A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  He looked like he wished I had, too.

  “All this over a bunch of bums,” he marveled. “All the crime in this town, and they get hard-ons over winos!”

  I didn’t remind him that his own drunken bragging had landed him here. But I hope it occurred to him later.

  I was surrounded by reporters when I left the police station. They looked at me like my client had taken bites out of their children.

  “Mr. Kelly is a very young person who regrets what alcohol made him say one evening. He bears no one any ill will, least of all the dead men, whom he never even met.” I repeated some variation of this over and over as I battled my way to my car.

  Meanwhile, their questions shed harsh light on my client’s bragfest at the Club.

  “Is it true he boasted about kicking homeless men and women?” “Is it true he said if homeless women didn’t smell so bad, at least they’d be usable?” “Did he say three bottles of Perrier is enough, but four’s more certain?” “Does he admit saying he was going to keep doing it till he ran out of Perrier?” “Is it true he once set a homeless man on fire?”

  Some of the questions were just questions: “Why Perrier?” “Is it a statement?” “Why did he buy it in bulk?” “Is this his first arrest?” “Does he have a sealed juvenile record?”

  I could understand why police had jumped at the chance to make an arrest. Reporters must have been driving them crazy.

  After flustering me and making me feel like a laryngitic parrot, they finally let me through. I locked myself into my car and drove gratefully away. Traffic was good. It only took me half an hour to get back to the office.

  I found the paramedic with the Geo parked in front. He jumped out of his car. “I just saw you on TV.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “Well, I semi-volunteered, for the company newsletter. I mean, we picked up those guys a few times. It’d be good to put something into an article.” He looked like one of those black-and-white sitcom kids. Opie or Timmy or someone. “I didn’t quite believe you, before, about the malpractice. I’m sorry I was rude.”

  “You weren’t rude.”

  “I just wasn’t sure you weren’t after us. Everybody’s always checking up on everything we do. The nurses, the docs, our supervisors, other medics. Every patient care report gets looked at by four people. Our radio calls get monitored. Everybody jumps in our shit for every little thing.”

  I didn’t have time to be Studs Terkel. “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss my case with you.”

  “But I heard you say on TV your guy’s innocent. You’re going to get him off, right?” He gazed at me with a confidence I couldn’t understand.

  “Is that what you came here to ask?”

  “It’s just we knew those guys. I thought for the newsletter, if I wrote something . . .” He flushed. “Do you need information? You know, general stuff from a medical point of view?”

  I couldn’t figure him out. Why this need to keep talking to me about it? It was his day off; didn’t he have a life?

  But I had been wondering: “Why exactly do you carry those tourniquets? What do you do with them?”

  He looked surprised. “We tie them around the arm to make a vein pop up. So we can start an intravenous line.”

  I glanced up at my office window, checking whether Jan had left. It was late, there were no more workers spilling out of buildings. A few derelicts lounged in doorways. I wondered if they felt safer tonight because someone had been arrested. With so many dangers on the street, I doubted it.

  “Why would a tourniquet be in the bushes where the last man was picked up?” I hugged my briefcase. “I assumed a medic dropped it, but you wouldn’t start an intravenous line on a dead person, would you?”

  “We don’t do field pronouncements—pronounce them dead, I mean—in hypothermia cases. We leave that to the doc.” He looked proud of himself, like he’d passed the pop quiz. “They’re not dead till they’re warm and dead.”

  “But why start an IV in this situation?”

  “Get meds into them. If the protocols say to, we’ll run a line even if we think they’re deader than Elvis.” He shrugged. “They warm up faster, too.”

  “What warms them up? What do you drip into them?”

  “Epinephrine, atropine, normal saline. We put the saline bag on the dash to heat it as we drive—if we know we have a hypothermic patient.”

  “You have water in the units?”

  “Of course.”

  “Special water?”

  “Saline and distilled.”

  “Do you know a medic named Ben?”

  He hesitated before nodding.

  “Do you think he has a bad attitude about the homeless?”

  “No more than you would,” he protested. “We’re the ones who have to smell them, have to handle them when they’ve been marinating in feces and urine and vomit. Plus they get combative at a certain stage. You do this disgusting waltz with them where they’re trying to beat on you. And the smell is like, whoa. Plus if they scratch you, you can’t help but be paranoid what they might infect you with.”

  “Ben said they cost your company money.”

  “They cost you and me money.”

  The look on his face scared me. Money’s a big deal when you don’t make enough of it.

  I started past him.

  He grabbed my arm. “Everything’s breaking down.” His tone was plaintive. “You realize that? Our whole society’s breaking down. Everybody sees it—the homeless, the gangs, the diseases—but they don’t have to deal with the physical results. They don’t have to put their hands right on it, get all bloody and dirty with it, get infected by it.”

  “Let go!” I imagined being helpless and disoriented, a drunk at the mercy of a fed-up medic.

  “And we don’t get any credit”—he sounded angry now—“we just get checked up on.” He gripped my arm tighter. Again I searched my office window, hoping Jan was still working, that I wasn’t alone. But the office was dark.

  A voice behind me said. “What you doin’ to the lady, man?”

  I turned to see a stubble-chinned black man in layers of rancid clothes. He’d stepped out of a recessed doorway. Even from here, I could smell alcohol.

  “You let that lady go. You hear me?” He moved closer.

  The medic’s grip loosened.

  The man might be drunk, but he was big. And he didn’t look like he was kidding.

  I jerked my arm free, backing toward him.

  He said. “You’re Jan’s boss, aren’t ya?”

  “Yes.” For the thousandth time, I thanked God for Jan. This must be one of the men she’d mother-henned this morning. “Thank you.”

  To the medic, I said. “The police won’t be able to hold my client long. They’ve got to show motive and opportunity and no alibi on four different nights. I don’t think they’ll be able to do it. They were just feeling pressured to arrest someone. Just placating the media.”

  The paramedic stared behind me. I could smell the other man. I never thought I’d find the reek of liquor reassuring. “Isn’t that what your buddies sent you to find out? Whether they could rest easy, or if they’d screwed over an innocent person?”

  The medic pulled his bill cap off, buffing his head with his wrist.

  “Or maybe you decided on your own to come here. Your coworkers probably have sense enough to keep quiet and keep out of it. But you don’t.” He was young and enthusiastic, too much so, perhaps. “Well, you can tell Ben and the others not to worry about Kyle Kelly. His reputation’s ruined for as long as people remember the name—which probably isn’t long enough to teach him a lesson. But there’s not enough evidence against him. He won’t end up in jail because of you.”

  “Are you accusing us . . . ?” He looked more thrilled than shocked.

  “Of dousing the men so you didn’t have to keep picking them up? So you could respond to more important calls? Yes, I am.”

  “But who are you going to—? What
are you going to do?”

  “I don’t have a shred of proof to offer the police,” I realized. “And I’m sure you guys will close ranks, won’t give each other away. I’m sure the others will make you stop ‘helping,’ make you keep your mouth shut.”

  I thought about the dead men; “pretty good guys,” according to the MiniMart proprietor. I thought about my-Johnny-self, the war veteran I’d spoken to this morning.

  I wanted to slap this kid. Just to do something. “You know what? You need to be confronted with your arrogance, just like Kyle Kelly was. You need to see what other people think of you. You need to see some of your older, wiser coworkers look at you with disgust on their faces. You need your boss to rake you over the coals. You need to read what the papers have to say about you.”

  I could imagine headlines that sounded like movie billboards: “Dr. Death.” “Central Hearse.”

  He winced. He’d done the profession no favor.

  “So you can bet I’ll tell the police what I think,” I promised. “You can bet I’ll try to get you fired, you and Ben and whoever else was involved. Even if there isn’t enough evidence to arrest you.”

  He took a cautious step toward his car. “I didn’t admit anything.” He pointed to the other man. “Did you hear me admit anything?”

  “And I’m sure your lawyer will tell you not to.” If he could find a halfway decent one on his salary. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do.”

  I turned to the man behind me. “Would you mind walking me in to my office?” I had some cash inside. He needed it more than I did.

  “Lead the way, little lady.” His eyes were jaundiced yellow, but they were bright. I was glad he didn’t look sick.

  I prayed he wouldn’t need an ambulance anytime soon.

  MAX ALLAN COLLINS

  Max Allan Collins’s (1948– ) Nathan Heller series about a private eye who meets and works with celebrities from Al Capone to Amelia Earhart during the course of his decades-long career . . . is the best hard-boiled historical series ever written. And don’t let anybody tell you differently.

  The Shamus Award–winning series has been so often imitated (i.e., ripped off in the way Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct books have been ripped off) that their original impact has been forgotten. Collins gave us something brand-new. His latest Nathan Heller novel is Angel in Black.

  In addition, Collins has written an excellent series about a contract killer (Quarry) and an equally good series about a thief named Nolan. Oh, yes, and he’s become King of the Movie Novelization, one of the most in-demand writers walking that particular path, perhaps because he’s an accomplished filmmaker in his own right. He never just does the script. He fleshes it out so that it has the inner tension and depth of a real novel. Which explains why he’s so much in demand. His most recent novelization, Road to Perdition, is based on his own graphic novel, now a feature film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.

  Kaddish for the Kid

  The first operative I ever took on in the A-1 Detective Agency was Stanley Gross. I hadn’t been in business for even a year—it was summer of ’33—and was in no shape to be adding help. But the thing was—Stanley had a car.

  Stanley had a ’28 Ford coupe, to be exact, and a yen to be a detective. I had a paying assignment, requiring wheels, and a yen to make a living.

  So it was that at three o’clock in the morning, on that unseasonably cool summer evening, I was sitting in the front seat of Stanley’s Ford, in front of Goldblatt’s department store on West Chicago Avenue, sipping coffee out of a paper cup, waiting to see if anybody came along with a brick or a gun.

  I’d been hired two weeks before by the manager of the downtown Goldblatt’s on State, just two blocks from my office at Van Buren and Plymouth. Goldblatt’s was sort of a working-class Marshall Field’s, with six department stores scattered around the Chicago area in various white ethnic neighborhoods.

  The stores were good-size—two floors taking up as much as half a block—and the display windows were impressive enough; but once you got inside, it was like the push-carts of Maxwell Street had been emptied and organized.

  I bought my socks and underwear at the downtown Goldblatt’s, but that wasn’t how Nathan Heller—me—got hired. I knew Katie Mulhaney, the manager’s secretary; I’d bumped into her on one of my socks and underwear buying expeditions, and it blossomed into a friendship. A warm friendship.

  Anyway, the manager—Herman Cohen—had summoned me to his office, where he filled me in. His desk was cluttered, but he was neat—moon-faced, moustached, bow- (and fit-to-be-) tied.

  “Maybe you’ve seen the stories in the papers,” he said, in a machine-gun burst of words, “about this reign of terror we’ve been suffering.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Goldblatt’s wasn’t alone; every leading department store was getting hit—stench bombs set off, acid sprayed over merchandise, bricks tossed from cars to shatter plate-glass windows.

  He thumbed his moustache; frowned. “Have you heard of ‘Boss’ Rooney? John Rooney?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s secretary of the Circular Distributors Union. Over the past two years, Mr. Goldblatt has provided Rooney’s union with over three thousand dollars of business—primarily to discourage trouble at our stores.”

  “This union—these are guys that hand out ad fliers?”

  “Yes. Yes, and now Rooney has demanded that Mr. Goldblatt order three hundred of our own sales and ad people to join his union—at a rate of twenty-five cents a day.”

  My late father had been a die-hard union guy, so I knew a little bit about this sort of thing. “Mr. Cohen, none of the unions in town collect daily dues.”

  “This one does. They’ve even been outlawed by the AFL, Mr. Heller. Mr. Goldblatt feels Rooney is nothing short of a racketeer.”

  “It’s an extortion scam, all right. What do you want me to do?”

  “Our own security staff is stretched to the limit. We’re getting some support from State’s Attorney Courtney and his people. But they can only do so much. So we’ve taken on a small army of night watchmen, and are fleshing out the team with private detectives. Miss Mulhaney recommended you.”

  Katie knew a good dick when she saw one.

  “Swell. When do I start?”

  “Immediately. Of course, you do have a car?”

  Of course, I lied and said I did. I also said I’d like to put one of my “top” operatives on the assignment with me, and that was fine with Cohen, who was in a more-the-merrier mood where beefing up security was concerned.

  Stanley Gross was from Douglas Park, my old neighborhood. His parents were bakers two doors down from my father’s bookstore on South Homan. Stanley was a good eight years younger than me, so I remembered him mostly as a pestering kid.

  But he’d grown into a tall, good-looking young man—a brown-haired, brown-eyed six-footer who’d been a star football and basketball player in high school. Like me, he went to Crane Junior College; unlike me, he finished.

  I guess I’d always been sort of a hero to him. About six months before, he’d started dropping by my office to chew the fat. Business was so lousy, a little company—even from a fresh-faced college boy—was welcome.

  We’d sit in the deli restaurant below my office and sip coffee and gnaw on bagels and he’d tell me this embarrassing stuff about my being somebody he’d always looked up to.

  “Gosh, Nate, when you made the police force, I thought that was just about the keenest thing.”

  He really did talk that way—gosh, keen. I told you I was desperate for company.

  He brushed a thick comma of brown hair away and grinned in a goofy boyish way; it was endearing, and nauseating. “When I was a kid, coming into your pop’s bookstore, you pointed me toward those Nick Carters, and Sherlock Holmes books. Gave me the bug. I had to be a detective!”

  But the kid was too young to get on the force, and his family didn’t have the kind of money or connections
it took to get a slot on the PD.

  “When you quit,” he said, “I admired you so. Standing up to corruption—and in this town! Imagine.”

  Imagine. My leaving the force had little to do with my “standing up to corruption”—after all, graft was high on my list of reasons for joining in the first place—but I said nothing, not wanting to shatter the child’s dreams.

  “If you ever need an op, I’m your man!”

  He said this thousands of times in those six months or so. And he actually did get some security work, through a couple of other, larger agencies. But his dream was to be my partner.

  Owning that Ford made his dream come temporarily true.

  For two weeks, we’d been living the exciting life of the private eye: sitting in the coupe in front of the Goldblatt’s store at Ashland and Chicago, waiting for window smashers to show. Or not.

  The massive gray-stone department store was like the courthouse of commerce on this endless street of storefronts; the other businesses were smaller—resale shops, hardware stores, pawn shops, your occasional Polish deli. During the day, things were popping here. Now, there was just us—me draped across the front seat, Stanley draped across the back—and the glow of neons and a few pools of light on the sidewalks from streetlamps.

  “You know,” Stanley said, “this isn’t as exciting as I pictured.”

  “Just a week ago you were all excited about ‘packing a rod.’ ”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “That’s right.” I finished my coffee, crumpled the cup, tossed it on the floor.

  “I guess a gun is nothing to feel good about.”

  “Right again.”

  I was stretched out with my shoulders against the rider’s door; in back, he was stretched out just the opposite. This enabled us to maintain eye contact. Not that I wanted to, particularly.

  “Nate . . . if you hear me snoring, wake me up.”

  “You tired, kid?”

  “Yeah. Ate too much. Today . . . well, today was my birthday.”

  “No kidding! Well, Happy Birthday, kid.”