Dying in the Post-War World

10

The next day, however, I did little on the Keenan case. I did check in with both Kruger and Drury, neither of whom had much for me — nothing that the papers hadn’t already told me.

Two janitors had been questioned, and considered suspects, briefly. One of them was the old Kraut we’d borrowed the broomstick from — Otto Bergstrum. The other was an Army vet in his early twenties named James Watson, who was the handyman for the nursery from which the kidnap ladder had been stolen. Watson was a prime suspect because, as a juvenile offender, he’d been arrested for molesting an eight-year-old girl.

That long-ago charge had been knocked down to disorderly conduct, however, and meanwhile, back in the present, both Bergstrum and Watson had alibis. Also, they both passed lie-detector tests.

“It doesn’t look like there’s any significance,” Kruger told me on the phone, “to that locker the killer broke into.”

“In the so-called ‘murder cellar,’ you mean?”

“Yeah. Kidnapper stole rags and shopping bags out of it. The guy’s clean, whose locker that is.”

“Any good prints turn up?”

“No. Not in the murder cellar, or the girl’s room. We had two on the window that turned out to be the cleaning lady. We do have a crummy partial off the kidnap note. And we have some picture-frame wire, a loop of it, we found in an alley near the Keenan house; might’ve been used to strangle the girl. The coroner says she was dead before she was cut up.”

“Thank God for that much.”

“We have a couple of odd auto sightings, near the Keenan house, in the night and early morning. We’re looking into that.”

“A car makes sense,” I said. “Otherwise, you’d think somebody would’ve spotted this maniac hand-carrying the body from the Keenans’ over to that basement.”

“I agree. But it was the middle of the night. Time of death, after all, was between one thirty and two a.m.”

Kruger said he’d keep me posted, and that had been that, for me and the Keenan case, on that particular day.

With one rather major exception.

I was about to get into my Plymouth, in a parking garage near the Rookery, when a dark blue 1946 Mercury slid up and blocked me in.

Before I had the chance to complain, the driver looked out at me and grinned. “Let’s take a spin, Heller.”

He was a thin-faced, long-chinned, beak-nosed, gray-complected guy about forty; he wasn’t big, but his presence was commanding. His name was Sam Flood, and he was a fast-rising Outfit guy, currently Tony Accardo’s chauffeur/bodyguard. He was also called “Mooney,” which was West Side street slang for nuts.

“A ‘spin,’ Sam — or a ‘ride’?”

Sam laughed. “Come on, Heller. I got a proposition for you. Since when do you turn your nose up at dough?”

I wasn’t armed, but it was cinch Flood was. Flood was a West Side boy, like me, only I grew up around Maxwell Street while he was from the Near West Side’s notorious “Patch,” and a veteran of the infamous street gang, the 42s.

“Let’s talk right here, Sam,” I said. “Nobody’s around.”

He thought about that; his dark eyes glittered. He pretended to like me, but I knew he didn’t. He hated all cops, including ex-cops. And my status with the Outfit largely had to do with my one-time friendship with the late Frank Nitti, whom Sam had no particular respect for. Sam was, after all, a protégé of Paul Ricca, who had forced Nitti out.

“Okay,” Sam said. He spoke softly, and almost haltingly. “I’m gonna park it right over there in that space. You come sit and talk. Nothing bad’s gonna happen to you in my own fuckin’ car.”

So we sat and talked.

Sam, wearing a dark well-tailored suit and a kelly-green snap-brim, half-turned to look at me. “You know who speaks well of you?”

“Who?”

“Louie Campagna.” He thumbed his chest. “I kept an eye on his missus for him while he was in stir on the movie-union rap.”

“Louie’s all right,” I said politely. Campagna had been Nitti’s right arm; for some reason, Sam wanted to reassure me that we were pals. Or at least, had mutual pals. Back in ’44, I’d encountered Sam for the first time when Outfit treasurer Jake Guzik got kidnapped and I was pulled in as a neutral go-between. From that experience I had learned Sam “Mooney” Flood was one ruthless fucker, and as manipulative as a carnival barker.

“You’re on this Keenan case,” he said.

That would’ve tensed me right there, only I was already wound tight.

“Yeah,” I said casually. “Not in a big way. The father’s a friend, and he wants somebody to keep the cops honest.”

That made him laugh. Whether it was the idea of me keeping somebody honest, or anybody keeping the cops honest, he didn’t say.

I decided to test the waters. “You know why Keenan called me in, don’t you?”

“No,” Sam said. It seemed a genuine enough response.

“He was afraid the kidnapping might have been the mob getting back at him for not playing ball back east. You know, in his OPA job.”

Sam nodded, but then shook his head, no. “That’s not likely, Heller. The eastern mobs don’t make a play on our turf without checking first.”

I nodded; that made sense.

“But just so you know — if you don’t already — up to very recent, I was in the gas and food stamp business.”

I had known that, which was why seeing the little hood show up on my figurative doorstep was so chilling; not that meeting with Sam Flood would warm me up under any circumstances.

“But that’s over,” Sam said. “In fact, it’s been over for a couple months. That racket’s gone the way of speakeasies. And Heller — when we was in that business, I never, and to my knowledge, no Outfit guy never made no approach to that Keenan guy.”

“He never said you did.”

The gaunt face relaxed. “Good. Now — let me explain my interest in this case.”

“Please do.”

“It’s looking like that fucking Lipstick Killer did this awful crime on this little child.”

“Looks like. But some people think a crank might’ve written that lipstick message in the alley.”

His eyes tightened. “I hear the family received a lipstick letter, too, with the same message: ‘Stop me before I kill more’ or whatever.”

“That’s true.”

He sighed. Then he looked at me sharply. “Does attorney/client privilege apply to you and me, if I give you a retainer?”

“Yeah. I’d have to send you a contract with an attorney I work with, to keep it legal. Or we could do it through your attorney. But I don’t know that I want you as a client, Sam. No offense.”

He raised a finger. “I promise you that working for me will in no way compromise you or put you in conflict of interest with your other client, the Keenan father. If I’m lying, then the deal’s off.”

I said nothing.

He thrust a fat, sealed envelope into my lap. “That’s a grand in fifties.”

“Sam, I...”

“I’m your client now, Heller. Got that?”

“Well...”

“Got it?”

I swallowed and nodded. I slipped the envelope in my inside suit coat pocket.

“The Lipstick Killer,” Sam said, getting us back on the track. “The first victim was a Mrs. Caroline Williams.”

I nodded.

He thrust his finger in my face; I looked at it, feeling my eyes cross. It was like looking into a gun barrel. “No one, Heller, no one must know about this.” The finger withdrew and the ferret-like gangster sighed and looked out the windshield at the cement wall beyond. “I have a family. Little girls. Got to protect them. Are you a father, Heller?”

“My wife’s expecting.”

Sam grinned. “That’s great! That’s wonderful.” Then the grin disappeared. “Look, I’d do anything to protect my Angeline. Some guys, they flaunt their other women. Me, far as my family knows, I never strayed. Never. But... you’re a man — you understand the needs of a man.”

I was starting to get the picture; or at least part of it.

“The thing is, I was seeing this woman, this Caroline Williams. For the most part, it was pretty discreet.”

It must have been, if Bill Drury hadn’t found out about it; he’d been on that case, after all, and his hate-on for the Outfit was legendary.

As if reading my mind, Sam said, “Not a word to your pal Drury about this! Christ. That guy’s nuts.”

Mooney should know.

“Anyway, there was this photo of us together. Her and me, together. I want it back.”

“Not for sentimental reasons, either.”

“No,” he admitted frankly. “It crushed me that my friend Mrs. Williams had the bad luck to be this maniac’s victim. But from what I hear, this guy was not just a sex killer. He was some kind of weirdie second-story man.”

“I think so,” I said. “I think he was a burglar with a hobby.”

“The police reports indicated that stuff was missing. Undergarments, various personal effects. Anyway, even with Drury on the case, I was able to find out that the picture album she had the photo in wasn’t among her effects.”

“Maybe her family got it.”

“I checked that out myself — discreetly.”

“Then you think... the killer took the photo album?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. She had photos of herself in bathing suits and shit. If he took her underwear with him, he could’ve taken that, too.”

“So what do you want from me?”

He looked at me hard; he clutched my arm. “All I want is that photo album. Not even that — just that one photo. It was taken in a restaurant, by one of them photo girls who come around.”

“How I am supposed to find it?”

“You may find this guy before the cops do. Or, you’re tight enough with the cops on the case to maybe get to it before they do. The photo album, I mean. It would embarrass me to have that come out. It would open up an ugly can of worms, and it wouldn’t have nothing to do with nothing, where these crackpot killings are concerned. It would hurt me and my family and at the same time only muddy up the waters, where the case against the maniac is concerned.”

I thought about that. I had to agree.

“So all you want,” I said, “is that photo.”

“And your discretion.”

“You’d be protected,” I said. “It would be through an attorney, after all. You’d be his client and he would be my client. I couldn’t say a word if I wanted to.”

“You’ll take the job?”

“I already took your money. But what if I don’t get results?”

“You keep the retainer. You find and return that picture, you get another four grand.”

“What I really want,” I said, “is that little girl’s murderer. I want to kill that son of a bitch.”

“Have all the fun you want,” Sam said. “But get me my picture back.”