A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  I left the stakeout and waited down on the street, in front of the plumbing-supply store, for Eddie to come back out. It didn’t take long—maybe ten minutes.

  “Heller!” he said. He was a skinny, tow-haired guy in his late twenties with a bad complexion and a good outlook. “What no good are you up to?”

  “The Goldblatt’s shooting. That kid they killed was working with me.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know! Heard about the shooting, of course, but didn’t read the papers or anything. So you were involved in that? No kidding.”

  “No kidding. You on watchman duty?”

  “Yeah. Up and down the street here, all night.”

  “Including the union hall?”

  “Sure.” He grinned. “I usually stop up for a free drink ’bout this time of night.”

  “Can you knock off for a couple of minutes? For another free drink?”

  “Sure!”

  Soon we were in a smoky booth in back of a bar and Eddie was having a boilermaker on me.

  “See anything unusual last night,” I asked, “around the union hall?”

  “Well . . . I had a drink there, around two o’clock in the morning. That was a first.”

  “A drink? Don’t they close earlier than that?”

  “Yeah. Around eleven. That’s all the longer it takes for their ‘members’ to lap up their daily dough.”

  “So what were you doing up there at two?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I noticed the lights was on upstairs, so I unlocked the street-level door and went up. Figured Alex . . . that’s the bartender, Alex Davidson . . . might have forgot to turn out the lights ’fore he left. The door up there was locked, but then Mr. Rooney opened it up and told me to come on in.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He was feelin’ pretty good. Looked like he was workin’ on a bender. Anyway, he insists I have a drink with him. I says, sure. Turns out Davidson is still there.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. So Alex serves me a beer. Berry—the union’s business agent—he was there, too. He was in his cups also. So was Rooney’s wife—she was there, and also feeling giddy.”

  I thought about Pribyl’s description of Mrs. Rooney as a matronly woman with four kids. “His wife was there?”

  “Yeah, the lucky stiff.”

  “Lucky?”

  “You should see the dame! Good-lookin’ tomato with big dark eyes and a nice shape on her.”

  “About how old?”

  “Young. Twenties. It’d take the sting out of a ball and chain, I can tell you that.”

  “Eddie . . . here’s a fin.”

  “Heller, the beer’s enough!”

  “The fin is for telling this same story to Sergeant Pribyl of the state’s attorney’s coppers.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “But do it tomorrow.”

  He smirked. “Okay. I got rounds to make, anyway.”

  So did I.

  At around eleven-fifteen, bartender Alex Davidson was leaving the union hall; his back was turned, as he was locking the street-level door, and I put my nine-millimeter in it.

  “Hi, Alex,” I said. “Don’t turn around, unless you prefer being gut-shot.”

  “If it’s a stickup, all I got’s a couple bucks. Take ’em and bug off!”

  “No such luck. Leave that door unlocked. We’re gonna step back inside.”

  He grunted and opened the door and we stepped inside.

  “Now we’re going up the stairs,” I said, and we did, in the dark, the wooden steps whining under our weight. He was a big man; I’d have had my work cut out for me—if I hadn’t had the gun.

  We stopped at the landing where earlier I had spoken to Sergeant Pribyl. “Here’s fine,” I said.

  I allowed him to face me in the near-dark.

  He sneered. “You’re that private dick.”

  “I’m sure you mean that in the nicest way. Let me tell you a little more about me. See, we’re going to get to know each other, Alex.”

  “Like hell.”

  I slapped him with the nine-millimeter.

  He wiped blood off his mouth and looked at me with hate, but also with fear. And he made no more smart-ass remarks.

  “I’m the private dick whose twenty-one-year-old partner got shot in the head last night.”

  Now the fear was edging out the hate; he knew he might die in this dark stairwell.

  “I know you were here with Rooney and Berry and the broad last night, serving up drinks as late as two in the morning,” I said. “Now you’re going to tell me the whole story—or you’re the one who’s getting tossed down the fucking stairs.”

  He was trembling now; a big hulk of a man trembling with fear. “I didn’t have anything to do with the murder. Not a damn thing!”

  “Then why cover for Rooney and the rest?”

  “You saw what they’re capable of!”

  “Take it easy, Alex. Just tell the story.”

  Rooney had come into the office about noon the day of the shooting; he had started drinking and never stopped. Berry and several other union “officers” arrived and angry discussions about being under surveillance by the state’s attorney’s cops were accompanied by a lot more drinking.

  “The other guys left around five, but Rooney and Berry, they just hung around drinking all evening. Around midnight Rooney jotted a phone number on a matchbook and gave it to me to call for him. It was a Berwyn number. A woman answered. I handed him the phone and he said to her, ‘Bring one.’ ”

  “One what?” I asked.

  “I’m gettin’ to that. She showed up around one o’clock—good-looking dame with black hair and eyes so dark they coulda been black, too.”

  “Who was she?”

  “I don’t know. Never saw her before. She took a gun out of her purse and gave it to Rooney.”

  “That was what he asked her to bring.”

  “I guess. It was a thirty-eight revolver, a Colt, I think. Anyway, Rooney and Berry were both pretty drunk; I don’t know what her excuse was. So Rooney takes the gun and says, ‘We got a job to pull at Goldblatt’s. We’re gonna throw some slugs at the windows and watchmen.’ ”

  “How did the girl react?”

  He swallowed. “She laughed. She said, ‘I’ll go along and watch the fun.’ Then they all went out.”

  Jesus.

  Finally I said, “What did you do?”

  “They told me to wait for ’em. Keep the bar open. They came back in, laughing like hyenas. Rooney says to me, ‘You want to see the way he keeled over?’ And I says, ‘Who?’And he says, ‘The guard at Goldblatt’s.’ Berry laughs and says, ‘We really let him have it.’ ”

  “That kid was twenty-one, Alex. It was his goddamn birthday.”

  The bartender was looking down. “They laughed and joked about it till Berry passed out. About six in the morning, Rooney has me pile Berry in a cab. Rooney and the twist slept in his office for maybe an hour. Then they came out, looking sober and kind of . . . scared. He warned me not to tell anybody what I seen, unless I wanted to trade my job for a morgue slab.”

  “Colorful. Tell me, Alex. You got that girl’s phone number in Berwyn?”

  “I think it’s upstairs. You can put that gun away. I’ll help you.”

  It was dark, but I could see his face well enough; the big man’s eyes looked damp. The fear was gone. Something else was in its place. Shame? Something.

  We went upstairs, he unlocked the union hall and, under the bar, found the matchbook with the number written inside: Berwyn 2981.

  “You want a drink before you go?” he asked.

  “You know,” I said, “I think I’ll pass.”

  I went back to my office to use the reverse-listing phone book that told me Berwyn 2981 was Rosalie Rizzo’s number; and that Rosalie Rizzo lived at 6348 West 13th Street in Berwyn.

  First thing the next morning, I borrowed Barney’s Hupmobile and drove out to Berwyn, the clean, tidy hunky suburb popu
lated in part by the late Mayor Cermak’s patronage people. But finding a Rosalie Rizzo in this largely Czech and Bohemian area came as no surprise: Capone’s Cicero was a stone’s throw away.

  The woman’s address was a three-story brick apartment building, but none of the mailboxes in the vestibule bore her name. I found the janitor and gave him Rosalie Rizzo’s description. It sounded like Mrs. Riggs to him.

  “She’s a doll,” the janitor said. He was heavy-set and needed a shave; he licked his thick lips as he thought about her. “Ain’t seen her since yesterday noon.”

  That was about nine hours after Stanley was killed.

  He continued: “Her and her husband was going to the country, she said. Didn’t expect to be back for a couple of weeks.”

  Her husband.

  “What’ll a look around their apartment cost me?”

  He licked his lips again. “Two bucks?”

  Two bucks it was; the janitor used his passkey and left me to it. The well-appointed little apartment included a canary that sang in its gilded cage, a framed photo of slick Boss Rooney on an end table, and a closet containing two sawed-off shotguns and a repeating rifle.

  I had barely started to poke around when I had company: a slender, gray-haired woman in a flowered print dress.

  “Oh!” she said, coming in the door she’d unlocked.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” Her voice had the lilt of an Italian accent.

  Under the circumstances, the truth seemed prudent. “A private detective.”

  “My daughter is not here! She and her-a husband, they go to vacation. Up north some-a-where. I just-a come to feed the canary!”

  “Please don’t be frightened. Do you know where she’s gone, exactly?”

  “No. But . . . maybe my husband do. He is-a downstairs. . . .”

  She went to a window, threw it open, and yelled something frantically down in Italian.

  I eased her aside in time to see a heavy-set man jump into a maroon Plymouth with a sliver swan on the radiator cap, and cream-colored wheels, and squeal away.

  And when I turned, the slight gray-haired woman was just as gone. Only she hadn’t squealed.

  The difference, this time, was a license number for the maroon coupe; I’d seen it: 519-836. In a diner I made a call to Lou Sapperstein, who made a call to the motor vehicle bureau, and phoned back with the scoop: The Plymouth was licensed to Rosalie Rizzo, but the address was different—2848 South Cuyler Avenue, in Berwyn.

  The bungalow was typical for Berwyn—a tidy little frame house on a small, perfect lawn. My guess was this was her folks’ place. In back was a small matching, but unattached, garage, on the alley. Peeking in the garage windows, I saw the maroon coupe and smiled.

  “Is Rosalie in trouble again?”

  The voice was female, sweet, young.

  I turned and saw a slender, almost beautiful teenage girl with dark eyes and bouncy, dark, shoulder-length hair. She wore a navy-blue sailorish playsuit. Her pretty white legs were bare.

  “Are you Rosalie’s sister?”

  “Yes. Is she in trouble?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I just know Rosalie, that’s all. That man isn’t really her husband, is he? That Mr. Riggs.”

  “No.”

  “Are you here about her accident?”

  “No. Where is she?”

  “Are you a police officer?”

  “I’m a detective. Where did she go?”

  “Papa’s inside. He’s afraid he’s going to be in trouble.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Rosalie put her car in our garage yesterday. She said she was in an accident and it was damaged and not to use it. She’s going to have it repaired when she gets back from vacation.”

  “What does that have to do with your papa being scared?”

  “Rosalie’s going to be mad as h at him, that he used her car.” She shrugged. “He said he looked at it and it didn’t look damaged to him, and if Mama was going to have to look after Rosalie’s g.d. canary, well, he’d sure as h use her gas not his.”

  “I can see his point. Where did your sister go on vacation?”

  “She didn’t say. Up north someplace. Someplace she and Mr. Riggs like to go to, to . . . you know. To get away?”

  I called Sergeant Pribyl from a gas station where I was getting Barney’s Hupmobile tank refilled: I suggested he have another talk with bartender Alex Davidson, gave him the address of “Mr. and Mrs. Riggs,” and told him where he could find the maroon Plymouth.

  He was grateful but a little miffed about all I had done on my own.

  “So much for not showboating,” he said, almost huffily. “You’ve found everything but the damn suspects.”

  “They’ve gone up north somewhere,” I said.

  “Where up north?”

  “They don’t seem to’ve told anybody. Look, I have a piece of evidence you may need.”

  “What?”

  “When you talk to Davidson, he’ll tell you about a matchbook Rooney wrote the girl’s number on. I got the matchbook.”

  It was still in my pocket. I took it out, idly, and shut the girl’s number away, revealing the picture on the matchbook cover: a blue moon hovered surrealistically over a white lake on which two blue lovers paddled in a blue canoe—Eagle River Lodge, Wisconsin.

  “I suppose we’ll need that,” Pribyl’s voice over the phone said, “when the time comes.”

  “I suppose,” I said, and hung up.

  Eagle River was a town of 1,386 (so said the sign) just inside the Vilas County line at the junction of US 45 and Wisconsin State Highway 70. The country was beyond beautiful, green pines towering higher than Chicago skyscrapers, glittering blue lakes nestling in woodland pockets.

  The lodge I was looking for was on Silver Lake, a gas station attendant told me. A beautiful dusk was settling on the woods as I drew into the parking of the large resort sporting a red city-style neon sign saying: DINING AND DANCE. Log-cabin cottages were flung here and there around the periphery like Paul Bunyan’s Tinkertoys. Each one was just secluded enough—ideal for couples, married or un-.

  Even if Rooney and his dark-haired honey weren’t staying here, it was time to find a room: I’d been driving all day. When Barney loaned me his Hupmobile, he’d had no idea the kind of miles I’d put on it. Dead tired, I went to the desk and paid for a cabin.

  The guy behind the counter had a plaid shirt on, but he was small and squinty and Hitler-moustached, smoking a stogie, and looked more like a bookie than a lumberjack.

  I told him some friends of mine were supposed to be staying here.

  “We don’t have anybody named Riggs registered.”

  “How ’bout Mr. and Mrs. Rooney?”

  “Them either. How many friends you got, anyway?”

  “Why, did I already catch the limit?”

  Before I headed to my cabin, I grabbed some supper in the rustic restaurant. I placed my order with a friendly brunette girl of about nineteen with plenty of personality, and makeup. A road-company Paul Whiteman outfit was playing “Sophisticated Lady” in the adjacent dance hall, and I went over and peeked in, to look for familiar faces. A number of couples were cutting a rug, but not Rooney and Rosalie. Or Henry Berry or Herbert Arnold, either. I went back and had my green salad and fried trout and well-buttered baked potato; I was full and sleepy when I stumbled toward my guest cottage under the light of a moon that bathed the woods ivory.

  Walking along the path, I spotted something: snuggled next to one of the secluded cabins was a blue LaSalle coupe with Cook County plates.

  Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy. I walked briskly back to the lodge check-in desk and batted the bell to summon the stogie-chewing clerk.

  “Cabin seven,” I said. “I think that blue LaSalle is my friends’ car.”

  His smirk turned his Hitler moustache Chaplinesque. “You want I should break out the champagne?”

  “I just want to
make sure it’s them. Dark-haired doll and an older guy, good-looking, kinda sleepy-eyed, just starting to go bald?”

  “That’s them.” He checked his register. “That’s the Ridges.” He frowned. “Are they usin’ a phony name?”

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  He squinted. “You sure they’re friends of yours?”

  “Positive. Don’t call their room and tell ’em I’m here, though—I want to surprise them. . . .”

  I knocked with my left hand; my right was filled with the nine-millimeter. Nothing. I knocked again.

  “Who is it?” a male voice said gruffly. “What is it?”

  “Complimentary fruit basket from the management.”

  “Go away!”

  I kicked the door open.

  The lights were off in the little cabin, but enough moonlight came in with me through the doorway to reveal the pair in bed, naked. She was sitting up, her mouth and eyes open in a silent scream, gathering the sheets up protectively over white skin, her dark hair blending with the darkness of the room, making a cameo of her face. He was diving off the bed for the sawed-off shotgun, but I was there to kick it away, wishing I hadn’t, wishing I’d let him grab it so I could have had an excuse to put one in his forehead, right where he’d put one in Stanley’s.

  Boss Rooney wasn’t boss of anything now: He was just a naked, balding, forty-four-year-old scam artist, sprawled on the floor. Kicking him would have been easy.

  So I did; in the stomach.

  He clutched himself and puked. Apparently he’d had the trout, too.

  I went over and slammed the door shut, or as shut as it could be, half off its hinges. Pointing the gun at her retching, naked boyfriend, I said to the girl, “Turn on the light and put on your clothes.”

  She nodded and did as she was told. In the glow of a nightstand lamp, I caught glimpses of her white, well-formed body as she stepped into her step-ins; but you know what? She didn’t do a thing for me.

  “Is Berry here?” I asked Rooney. “Or Arnold?”

  “N . . . no,” he managed.

  “If you’re lying,” I said, “I’ll kill you.”