder? And if they wanted to get away from her parents and that boat, why hang around the dock? Why not climb in Bud’s convertible and seek a burger joint that wasn’t in her parents’ watery backyard?

  Such thoughts bobbed like a buoy in my trained snoop’s mind as the couple sat at the counter and nibbled at their food. It was a meal any respectable young couple could down in a matter of minutes. But forty-five minutes later, the two were still sitting on those stools, sometimes picking at barely eaten, very cold-by-now food, often staring soulfully into each other’s eyes. Every other stool at that counter had seen at least three customer backsides in the same span.

  I was long since used to boring stakeout duty; but it was unnerving having my subjects so near at hand, for so long a time. I finally got up and went to the men’s room, partly to test whether they’d use that opportunity to slip away (again, had they made me?), and partly because after three cups of coffee, I needed to take a piss.

  When I got back, Bud and Louise were still sitting on their stools, Louise ever so barely swivelling on hers, like a kid in a soda shop. Frustrated, confused, I settled back into my booth, and glanced out the window, and the world exploded.

  Actually, it was just the Mary E. that exploded, sending a fireball of flame rising from the cruiser, providing the clear night sky with thunder, hurling burning debris everywhere, making waves out of the placid waters, rocking the pier.

  Rocking the cafe patrons, too, most of them anyway. Everyone except the employees leapt to their feet, screaming, shouting, running outside into a night turned orange by flame, dabbed gray by smoke.

  Almost everyone—Bud and Louise were still just sitting at the counter, albeit looking out the window, numbly.

  Me, I was on my feet, but then I settled back into the booth, trying to absorb what I’d seen, what I was seeing. I knew my client was dead, and so was his wife—two people I’d spoken to at length, just the day before—as that cruiser was already a listing, smoking shambles, sinking stern first into the bay’s eighteen feet.

  Finally, the couple headed outside, to join the gathering crowd at the water’s edge. I followed them. Sirens were cutting the air, getting closer, closer.

  Louise was crying now, hysterical, going from one gaping spectator to another, saying, “My father was on that boat! My mother, too! Somebody save them—somebody rescue them…somebody has to rescue them!”

  The boy friend remained at the side of the stricken girl as she moved through the crowd, making her presence blatantly known, Bud’s boyish face painted with dismay and shock and reflected flames.

  I went to my rental car and got my Speed Graphic. I wouldn’t even need the flash—plenty of light.

  Snagging shots of the dying boat, and the distraught daughter and her beau, I heard the speculation among the boating-wise onlookers, as to the explosion’s cause.

  “Butane,” one would say.

  “Or gasoline,” another would say.

  But this ex-Marine wasn’t so easily fooled.

  Butane, hell—I smelled dynamite.

  Before long, the Coast Guard arrived, and fire trucks, and police from nearby Santa Ana and Orange County Sheriff’s Department personnel. The Chief of the Newport Beach Police showed, took over the investigation, questioned the tearful, apparently anguished Louise Overell and promptly released her, and her boy friend.
/>   Pushing through the bustle, I introduced myself to the chief, whose name was Hodgkinson, and told him I was an investigator who’d been doing a job for Walter Overell.

  “A job related to what happened here tonight?” the heavyset chief asked, frowning.

  “Very possibly.”

  “You suspect foul play?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Where are you staying, Mr. Heller?”

  “The Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  That impressed him—he didn’t realize it was a perk of my security work for the hotel. “Well, obviously, Mr. Heller, I’m gonna be tied up here quite a while. Can you come by the station tomorrow sometime? Tomorrow’s Sunday—make it Monday. And if I’m not there, I may be back out here.”

  “Sure. Why did you let those two kids go?”

  “Are you kiddin’? We’ll be dredging her parents’ scorched corpses outa the drink before too long. It’s only decent to spare that girl the sight of that.”

  Only decent.

  Sunday I took my wife to the beach at Santa Monica—she was only a few months pregnant and still looked great in a swim suit. Peggy was an actress and recently had a small role in a Bob Hope picture, and even out here her Deanna Durbin-ish good looks attracted attention.

  She ragged me, a little, because I seemed preoccupied, and wasn’t terribly good company. But that was because I was thinking about the Overell “Yacht Murder” (as the papers had already starting calling it). I had sold my crime scene photos to Jim Richardson, at the Examiner, by the way, for three hundred bucks. I was coming out way ahead of the game, considering my client and his wife had been blown to smithereens the night before.

  Call it guilt, call it conscience, call it sheer professionalism, but I knew I hadn’t finished this job. Walter Overell deserved more for that two-hundred buck retainer—just like he’d deserved better from that shrewd sexed-up daughter of his.

  So on Monday, bright and early, looking like a tourist in sportshirt and chinos, I began looking. What was I looking for? A slip of paper…a slip of paper in the desert…sounds worse than a needle in a haystack, but it wasn’t. I found the damn thing before noon.

  Chatsworth was a mountain-ringed hamlet in the West San Fernando Valley that used a Wild West motif to attract tourists, offering them horseback riding and hiking trails, with the ocean and beaches and desert close at hand for lovers of the outdoors—like that Boy Scout Bud Gollum and his bosomy Campfire Girl.

  The guy behind the counter in the sparse storefront at the Trojan Powder Company looked a little like Gabby Hayes—white-bearded, prospector-grizzled, in a plaid shirt and bib overalls. But he had his original teeth and a faint British accent, which took him out of the running for playing a Roy Rogers or Gene Autry sidekick.

  This was the owner of the place, and he was looking at the photo I’d handed him, taking a closer look than he had at the Illinois P.I. badge I’d flashed him.

  “That young woman will never drown,” he said, with a faintly salacious smile.

  “I’m not so much interested whether you recognize her tits as if her face is familiar—or her boyfriend’s.”

  “I recognize the whole batch of them—both faces, both bosoms, for that matter. The girl didn’t come in, though—she sat out in their convertible—a Pontiac, I believe. I could see her right through the front window.”

  “Did he make a purchase?”

  “I should say—fifty sticks of dynamite.”

  Jesus, that was a lot of dinah.

  “This is fresh in my memory,” the proprietor said, “because it was just last Friday.”

  Day before the boat blew up.

  “Can anybody stroll in here and buy that stuff?”

  “It’s a free country—but back in the early days of the war, when folks were afraid of saboteurs, city and county officials passed an ordinance, requiring purchasers to sign for what they buy.”

  I liked the sound of that. “Can I see the signed receipt?”

  Bud had not signed his own name—“R.L. Standish” had purchased the fifty sticks of dynamite—but I had no doubt handwriting experts would confirm this as the Boy Scout’s scrawl.

  “Some officers from Newport Beach will be along to talk to you,” I told him.

  “Fine—what about reporters?”

  “Good idea,” I said, and used the phone.

  Examiner editor Richardson paid me another C-note for the tip, and the proprietor of the Trojan Powder Company earned his own fifty bucks of Mr. Hearst’s money for providing the exclusive.

  I found Chief Hodgkinson at the Newport Beach dock, where the grim, charred wreckage had been surfaced from the depth of eighteen feet—about all that remained was the black blistered hull. The sun was high and golden on the waters, and the idyllic setting of stucco villas in the background and expensive pleasure craft on either side was turned bizarre by the presence of the scorched husk of the Mary E.

  Seated in the Beachfront Cafe across from the blue-uniformed, heavyset chief, in the same booth I’d occupied Saturday night, I filled him in on what I’d discovered up Chatsworth way. He excused himself to pass the information along to a couple of D.A.’s investigators who would make the trip to the Trojan Powder Company.

  When the chief returned, bearing a plate with a piece of pecan pie with whipped cream, he sat and ate and shared some information.

  “Pretty clear your instincts were right about those kids,” he said gruffly but good-naturedly. “It’s just hard to believe—patricide and matricide. Only in California.”

  “The late Walter Overell was supposedly worth around a million. And, like I told you, he was threatening to cut his daughter off, if she married her four-eyed romeo.”

  “What made you think to go looking for that sales receipt, Mr. Heller?”

  “I knew they’d gone ‘picnicking’ in the San Fernando Valley, and a college pal of Bud’s said the loving couple liked to hike up around Chatsworth. Plus, I knew if Bud had been a Radio Man 1st Class in the war, he had the technical knowhow to rig a bomb. Hell, Chief, Saturday night, you could smell the dynamite in the air—and the murder.”

  He nodded his agreement. “It’s as cold-blooded a crime as I’ve ever come across. We found thirty-one sticks of unexploded dynamite in the galley, crude time bomb thing, rigged with wire and tape to an alarm clock—second of two charges. Bulkhead kept the larger one from goin’ off. Which was lucky.”

  “Not for the Overells.”

  “No, the smaller bundle of dynamite was enough to kill ’em plenty dead,” he said, chewing a bite of pecan pie. “But it wasn’t enough to cover up the rest of the evidence.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as what the coroner discovered in his autopsies—before the explosion, both Mom and Dad had been beaten to death with a ball-peen hammer we found aboard the ship…. That there was no water in their lungs backs that theory up.”

  “Jesus—that is cold.”

  A young uniformed officer was approaching; he had a wide-eyed, poleaxed expression.

  “Chief,” the young cop said, leaning in, “somebody’s here and wants to talk to you—and you won’t believe who it is.”

  Within a minute, a somber yet bright-eyed Louise Overell—in a short-sleeved, cream-colored, well-filled sweater and snug-fitting blue jeans—was standing with her hands fig-leafed before her.

  “Hello, Chief Hodgkinson,” she said, cheerfully. “How are you today?”

  “Why, I’m just fine,” he said.

  “I’m doing better…thanks,” the blue-eyed teenager said, answering a question Hodgkinson hadn’t asked. “The reason I’m here is, I wanted to ask about the car.”

  “The car?”

  “My parents’ car. I know it was left here in the lot, and I thought maybe I could drive it back up to Flintridge…I’ve been staying up there, since…the tragedy.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, getting out, and I flashed the chief a look that I hoped he would understand as meaning he should stall the gir
l.

  “Well,” the chief was saying, “I’m not sure. I think perhaps we need to talk to the District Attorney, and make sure the vehicle isn’t going to be impounded for…”

  And I was gone, heading for the parking lot.

  Wherever Louise went, so surely too went Bud—particularly since another driver would be needed to transport the family sedan back to the Flintridge estate.

  Among the cars in the gravelled lot were my own rental job, several police cars, Bud’s Pontiac convertible, and a midnight blue ‘47 Caddy that I just knew had to have been Walter Overell’s.

  This opinion was formed, in part, by the fact that Bud Gollum—in a red sportshirt and denim slacks—was trying to get into the car. I approached casually—the boy had something in his left hand, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a weapon.

  Then I saw: a roll of electrical tape, and spool of wire. What the hell was he up to?

  Then it came to me: while little Louise was keeping the chief busy, Bud was attempting to plant the tape and wire…which would no doubt match up with what had been used on the makeshift time bomb…in Overell’s car. When the chief turned the vehicle over to Louise, the “evidence” would be discovered.

  But the Caddy was locked, and apparently Louise hadn’t been able to provide a key, because Bud was grunting in frustration as he tried every door.

  I just stood there, hands on my hips, rocking on my heels on the gravel. “Is that your plan, Bud? To try to make this look like suicide-murder, planned by ol’ Walter?”

  Bud whirled, the eyes wild in the boyish face. “What…who…?”

  “It won’t play, kid. The dynamite didn’t do its job—the fractured skulls turned up in the autopsy. You’re about two seconds away from being arrested.”

  That was when he hurled the tape and the wire at me, and took off running, toward his parked convertible. I batted the stuff away, and ran after him, throwing a tackle that took us both roughly down onto the gravel.