“But if he’d switched guns or bullets?”
“Oh, the vest was bullet-proofed for anything short of atomics. The danger was in his thinking of a fancy way of disposing of the body. If he had, I could have taken care of myself, of course, but it would have spoiled the plan and cost me three months’ build-up. But I’d studied his style and I was pretty sure what he’d do. Now here’s what I want you to do, Dyer—”
The newspapers and videocasts the next morning carried the story of the finding of a body of an unidentified man in a certain alley. By afternoon they reported that it had been identified as the body of Martin Blue, a small-time crook who had lived on Lake Shore Drive, in the heart of the Tenderloin. And by evening a rumor had gone out through the underworld to the effect that the police suspected Joe Zatelli, for whom Blue had worked, and might pick him up for questioning.
And plainclothesmen watched Zatelli’s place, front and back, to see where he’d go if he went out. Watching the front was a small man about the build of Bela Joad or Martin Blue. Unfortunately, Zatelli happened to leave by the back and he succeeded in shaking off the detectives on his trail.
They picked him up the next morning, though, and took him to headquarters. They put the lie-detector on him and asked him about Martin Blue. He admitted Blue had worked for him but said he’d last seen Blue when the latter had left his place after work the night of the murder. The lie-detector said he wasn’t lying.
Then they pulled a tough one on him. Martin Blue walked into the room where Zatelli was being questioned. And the trick fizzled. The gauges of the detector didn’t jump a fraction of a millimeter and Zatelli looked at Blue and then at his interrogators with complete indignation.
“What’s the idea?” he demanded. “The guy ain’t even dead, and you’re asking me if I bumped him off?” They asked Zatelli, while they had him there, about some other crimes he might have committed, but obviously—according to his answers and the lie-detector—he hadn’t done any of them. They let him go.
Of course that was the end of Martin Blue. After showing up before Zatelli at headquarters, he might as well have been dead in an alley for all the good he was going to do.
Bela Joad told Chief Rand, “Well, anyway, now we know.”
“What do we know?”
“We know for sure the detector is being beaten. You might conceivably have been making a series of wrong arrests before. Even the evidence I gave you against Girard might have been misleading. But we know that Zatelli beat the machine. Only I wish Zatelli had come out the front way so I could have tailed him; we might have the whole thing now instead of part of it.”
“You’re going back? Going to do it all over again?”
“Not the same way. This time I’ve got to be on the other end of a murder, and I’ll need your help on that.”
“Of course. But won’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, Dyer. I’ve got a hunch within a hunch. In fact, I’ve had it ever since I started on this business. But will you do one other thing for me?”
“Sure. What?”
“Have one of your men keep track of Zatelli, of everything he does from now on. Put another one on Gyp Girard. In fact, take as many men as you can spare and put one on each of the men you’re fairly sure has beaten the detector within the last year or two. And always from a distance; don’t let the boys know they’re being checked on. Will you?”
“I don’t know what you’re after, but I’ll do it. Won’t you tell me anything. Joad, this is important. Don’t forget it’s not just a case, it’s something that can lead to the breakdown of law enforcement.”
Bela Joad smiled “Not quite that bad, Dyer. Law enforcement as it applies to the underworld, yes. But you’re getting your usual percentage of convictions on nonprofessional crimes.”
Dyer Rand looked puzzled. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Maybe everything; It’s why I can’t tell you anything yet. But don’t worry.” Joad reached across the desk and patted the chief’s shoulder, looking—although he didn’t know it—like a fox terrier giving his paw to an Airedale. “Don’t worry, Dyer. I’ll promise to bring you the answer. Maybe I won’t be able to let you keep it.”
“Do you really know what you’re looking for?”
“Yes. I’m looking for a criminologist who disappeared well over two years ago. Dr. Ernst Chappel.”
“You think—?”
“Yes, I think. That’s why I’m looking for Dr. Chappel.”
But that was all Dyer could get out of him. Bela Joad left Dyer Rand’s office and returned to the underworld.
And in the underworld of Chicago a new star arose. Perhaps one should call him a nova rather than merely a star so rapidly did he become famous—or notorious. Physically, he was rather a small man, no larger than Bela Joad or Martin Blue, but he wasn’t a mild little man like Joad or a weak jackal like Blue. He had what it took, and he parlayed what he had. He ran a small night club, but that was just a front. Behind that front things happened, things that the police couldn’t pin on him, and—for that matter—didn’t seem to know about, although the underworld knew.
His name was Willie Ecks, and nobody in the underworld had ever made friends and enemies faster. He had plenty of each; the former were powerful and the latter were dangerous. In other words, they were both the same type of people.
His brief career was truly—if I may scramble my star-nova metaphor but keep it celestial—a meteoric matter. And for once that hackneyed and inaccurate metaphor is used correctly. Meteors do not rise—as anybody who has ever studied meteorology, which has no connection with meteors, knows. Meteors fall, with a dull thud. And that is what happened to Willie Ecks, when he got high enough.
Three days before, Willie Ecks’s worst enemy had vanished. Two of his henchmen spread the rumor that it was because the cops had come and taken him away, but that was obviously malarkey designed to cover the fact that they intended to avenge him. That became obvious when, the very next morning, the news broke that the gangster’s body had been found, neatly weighted, in the Blue Lagoon at Washington Park.
And by dusk of that very day rumor had gone from bistro to bistro of the underworld that the police had pretty good proof who had killed the deceased—and with a forbidden atomic at that—and that they planned to arrest Willie Ecks and question him. Things like that get around even when it’s not intended that they should.
And it was on the second day of Willie Ecks’s hiding-out in a cheap little hotel on North Clark Street, an old-fashioned hotel with elevators and windows, his whereabouts known only to a trusted few, that one of those trusted few gave a certain knock on his door and was admitted.
The trusted one’s name was Mike Leary and he’d been a close friend of Willie’s and a close enemy of the gentleman who, according to the papers, had been found in the Blue Lagoon.
He said, “Looks like you’re in a jam, Willie.”
“Hell, yes,” said Willie Ecks. He hadn’t used facial depilatory for two days; his face was blue with beard and bluer with fear.
Mike said, “There’s a way out, Willie. It’ll cost you ten grand. Can you raise it?”
“I’ve got it. What’s the way out?”
“There’s a guy. I know how to get in touch with him; I ain’t used him myself, but I would if I got in a jam like yours. He can fix you up, Willie.”
“How?”
“He can show you how to beat the lie-detector. I can have him come around to see you and fix you up. Then you let the cops pick you up and question you, see? They’ll drop the charge—or if they bring it to trial, they can’t make it stick.”