Stepping into a waiting taxi, down to my left.
I headed to the right and picked out another cab. I climbed in, just as the Checker Cab, bearing the babe with the babe, glided by like a memory.
“Follow that car,” I said.
And the cabbie, a rumpled-faced Hunky with a shabby green cap and a wide space between his front teeth, glanced back and grinned. “Figured some day somebody’d ask that.”
“That’s peachy,” I said. “Here’s your fare in advance.”
I showed him my badge, and his cheerfulness faded.
“Might be a fin in it,” I allowed, “if you don’t lose ’em, and they don’t make you.”
“They won’t,” he said, relieved there was maybe a buck in this after all, and wheeled his Yellow out onto Van Buren.
This Bernice Rogers was about thirty, with a record that included prostitution and petty theft. A few months back she had adopted a boy from the Cradle, an Evanston agency; she’d been fussy about the age-had to be less than two years, older than one.
Chief of Detectives Schoemaker, a.k.a. “Old Shoes,” a canny old copper, figured the adopted kid was a front. In which case, it would have gone something like this….
The adopted child is looked after by a woman member of the Bonelli gang (presumably Bernice Rogers) for a number of months. People seeing Rogers with the kid assume it’s hers. In the meantime, the kidnap gang executes a snatch on a specific kid (presumably Charles Lindbergh, Jr.); the woman then substitutes the snatched kid for the adopted one-while the latter is abandoned or otherwise disposed of.
And when Bernice Rogers is seen with the kidnapped child, suspicion is nil because that child is mistaken for the one she’s been seen with previously. You seen one baby, you seen ’em all.
But if that had been the plan, why was Bernice Rogers turning back up in Chicago? Schoemaker figured she’d been out east of late, living rather conspicuously as the mother of a small infant. Were things too hot out there? Was somebody in the gang crumbling under the pressure? Was a double-cross in the works?
I smiled and sat back in the cab and relished the thought of answering some of those questions by busting Bernice Rogers. Savoring the idea of being the cop who single-handedly cracked the Lindbergh case, half a continent away. Not bad for a kid, which is what I was: twenty-six years old and enjoying a relatively easy life in undoubtedly hard times.
As for making the collar itself, I was eager, not apprehensive. I knew molls like Bernice could be dangerous, but on the pickpocket detail, you get physical with crooks every day. Hardly a week went by, I didn’t take a gun off some punk.
And I had a gun of my own under my arm, besides-a nine-millimeter Browning-and was not afraid to use it.
Not that I was trigger-happy. In fact I carried this specific weapon, rather than the usual revolver most cops carry, partly because I preferred automatics, and partly because this was the gun my father shot himself with.
My father, whose bookstore on the West Side had run to radical literature, was an old union guy who hated the idea that I became a cop. He specifically hated it when he found out, or figured out, that some money I’d given him, to renew the lease on his store, was a payoff I got for testifying in the Jake Lingle murder trial.
The cops and Capone had a patsy lined up to take the fall for that killing, and I was the witness that swung it. It was no big deaclass="underline" the patsy was a willing participant, getting well paid for his prison stay. And my cooperation got me a promotion to plainclothes and an envelope with a grand in it. But my Papa could not understand that I was just trying to get ahead, trying to land a better job, playing by the rules of the Chicago game.
Well, really, he did understand. What he could not do was condone it. He put this very gun to his head and blew his brains out; that had been last year. And I carried the gun with me to make sure I never forgot that. I wouldn’t hesitate to use it, but I wouldn’t use it carelessly. It was the only conscience I had.
I was still not above taking a little honest graft-you didn’t take a job this dirty and this dangerous for the piddling paycheck alone.
But I owed it to Papa not to abuse the policeman’s power. That’s what he hated about us: billy-club-swinging, trigger-happy bastards is what we were, to that old communist.
Maybe Papa would be up there watching this afternoon, when I did something worthwhile, did the kind of thing a cop is supposed to do. Righted a wrong like Nick Carter or Sherlock Holmes in the books I read as a kid. Restored a missing child to his distraught parents. Papa would like that, up in heaven. Only Papa didn’t believe in heaven and neither did I.
“Not so close,” I cautioned the cabbie. “Keep two or three cars behind.”
He nodded and backed off. We were on Lake Shore Drive, following the Checker Cab up the Gold Coast-aristocratic brownstone mansions hobnobbing with modern high-rise apartments, fronting an unimpressed, choppy white-and-gray Lake Michigan. One of these days I had to look into finding a flat in this neighborhood-hell, they started at a mere three-hundred-fifty a month.
The Checker pulled off at Irving Park and so did we, moving into an area that had once been an exclusive section of town itself, before the money moved north. Which was a boon for criminals-a whole gang, particularly one on the lam, could move into one of these sprawling six-room numbers, and live a life of ease, with the nightlife of Uptown nearby. If I had a crook’s money, I might move in here myself.
Now the Checker swung right on Sheridan Road, where the cab soon pulled up in front of a big brick terra-cotta-trimmed six-flat apartment house-one of many such that stood shoulder-to-shoulder on this street-and let the blonde with the baby out.
My cab rolled on by, and when I looked back and saw the blonde disappear into the six-flat, I said, “Right here.”
The cabbie pulled over and craned around and showed me his gap-toothed grin again. “How’d I do?”
“Swell,” I said, and I took out a sawbuck, tore it in two and handed him half.
His eyes got wide; he wasn’t sure whether he should be pissed off or pleased. “What’s this?”
I was already getting out. “You get the other half by hanging around. Pull around the corner, there, and wait-but first find a phone and call Lt. Sapperstein at the Detective Bureau. Tell him I trailed Bernice Rogers to 4072 Sheridan, and want some backup.”
“Okay. Who’s the message from?”
“Heller.”
“Okay, Officer Heller.”
“Repeat all the names.”
“Uh-Lt. Sapperstein at the Detective Bureau. Bernice Rogers. Heller.”
“And the address?”
“4072 Sheridan.”
Now I gave him a smile. “Good man.”
The snow had stopped, but there was enough wind to blow it around some, a fine white mist that felt good on my face. My heart was starting to race and I breathed slow as I walked, calming myself. Across from the six-flat in question was one of the elaborate neighborhood movie palaces Chicago was so rich in. Arrowsmith was playing, with Ronald Colman. I hadn’t caught that one yet.
Same was true of the blonde, of course; hadn’t caught her yet, either. Inside the claustrophobic vestibule were half a dozen mailboxes and as many buzzers. All but one of the buzzers had a name underneath; neither “Bernice” nor “Rogers” was one of them. I pressed them all, except the nameless one-4-B-and waited for somebody to buzz the inner door open.
Somebody did.
The central stairway stopped at each floor for a small landing and a couple of apartment doors, then jogged on up to the next landing. The janitor had a basement apartment, and I could’ve checked with him, but he might warn his tenant a cop was on the way. Instead, I went up to the first landing, knocked on the door of Apartment 1-A, and waited.
A cutie about twenty with Clara Bow curls peeked around the door at my upheld badge. She frowned.
“You’re new,” she said. Betty Boop with a bad attitude and a cigarette.