True Detective

by Max Allan Collins

  "I'm glad you did. I don't like secrets."

  "I don't either. Nathan?"

  "Yes?"

  "I know another reason why I love you."

  "Really?"

  "You're honest."

  I laughed out loud at that. "Nobody ever accused me of that before."

  "I read about you in the papers. I said I came to your office because you were first in the phone book.

  Well, that was partially true. I also- I recognized your name. too. I remembered reading about you quitting the police, after that shooting. I asked some of my friends in Tower Town about it. and they said they heard you quit because you didn't want to be a party to the corruption."

  "That sounds like the kind of high-flown horseflop that might pass for thinking in Tower Town."

  "It's true, isn't it? And you told the truth at that trial, last week. Because you're honest."

  I took her by the small of the arm; not hurting her. but firm enough to engage her attention. "Look. Mary Ann. Don't build me into something I'm not. Don't put your rose-colored glasses on when you look at me. I'm more honest than some people I know, but the soul of honesty, I'm not. Are you listening?"

  She just smiled at me. like the child she was- or chose to be.

  "Is that why you love me?" I asked. "Because I'm a detective? A private eye? Don't build me into a romantic figure, Mary Ann. I'm just a man."

  She picked my hand off her arm like a flower and gave me that impish grin of hers, which she really had down pat by now. Then she hugged me and said, "I know you're a man. I've been paying attention."

  "Have you, Mary Ann?"

  "Maybe I am naive, Nathan. But I know you're a man, and an honest one- for Chicago, anyway."

  "Mary Ann.."

  "Just be honest with me. Don't lie to me. Nathan. No secrets. No deceptions."

  "That's good, coming from an actress."

  She sat up in bed; the blue robe hung open and I could see the start of the gentle curves of the cups of either breast. "Promise me." she said. "No lies. And I'll promise you the same."

  "Okay," I said. "That's fair."

  She grinned, and not impishly- not in any way contrived or calculated- a good, honest grin, and a beautiful one.

  "Now," she said, suddenly serious, slipping the robe off, "make love to me."

  I didn't argue with her, even if this was her brother's bed. But I did reach for my billfold, to get a Sheik, and she stopped me.

  "Don't use anything," she said.

  "That can lead to little Mary Anns and Nathans, you know."

  "I know. You can pull out if you want, but I want to feel you in me. And I want you to feel me…"

  The intensity of the rain kept pace with us. and the reflection of the rain on her ghostly pale flesh as I arched over her, driving steadily but sweetly into her, was ever-shifting, creating streaky, elusive patterns on her, and her mouth was open in a smile, in her passion, and her eyes gazed at me with an adoration that I'd never seen in any woman's eyes before; and when I withdrew from her, she had a momentary' look of pain and then she grabbed that part of me in her hands so that I would spill into them, and she cupped my seed in her hands, then clasped her hands together and held the warm seed there and looked up at me with a closemouthed smile that I will take to my grave.

  Finally, back to reality, she took some tissues from the pocket of the robe and, with droll reluctance, wiped her hands, putting the robe on, kissing me, touching my face, leaving me there, as the storm dissipated.

  In the morning her father had grapefruit and coffee ready for us. He wore gray again- a different suit, a different gray tone in the tie, but gray again- perhaps that was because gray seemed the least conspicuous color for the ever-present gloves.

  Mary Ann and I sat on one side of the nook, her father on the other; I stayed out of the breakfast conversation, for the most part, while father and daughter filled each other in on what they'd been up to lately. John Beame dutifully reported that he had indeed been listening to his daughter's radio programs- he even took a morning break for "Just Plain Bill," in his little office at the college; and he particularly liked an adaptation of "East Lynne" that he'd heard her in on "Mr. First-Nighter."

  That seemed to please Mary Ann, who was wearing this morning a feminine yellow-and-white print dress that I could not picture her wearing in Tower Town.

  I took a quick look at the morning Democrat: hailstorm damage locally amounted to one hundred thousand dollars; one of the Scotsboro boys had been found guilty in that rape case; Roosevelt was asking Congress to approve of something he called the Tennessee Valley Authority.

  "Can I give you a ride over to the college, sir?" I asked him, as the conversation between father and daughter seemed to have wound down.

  "I usually walk." he smiled, "but I'm willing to be a loafer this once."

  "Hope you don't mind the rumble seat." I said.

  "I've put up with worse indignities." he allowed.

  "That must mean I'm invited along," Mary Ann said.

  "Sure," I said. "For right now."

  She went mock-snooty. "Well, I like that" she said, getting out of the nook, going after her purse. Her father and I let her lead us out to the car, where the drive and lawn were strewn with melting hailstones; it was cloudy and a little cold. Somebody somewhere in town was burning garbage: the smell hung in the dank air like rotten fruit. Soon we were going down Harrison, cutting left on Seventh Street, and heading up the steep hill of Brady.

  At the crest of Brady, across from a mortuary, was Palmer College, a collection of long rambling brown-brick buildings crowded together, taking up two square blocks. In front of what seemed to be the central building was a round deco clock on a skinny pole and a neon sign that said:

  RADIO STATION

  W

  O C

  VISITORS WELCOME

  and, beneath that. CAFETERIA, inside a neon pointing arrow. From atop adjacent buildings, twin black antenna towers rose like derricks.

  I found a place on the street to park and followed Beame and his daughter into the building the neon hung from. There were students in their twenties all about, mostly male, but a few female. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any college, with one strange exception: epigrams were painted in black on the cream-color plaster walls, just about everywhere you looked: over doors, on the ceiling, on the wall going up the stairs, everywhere. Their wisdom seemed a bit obscure to me, at best: "Use Your Friends/By Being of Use to Them"; "Early to Bed, Early to Rise/Work Like Hell and Advertise"; "The More You Tell/The Quicker You Sell." Was this a medical school for bonesetters, or a training school for Burma Shave salesmen? Mary Ann must've caught me making a face, and shook her head no. letting me know this was not a subject to get into with her father.

  We went up an elevator to the top floor of the school, the doors opening onto the reception room of the radio station, which was even stranger than the motto-strewn floors below: it resembled, more than anything, a den in a hunting lodge. A heavy chunk of wood with wavy letters spelling RECEPTION ROOM carved out of it hung by chains from a ceiling that was crossed by several varnished tree trunks; the rustic wood-and-brick room was wall to wall with photos of celebrities, both local and national, in misshapen roughhewn frames. Visitors were apparently expected to sit on benches made of varnished tree limbs and branches; amid this rustic nonsense was an electric sign with lit-up red letters that demanded SILENCE and reminded you, vaguely, that this was the twentieth century.

  This time Beame noticed me smirking, I guess, because he seemed a little embarrassed, as he gestured to the area and said, "B.J. does have his eccentricities." He meant B. J. Palmer, of course, head of the school and the station, and judging from the sotto voce Beame used, which wasn't just because of the SILENCE sign, B.J.'s being eccentric wasn't a thought you expressed openly, at least not loudly.

  There was no receptionist, but we hadn't been there long when, through a rectangular window that seemed at first to be jus
t another (if oversize) photo on the wall, a face peered, belonging to a handsome collegiate-type with crew cut and glasses, wearing a brown suit and green tie.

  He came into the reception room, moving with an athlete's assurance, and Mary Ann smiled at him and he smiled shyly back at her and then the smile turned almost brash as he held his hand out to me, saying, "I understand you're from Chicago."

  "That's right," I said.

  "I tried to get work there," he said "They said I should try a station in the sticks." He grinned and nodded up at the wood overhead. "So I took 'em at their word."

  Beame put a hand on the kid's shoulder and said, "Nate Heller, this young man is Dutch Reagan. He's our top sportscaster. In fact we're losing him to our sister station WHO in Des Moines, in a few weeks."

  "Glad to meet you, Dutch," I said, and we shook hands: Yes, he was an athlete all right. "Hope we're not interrupting you."

  "I don't go on the air for another fifteen minutes yet," he said.

  Beame introduced Reagan to Mary Ann, who was obviously impressed by the handsome kid.

  "Mr. Beame said you're here to talk to me about his son," Reagan said, adjusting his glasses, "but I never knew Jimmy. I've only been at WOC four months."

  "But you were a close friend of another announcer here who aft/know Jimmy."

  "Jack Hoffmann. Sure."

  "Mr. Beame thought Jimmy might have come up in conversation with Hoffmann."

  Beame said, "It's a long shot. Dutch. But Jimmy had so few friends…"

  Reagan thought about it; his face was so earnest it hurt. "Can't think of anything, sir. I'm really sorry."

  I shrugged. "Like the man said, it was a long shot. Thanks, anyway."

  "Sure. Oh, Mr. Heller. Could I have a word with you? Could you step in the studio for a second?"

  "Fine," I said.

  Beame looked curious, and Reagan said, "I want to ask Mr. Heller to look up a friend of mine in Chicago. No big deal."

  Beame nodded, and Reagan and I went into the studio, a room hung with dark blue velvet drapes, for soundproofing purposes, though the ceiling was crossed by more trees, bark and all, attached to which were various stuffed birds, poised as if in flight, though they weren't going anywhere.

  "I didn't want to talk in front of Mr. Beame," Reagan said. "I do know some things about his son, but they aren't very flattering."

  "Oh?"

  Beame was watching us through the window; stuffed birds watched us from tree beams above.

  "Yeah. He was in with a rough crowd. Hanging around in speakeasies. Drinking. Fooling around with the ladies, using that term loosely, if you get my drift."

  "I get it. You know what joints he might've been frequenting?"

  Reagan smiled on one side of his face. "I'm no teetotaler. I'm Irish."

  "That means you might know where some of those places are."

  "Yeah. Jack Hoffmann and I used to hit some of 'em, occasionally. And those I haven't been in. I know about. Why?"

  "You working tonight?"

  "No."

  "Busy?"

  "Are you buyin'?"

  "That's right."

  "I live at the Perry Apartments, corner of East Fourth and Perry. I'll be waiting out front at eight tonight. Swing by."

  "I'll do that." I said, and we shook hands, and he smiled at me. and it was an infectious smile.

  "Irish, huh?" I said.

  "That's what they tell me." he said, and went back in his announcer's booth, which was visible through a window in the left draped wall, where a bulky WOC microphone could also be glimpsed.

  In the rustic reception room, Mary Ann's father said, "What was that all about?"

  "Old girl friend of Iris he wants me to check up on."

  "Oh."

  "Nice guy."

  "Yes. Yes, he is. Now, then. I've made an appointment with Paul Traynor, for ten o'clock, at the newspaper. In the meantime, I've got to stay up here and get to work. I'll leave you at my daughter's mercy."

  "Come along," Mary Ann said, taking my arm as we got on the elevator. "That appointment's at ten and it's only half past eight now. I'm going to take you on a tour of my favorite place in the world. Or anyway, the Tri-Cities."

  "Really? And what's that?"

  " 'A Little Bit O' Heaven.' Ever hear of it?"

  "Can't say I have. Where is it?"

  "Next door."

  Soon I was walking with Mary Ann across an oriental courtyard, past a thirty-foot-long writhing rock-and-tile and chipped-stone snake, by two idols with human heads and monkey bodies, under shell-and-stone umbrellas, through a four-ton revolving door inlaid with thousands of pearl chips and semiprecious stones, into a big pagoda of a building in which ancient hindu idols coexisted with Italian marble pieces that luxuriated in lushly lit waterfalls; where rock gardens and pools and ponds and fish and fauna and petrified wood and growing plants and shells and agates came together to form a place I and no one- had ever seen the like of before. Trouble was, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

  I said little as she led me around; she was enthralled- I wasn't. The money that had been sunk into this combination rock garden and museum seemed excessive, considering the times. This was not a curator's notion of a museum, it was a collector's conceit, a conglomeration whose sum was considerably less than its parts.

  "This is B. J. Palmer's personal collection, you know," Mary Ann said, as we stood in front of an immense black idol, a sign telling us this "Wishing Buddha" was over a thousand years old. "I think it's wonderful of him to open it up to the public like this."

  "We paid a dime."

  "What's a dime?"

  "Two cups of coffee. A sandwich."

  "Don't get serious on me. Nathan. Can't you see the benefit of a place like this?"

  "You mean a world that isn't the real world? Sure. It's nice to go someplace unreal once in a while."

  "You're damn right." she said, and tugged at me, and said. "This is my favorite part," and soon we were in a tiny wedding chapel, formed of pebbles and stones and mortar, with a rock altar eight feet wide, eight feet deep, ten feet high.

  "The smallest Christian church in the world," she said in a hushed tone.

  "No kiddin'."

  We were holding hands; she squeezed mine.

  "Hundreds of couples are married here every year," she said.

  That she could be warmed by a cool, stone closet like this was a testament to her imagination and sense of the romantic.

  "Isn't it splendid?" she said.

  Well.

  She put her arms around me. looked up at me with that innocent look that I had come to know was only partly artifice.

  "When we get married." she said, "let's get married here."

  "Are you asking for my hand, madam?"

  "Among other things."

  "Okay. If we get married, we'll do it here."

  "If?"

  "If and when."

  "When."

  "All right," I said. "When."

  She pulled me out of there, almost running, like a schoolgirl. When we were out in the oriental court, with a little brook babbling nearby, she babbled, too: "This was our favorite place."

  'What?

  "Jimmy's and mine. When we were kids. We came here every week. We'd make up stories, run around till the guides'd get cross and stop us. Even when we were teenagers, we'd come here now and then."

  I said nothing.

  She sat on a stone bench. "The day before Jimmy left, we came here. Walked around and took it all in. There's a greenhouse we've yet to see. Nate." She stood. "Come on."

  "Just a second."

  "Yes?"

  "Your brother. I don't mind looking for him. It's my job. You're paying me to do that. Or you were. I'm not inclined to take any of your money, from here on out. But. anyway, your brother…"

  "Yes?"

  "I don't want to hear about him anymore."

  Her face crinkled into an amused mask. "You're jealous!"

  "You're goddamn righ
t." I said. "Come on. Let's get the hell out of heaven."

  She kissed me. "Okay," she said.

  "Jimmy's a good kid." Paul Traynor said, "just a little on the wild side."

  Traynor was only a few years older than me, but his hair was already mostly gray, his lanky frame giving over to a potbelly, his nose starting to go vein-shot, the sad gray eyes looking just a shade rheumy. He was sitting at his typewriter at a desk on the first floor of the newspaper building, in a room full of desks, about half of which were occupied, primarily by cigar-puffing men who sat typing through a self-created haze.

  "He grew up during the Looney years," Traynor said, "and developed this fascination for gangsters. And, you know, we always have run a lot of Chicago news in the Democrat. We cover the gangland stuff pretty good, 'cause it has reader appeal, and 'cause the Tri-Cities liquor ring is tied to the Capone mob. So a kid around here could easily grow up equatin' that stuff with the wild west or whatever."

  "His father said you and Jimmy were pretty friendly. You let him tag along to trials now and then."

  "Yeah. Since he was maybe thirteen. He read the true detective magazines, and Black Mask, and that sort of thing. Kept scrapbooks about Capone and that crowd and so on. It seemed harmless to me. Till he got out of high school, anyway, and started feelin' his oats."

  "Drinking, carousing, you mean? Lots of kids do that, when they hit eighteen or so."

  "Sure. A kid out of high school wants to get laid, wants to go out with his pals and get blotto. Flamin'

  youth. And so what? No. I wish that was the way Jimmy'd gone: hip flasks and raccoon coats. Oh yass."

  "You mean instead of hanging around speakeasies."

  He had a smile like a fold in cloth. "Yeah. But it's more than even that. He got thick with the local bootleggers themselves. It's possible- just possible- he did some work for 'em. But don't tell his old man; it'd kill his old man."

  "Don't worry. Did the kid actually want to be a gangster?"

  "Did Jimmy want to be Al Capone when he grew up? Naw. That wasn't it. It was a combination of a couple of things. First, he was just taken with that crowd, road-show Capones that they were. It was the Nick Coin bunch, and Talarico's crowd, that he was hanging around with."

  "Those names don't mean anything to me."