“It’s gonna be months before you see any of that dough,” Davis whined. “It’s all contingent upon a conviction, you know.”
“I know. I can wait. I’m a patient man. Besides, I got a feeling the A-1 isn’t going to be hurting for business after this.”
Davis smirked. “Feelin’ pretty cocky aren’t you? Pretty smug.”
“That’s right,” I said, and brushed by him. I went to the pay phones and called home. It was almost ten, but Peg usually stayed up at least that late.
“Nate! Where have you been... it’s almost...”
“I know. I got him.”
“What?”
“I got him.”
There was a long pause.
“I love you,” she said.
That beat reward money all to hell.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Both of you.”
I was slipping out of the booth when Lt. Kruger shambled over. His mournful-hound puss was twisted up in a grin. He extended his hand and we shook vigorously.
He took my arm, spoke in my ear. “Did you take a look at the letter in Lapps’ billfold?”
I nodded. “It’s his spare tire of an alibi. He told me ‘George’ did the killings. Is he sticking to that story?”
Kruger nodded. “Only I don’t think there is a George.”
“Next you’ll be spoiling Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for me.”
“I don’t think that’s what he’s up to.”
“Oh? What is he up to, lieutenant?”
“I think it’s a Jekyll and Hyde routine.”
“Oh. He’s George, only he doesn’t know it. Split personality. There’s a post-war scam for you.”
Kruger nodded. “Insanity plea.”
“The papers will love that shit.”
“They love the damnedest things.” He grinned again. “Tonight they even love you.”
Chief of Detective Storm came and found me, shortly after that, and said, “There’s somebody who wants to talk to you.”
He led me back behind the reception counter to a phone, and he smiled quietly as he handed me the receiver. He might have been presenting an award of valor.
“Nate?” the voice said.
“Bob?”
“Nate. God bless you, Nate. You found the monster. You found him.”
“It’s early yet, Bob. The real investigation has just started...”
“I knew I did the right thing calling you. I knew it.”
I could tell he was crying.
“Bob. You give Norma my love.”
“Thank you, Nate. Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Thanks, Bob. Good night.”
I gave a few more press interviews, made an appointment with Storm to come to First District Station the next morning and give a formal statement, shook Kruger’s hand again, and wandered out into the parking lot. Things were winding down. I slipped behind the wheel of Plymouth and was about to start the engine when I saw the face in my rearview mirror.
“Hello, Heller,” the man said.
His face was all sharp angles and holes: cheekbones, pock-marks, sunken dead eyes, pointed jaw, dimpled chin. His suit was black and well tailored — like an undertaker with style. His arms were folded, casually, and he was wearing kid gloves. In the summer.
He was one of Sam Flood’s old cronies, a renowned thief from the 42 gang in the Patch. Good with a knife. His last name was Morello.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Drive a while.”
His first name was George.
17
“Sam couldn’t come himself,” George said. “Sends his regards, and apologies.”
We were on Sheridan, heading toward Evanston.
“I was going to call Sam when I got home,” I said, watching him in the rearview mirror. His eyes were gray under bushy black brows; spooky fucking eyes.
“Then you did make it to the kid’s pad, before the cops.” George sighed; smiled. A smile on that slash of a craggy face was not a festive thing.
“Yeah.”
“And you got what Sam wants?”
“I do.”
“The photo?”
“Yes.”
“That’s swell. You’re all right, Heller. You’re all right. Pull over into the graveyard, will you?”
Calvary Cemetery was the sort of gothic graveyard where Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein’s monster might go for a stroll. I pulled in under the huge limestone archway and, when George directed, pulled off the main path onto a side one, and slowed to a stop. I shut the engine off. The massive granite wall of the cemetery muffled the roar of traffic on Sheridan; the world of the living seemed suddenly very distant.
“What’s this about, George?” At Statesville, they say, where he was doing a stretch for grand theft auto, George was the prison shiv artist; an iceman whose price was five cartons of smokes, for which an individual who was annoying you became deceased.
Tonight George’s voice was pleasant; soothing. A Sicilian disc jockey. “Sam just wants his photo, that’s all.”
“What’s the rush?”
“Heller — what’s it to you?”
“I’d rather turn it over to Sam personally.”
He unfolded his arms and revealed a silenced Luger in his gloved right hand. “Sam says you should give it to me.”
“It’s in the trunk of the car.”
“The trunk?”
“I had the photo in my coat pocket, but when I realized cops were going to be crawling all over, I slipped it in an envelope in my trunk, with some other papers.”
That was the truth. I did that at the hospital, before I took Lapp inside.
“Show me,” George said.
We got out of the car. George made me put my hands up and, gun in his right hand, he calmly patted me down with his left. He found the nine millimeter under my arm, slipped it out, and tossed it gently through the open window of the Plymouth onto the driver’s seat.
Calvary was a rich person’s cemetery, with mausoleums and life-size statues of dear departed children and other weirdness, all casting their shadows in the moonlight. George kept the gun in hand, but he wasn’t obnoxious about it. I stepped around back of the Plymouth, unlocked the trunk, and reached in. George took a step forward. I doubled him over with the tire iron, then whacked the gun out of his hand, and swung the iron sideways against his cheek as he began to rise up.
I picked up his Luger and put a knee on his chest and the nose of the silenced gun against his bloody cheekbone. I would have to kill him. There was little doubt of that. His gray eyes were narrowed and full of hate and chillingly absent of fear.
“Was killing me Sam’s idea, or yours?”
“Who said anything about killing you?”
I forced the bulky silenced nose of the gun into his mouth. Time for the Chicago lie-detector test.
Fear came into his eyes, finally.
I removed the gun, slowly, not taking any teeth, and said, “Your idea or Sam’s?”
“Mine.”
“Why, George?”
“Fuck you, Heller.”
I put the gun in his mouth again.
After I removed it, less gently this time, cutting the roof of his mouth, he said through bloody spittle, “You’re a loose end. Nobody likes loose ends.”
“What’s it to you, George?”
He said nothing; he was shaking. Most of it was anger. Some of it was fear. An animal smell was coming up off him.
“I said, what’s it to you, George? What was your role in it?”
His eyes got very wide; something akin to panic was in them.
And then I knew.
Don’t ask me how, exactly, but I did.
“You killed her,” I said. It was part question, part statement. “You killed Sam’s girlfriend. For Sam?”
He thought about the question; I started to push the gun back in his mouth and he began to nod, lips kissing the barrel. “It was an accident. Sam threw her over, and she was posing a problem.”