True Crime (20 page)

For a dreary-looking stone structure on a blistering hot July afternoon, the morgue was doing brisk business. About the only difference between it and the Biograph last night was the lack of a marquee, and the melodrama attracting the crowds was Chicago, not Manhattan.

The line to the front doors was a double one and, splitting off, extended well down the sidewalk in both directions; a steady stream was coming out the morgue doors, as well. Formal attire was not required, at this mortuary—the dressiest “mourners,” many carrying cameras, were men in shirt sleeves and women in summery dresses, and not a few females were in beach apparel, and many a male wore his undershirt. There were plenty of kids in the crowd, mostly boys with their thoughtful moms. The hot air was filled with hot air—a constant chatter not limited to the dead subject at hand added to the holiday mood. A guy in a big orange tie and orange cap was hawking orange juice a dime a cup out of a tray full of ice slung over his shoulder on a couple of straps, cigarette-girl style; the ice was melting quickly, but not as quickly as the paper cups of orange juice were going. Another guy, wearing a straw boater and no tie, was going around waving two handfuls of blood-stained swatches of white cloth, yelling, “Genuine guaranteed Dillinger’s blood!” More bloody swatches protruded from three of his four bulging pants pockets; apparently blood had been running down Lincoln Avenue like a flood, last night.

All this humanity, if you want to call it that, was being overseen by a handful of cops, uniformed guys still lacking their uniforms due to the heat wave, badges on their light blue blouses; but the caps and guns and nightsticks were still there. These were cops, no mistaking ’em.

I walked up to a burly Irish flatfoot in his forties, with red cheeks and light blue eyes; I didn’t know him, and hoped he didn’t know me—and would maybe take my reddish-brown hair as us having a bit of the Blarney in common.

“What’s the chance of getting in past this crowd?” I asked him.

He smiled and shook his head. “Slim and none.”

“What if I just wanted to talk to a morgue attendant and didn’t care about getting a view of the stiff?”

He scratched his head, still smiling. “Might be done. But they’re greedy lads, those boys.”

“Think you could pave the way for me?”

“Might be done.”

“Thanks,” I said, and shook his hand; mine had a buck in it. For a while.

He led me through the crowd, saying, “Make way, make way,” and introduced me to a pasty-faced, pencil-mustached, skinny fellow named Culhane. White-smocked Culhane had eyes like a gingerbread man and was about as animated. We were in a big reception area on the first floor, where the lines of people coming through the door turned into a mob, a vocal one, waiting to be let down the stairs by a police guard, who was only letting ten or so at a time go. There was no air conditioning and the place smelled stale and bad; body odor was on a rampage. Culhane curled a finger and led me to a corridor, where we were alone.

His voice was soft and oddly seductive. “I can take you downstairs and inside the cubicle with him.”

“Swell. How much?”

He pursed his lips and the tiny mustache went up at either end. “There’s a group down there right now that gave me fifty dollars.”

This wasn’t a morgue, it was a whorehouse.

I said, “How many in the group?”

That threw him momentarily; then he said, “Five.”

“Then I’ll give you ten.”

Being a man of science, he could hardly argue with my logic. But he was pouting as he led me back into the big reception area and through the noisy, pushing-and-shoving crowd, where at his nod the cop let us down the steps into the basement. We moved past and cut through a single line of curiosity seekers that extended down the corridor. Culhane led me through a door into a larger room, where the smell of formaldehyde sliced through the air and made me nostalgic for the body odor upstairs. The smell was so overpowering you didn’t notice at first that the room was refrigerated. Or that along the walls were rows of corpses, in open vaults, one atop the other. Most of the tenants—running to old folks and down-and-outers—had died of the heat; hell of a way to get into an air-conditioned room.

Culhane led me into a small adjacent chamber off the main room and there, with four men and a woman crowded around him, was the dead man, propped up at a forty-five-degree angle on the slab, his body partially covered with a sheet, his face completely covered by a damp white mass. The man applying the damp white mass, a heavyset brown-haired man about forty, wearing a towel like a bib, looked up nervously and said, “We’re from Northwestern University, officer. We got permission to do this.”

The other four, including the rather pretty girl, who had a cute brunette bob, were young, in their early twenties; they looked at me apprehensively.

“I’m not a cop,” I said, and Culhane whispered to me, “They’re making a death mask for the Northwestern Museum of Crime.”

I’d never heard of any such museum, but couldn’t have cared less.

“I need a look at him,” I said to the heavyset man, presumably the professor to these apparent students.

“Oh, but we can’t remove the moulage yet,” he said, still nervous.

“I don’t need to see his face,” I said. “I’ve seen his face.”

I lifted the sheet back. Glanced at the body; noted various scars. I had company: through a glass panel just a few feet away from me, the openmouthed spectators were slowly filing by, pointing fingers, taking pictures. Their jabbering was faintly audible through the heavy plate glass; it sounded like swarming insects.

Before I left, I looked at the heavyset man and said, “If you’re from Northwestern, why does your towel say Worsham College on it?”

He glanced down at the bib and swallowed. “We—we, uh, frequently exchange ideas with the Worsham faculty.”

“And towels?”

He swallowed again, and I pulled a confused-looking Culhane by the arm out into the larger room, where stacked stiffs seemed to eavesdrop as I said, “Worsham’s a trade school for morticians. Those people in there are having a little practice session at your expense.”

“Oh my…”

“Better clear ’em out. Letting somebody from Northwestern play footsie with your prize corpse isn’t going to get you in trouble; but some yo-yos from an embalming society using him to make practice death masks, that could lose you your job.”

He nodded gravely, and I followed him out into the hall, away from the formaldehyde smell and the cool air, and up the stairs into body-odor heaven. He found a spare cop, told him to evict the embalming students and their prof, and the cop went off to do so. Then Culhane turned and looked at me, with some irritation, his little mustache twitching over a puckered mouth.

“Are you still here?” he said. It wasn’t a question that wanted an answer.

“Least you could do is say thanks.”

“Thank you. You’ve had your ten dollars’ worth. Now go away. Shoo.”

I put my arm around his shoulder and walked him toward that private corridor; he pouted, but seemed to like it.

“Mr. Culhane,” I said, “I have another request. I also have another ten dollars. As a matter of fact, I have twenty dollars.”

He began nodding. His puckered lips smiled.

I removed my arm from around his shoulder; enough’s enough. I said, “I’d like a look at the autopsy report.”

He thought that over. Then he said, “Why?”

“Why not?”

He thought some more. “Who are you? A reporter?”

“I’m a guy with twenty dollars.”

He held out an open palm. “If you want it, it’ll cost a lot more. There’s only two carbons, you know.”

I put a sawbuck in the open palm. “I don’t want a copy. I won’t even make notes. I just want to look at it, for a couple minutes.”

He thought again, but not for long; closed his hand tight over the sawbuck, touched my sleeve with his free hand and said, “Don’t move from this spot.”

I didn’t, and soon he was back with three sheets of paper. Handed them to me.

It was a carbon copy of the coroner’s protocol, two pages of which were a form, the final page of which was a separate typed sheet, elaborating on the wounds and condition of the dead man’s organs. Fairly detailed, it took me five minutes to read and absorb, while Culhane stood there like a skinny stone. Then I handed it back to him, gave him the other sawbuck and walked ahead of him out into the reception area, pushing through the noisy, smelly crowd.

A fat blonde in a polka-dot dress was scrunched beside me, putting on her lipstick, looking in her compact’s mirror, as we moved through the sea of flesh; she managed to put the lipstick on without mishap, as well as make a comment.

“I’m disappointed,” she told me. “He didn’t look like his pictures in the paper. He looked like any other dead guy. But what the heck—I think I’ll get back in line and go through just once more.”

“Good idea,” I said, and we burst out through the door into the hot, fresh air. The guy in the orange cap and orange tie was back with a fresh tray of ice and juice. I couldn’t help myself: I bought a cup and swigged it down. It was cool and tasted good. Spending time in a morgue can make you appreciate the little things.

I was walking toward where my coupe was parked when a father, gesturing with one hand, the other on the shoulder of a weeping eleven-year-old boy, walked briskly by, saying, “Now I wanted you to see that as a moral lesson, Tim—it’s like Melvin Purvis says: Crime don’t pay, remember that!”

The father held one of the bloody swatches of handkerchief as he gestured.

I kept that in mind as I drove to the Banker’s Building, where I hoped Purvis and Cowley would both still be on hand.

They seemed almost glad to see me.

Cowley, in a brown baggy suit, was standing over by nattily dressed Purvis, seated behind his big glass-topped desk, and they looked toward me as I came in, followed me with their eyes as I approached them. There was no college boy in the receptionist’s slot this time to try to stop me—it was nearly six and most of the desks in the big office were empty, the windows half-open, letting in some warm but anyway fresh air and a glimpse of the day dying out there.

I stood across from Purvis and pushed my hat back on my head; I was still in shirt sleeves—sweaty ones, by now. I probably didn’t smell any better than the rest of the crowd at the morgue.

I said, “Looks like things have settled down around this joint.”

Cowley found an uneasy smile for me. “You should’ve seen it this morning. Real madhouse.”

Purvis mustered an unconvincing smile, and stood. “Nice of you to stop by, Mr. Heller,” he said in that faintly Southern drawl, as if he’d requested this visit. He gestured with an open hand back toward where I’d come in. “Let’s step into the conference room down the hall, for a chat….”

I didn’t see why not.

We sat, the three of us, with me in the middle, at one side of a long table for twelve in a big room that had a few smaller tables, apparently used for interrogation, along the wall by the windows. Through the windows I could see the Rookery just across the alley, looking enigmatically on. The Rookery was an early near-skyscraper, whose eleven stories had an oddly moorish ornamentation that made it stand out among its newer, taller, sleeker neighbors and its older, more staid, stodgy ones, too.

Speaking of staid and stodgy, Cowley started in. “I haven’t seen you quoted in the press as yet.”

“You will.”

Purvis, on the other side of me, spit out the words; his cordial pose hadn’t lasted long. “What have you said?”

I scooted my chair back so that I could look at both of them, undercutting the double-teaming routine they were trying to pull. I gave them a brief rundown on what I’d told Davis, and they seemed relieved, and relieved was what they should be: it was a whitewash, after all.

Purvis said, “You didn’t mention Anna Sage? Or Polly Hamilton?”

“No. But I did tell Stege their names, when he came to see me last night.”

Cowley looked momentarily glum, but said, “We know. We’ve dealt with that.”

“Oh really?”

Purvis said, “Stege was questioning Anna at the Sheffield Avenue Station this afternoon, but we sent our men to pick her up.” A thin smile flitted across thin lips. “We told ’em it was a federal job and squelched the interrogation. She’s in federal custody, now. Protective.”

“She’s in jail?”

“No,” Cowley said. “We’re just looking out for her.”

“What about Polly?”

“Her too,” Purvis said, nodding.

“I notice you’ve kept their names out of the papers. You think that’s going to last?”

Purvis smirked. “Not since you gave the women’s names to Stege. Once the Chicago cops have it, the papers soon will, too. Those louts would sell their grandmother for a cup of java.”

I couldn’t help smiling; when Purvis tried to talk tough, it was kind of pitiful. I said, “You shouldn’t worry. You boys are getting good press on this.”

Cowley was impassive, but Purvis had a smug, tight little smile.

I decided to wipe it off his face by saying, “You are aware by now that you killed the wrong man, aren’t you?”

Purvis threw his hands in the air and said, “Jesus! Not that again!” Cowley just sat shaking his head, like I was a promising student who continually disappointed him.

“I don’t plan to go to the papers with it,” I said. “I plan to stick to the version I gave Davis. I was just curious if you guys finally copped to what you’ve done—which is do Dillinger and Nitti a favor and kill some ringer for ’em, and get the heat off.”

Cowley brushed a comma of brown hair off his forehead, but it only fell back again. He said, “If you believe this to be true, why keep it to yourself? Why not go to the papers? You might make some tidy pocket change off it.”

Purvis glared at Cowley for having suggested that.

I said, “I’m keeping it to myself because Frank Nitti might not like it if I didn’t. And because whoever that poor shmuck in front of the Biograph is—or was—doesn’t much matter, at this point. He’s dead. I saw it coming, and would’ve liked to stop it from happening. But I wasn’t up to the job. So be it. Best of luck to all concerned.”

Purvis got up, paced for a moment, then went over to the open window and looked out at the Rookery, hands in pockets. “I don’t get you, Heller. You’re not a stupid man. Yet you seriously entertain such a stupid goddamn fantasy. We killed a ‘ringer’! Utter rubbish.” He turned and looked at me with a painfully earnest expression. “How in God’s name could that have been anyone else
but
John Dillinger last night?”

Without malice, I said, “You were so eager for it to be him, it didn’t have to be.”

He strode over to me, hands still in pockets; he seemed a little boy playing man. “What the hell’s your meaning?”

With malice, I said, “Listen to me the first time I say something, Little Mel—then you won’t have to ask me to repeat it four times.”

His marionette features took on a hurt, angry cast and he told me to go hell and walked briskly toward the door.

“I have a train to catch,” he said. “I don’t have time for your nonsense.”

He was opening the door when I said, “I can prove it wasn’t Dillinger, Melvin.”

That caught his attention.

“I really can, Mel,” I said. “But if you have a train to catch…”

He shut the door and walked back. Sat down next to Cowley. Both men looked at me with doubting, but troubled, expressions.

“I was just at the morgue,” I said. “I got a good look at the body, and a good look at the autopsy report.”

That angered Purvis. “How did you manage…”

I rubbed my thumb and fingers together, in the money gesture. Purvis fell silent and Cowley winced and nodded and I went on.

“The man Zarkovich and O’Neill shot was approximately Dillinger’s height and weight. He was a little shorter and a little heavier than the real McCoy, but within an inch and ten pounds, so what the hell. Facially he doesn’t resemble Dillinger much, but certain scars indicate a face-lift, so plastic surgery
might
explain that. But how do you explain the eyes?”

“The eyes?” Purvis said.

“Yeah—the eyes have it, you know. And the corpse has brown eyes. I saw it for myself, last night; and that’s what the autopsy report says, too. Brown eyes.”

“So?” Cowley said.

“Dillinger has gray eyes.”

Purvis said, “If the corpse has brown eyes, Dillinger has brown eyes, because that corpse is Dillinger. This is ridiculous. I really do have a train to catch.” He stood again. “You fill Cowley in on your fantasy, if you like, Heller—I have neither the stomach nor time for it.”

“Sit down, Melvin,” I said. “You’re going to hear this, or I’ll find somebody else to tell it to.”

He sat.

“There was also a birthmark, a mole, missing on the body—right between the eyes—and several scars from bullet wounds and a scar on the lip were also not there.”

“Plastic surgery,” Cowley offered.

Cockily, Purvis said, “We know for a fact that Dillinger had plastic surgery just within this past month or so. This afternoon agents from this office picked up two of the ring involved in Dillinger’s several face-lift operations—Louis Piquett’s personal private investigator, and the doctor who performed the operation. And this office will be making more arrests in the days to come.”

That sounded like a fucking press release. I said so.

“You’re an annoying man,” Purvis said, his Southern sense of manners apparently infringed.

“If Dillinger
did
have plastic surgery this past month or so,” I said, “how could he be completely healed so soon? The skin on his upper lip would at least look pink, for instance. Nothing looked pink about that stiff, believe me.”

Purvis was shaking his head, scowling. “Where are you getting your ‘facts’? Newspaper files? What description are you going by? What’s the basis of your comparison? Get serious, Heller.”

I took a folded-up piece of paper out of my front right pants pocket and spread it out on the table.

“Division of Investigation identification order number twelve-seventeen,” I said, pointing to the federal wanted poster for John Dillinger. “Given to me by my friend Captain John Stege as a souvenir of this little episode.”

Both Purvis and Cowley just stared blankly at the poster. Purvis was swallowing, like his mouth was suddenly dry.

I said, “And as you well know, the physical description of the fugitive on this ID order is detailed and exact. Notice the eye color listed: gray.”

Cowley gestured toward the paper, as if afraid to touch it. “This is what you compared the autopsy report to?”

“Yes, and if any reporter in town gets ahold of that report, and does the same thing, some very messy questions are likely to get asked.”

Purvis looked at the poster with wide, empty eyes; he too didn’t touch it. Just stared at it.

“You may be lucky,” I said. “The newshounds seem satisfied with the abbreviated report Kearns read into the record at the inquest. So far, apparently, nobody has thought to bribe a peek at the actual report—except me.”

Purvis started to say something dismissive, but I interrupted. “There’s more, gentlemen. Your corpse has some things Dillinger did not have—a tattoo on the right forearm; scars from bullet wounds in places Dillinger never got shot; black hair, not brown; thin, arching eyebrows instead of bushy straight ones; and a tooth—the top right incisor, to be exact.”

Purvis was shaking his head again, but slowly, now. “This is ridiculous. Sheerly ridiculous. You’re basing this on an autopsy conducted in a carnival atmosphere…and comparing that report to data gathered from hither and yon, over the years, on a
fugitive
.”

Cowley, bleakly, said, “Mel, much of the ID order description comes from Dillinger’s Navy records, remember?”

“Right,” I said. “And the Navy physical he got was surely pretty accurate.”

Defensive, Purvis said, “How can you know that? Were you there?”

“No I wasn’t, and maybe you’re right. Maybe the Navy doctor was drunk that day. But the coroner’s pathologist, Kearns, isn’t a drinking man. That autopsy was carefully handled, despite the ghoulish goings-on at the morgue. Kearns is a top doc; he’s done every major murder in Chicago from Bobby Franks to the Saint Valentine’s crowd. And he was assisted in this by another doctor, and a medical stenog was recording everything. This was not your typical Cook County foul-up.”

“Ridiculous,” Purvis said, softly.

“I’ll tell you something else the dead man had that Dillinger didn’t: a bum ticker.”

Cowley sat up straight. “What?”

“A bum ticker. The corpse had a rheumatic heart condition. He’d had it a long time, since he was a kid. How could he have passed the Navy physical with that? How could he have played baseball like he did? Not to mention certain other strenuous activities he’s been involved in this past year or so.”

Cowley finally picked up the wanted poster and glanced at it.

“Maybe,” he said, “his heart condition was something he knew about but kept to himself. Maybe it was what made him live the reckless way he did.”

“It won’t wash,” I said. “That’s some other guy on that slab down there at the morgue.”

“
Who
then?” Purvis demanded.

I shrugged. “Maybe he
is
a guy named Jimmy Lawrence. One of Anna Sage’s pimps from East Chicago or something. Most likely he’s a small-timer on the run who had some plastic surgery a while back and was hiding out, with the help of some friends. Or some people he thought were friends. When Frank Nitti needed a patsy to stand in for Dillinger, this poor shmuck got elected.”

Purvis stood again; paced with his hands in his pockets, checking his wristwatch now and again, nervously. He said, “Nitti. You see Nitti under every bed. I don’t see him even
vaguely
figuring in this. Not vaguely…”

I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Anna Sage is a madam and connected to the mob. Zarkovich has Capone ties going way back, and probably engineered the Crown Point escape for Dillinger. Even the Biograph theater has Nitti’s name on it—there’s been a bookie joint over the theater for years and, hell, Nitti’s got a lock on the movie projectionist’s union, so what better place to rub out the patsy?”

Cowley, his face ashen, his eyes haunted, said, “Why did you do it, Heller? Why’d you go to the morgue? Why are you stirring things up?”

“It’s something you two wouldn’t understand. It’s called being a detective.”

Purvis laughed humorlessly. “Very funny,” he said, and stopped to look out at the Rookery, then at his watch.

Cowley said, “You had this theory, and you just had to see if it was right. You just had to know.”

I shrugged, said, “Yeah, I suppose. I had to know.”

“Did you ever go to college?”

“For a while.”

“Did you take any science?”

What the hell was this about? “Some,” I said.

Cowley leaned forward, hands folded, and tried to look fatherly, wise. “Did you learn anything about what happens when a scientist goes looking for a certain answer, when he should just be looking?”

“You’re saying I was predisposed to finding out this guy wasn’t Dillinger.”

Cowley nodded.

“Hell, I wish the guy
was
Dillinger. I’d feel like less of a chump. It would mean a couple of corrupt East Chicago cops used me to help put public enemy number one on the spot, for the reward money. I wouldn’t be nuts about that either, but it’s better than helping set up some poor dope for a bullet or two so John Dillinger can drink tequila and lay Mexican broads into his old age in peace. No, Dillinger’s eyes are gray, the dead guy’s are brown. And so on. Better face up, boys.”