Amazingly, she hadn’t gone down. She’d staggered, knocked the ashtray to the floor, only to look over her shoulder at him and say, “You have the nerve to hit me?”
And he found the nerve to hit her again, and another ten times, where she lay on the floor.
He removed the woman’s diamond wedding ring, and went upstairs and emptied the wallet. All of this he admitted in a thirty-page statement. The diamond was found in a toolbox in his basement, the wrench in the Chicago River (after three hours of diving). His guilty plea got him a life sentence.
About a week after I’d found Rose Vinicky’s body, her husband called me at my office. He was sending a check for my services-the five days I’d followed Miller-and wanted to thank me for exposing his brother-in-law as the killer. He told me he was taking his daughter to California on the trip her mother had promised; the sister-in-law was too embarrassed and distraught to accept Vinicky’s invitation to come along.
“What I don’t understand,” the pitiful voice over the phone said, “is why Rose was so distant to me, those last weeks. Why she’d acted in a way that made me think-”
“Mr. Vinicky, your wife knew her sister’s husband was a lying louse, a degenerate gambler, stealing from the both of you. That was what was on her mind.”
“…I hadn’t thought of it that way. By God, I think you’re right, Mr. Heller…. You know something funny? Odd. Ironic, I mean?”
“What?”
“I got a long, lovely letter from Rich Miller today. Handwritten. A letter of condolence. He heard about Rose’s death, and said he was sick about it. That she was a wonderful lady and had been kind to him. After all the people who’ve said Rose was hard-hearted to the people who worked for us? This, this…it’s a kind of…testament to her.”
“That’s nice, Mr. Vinicky. Really is.”
“Postmarked Omaha. Wonder what Miller’s doing there?”
Hiding from the legbreakers, I thought.
And, knowing him, doing it at the dog tracks.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
George Hagenauer discovered the Vinicky case in an obscure true-detective magazine. I have compressed time and omitted aspects of the investigation; and some of the names in this story have been changed.
UNREASONABLE DOUBT
In March of 1947, I got caught up in the notorious Overell case, which made such headlines in Los Angeles, particularly during the trial that summer. The double murder-laced as it was with underage sex in a lurid scenario that made “Double Indemnity” seem tame-hit the front pages in Chicago, as well. But back home I never bragged about my little-publicized role, because-strictly speaking-I was the one guy who might have headed the whole thing off.
I was taking a deductible vacation, getting away from an Illinois spring that was stubbornly still winter, in trade for Southern California’s constant summer. My wife, who was prent and grouchy, loved L.A., and had a lot of friends out there, which was one of the reasons for the getaway; but I was also checking in with the L.A. branch office of the A-1 Detective Agency, of which I was the president.
I’d recently thrown in with Fred Rubinski, a former Chicago cop I’d known since we were both on the pickpocket detail, who from before the war had been running a one-man agency out of a suite in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.
It was Friday morning, and I was flipping through the pages of Cue magazine in the outer office, occasionally flirting with Fred’s good-looking blonde receptionist-like they say, I was married but I wasn’t dead-waiting to get together with Fred, who was in with a client. The guy had just shown up, no appointment, but I didn’t blame Fred for giving him precedence over me.
I had seen the guy go in-sixtyish, a shade taller than my six feet, distinguished, graying, somewhat fleshy, in a lightweight navy suit that hadn’t come off the rack; he was clearly money.
After about five minutes, Fred slipped out of the office and sat next to me, speaking sotto voce.
My partner looked like a balding, slightly less ugly Edward G. Robinson; a natty dresser-today’s suit was a gray pinstripe with a gray and white striped tie-he was a hard round ball of a man.
“Listen, Nate,” he said, “I could use your help.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
“You’re not tied up today-I know you’re on vacation…”
“Skip it. We got a well-heeled client who needs something done, right away, and you don’t have time to do it yourself.”
The bulldog puss blinked at me. “How did you know?”
“I’m a detective. Just keep in mind, I’ve done a few jobs out here, but I don’t really know the town.”
Fred sat forward. “Listen, this guy is probably worth a cool million-Walter E. Overell, he’s a financier, land developer, got a regular mansion over in Pasadena, in the Flintridge district, real exclusive digs.”
“What’s he want done?”
“Nothin’ you can’t handle. Nothin’ big.”
“So you’d rather let me hear it from him?”
Fred grinned; it wasn’t pretty. “You are a detective.”
In the inner office, Overell stood as Fred pulled up a chair for me next to the client’s. As the financier and I shook hands, Fred said, “Mr. Overell, this is Nathan Heller, the president of this agency, and my most trusted associate.”
He left out that I wasn’t local. Which I didn’t disagree with him for doing-it was good tactically.
“Of course, Mr. Heller commands our top rate, Mr. Overell-one hundred a day.”
“No problem.”
“We get expenses, and require a two-hundred dollar retainer, non-refundable.”
“Fine.”
Fred and I made sure not to look at each other throughout my partner’s highway robbery of this obviously well-off client.
Soon we got down to it. Overell slumped forward as he sat, hands locked, his brow deeply furrowed, his gray eyes pools of worry.
“It’s my daughter, Mr. Heller. She wants to get married.”
“A lot of young girls do, Mr. Overell.”
“Not this young. Louise is only seventeen-and won’t be eighteen for another nine months. She can’t get married at her age without my consent-and I’m not likely to give it.”
“She could run away, sir. There are states where seventeen is plenty old enough-”
“I would disinherit her.” He sighed, hung his head. “Much as it would kill me…I would disown and disinherit her.”
Fred put in, “This is his only child, Nate.”
I nodded. “Where do things stand, currently?”
Overell swallowed thickly. “She says she’s made up her mind to marry her ‘Bud’ on her eighteenth birthday.”
“Bud?”
“George Gollum-he’s called Bud. He’s twenty-one. What is the male term for a golddigger, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Greedy bastard?”
“That will do fine. I believe he and she have…” Again, he swallowed and his clenched hands were trembling, his eyes moist. “…known each other, since she was fourteen.”
“Pardon me, sir, but you use the term ‘known’ as if you mean in the…Biblical sense?”
He nodded curtly, turned his gaze away; but his words were clipped: “That’s right.”
An idea was hatching; I didn’t care for it much, but the idea wasn’t distasteful enough to override my liking of a hundred bucks a day.
Overell was saying, “I believe he met my daughter when he was on leave from the Navy.”
“He’s in the Navy?”
“No! He’s studying at the Los Angeles campus of U.C., now-pre-med, supposedly, but I doubt he has the brains for it. They exchanged letters when he was serving overseas, as a radioman. My wife, Beulah, discovered some of these letters…. They were…filth.”
His head dropped forward, and his hands covered his face.
Fred glanced at me, eyebrows raised, but I just said to Overell, “Sir, kids are wilder today than when we were young.”