It seemed a haphazard choice, a wild, crazed choice, and yet there arose in me the tantalizing feeling of something unresolved that one experiences sometimes in the presence of the seemingly irrational. We speculated. Could the criminal be some poor local inhabitant who had picked up an acquaintance with the rich kids coming for their nature studies? Did people hang out here for anything? Fishing?
Strange how naked the area was only two days after the murder. Not even a policeman. But what would a cop be watching for, we kidded each other – the murderer’s return?
We decided to go back to the local police station. The captain himself, named Cleary, talked to us.
Well, he said, in summer kids went swimming there, and some guys went fishing, some of the Polacks, just for bluefish, and there was even a little rabbit hunting, but these Polacks around here were hard-working mill hands. Hell, in the first place none of them could even write a letter like that ransom letter.
Tom asked if there were any other teachers, besides those from the Twain School, who brought classes out there. Cleary said he didn’t know much about that; in fact, the prairie was officially outside his territory – it was state land, and the Forest Preserves had charge of it.
After we left, as it turned out, Captain Cleary telephoned a Forest Preserve guardian. He only wanted to protect himself. Captain Cleary asked the Forest Preserve man if he knew of any natural-history teachers, or specimen collectors, or anything like that, hanging around the Hegewisch wilds. And he got an answer. There was some bunch went out there on Sundays sometimes, Warden Gastony said; some lad brought them out there – he had his name down because the lad had a gun permit for shooting specimens. A millionaire’s kid by the name of Steiner – Judah Steiner, Jr., a real studious boy. Young Steiner would know what classes went out there.
Captain Cleary made a note of the name.
Coming home from the visit to Hegewisch, I saw Artie, driving along my street as though he had been lying in wait for me. He hailed me, waving a Globe, with our scoop about the drugstore. And he reminded me of out date.
I had really intended to forget about it; I always felt ill at ease when going out with rich guys, always felt they might suddenly drag the party to some place expensive. But now there was no getting out of it; Artie said he had run into Ruth on campus and told her.
Just when I was ready for the date, a call came from Tom. He was at the Bureau. A suicide had been found, at least a dead man, off the Oak Street Beach. And a typewritten letter had come to the police, confessing to the crime and saying, “When you get this I will be a dead man. I am very sorry I did this inhuman piece of work.” It was signed, “A Sorry Man.” Chief Nolan believed the note had been written on the ransom-note typewriter, and an expert was checking it. Tom was staying with the story at the Bureau, and if I wanted, I could go out to the suicide’s address; it was on West Madison. Sounded like a flophouse.
I called Artie, catching him at home. Perhaps he could pick up Ruth, and I would meet them later. Artie became intensely excited over the new clue. Sure, sure, he’d pick up Ruth; in fact, Judd didn’t have a date, so Judd could take care of Ruth for me. Why not let Judd pick up the girls, and he, Artie, would drive me over to West Madison Street on my story?
But I had had enough of Artie’s jittery intensity. I said he had better go fetch Ruth since she didn’t know Judd. Then I called her and joked about how this was what it would be like to be married to a newspaperman.
It was indeed a flophouse on West Madison. The manager, elderly and tired of everything, said, Nah, this John Doe had flopped there for a few days – nobody knew anything about him; there were no possessions. The cops had taken a couple of rags of shirts he had had there in a bag. As for his being the kidnapper, the murderer, “Hell, how could that bum have done it?” the manager said. “He was laying here all boozed up most of the time.”
I even ran out to the morgue at the county hospital and looked at the corpse, a runty, meagre body, a battered, boozy face. Had he written that note?
Certainly I knew, even as a young punk reporter, that every crime drew lunatic confessions, but downtown Chief Nolan was already declaring the crime had been solved. It was a degenerate vagrant who had murdered the boy and then tried to extort money, and finally, in fright, committed suicide.
Before it was over, the case was to reach into many such pitiful corners, like a random cyclone that leaves exposed the refuse of a city’s cellars.
I met Tom at the Bureau and gave him what I had. Between us we decided this was nothing at all, even though the morning papers were giving it their banner headlines. It was by then ten o’clock. I almost wanted to ask Tom to come along to the speakeasy, but we might seem like kids to him, I thought. So I said good night and went on to my date.
The place was a cellar night club. I ran down the stairs, slightly apprehensive about Ruth being with those smoothies, and I was curious, too, about Myra, whom I knew only from a poetry class. I felt full of importance, breathless with my impressions of the morgue and of a derelict’s death, while all they knew about was college life.
The room was a dim-lit box, with a few burly men around the doorway. Liquor was served openly there, I saw. The brassy music, slapped down by the low ceiling, made the whole box throb. This was a place already known among the knowing ones, the people like Myra and Artie who always knew ahead of the rest of the crowd.
The lighting was a subdued rose colour, on walls of a kind of yellowish stucco that was considered fancy at that time, and there was a small square dance floor. The Negro band sat on a strip of platform with their heads against the ceiling. I could not have known that in years to come jazz enthusiasts would look back reverently to this dim cellar as the birthplace of the Chicago style.
I made out first, from the stairs, Artie and Myra dancing, and even in that glimpse I caught something about Myra, the way she was entirely given over, her glossy head tilted, lost. I saw Ruth and Judd at a far table, their heads bent close together so as to hear each other under that noise. Ruth caught sight of me, raising her face, and there came over it the glow that was for me – but slowly, as though it had to be summoned, so absorbed had she been with Judd.
Artie broke off dancing and came rushing toward me. He wanted to know the news. Was the suicide really the murderer? I said it didn’t look like it. Breathlessly, Artie speculated, “Maybe it was a plant – the real murderer wrote the note and found this bum and gave him some knock-out drops and pushed him in!” We reached the table. “That would be a good move for him to get the police off the trail, wouldn’t it?”
Myra shook her head over his imaginings, and Judd said why didn’t he leave the case to the police? A chair had to be pulled up for me, and I sat at the corner of the table, feeling it was I who was the extra man since the party was a celebration for Judd.
I had seen Judd around campus, but now I had my first full impression of him, and I was made uneasy by the dark glow of his eyes in their disturbing intensity. And I felt at once that those eyes, that entire personality, fascinated Ruth.
My set-up came, and Judd poured some of his liquor into it. Artie ordered me to catch up fast. Myra said she had wanted to get to know me in the modern-poetry class – wasn’t this music like Vachel Lindsay’s “The Congo”? We recited it, Artie beating out the rhythm with spoons. Judd asked if he could dance with my girl. For a while I watched them; he seemed to keep on talking while they danced, and Ruth remained absorbed.
In the middle of the number, Artie excused himself and dragged Myra up. Then they were doing the Charleston in a spectacular way, but with great ease; presently half the floor was watching them. Ruth and Judd came back, and we clapped for Artie and Myra. The tenor saxman stood up. The drummer rattled and jerked his head to the flash of Myra’s knees.