A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

“My pa made the keenest cake. Say, I . . . I’m sorry I didn’t invite you or anything.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “It was a surprise party. Just my family—a few friends I went to high school and college with.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But there’s cake left. You want to stop by Pa’s store tomorrow and have a slice with me?”

  “We’ll see, kid.”

  “You remember my pa’s pastries. Can’t beat ’em.”

  I grinned. “Best on the West Side. You talked me into it. Go ahead and catch a few winks. Nothing’s happening.”

  And nothing was. The street was an empty ribbon of concrete. But about five minutes later, a car came barreling down that concrete ribbon, right down the middle; I sat up.

  “What is it, Nate?”

  “A drunk, I think. He’s weaving a little . . .”

  It was a maroon Plymouth coupe; and it was headed right our way.

  “Christ!” I said, and dug under my arm for the nine millimeter.

  The driver was leaning out the window of the coupe, but whether man or woman I couldn’t tell—the headlights of the car, still a good thirty feet away, were blinding.

  The night exploded and so did our windshield.

  Glass rained on me as I hit the floor; I could hear the roar of the Plymouth’s engine and came back up, gun in hand, saw the maroon coupe bearing down on us, saw a silver swan on the radiator cap, and cream-colored wheels, but people in the car going by were a blur, and as I tried to get a better look, orange fire burst from a gun and I ducked down, hitting the glass-littered floor. Another four shots riddled the car and the night, the side windows cracking, and behind us the plate glass of display windows was fragmenting, falling to the pavement like sheets of ice.

  Then the Plymouth was gone.

  So was Stanley.

  The first bullet must have got him. He must have sat up to get a look at the oncoming car and took the slug head-on; it threw him back, and now he still seemed to be lounging there, against the now-spiderwebbed window, precious “rod” tucked under his arm; his brown eyes were open, his mouth too, and his expression was almost—not quite—surprised.

  I don’t think he had time to be truly surprised before he died.

  There’d been only time enough for him to take the bullet in the head, the dime-sized entry wound parting the comma of brown hair, streaking the birthday boy’s boyish face with blood.

  Within an hour I was being questioned by Sergeant Charles Pribyl, who was attached to the state’s attorney’s office. Pribyl was a decent enough guy, even if he did work under Captain Daniel “Tubbo” Gilbert, who was probably the crookedest cop in town. Which in this town was saying something.

  Pribyl had a good reputation, however; and I’d encountered him, from time to time, back when I was working the pickpocket detail. He had soft, gentle features and dark alert eyes.

  Normally, he was an almost dapper dresser, but his tie seemed hastily knotted, his suit and hat looked as if he’d thrown them on—which he probably had; he was responding to a call at four in the morning, after all.

  He was looking in at Stanley, who hadn’t been moved; we were waiting for a coroner’s physician to show. Several other plainclothes officers and half a dozen uniformed cops were milling around, footsteps crunching on the glass-strewn sidewalk.

  “Just a kid,” Pribyl said, stepping away from the Ford. “Just a damn kid.” He shook his head. He nodded to me and I followed him over by a shattered display window.

  He cocked his head. “How’d you happen to have such a young operative working with you?”

  I explained about the car being Stanley’s.

  He had an expression you only see on cops: sad and yet detached. His eyes tightened.

  “How—and why—did stink bombs and window smashing escalate into bloody murder?”

  “You expect me to answer that, Sergeant?”

  “No. I expect you to tell me what happened. And, Heller—I don’t go into this with any preconceived notions about you. Some people on the force—even some good ones, like John Stege—hold it against you, the Lang and Miller business.”

  They were two crooked cops I’d recently testified against.

  “Not me,” he said firmly. “Apples don’t come rottener than those two bastards. I just want you to know what kind of footing we’re on.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  I filled him in, including a description of the murder vehicle, but couldn’t describe the people within at all. I wasn’t even sure how many of them there were.

  “You get the license number?”

  “No, damnit.”

  “Why not? You saw the car well enough.”

  “Them shooting at me interfered.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Shit. Too bad you didn’t get a look at ’em.”

  “Too bad. But you know who to go calling on.”

  “How’s that?”

  I thrust a finger toward the car. “That’s Boss Rooney’s work—maybe not personally, but he had it done. You know about the Circular Union and the hassles they been giving Goldblatt’s, right?”

  Pribyl nodded, somewhat reluctantly; he liked me well enough, but I was a private detective. He didn’t like having me in the middle of police business.

  “Heller, we’ve been keeping the union headquarters under surveillance for six weeks now. I saw Rooney there today, myself, from the apartment across the way we rented.”

  “So did anyone leave the union hall tonight? Before the shooting, say around three?”

  He shook his head glumly. “We’ve only been maintaining our watch during department-store business hours. The problem of night attacks is where hired hands like you come in.”

  “Okay.” I sighed. “I won’t blame you if you don’t blame me.”

  “Deal.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “You can go on home.” He glanced toward the Ford. “We’ll take care of this.”

  “You want me to tell the family?”

  “Were you close to them?”

  “Not really. They’re from my old neighborhood, is all.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” He patted my shoulder. “Go home.”

  I started to go, then turned back. “When are you going to pick up Rooney?”

  “I’ll have to talk to the state’s attorney first. But my guess? Tomorrow. We’ll raid the union hall tomorrow.”

  “Mind if I come along?”

  “Wouldn’t be appropriate, Heller.”

  “The kid worked for me. He got killed working for me.”

  “No. We’ll handle it. Go home! Get some sleep.”

  “I’ll go home,” I said.

  A chill breeze was whispering.

  “But the sleep part,” I said, “that I can’t promise you.”

  The next afternoon I was having a beer in a booth in the bar next to the deli below my office. Formerly a blind pig—a speakeasy that looked shuttered from the street (even now, you entered through the deli)—it was a business investment of fighter Barney Ross, as was reflected by the framed boxing photos decorating the dark, smoky little joint.

  I grew up with Barney on the West Side. Since my family hadn’t practiced Judaism in several generations, I was shabbas goy for Barney’s very Orthodox folks, a kid doing chores and errands for them from Friday sundown through Saturday.

  But we didn’t become really good friends, Barney and me, till we worked Maxwell Street as pullers—teenage street barkers who literally pulled customers into stores for bargains they had no interest in.

  Barney, a roughneck made good, was a real Chicago success story. He owned this entire building, and my office—which, with its Murphy bed, was also my residence—was space he traded me for keeping an eye on the place. I was his night watchman, unless a paying job like Goldblatt’s came along to take precedence.

  The lightweight champion of the world wa
s having a beer, too, in that back booth; he wore a cheerful blue and white sportshirt and a dour expression.

  “I’m sorry about your young pal,” Barney said.

  “He wasn’t a ‘pal,’ really. Just an acquaintance.”

  “I don’t know that Douglas Park crowd myself. But to think of a kid, on his twenty-first birthday . . .” His mildly battered bulldog countenance looked woeful. “He have a girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Poor little bastard. When’s the funeral?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going, aren’t you?”

  “No. I don’t really know the family that well. I’m sending flowers.”

  He looked at me with as long a face as a round-faced guy could muster. “You oughta go. He was working for you when he got it.”

  “I’d be intruding. I’d be out of place.”

  “You should do kaddish for the kid, Nate.”

  A mourner’s prayer.

  “Jesus Christ, Barney, I’m no Jew. I haven’t been in a synagogue more than half a dozen times in my life, and then it was social occasions.”

  “Maybe you don’t consider yourself a Jew, with that Irish mug of yours your ma bequeathed you . . . but you’re gonna have a rude awakening one of these days, boyo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s plenty of people you’re just another ‘kike’ to, believe you me.”

  I sipped the beer. “Nudge me when you get to the point.”

  “You owe this kid kaddish, Nate.”

  “Hell, doesn’t that go on for months? I don’t know the lingo. And if you think I’m putting on some stupid beanie and . . .”

  There was a tap on my shoulder. Buddy Gold, the bartender, an ex-pug, leaned in to say, “You got a call.”

  I went behind the bar to use the phone. It was Sergeant Lou Sapperstein at Central Headquarters in the Loop; Lou had been my boss on the pickpocket detail. I’d called him this morning with a request.

  “Tubbo’s coppers made their raid this morning, around nine,” Lou said. Sapperstein was a hard-nosed, balding cop of about forty-five and one of the few friends I had left on the PD.

  “And?”

  “And the union hall was empty, ’cept for a bartender. Pribyl and his partner Bert Gray took a whole squad up there, but Rooney and his boys had flew the coop.”

  “Shit. Somebody tipped them.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “Yeah. Surprised I expected the cops to play it straight for a change. You wouldn’t have the address of that union, by any chance?”

  “No, but I can get it. Hold a second.”

  A sweet union scam like the Circular Distributors had “Outfit” written all over it—and Captain Tubbo Gilbert, head of the State Prosecutor’s Police, was known as the richest cop in Chicago. Tubbo was a bagman and police fixer so deep in Frank Nitti’s pocket he had Nitti’s lint up his nose.

  Lou was back: “It’s at seven North Racine. That’s Madison and Racine.”

  “Well, hell—that’s spitting distance from Skid Row.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So that explains the scam—that ‘union’ takes hobos and makes day laborers out of them. No wonder they charge daily dues. It’s just bums handing out ad circulars. . . .”

  “I’d say that’s a good guess, Nate.”

  I thanked Lou and went back to the booth, where Barney was brooding about what a louse his friend Heller was.

  “I got something to do,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “My kind of kaddish.”

  Less than two miles from the prominent department stores of the Loop they’d been fleecing, the Circular Distributors Union had their headquarters on the doorstep of Skid Row and various Hoovervilles. This Madison Street area, just north of Greek town, was a seedy mix of flop-houses, marginal apartment buildings, and storefront businesses, mostly bars. Union headquarters was on the second floor of a two-story brick building whose bottom floor was a plumbing supply outlet.

  I went up the squeaking stairs and into the union hall, a big high-ceilinged open room with a few glassed-in offices toward the front, to the left and right. Ceiling fans whirred lazily, stirring stale smoky air; folding chairs and card tables were scattered everywhere on the scuffed wooden floor, and seated at some were unshaven, tattered “members” of the union. Across the far end stretched a bar, behind which a burly blond guy in rolled-up white shirt-sleeves was polishing a glass. More hobos leaned against the bar, having beers.

  I ordered a mug from the bartender, who had a massive skull and tiny dark eyes and a sullen kiss of a mouth.

  I salted the brew as I tossed him a nickel. “Hear you had a raid here this morning.”

  He ignored the question. “This hall’s for union members only.”

  “Jeez, it looks like a saloon.”

  “Well, it’s a union hall. Drink up and move along.”

  “There’s a fin in it for you, if you answer a few questions.”

  He thought that over; leaned in. “Are you a cop?”

  “No. Private.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “Goldblatt’s.”

  He thought some more. The tiny eyes narrowed. “Let’s hear the questions.”

  “What do you know about the Gross kid’s murder?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Was Rooney here last night?”

  “Far as I know, he was home in bed asleep.”

  “Know where he lives?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know where your boss lives.”

  “No. All I know is he’s a swell guy. He don’t have nothin’ to do with these department-store shakedowns the cops are tryin’ to pin on him. It’s union-busting, is what it is.”

  “Union-busting.” I had a look around at the bleary-eyed clientele in their patched clothes. “You have to be a union, first, ’fore you can get busted up.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means this is a scam. Rooney pulls in winos, gets ’em day-labor jobs for $3.25 a day, then they come up here to pay their daily dues of a quarter, and blow the rest on beer or booze. In other words, first the bums pass out ad fliers, then they come here and just plain pass out.”

  “I think you better scram. Otherwise I’m gonna have to throw you down the stairs.”

  I finished the beer. “I’m leaving. But you know what? I’m not gonna give you that fin. I’m afraid you’d just drink it up.”

  I could feel his eyes on my back as I left, but I’d have heard him if he came out from around the bar. I was starting down the stairs when the door below opened and Sergeant Pribyl, looking irritated, came up to meet me on the landing, halfway. He looked more his usual dapper self, but his eyes were black-bagged.

  “What’s the idea, Heller?”

  “I just wanted to come bask in the reflected glory of your triumphant raid this morning.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means when Tubbo’s boys are on the case, the Outfit gets advance notice.”

  He winced. “That’s not the way it was. I don’t know why Rooney and Berry and the others blew. But nobody in our office warned ’em off.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He clearly wasn’t. “Look, I can’t have you messing in this. We’re on the damn case, okay? We’re maintaining surveillance from across the way . . . that’s how we spotted you.”

  “Peachy. Twenty-four-hour surveillance, now?”

  “No.” He seemed embarrassed. “Just day shift.”

  “You want some help?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Loan me the key to your stakeout crib. I’ll keep night watch. Got a phone in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll call you if Rooney shows. You got pictures of him and the others you can give me?”

  “Well .
. .”

  “What’s the harm? Or would Tubbo lower the boom on you if you really did your job?”

  He sighed. Scratched his head and came to a decision. “This is unofficial, okay? But there’s a possibility the door to that apartment’s gonna be left unlocked tonight.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Third floor—three-oh-one.” He raised a cautionary finger. “We’ll try this for one night. . . no showboating, okay? Call me if one of ’em shows.”

  “Sure. You tried their homes?”

  He nodded. “Nothing. Rooney lives on North Ridgeland in Oak Park. Four kids. Wife’s a pleasant, matronly type.”

  “Fat, you mean.”

  “She hasn’t seen Rooney for several weeks. She says he’s away from home a lot.”

  “Keeping a guard posted there?”

  “Yeah. And that is twenty-four hour.” He sighed, shook his head. “Heller, there’s a lot about this case that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Such as?”

  “That maroon Plymouth. We never saw a car like that in the entire six weeks we had the union hall under surveillance. Rooney drives a blue LaSalle coupe.”

  “Any maroon Plymouths reported stolen?”

  He shook his head. “And it hasn’t turned up abandoned, either. They must still have the car.”

  “Is Rooney that stupid?”

  “We can always hope,” Pribyl said.

  I sat in an easy chair with sprung springs by the window in Room 301 of the residential hotel across from the union hall. It wasn’t a flophouse cage, but it wasn’t a suite at the Drake, either. Anyway, in the dark it looked fine. I had a flask of rum to keep me company, and the breeze fluttering the sheer, frayed curtains remained unseasonably cool.

  Thanks to some photos Pribyl left me, I now knew what Rooney looked like: a good-looking, oval-faced smoothie, in his mid forties, just starting to lose his dark, slicked-back hair; his eyes were hooded, his mouth soft, sensual, sullen. There were also photos of the union’s so-called business agent Henry Berry, a mousy little guy with glasses, and pockmarked, cold-eyed Herbert Arnold, V.P. of the union.

  But none of them stopped by the union hall—only a steady stream of winos and bums went in and out.

  Then, around seven, I spotted somebody who didn’t fit the profile.

  It was a guy I knew—a fellow private op, Eddie McGowan, a Pinkerton man, in uniform, meaning he was on night-watchman duty. A number of the merchants along Madison must have pitched in for his services.