True Crime Page 14

  “What’s happened since then?”

  He swallowed some coffee. “Nothing much yet. We had to send somebody over to the Biograph.”

  “The Biograph? Why?”

  Heavy sigh. “When she called she said Dillinger was there, at her apartment, and that they’d be leaving in five minutes—for either the Marbro or the Biograph. She wasn’t sure which.”

  “Shit. The Biograph. That’s some wild card to get played this late in the game. What did you do?”

  He told me. He’d quickly sent two men to the Biograph on the North Side to reconnoiter; they’d returned with notes on entrances and exits. A special agent had accompanied Zarkovich to the Marbro; and Purvis and another agent were staking out the Biograph. Each pair was to have one of its men phone in every few minutes with a report.

  That had been an hour and a half ago.

  “That’s a long five minutes,” I said, “especially if they’re going to the Biograph, walking from Anna’s apartment—the theater’s just around the corner from there, you know.”

  “I know,” Cowley said glumly.

  “Looks like it’s not going down tonight.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve had some second thoughts about whether Jimmy Lawrence is really Dillinger.”

  Cowley sighed again and looked upward, as if he would’ve thrown his arms in the air, if he’d had the energy. “You’re not going into that old song and dance again. What does it take to convince you, Heller?”

  “Quite a bit, before I go pulling a trigger on a guy.”

  “We’re not pulling a trigger on anybody—not unless he forces us to. And if it isn’t Dillinger, we’ll straighten it out after we’ve made the collar.”

  “I thought you were going to supervise this yourself and make sure nobody got trigger-happy. Being a trained detective, I can tell right away you’re here sitting at a desk.”

  He patted the air with his free hand, as he sipped his coffee. “I will supervise the capture. Don’t worry about that. When they spot Dillinger, I’ll be called and go straight to whichever theater it is.”

  “They won’t take him as they see him go in?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Probably not?”

  “With only two men at each site, we’d prefer to wait till our entire contingent has converged on the one correct theater.”

  “Then what? Take him after he’s inside the dark theater?”

  “Possibly. But only if there’s an open seat behind him and we could grab him from behind.”

  I shook my head. “Not in this heat. There isn’t an empty seat in any air-cooled movie house in town, tonight.”

  Cowley shrugged with his eyebrows. “Then we take him when he comes out.”

  “Anna and Polly are with him?”

  “The Sage woman and Miss Hamilton, yes.”

  “Is Polly in on it?”

  “We’ve been dealing with Mrs. Sage.”

  “You mean Purvis has. You haven’t even met her.”

  He scratched the side of his head, where it went from brown to gray. Didn’t look at me. “That’s right. But it’s not pertinent.”

  “I think you should be very careful, if this does fall into place tonight. Particularly if you’re planning to let the East Chicago boys come along. Will they be a part of your ‘contingent’? All six of ’em?”

  Stone-faced, Cowley just looked at me; then, slowly, reluctantly, he nodded.

  I said, “Zarkovich is at the Marbro, I know. The rest of them, where are they now?”

  Sarcasm etched itself into the corners of his eyes. “In our conference room down the hall, with some of my men, having sandwiches. Why, is there somebody you’d like to talk to?”

  “Your conference room,” I said, my aches and pains suddenly coming back to me. “They ought to be comfortable, there. Isn’t that where you guys do your own rubber-hose work, and hang guys out the window till they talk and such?”

  Cowley didn’t like that. But he just said, “That’s not the way we do things. Maybe it’s different in East Chicago.”

  “So I hear. Anyway, be careful tonight, if you decide to go to the movies. Because the Outfit may be providing you with a fall guy for the main feature.”

  “A fall guy.”

  “A patsy. A ringer.”

  He made a dry disgusted tch-tch sound. “And you think that would fool us. You think we could be fooled.”

  “Well, Purvis could. He has been before.”

  “Don’t start again, Heller…”

  I shrugged elaborately, and it only hurt a little. “Hey, it’s your job on the line, not mine. Just don’t forget that you’re following through on something put in motion by Dillinger’s own lawyer.”

  He swatted at the air with one thick hand, like my thoughts were flies. “That doesn’t mean anything. Piquett just double-crossed him, is all.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you’re falling in line with Piquett and doing Dillinger a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Getting him declared dead.”

  Cowley, not a man given to smirks, smirked. “And what does John Dillinger do, once he’s ‘dead’? Disappear in thin air?”

  “With the accumulated loot from his various bank jobs, sure. He could buy a fucking island.”

  Cowley winced at “fucking.” He just didn’t like that kind of language; I knew he didn’t—that’s why I said it. Anything, to light a match under his Mormon butt.

  “You’re a good man, Cowley,” I said. “Don’t get taken in.”

  “Your confidence in me is an inspiration, Heller.”

  The phone on his desk jangled and he grabbed it, the weariness in his face replaced with urgency.

  Then his face fell, while at the same time he sat erect, as he said crisply, “No, sir. No developments…yes sir, immediately, sir…yes, sir, I quite agree. We’d reached that conclusion ourselves…yes, sir.”

  He hung up.

  “Hoover?” I said.

  Cowley nodded. “He’s been calling every few minutes. From his home in Washington, D.C. Pacing his library, I gather.”

  “This is a make-or-break moment for you guys.”

  “Yes, and Hoover knows it. He was just vetoing the notion of taking Dillinger within the theater, by the way. He wants no gunplay in a crowded auditorium.”

  “It occurs to me this sudden possible switch from the Marbro to the Biograph is a trifle suspicious.”

  “Oh, really,” he said, with flat, almost disinterested skepticism. “Why is that?”

  “It allows you to plan for one theater all day, and then pulls the rug out from under you at the last minute…besides scattering your forces between the two locations.”

  Cowley counted on his fingers, as if explaining to a child. “First of all, we’ll have time to converge on whichever theater it is, before we take him, and that includes the two men currently covering whichever theater proves to have been a false alarm. Second, your suspicions only hold true if they go to the second theater, the Biograph, because we’ve had ample opportunity to scout the Marbro.”

  “What’s playing?”

  That threw him. “What?”

  “What pictures are playing?”

  Cowley rolled his eyes. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “You got a Sunday paper up here?”

  He sighed heavily, called one of the college boys over. Told him to get me the movie listings from one of the Sunday papers. The college boy did, looking like a kid playing guns with that .38 slung heavily under his arm.

  I spread the paper open on Cowley’s desk and pointed to the Marbro listing. “See what’s opening today? Little Miss Marker. Shirley Temple. Now look at the Biograph.” I pointed there. “Manhattan Melodrama. A gangster picture.”

  Cowley tried to act like he didn’t get my point, but he did.

  I told him anyway. “Whether it’s Dillinger or not, my guess is he
’s going to the Biograph. The other’s a kid’s picture, and they’d have to go to the West Side, something like nine miles, to see it. Of course if he’s the kind of guy who’d rather sleep with Shirley Temple than Myrna Loy, my thinking here could be all wet.”

  The sexual allusion to Miss Temple didn’t sit well with the good Mormon Cowley. He looked irritated. And he looked weary again. Particularly with me. “I don’t think you have business here, Mr. Heller. Why don’t you leave this to the government?”

  “Good idea,” I said. “I’m in the mood for some relaxation, anyway.”

  I stood up; put on my hat. Slung my suitcoat over my shoulder casually.

  “Think I’ll take in a show,” I said, smiled, and let him do his Edgar Kennedy slow burn behind me.

  18

  The theater marquee was pulsing with little white bulbs in sockets, lined in rows and curlicues above and around the name on the front, Essaness, in cursive letters, and below, boldly in block letters:

  BIOGRAPH

  On either side of the marquee, more rows of bulbs in sockets called attention to the featured attraction:

  “MANHATTAN MELODRAMA”

  with

  CLARK GABLE and WILLIAM POWELL

  Below the marquee a dark blue banner with light blue letters hung; on the sides, under the featured attraction billing, it said iced fresh air; and in front it said:

  COOLED

  BY REFRIGERATION

  The promise of cool air, as much as Clark Gable (and William Powell and Myrna Loy), accounted for the steady stream of people going in the theater. It was now 8:00 P.M. and the next show would start at 8:30. Couples, families and the occasional single man or woman approached the Biograph box office, a central glass booth, bought their tickets and went in to wait in the cool lobby and buy some popcorn and Coca-Cola.

  Otherwise there wasn’t much activity on the street. The muggy night—overseen by an unreal, orange-tinted sky that seemed just as Hollywood as the Biograph marquee—was untouched by a lake breeze. Occasional traffic found its way down Lincoln Avenue, but no cool air. Not unless it slipped out of the doors opening and closing as people went in and out of the Biograph.

  There were a few people around. Folks living in second-story apartments above shops along the street had their windows open and many were leaning out, wondering where the hell Chicago’s famous lake wind had gone to. The tavern next to the theater was open, Goetz’s Country Club, and a soda fountain down the block, and a few other places. None of the shops, outside of those selling orange juice or ice cream or the like, was open. Some younger people, in their teens and twenties, were out wandering, window-shopping, boys in shirt sleeves, girls in light summery dresses. Sometimes they were paired off, but more often a trio or quartet of girls giggled along, often followed by a similar number of swaggering boys. Even the heat couldn’t put a stop to mating rites. If anything it encouraged them.

  Oh, and I was there. Having gone high-hat by cabbing it from the Drake to the Banker’s Building, I hoofed it from the latter to my office, where I got my Chevy and headed for the North Side, specifically Lincoln Avenue. I had thought about going up to my office for my automatic; but that seemed to be asking for trouble. There would be too many people at the Biograph tonight with guns without my adding to the arsenal.

  I’d parked on the same side of the street as the Biograph, just to the right of the mouth of an alley. The marquee was glowing just down the street; between me and it was a grocery store, on the alley corner, and past that the tavern next to the theater. As I got out of my car, it occurred to me that just a few blocks down was the garage where the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre had taken place. Small world.

  I fell behind a family, father and mother and a boy of about ten and a girl of about eight—on a summer, non-school night, and in heat like this, parents taking their kids out this late wasn’t unusual—and was just passing the Goetz Country Club tavern when I noticed an ostentatious-looking car, a gray-and-black Pierce Arrow, parked along the curb. I looked down through the open window.

  Melvin Purvis was behind the wheel.

  He was lighting a cigarette with a hand that was shaking; just a little, but shaking. He wore a jaunty straw hat and blue sports coat. He looked like he should have a debutante next to him. Instead he had in the rider’s seat one of those college-boy agents from the Banker’s Building, who was now looking at me with wide, somehow frightened eyes.

  I held my palms up and out, chest-high, and smiled a little.

  Looking past his college-boy companion and out at me, Purvis, cigarette lit now, frowned like a housewife whose cake just fell, and motioned at me. I went around on his side and leaned against the car and smiled in at him.

  “Hello, Melvin,” I said.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Heller?” He squeezed off each word, his Southern accent vanished. His speech pattern reminded me of Walter Winchell’s, at least at that moment it did.

  “Just thought I should check in with you, since I was in the neighborhood,” I said cheerfully. “Just for the record, I’m not Dillinger.”

  His mouth fell open a little and his eyes glowed like the tip of his cigarette, which dangled from his mouth forgotten.

  “I just thought I should point that out,” I said. “I’m in no mood to get shot.”

  “You’re interfering with a government job, Heller. Get lost.”

  “It’s a free country, Melvin. I thought I might take in the show.”

  He glanced over at his companion and his Southern drawl suddenly replaced the clipped Winchell tone. “Agent Brown,” he said, “why don’t you accompany Mr. Heller from the premises.”

  I leaned in and stared right into Purvis’ startled face and smiled; I could smell Sen-Sen on his breath. “Send him on out. I never broke a government agent’s arm before.”

  “Are you threatening—”

  “Promising. Promising a scene bigger than any that ever played that movie house. Want to risk blowing your stakeout over that?”

  He bit the words off: “Go to the movie then. Go to hell.”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind standing out here and watching the parade of humanity go by. A detective can always learn something by studying people, you know.”

  He looked over at Agent Brown. “Get in the back seat.” Brown did that, and Purvis looked at me; his face looked more than ever like the chiseled kisser of a ventriloquist’s dummy—when he spoke, I was almost surprised my lips didn’t move. He said, “Get in on the rider’s side, Heller. If you’re going to be around, at least you can be under my watchful eye.”

  “I know I’ll sleep better tonight for it,” I said.

  He jerked with this thumb. “Go around and get in.”

  I did.

  “Nice car, Melvin,” I said.

  “Shut up and don’t bother me.” He was intently studying each passerby. His technique was as subtle as a guy in the front row at a State Street burlesque house.

  “Say, uh…Melvin?”

  Without looking at me, he snapped, “What?”

  “You’re going to burn yourself.”

  Then he looked at the cigarette in his fingers, burned down to the point where it would soon sizzle against his skin, and nervously jumped, flicked it out the window.

  “Melvin,” I said, suddenly feeling a little sorry for him. “Calm down. Take it easy.”

  He looked at me expecting sarcasm, didn’t see any, sighed a little, nodded, and kept looking. He was wearing, in addition to that navy-blue sports jacket with white buttons, white slacks and white shoes. He had a white hanky in his sports jacket pocket; the initials MHP showed. He was as immaculately groomed as Frank Nitti, albeit in an Ivy League manner foreign to Al Capone’s successor.

  But he was sweating like a wop; that much they had in common.

  He glanced at me, and, in a peacemaking gesture, said, “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “No thanks.”

  It was 8:15 now. Agent Brown g
ot out to use the phone in the tavern to call Cowley and report no sign yet of John Dillinger.

  “Melvin?”

  “Yes?”

  “I stopped by the Banker’s Building.”

  He nodded. “Cowley mentioned it when we called in, a while back.”

  “Did he say I might stop by?”

  He nodded again. “Advised we keep an eye out for you.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “No.”

  “While you’re watching the folks pass by, mind if I tell you a little story?”

  “I suppose not.”

  And I told him how Frank Nitti had, in collaboration with Louis Piquett and Anna Sage and Sgt. Martin Zarkovich, put a man they called Dillinger on the spot. Set him up for execution.

  Purvis was remarkably calm as I told him this.

  “Much of what you say seems reasonable,” he said. “And, in truth, Sam Cowley did run some of this by me the other day. He admitted to me that his reaction to your…suppositions…was that we didn’t care where we got help in capturing this felon. I personally don’t believe the end justifies the means; but neither do I think one can work this side of the street without stepping in something occasionally.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that; so I didn’t.

  Purvis continued, all the while watching people stroll up to the Biograph box office to buy tickets. “What I don’t understand is your implication that the man we’re stalking tonight may not actually be Dillinger.”

  “I’m not saying that’s the case,” I said. “Just a possibility. Frank Nitti’s pulled scams like this before.”

  “It would be outrageous for Nitti and Piquett and company to dream they could get away with such a thing. I can’t believe they’d try.”

  “You can protect yourself, in any event.”

  He looked away from the people on the street, momentarily, and his eyes met mine. “How?”

  “Don’t shoot Jimmy Lawrence tonight; and don’t let anyone else do it, either.”

  His mouth made a tiny twitch and his eyes flickered and he looked back at the street, where people continued to approach the box office.

  “Melvin,” I said. “What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?”