"I'd rather be fishing," he muttered, looking up from a stack of paperwork and pulling a cigarette out of the pack. "I s'pose you want coffee?"
"Good guess," I said as he reached for the intercom to signal Elsie. But she was already coming through the doorway with a steaming cup of java.
"You pamper me," I told her with a grin. "Don't ever stop."
"You say the sweetest things to a girl," she purred, turning on her heel and leaving, closing the door behind her.
"One in a million," I observed. "The other gal you had here taking her place seemed okay, and she made decent-enough coffee. But you've got to be glad to have Elsie back again."
"Yeah, I am, but call me a traditionalist, Snap. A mother really ought to be home with her little one," Fahey said with a sigh. "Her sister over on
Ashland Boulevard is watching the little guy during the day now." "Is the money tight at home?"
Fahey took a drag on his Lucky and shrugged. "Seems that her husband does okay working in the purchasing department at that railroad, the Rock Island Line. But they're saving up to buy a house in the suburbs. There's a neighborhood they like out in Elmhurst, I think it is. They need Elsie's extra income for a down payment, so I figure she'll be here another year or so."
"At least the kid's in good hands with an aunt," I said. "It's not like Elsie's leaving him with some stranger."
"True enough," the chief replied without enthusiasm. "How's things on the home front for you?"
"No complaints. Catherine's still working at the Oak Park Library, which she loves. And Peter's going to graduate down in Champaign in the spring. Still lives with his mother and her husband over on Lake Shore Drive, but I figure he'll get himself a place in the city after graduation–as well as a job with an architectural firm. Enough on family life. What's percolating in your department, Fergus?"
He snorted. "Big worry all over the department right now is Truman's visit to town next week. Never fun when a President comes around."
"Hmm? You expecting trouble?"
Fahey ground out his cigarette. "Presidents make me nervous. There's a lot of nut cases out there. Remember FDR down in Miami back in '33?"
"Lot of folks think Cermak really was the target, not Roosevelt," I said, referring to Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who was shot dead by an assassin while sitting on a dais next to the President-elect.
"Maybe. I'd still rather that Harry stayed out of town."
"Well, Fergus, it's the home stretch of a tough campaign, and our President is not about to pass up a chance to show his smiling mug in the second-largest city of this great land. There's votes to be had, and 'Give 'em Hell Harry' wants–and needs–those votes."
"Shit, he figures to win Illinois anyway," Fahey said, torching another Lucky. "Why not have him stump in some of the states where he's running behind in the polls?"
"Beats me, Fergus. But I still think you're worrying over nothing. Nobody's going to take a potshot at him. Not with all the security both the Feds and your own force are going to be providing."
"I suppose you're right," the chief of detectives answered, but his voice seemed to lack conviction.
Also Available
THREE STRIKES YOU'RE DEAD
A Snap Malek Mystery
Book One
SHADOW OF THE BOMB
A Snap Malek Mystery
Book Two
Robert Goldsborough
Interviews
Max Allan Collins
If Max Allan Collins is not the most productive writer in the mystery and suspense field, I would be hard-pressed to find another nominee. He has written more than eighty novels, many of them components of seven different series. His works include his fourteen highly acclaimed Nate Heller books, the CSI series, and the New York Times bestseller "Saving Private Ryan."
In addition, he has been a scripter of the "Dick Tracy" comic strip, and his graphic novel "Road to Perdition" was the source of the film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Stanley Tucci. He also is a screenwriter and independent filmmaker. He has won the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award (twice) and the Bouchercon Anthony Award, and has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award in both fiction and non-fiction categories.
Max has long been an inspiration to me, among other reasons because of his ability to brilliantly blend real and fictional characters in his novels, many set against the backdrop of actual events, including the Lindbergh kidnapping, Amelia Earhart's doomed final flight, and Huey Long's assassination.
I recently asked Max to share some of his thoughts about mixing fact and fiction in mystery/suspense writing. Following is our conversation.
–Robert Goldsborough
Goldsborough: In so many of your novels, you have mixed historical figures with your fictional ones. Are there historical figures–or types–who are especially attractive to you as subjects?
Collins: I'm particularly interested in exploring figures in 20th century history who have fed the popular culture–Eliot Ness, Al Capone, Wyatt Earp. To me, it's fascinating to see the reality behind the myth. I'm not myth-busting, though. The three I mentioned led lives fully worthy of generating myths. And always the truth about such figures is more interesting than the Hollywood versions.
Along those same lines, I've tried to examine the private eye myth in its historical context. The hardboiled/noir private eye became a part of the popular culture when Hammett and Chandler defined the character as a genre hero in the '20s, '30s, and '40s. I wanted to dig into the convention and even the clichés of the P.I. in a historical context. Usually in the Nate Heller novels, Heller stands in for the real investigator, often a private eye or insurance investigator. That way, he doesn't feel shoehorned in.
Goldsborough: In several books, you have used famous events as your centerpiece. Do you go to the places where these events occurred? And if you do, do you find the visit gives you a better understanding of the historical event(s)?
Collins: With my primary research associate, George Hagenauer, I've visited virtually all of the Chicago locations in the Nate Heller memoirs. We did a big walking tour of the Loop in '81, and much of what we saw then is gone now. Sometimes time or money makes it impossible for me to visit a location, so I turn to others. I had a friend who was teaching on Saipan take photos and do research there for "Flying Blind," the Amelia Earhart novel. But I did to go Nassau for "Carnal Hours" and to Hawaii for "Damned in Paradise." Seeing the actual place is helpful–it's like location scouting for a film. It's not until you see how tiny the pillars are at the Baton Rouge Capitol–which Long's assassin supposedly hid behind, lying in wait, a physical impossibility–that certain questions start popping into your brain.
Goldsborough: Any anecdotes about those visits?
Collins: Probably the most memorable was sitting around the pool at the Flamingo in Vegas with a retired pit boss who had worked the opening weekend of the casino/hotel. He dispelled the story that the opening was a flop–it wasn't, it was huge–but Ben "Bugsy" Siegel hadn't finished enough hotel rooms, meaning his customers stayed at other hotels and did much of their gambling off-site. He also pointed out several rose bushes under which he claimed certain disloyal employees had gone to rest.
Another prime anecdote had to do with a Cleveland trip George Hagenauer made without me. We did numerous Cleveland visits researching Eliot Ness. George was checking out Kingsbury Run, the nasty gully where the Mad Butcher did his thing, and got chased by a pack of wild dogs for his trouble.
Goldsborough: As a result of writing about real people, have you ever gotten any reaction from their descendants?
Collins: I've had very positive contact with friends and relatives of Sally Rand and Barney Ross, both recurring characters in the Heller novels. Film director William Friedkin, who liked "True Detective," was a nephew or something of one of the crooked cops in that book. The most trouble I've had came from Amelia Earhart fans who were furious that I depicted her as bisexual. I do the research an
d calls 'em as I sees 'em.
Goldsborough: Do you have any general advice for mystery writers who want to mix fact and fiction in their work?
Collins: The biggest temptation is to put in every scrap of research. You remember the long hours you put in, plus you get fascinated with the subject in a way that doesn't always jibe with the novelist's mission to entertain. The research that shows in the book is the tip of the iceberg that (a) allows the reader to extrapolate the rest of the iceberg, and (b) provides solid if off-stage underpinning that makes the writer confident that the time and place are being shared with the reader.
MEET THE AUTHOR
In his early teens, Robert Goldsborough complained to his mother one summer day that he had "nothing to do." An avid reader of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries, she gave him a magazine serialization, and he became hooked on the adventures of the corpulent Nero and his irreverent sidekick, Archie Goodwin.
Through his school years and beyond, Goldsborough devoured virtually all of the 70-plus Wolfe mysteries. It was during his tenure as writer and editor with the Chicago Tribune that the paper printed the obituary of Rex Stout. On reading it, his mother lamented that "Now there won't be any more Nero Wolfe stories."
"There might be one more," Goldsborough mused, and began writing an original Wolfe novel for his mother as a 1978 Christmas present. This story, Murder in E Minor, remained a bound typescript for years, but in the mid-'80s, Goldsborough received permission from the Stout estate to publish it. Murder in E Minor first appeared as a Bantam hardcover, then in paperback, and six more Nero Wolfe novels eventually followed–all to favorable reviews.
As much as he enjoyed writing those mysteries, Robert Goldsborough longed to create his own characters. Thus, so far we have Three Strikes You're Dead, set in the gang-ridden Chicago of the late 1930s; Shadow of the Bomb, set in the early years of America's participation in World War II as scientists worked to secretly develop the atomic bomb on the University of Chicago campus, and A Death in Pilsen, set during the postwar mid-1940s in an old southside Chicago neighborhood–each book in the series narrated by Tribune police reporter Steve Malek.
Goldsborough, a lifelong Chicagoan who logged twenty-one years with the Tribune and twenty-three years with the trade journal Advertising Age, says it was "Probably inevitable that I would end up using a newspaperman as my protagonist."
A Death in Pilsen (A Snap Malek Mystery) Page 18