True Crime

by Max Allan Collins

  “You bastard—”

  “My parents were married, lady. I don’t know which side of the sheets you come from, and I don’t care. I do know why you came here, more or less…you’re trying to make yourself look ‘innocent’ in my eyes, so that when I tell my story to the cops and/or the papers you won’t look like Judas in a dress.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  I stood. “Wrong again. My mother was kind and good. Like Jimmy Lawrence. Now, get the hell out of here.”

  She stood. “You fucker!”

  “You finally got one right. But not tonight, and not with you. Get out.”

  Steaming, she turned to go and I followed her, to let her out. Just as we were approaching the door, a shape loomed behind the frosted glass and a loud knock accompanied it. I pushed her into the bathroom, at our immediate right, and raised a finger to my lips in a “shush” gesture, and she looked at me startled and scared, and I shut her in there.

  Then I went to my desk, got my gun out and walked carefully to the door. Stood sideways against a wood portion of the wood-and-glass wall next to it. I didn’t know if my shape would show through the frosted glass, but I couldn’t see taking the chance.

  Then somebody said, harshly, “Open up, Heller, or we’ll bust it down.”

  I thought I recognized the male, gravelly, mid-pitched voice; I hoped I was wrong.

  “Then don’t open it! Give me an excuse to kick it in!”

  I wasn’t wrong.

  I went back to the desk and put the gun away and glanced at the bathroom door and thought, Oh, boy, as I unlocked and opened my office door and a short stocky man with dark-rimmed glasses and white hair was standing there, fanning himself with his hat. That was the only sign the heat was getting to him, however: he wore a suit and tie and looked comfortable, not a bead of sweat on him. A heavy-set, taller man, also in a suit, sweating like sin, stood behind him in the hall against the wall, like a man in a line-up.

  The stocky little man pushed by me and shut the door behind him, leaving his backup out in the hall.

  “Make yourself at home, Captain Stege,” I said.

  21

  Stege went over and sat in the chair, which was probably still warm from Polly Hamilton. I didn’t turn on the overhead light; the desk lamp would be plenty. Stege found me distasteful enough to prefer the dark and, what the hell, looking at him did nothing for me, either.

  He sniffed the air. Glanced at the smoldering lipstick-ringed cigarette butt in the ashtray. “Been entertaining a woman up here, Heller? I smell perfume amidst the tobacco fumes—and of course you don’t smoke.”

  “I also don’t wear lipstick, but I’m flattered you know so much about me, Captain.”

  He grunted. “Don’t be. It’s my business to know the enemy.”

  “I’m not the enemy, Captain.”

  He looked around the office. “Is that—”

  “A Murphy bed? Yes.”

  He nodded. “You work and live here. Business must not be good.”

  “My business isn’t any of yours.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “You’re here by my good leave, Captain. I didn’t see a warrant.”

  He held out two small but powerful-looking hands, palms up; his fingers looked like thick sausages. “Am I searching the place?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And I won’t. This is a…friendly visit.” He almost choked on the word “friendly.”

  “Your opinion of me is all wet, Captain. You think I’m a dirty cop, and—”

  He pointed one of the thick sausages at me, blinked at me like a bird behind his round dark-rimmed glasses lenses. “I think you’re an ex-dirty cop. Let’s not get careless with our facts.”

  I sighed. I should’ve felt nervous, what with Polly Hamilton in the bathroom across the room; but mostly I was annoyed—and weary. I still ached—and not just from the recent physical beating. There was a man who had died tonight and I’d been part of it. And I’d tipped to what was going on and still hadn’t been able to stop it.

  And now here was pious Capt. John Stege, a Chicago cop so honest he made Eliot Ness look like Long John Silver. I needed this dose of conscience like Jimmy Lawrence needed a hole in the head.

  “You know something, Captain…you pretend to hate me because I used to be a dirty cop. But that isn’t the real reason. The real reason is I exposed some dirty cops, and embarrassed you and yours.”

  “Don’t be impertinent, or I’ll—”

  “It’s just you and me in here, Stege. Maybe you ought to watch your mouth.”

  He thought about that. Then said, “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. I’m just prepared to tell you to go to hell anytime I feel like it. Understood?”

  CAPTAIN STEGE – WITH AL CAPONE

  He took in a deep breath and something like a smile crossed his thin, tight mouth. I had the damnedest feeling he respected what I’d just said. Whatever the case, he said, “Understood,” and took a folded sheet of paper out of his suit pocket and unfolded it and spread it out on the desk before me.

  It was a Division of Investigation wanted poster for John H. Dillinger.

  “Thought you might like this souvenir,” Stege said. “I’ll be cleaning out my desk, you know.”

  I nodded. “Not much for the Dillinger Squad to do with Dillinger dead.”

  “What were you doing there, Heller?”

  He meant the Biograph, of course. I didn’t pretend I didn’t know that.

  I said, “Trying to stop it.”

  “What?”

  I wished I hadn’t said it.

  But I had, so I needed to elaborate. “It was a setup, designed to let the East Chicago cops execute their man without interference. I knew it, and tried to convince Cowley. I tried to convince Purvis, too. Actually, I think I convinced ’em both, but they weren’t able to stop it. If indeed they wanted to.”

  “Damn!” Stege said, and slammed a hard tiny fist on my desk top. The ashtray jumped. And unless I missed my bet, so did Polly Hamilton in the toilet.

  “Sorry, Captain—that’s the way I see it.”

  He waved me off. Stood and paced. Then he came over and leaned one hand against the desk and gestured with the other.

  “They came to my office, beginning of last week. Zarkovich and his captain. What’s his name?”

  “O’Neill,” I said.

  “O’Neill,” Stege repeated, like he was uttering an oath. “You know what the sons of bitches said?”

  “No.”

  “They told me they knew where Dillinger was. He was in Chicago, hiding out, and they could lead me to him. But there was one condition—one small proviso…we had to kill him.”

  He drew in a breath and looked at me, his eyes popping a little, a vein by one eye pulsing. Silence filled the room; a very loud silence.

  Then he said, “We, the Chicago Police Department’s Dillinger Squad, were to promise that we would ambush our man, execute him. Or no information from our brother officers from East Chicago would be forthcoming.” And under his breath: “Bastards.”

  “And you threw ’em out on their butts.”

  He nodded slowly. “I told ’em I’d give even John Dillinger a chance to surrender.”

  “Over these last six months or so, you’ve said the opposite to the press.”

  He sat back down. “Not really. I picked the best marksmen on the force for our squad, simply because these outlaws are trigger-happy. Fight fire with fire.”

  “You said you wanted to either drive the Dillinger gang out of the state or bury ’em. And you said you preferred the latter.”

  Oddly, he seemed almost embarrassed. “Hyperbole.”

  “Captain, you should be a happy man. John Dillinger is dead. Your quarry’s been bagged…even if you didn’t bag him yourself.”

  He took a cigar out of his inside pocket, bit off the end, lit it up. “Your sarcasm isn’t lost on me, Heller. If you’re saying I’m jealous of th
e federal boys landing my man, you’re as full of crap as a Christmas goose. I don’t care who gets these lice, just so long as they get got.”

  “Then why aren’t you a happy man?”

  He put the cigar in the ashtray without puffing it past getting it going. With a bleak expression, he said, “Police executions make me sick.”

  “The guy on the receiving end doesn’t feel any too well, either.”

  He ignored that. What he said next seemed more for his own benefit than mine. “I try to be a good cop in a town where it isn’t easy being one. There’s few towns more political, and there’s no town as under the influence of gangsters. But I still take pride in my work, in my town, because once in a while we succeed. We fly in the face of what people expect from us. But when cops shoot fugitives in cold damn blood, without even a nod toward capture, well it makes me sick, Heller. It makes me wonder what the hell country I’m living in; we’re no better than Hitler’s bully boys, are we.”

  “It wasn’t Chicago cops who killed the man at the Biograph.”

  “No, it was federal men, I know that.”

  “I told you before it wasn’t federal men.”

  “Oh?”

  “Take a wild stab at what two individuals fired the killing shots.”

  “Zarkovich and O’Neill did it themselves?”

  “Bingo, Captain. I’d give you a cigar but you already got one.”

  “Damn. They were in with him, you know.”

  “What?”

  “That whole East Chicago crowd. Cops and politicians and judges. In with Dillinger. That’s what this is all about, really about. They wanted to silence him before he could spill the beans where Indiana corruption’s concerned. It all goes back to Crown Point.”

  “The jail, you mean? Dillinger’s wooden-gun crash-out?”

  Stege smiled his thin little smile again. “That was no wooden gun. Somebody smuggled it in to him. Somebody on the inside.”

  “Who?”

  “My sources say Zarkovich and a certain judge engineered it. I can’t prove it. Did you know that not long ago two East Chicago cops, two honest East Chicago cops, were investigating that very case, and during the course of it turned up dead alongside the road in their car? Fifteen minutes from their station house? With their guns tucked inside their coats? Never even went for ’em.”

  “Cops killed by cops,” I said.

  “So it would seem. What a world.”

  I shook my head.

  Stege wasn’t saying anything; he was, in fact, eyeing me suspiciously.

  Slowly, he said, “You were part of it, weren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was money to be made in this. Graft money; mob money. Were you in bed with the East Chicago cops?”

  “Please. Not on an empty stomach.”

  Stege’s face was impassive, but his voice had an edge in it. “I know you, Heller. You were always for sale. You were always in it for yourself. You’re smooth in your way. You have a crude sort of wit. You almost fooled me. But I’m a cop with a cop’s instinct. And I think you and Zarkovich and O’Neill are bound up in this together. It doesn’t take me giving you the third degree to find that out.”

  “You don’t have to give me the third degree at all. Zarkovich and O’Neill beat you to it.”

  Stege laughed humorlessly. “Of course they did.”

  “Not personally. They sent two of their strong-arms, and they fed me the goldfish.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was trying to stop this from going down! And you can see how successful at it I was.”

  Stege sighed coldly. “I don’t believe you. But I intend to investigate this matter thoroughly, and if I can nail those East Chicago cops to the wall, I will, so help me God.”

  “Expose crooked cops, Captain? That’ll make the police look bad in the public’s eye. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  He stood. “Your irony is heavy-handed, Heller. I’m unimpressed.”

  I stood. “Did you ever see Sally Rand dance, Captain?”

  “What? Uh, well…yes.”

  “Were you impressed?” I was unbuttoning my shirt.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I took the shirt off and shined the lamp on me.

  Stege said, “My God…they did feed you the goldfish.”

  “Yes they did.”

  He sat back down. So did I, after I put my shirt on.

  I told him most of it—with the exception of meeting Nitti face-to-face; I kept my thoughts about the Outfit’s connections to Dillinger on a theoretical level. And, for the moment, I left out my notion that the dead man might not be Dillinger; one step at a time, after all.

  He took out a small pad and wrote down the names Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton; he’d heard about two women being with Dillinger at the theater, but the feds had refused to give the names even to the Chicago cops.

  I told him how I’d been chosen for my role at least partially because I would take my information to the feds, rather than the cops, since I was on the outs with the local P.D.—particularly the head of their Dillinger Squad, one Capt. John Stege.

  “So even I played an unwitting role in this farce,” Stege said.

  “Just some more heavy-handed irony,” I said, “only I can’t claim it as mine.”

  He stood slowly; he seemed beaten down.

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think the dead man is Dillinger.”

  Stege gave me a look like I was a candidate for the loony bin. “Don’t be ridiculous—one of my men has already been to the morgue and shook hands with the corpse. It’s Dillinger all right.”

  “It doesn’t look like Dillinger.”

  “Plastic surgery,” Stege said, repeating the by-now-familiar litany.

  “This whole elaborate setup might’ve been staged to put a patsy in Dillinger’s place, and let the real Dillinger ride off into the sunset.”

  “Poppycock.”

  “Well, if you feel that strongly about it, Captain…”

  “No,” Stege said, shaking his head solemnly, “John Dillinger’s dead. No getting around that. But I aim to find out who put him on the spot…and that includes those crooked East Chicago bastards and Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton.”

  “Be my guest.”

  He walked toward the door and I followed him. We stopped by the door to the bathroom.

  “Is this the commode?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I use it?”

  “It’s out of order. Best I can do is a chamber pot.”

  “Ah, never mind. It’ll keep. Thanks for the information, Heller. Thanks for the names of the two women. Very helpful. We’ll want to talk to them as soon as possible.”

  “Right.”

  I opened the door for him and, as an afterthought, he turned and offered me his hand. Surprised, I shook it.

  Then he walked like a little general down the hall with the burly plainclothes man in attendance. Off to do battle with the East Chicago police; and to find a bathroom.

  I closed and locked the door. Opened the bathroom door and Polly Hamilton, fists on her hips, was burning at me.

  “You gave him my name!”

  “Did you think it was going to be a secret? The dead man had your picture in his watch, you know.”

  “I—I forgot he had that picture…”

  “Well, you were at the scene when he was killed. Lots of people saw you. Come on out of that bathroom, Polly.”

  She did. She looked forlorn. But pretty.

  “I can’t go home. They’ll be waiting.”

  “Face the music, or better, go see the feds. They’ll probably shield you.”

  She looked up and her eyes did a little dance, like maybe she was remembering something Anna Sage told her along the same lines.

  Then she got angry with me, or mock-angry. There was some coquettishness in it.

&
nbsp; “Why did you tell him all that?” she wanted to know.

  “He’s a cop and he asked me.”

  “Oh, you’re such a shit.”

  “I thought you had special memories of our night together?”

  That made her smile; I still liked her smile.

  “I need a place to stay,” she said. “No one would think of looking for me here…”

  I was tempted. I admit I was tempted.

  But I said, “Try the YWCA,” and pushed her out the door. Hoping Stege was long gone by now.

  Before I shut the door she stuck her tongue out at me, and said, “Fuck you.” A strange combination of childishness and adultness. Or is that adultery?

  Then I went back to the desk and sat. Looked at the federal wanted poster for Dillinger spread out there, where Stege had left it. His irony was a little heavy-handed, too. Looked at my watch. It was after one.

  I called her anyway.

  “Helen,” I said into the phone. “Did I wake you? Is that offer for me coming over tonight still open?”

  “Yes,” Sally said.

  22

  The next afternoon, around three, I was sitting in my shirt sleeves having a bagel and a glass of cold milk in the deli-restaurant below my office. Milk was almost never my drink of choice, but coffee was out of the question—the day was steaming hot, so who the hell needed coffee?

  I hadn’t been upstairs yet, having just got back from Sally’s. She’d been good to me last night—we didn’t talk at all; in fact, we didn’t do anything except sleep together—just sleep. And it was exactly what I needed.

  What I didn’t need this afternoon was a reporter, but suddenly that’s exactly what I had: Hal Davis, of the Daily News, a little guy with a big head—by which I don’t mean he was conceited: he had a big head, literally, a size too big for his smallish frame. He stood grinning in front of me in shirt sleeves and bow tie and gray hat. He was one of those guys who would always seem to be about twenty-two years old. He was easily forty.

  “I been looking for you,” he said.

  “Sit down, Davis, you’re making me nervous.”

  He sat. “You’re a hard man to find.”

  “You seem to’ve found me.”