Three Strikes You're Dead

Chapter 5

Wet snow flurries floated down on the city that February Tuesday, which slowed the morning rush hour traffic, including the streetcars, and which also made me ten minutes late getting to the pressroom at 11th and State. Normally, my coming in at 9:10 was not a cause for concern but, as I was about to learn, this day would be far from normal.

“Damn it, Snap, where have you been?” Nick Corcoran, sweat beading on his upper lip and in twin arcs above his overgrown black eyebrows, pounced on me as I entered the room, which was unusually crowded and noisy. Nick was our overnight man, a 35-year Trib veteran who liked the graveyard shift because he didn’t have to work too hard and had almost nothing to do with any level of management back in the Tower. He was terrified of anyone or anything that smelled of management.

“Jesus Christ, Snap, all hell’s breaking loose, didn’t ya hear about it on the radio or anything?” Nick rasped over the din made by the other reporters and, as I now noticed, photographers as well, including two of our own picture jockeys, McGee and Langley.

“I didn’t turn on the radio this morning. What was I supposed to hear, for God’s sake?”

“Martindale,” Nick sputtered, starting to hyperventilate. “Martindale. Lloyd Martindale. Got shot clean through the pump. Body found a few minutes after 6:00 this morning by a newsie who happened by.”

“Where?”

“Lying near his car in a parking lot on Broadway about a block north of Diversey, close to a restaurant where he’d been addressing some sort of ‘citizens against crime’ group. He left the place alone a few minutes after 11 last night, so he probably caught it just a little later.”

“I’ll be damned. You filed, of course?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, about ten graphs, with a couple of fairly good quotes from Fahey about how it looks like — surprise — a mob hit. Of course it’s a mob hit. I was too late to make the three-star, though. The city desk’s been hollering for you since quarter to nine. And the commissioner’s holding a press conference in his office here at 10:00. Prob’ly wants to beat Courtney to the punch. I was afraid you wasn’t gonna make it.”

“I’m sure you were. I’ll call in right now and calm down all the generals in the tower. Can you stick around and give me a hand at the press conference?”

Nick nodded grimly. He usually tore out the door of the pressroom the instant I came through it, sometimes with barely a hello. Today, he might actually have to earn his salary.

Police Commissioner James P. Allman had two offices, one next door to the mayor’s suite in City Hall down on LaSalle Street in the Loop and the other at Police Headquarters. Years ago some mayor, very likely Big Bill Thompson, had wanted the top cop under his nose downtown so he could have more control over the Police Department. And even now, Allman spent the majority of his time in his City Hall digs. But today, he chose 11th and State for his press conference because, as Anson Masters observed, “he figures he’ll get better treatment from us than from the City Hall press boys. Besides, here he’s the top dog, the star. Down at the Hall, he’s just another department head.”

The carpeted reception area outside Allman’s Headquarters office was jammed with newspaper and radio reporters and photographers. A scarred mahogany rostrum had been hauled out, and four of the local radio stations had clamped their microphones to it. Nick Corcoran was right; Allman wanted to have his say before the Cook County State’s Attorney, Tom Courtney, waded in with his own press conference, which he surely would hold sometime before noon at the County Building, which adjoined City Hall. Courtney himself was a likely challenger for mayor in the Democratic primaries, and he wasn’t about to lose the opportunity to take his whacks at the mayor, the police, and what he would doubtless call “general lawlessness” in a city governed by the Honorable Edward J. Kelly.

At precisely 10 by my watch, the door to Allman’s office swung open, and the commissioner, lips pursed and jaw set, strode purposefully into the overcrowded, overheated room, followed by an equally grim-faced Chief of Detectives Fergus S. Fahey.

“Gentlemen, thank you for rearranging what I appreciate are busy schedules,” Allman intoned after clearing his throat and striking a pose as flashguns popped. He had no notes. “As all of you are aware, a shocking crime took place last night. One of this city’s most outstanding and exemplary citizens, Lloyd Martindale, age forty-seven, was shot dead after having been the guest speaker at a dinner meeting of the North Side Citizens Against Crime organization in the back room of a street-level restaurant in the 2900 block of North Broadway. Mr. Martindale’s body was found at 6:03 this morning lying in a parking lot twenty-two feet from his car, a ’35 Lincoln Le Baron roadster, by a newsstand operator who was passing by on foot en route to his stand, which is located at the intersection of Broadway and Diversey.”

“Commissioner, can you—”

“Let me continue, and then there will be ample time for questions,” Allman snapped at a radio reporter, clearly upset that the rhythm of his oratory had been broken. “Mr. Martindale was shot once, through the heart, probably with a.32 caliber bullet — it’s still in the body. Death was virtually instantaneous, according to the coroner’s office, and the shooting probably occurred before midnight.

“Robbery does not appear to have been a motive, as the victim’s billfold was still on his person and contained $48.55. Also, a gold pocket watch worth several times that amount was in his vest pocket. We have no suspects at this time, but then, the case is barely hours old. I can assure you that the vast resources of this department are being marshaled, and I have every confidence that the perpetrator will swiftly be brought to justice. I know that Chief of Detectives Fahey here” — Allman gestured to his right — “is prepared to use extraordinary measures to ferret out the killer or killers.”

Fahey, looking uncomfortable, nodded.

“Now, are there questions?” Allman asked.

“Yes, Commissioner.” It was Anson Masters, who started by clearing his throat. “Do you attach any significance to the fact, the very interesting fact, that Mr. Martindale was killed on Saint Valentine’s Day? Exactly nine years after the massacre?”

“That apparent coincidence has not been lost upon us, Mr. Masters,” Allman responded coldly, turning again to Fahey. “Chief, would you care to comment at this time?” Fahey stepped to the rostrum, scowling. “It seems probable that Lloyd Martindale has been the victim of the crime syndicate or one of its number. It has not been widely revealed until now, but Mr. Martindale had received — and duly reported the fact to us — several telephone threats within the last year.”

“What kind of threats?” I asked.

“Threats on his life. The caller or callers told him, in essence, to stop his crusading against prostitution, handbooks, numbers, etcetera.”

“But we keep hearing official word that none of these vices still even exist within the city,” Packy Farmer said with a smirk as several members of the media chuckled.

Fahey’s always ruddy face got a few shades redder. “I’m not going to dignify that with a comment,” he growled.

“Was Martindale getting any kind of official protection?” one of the radio guys asked.

“He wouldn’t take any,” Fahey said. “Told us he didn’t want to be perceived as hiding behind the shield of the Police Department. We have, however, maintained ’round-the-clock patrols in the immediate vicinity of the Lake Shore Drive apartment building where he had lived for the last eight months. Our men never saw anyone suspicious in all that time.”

“Martindale has also been pretty hard on the police department,” another radio reporter put in.

Allman aimed an Arctic glare in the questioner’s direction. “Meaning?”

“Just an observation.”

The commissioner blinked once, then looked away. “Any other pertinent questions?”

Indeed, more questions followed, none of which added to the apparently scant information about Martindale’s murder. As the noisy group shuffled out of the police commissioner’s anteroom and headed back to the pressroom to phone in their stories on the conference, Packy Farmer sidled up and gave my arm a tug. “Snap, you’re going to see Fahey now, aren’t you?” he asked sotto voce.

“Well, he sure as hell wouldn’t want to talk to you after that smart-ass comment you tossed his way,” I said. “But before I do anything else, I’m going to phone in a piece. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ll call in something now, mainly to hold space for the later editions. But our first deadline’s a damn sight earlier than yours. We need some good stuff from him.”

“Could be that whatever he gives me, he’ll stipulate that I can share it with everybody but you.”

“Aw, come on, Snap. Don’t be that way.”

I felt like telling Packy to go and dig something up himself, but he had fed my vanity with his suggestion that I “owned” Fahey.

In fact, I’m not stretching the truth when I say that I was in thick with the chief of detectives. That Sunday feature I’d done on him hadn’t hurt any, to be sure, but our relationship went deeper than that single article. Whatever his reasons, the grizzled old police dick seemed to like me, or at least put up with me.

Maybe part of it was that he was reasonably sure that he could trust me — as sure as a copper ever can be about a reporter. When he talked off the record, I honored that, because I knew I’d eventually get the story from him, and usually get it all, when he was ready to unload. And he didn’t use the off-the-record dodge often, maybe because he figured I could find ways to make life hot for him in the pages of the Trib if I thought he was giving me the runaround. He was right.

And yes, Packy Farmer would get some of Fahey’s quotes for the next edition of the American, all right, but I’d make sure he would sweat a little first. If I had to share, I’d have a little fun first.

Back in the pressroom, I called the city desk and dictated a few graphs to a rewrite man on the press conference for our outstate edition, even though the deadline was nowhere close. Packy watched me all the while, drumming his fingers on his desk and rolling another one of his ugly little smokes. I never understood how a guy who had been making his own cigarettes for all of his adult years couldn’t do a better job of it.

After I hung up with rewrite, I leaned back, feet on the desk, and lit up myself — a real cigarette, a Lucky — closing my eyes and struggling to keep from laughing. The Daily News, also a p.m. paper, had roughly the same schedule of editions as Packy’s American, but Anson Masters always seemed unconcerned until minutes before deadline. So while Packy fumed about my inactivity, Anson pored over the Ely Culbertson bridge column in his own paper from the day before, trying to figure out how a guy in a tournament someplace in Europe managed to take all the tricks in a deal even though he and his partner were missing an ace and two kings.

Elsie Dugo looked up from her typewriter, blinked once, and gave me a toothy grin as I eased into her six-foot-square alcove, which guarded the inner sanctum of the chief of detectives. “That grand old fellow on the premises?” I asked, returning her smile.

She nodded, pressing a button and pronouncing my name into a box on her desk. “You know the way, big boy,” Elsie chirped after getting what was to me an unintelligible squawk out of the box. “Be warned, however, that he’s not in the best of tempers.”

“Thanks for the heads up on his frame of mind. Knowing him as I do, I never would have guessed it.”

To call Fergus Fahey’s office dingy would be to pay it a compliment. It did have a carpet all right, albeit edging toward threadbare and of a shade somewhere between dirty brown and dirty gray. And there were two padded, semi-comfortable but unmatched chairs, each of which had arms. These were the only concessions to refinement in a room that looked like a Trappist monk had decorated it. Banks of gray filing cabinets lined two gray, pictureless walls, and on the wall behind Fahey’s desk, a single window that hadn’t been washed since Coolidge first took the oath of office looked out on the Elevated tracks.

The man himself slouched behind a battered, brown wooden desk that seemed to function primarily as support for stacks of paperwork. He dipped his chin almost imperceptibly in acknowledgment of my presence.

“Well, and a nice warm hello to you, too,” I said, sliding into one of the guest chairs.

“Got a Lucky?” he snorted, knowing I always did.

“Yeah. Got coffee?” I responded, knowing he always did. This was a ritual we had fallen into sometime back. The coffee in his office, brewed by Elsie in her anteroom, was the best in the building. Fahey hit the intercom buzzer three times — the coffee signal — as I handed my pack of smokes across and he pulled two out. He never took just one.

Elsie clicked in on her high heels carrying a steaming mug of caffeine juice and set it on the corner of the desk, one of the few spots not covered with stacks of papers.

“I’m pretty sure I love you,” I said, hoisting the cup to her in salute and getting a dimpled smile in response before she stuck out her tongue at me.

“You two could do a lot worse than each other,” the chief observed dryly, looking from her to me and back again. “Elsie, what did I tell you when I came back from that damned press conference?”

“You said that Snap — Mr. Malek — would show up here at 10:25.”

“What time is it now?”

She looked at the clock on the wall behind Fahey and grinned in my direction. “It’s 10:27.”

“And how long has our Mr. Malek been here?”

“Two minutes?” It was a question, but tentatively posed.

“Right! I’m just trying to confirm patterns of predictability. Thank you, Elsie.” She did a graceful about-face and left the room, which instantly reverted to its drab state.

I drank coffee and crossed one leg over the other. “Okay, now that you have flushed all that bile out of your system, want to talk about Lloyd Martindale?” I asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Force yourself, open up. What’s your opinion? Off the record this time. I’m feeling generous.”

Fahey lit up and leaned back, blowing smoke and running a hand over the gray fringe of hair that formed a semicircle around that ruddy scalp of his. “Christ, what do you think, Snap? If I was in the syndicate, I’d be looking for ways to get rid of the guy, too. Off the record, of course.”

“Of course. No question it was them?”

“Or one of them. Or somebody in their hire.”

“Why?”

“Oh, come on, you know the answer to that question as well as I do, probably better,” the chief sighed, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “He looked like he was headed for the mayor’s office.”

“You really think he would have won?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know for sure — maybe not. But the possibility was definitely there, which may have been enough to scare the boys. Things are fairly comfortable for them as long as Kelly sits in the big office with Pat Nash’s power backing him up. But Martindale figured to turn the town on its ear, even if he was a pompous, posturing, publicity-hungry ass. He would have made life miserable for a lot of people who don’t like being uncomfortable.”

“And you really figure that they’d kill him rather than risk his getting into the Hall?”

The chief shrugged again and threw his arms up. “You know as well as I do that they’ve done it for a lot smaller stakes.”

“So now what happens?”

Fahey furiously ground out his butt in a ceramic ashtray bearing the name of a Wabash Avenue steak house. “You know the answer to that one, too. What happens, of course, is that the heat is on the department, which is to say, yours truly, thank you. Altman had his ‘we’ll-leave-no-stone-unturned’ speech a little while ago, as you heard. At 11:00, Courtney gets his chance to chest-thump down at the County Building about this horrible crime and how the city desperately needs new leadership, which — though he won’t say so outright — is none other than himself, of course. And what are you willing to wager that by 3:00 this afternoon, Hizzoner the Mayor, with puppet master Pat Nash nodding soberly at his side, holds his own press conference in which he’ll rail about how he doesn’t get enough support in his ongoing, unrelenting war on organized crime.”

“What war on organized crime?”

Fahey actually started to grin before catching himself. “Just so. But he’ll make it sound good, damn good, and some newspapermen are dumb enough, or gullible enough, to take the bait. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Of course. You sound a touch on the acid side,” I chided.

“More than a touch, Snap. And what really pisses me off is that Martindale will come out of this looking like a goddamn martyr. Hellfire, the last couple of years, he’s been all over the department about our inability to nail any of the post-Capone syndicate biggies. Never mind that he had no specific suggestions on how to do it. What a pain in the ass he got to be, for all of us. If I wasn’t so sure who was behind his killing, I’d guess it was somebody high up in the Department who got sick of hearing him carp. But I never said that, did I?”

“Nah. And I never heard it. Although I noticed at the press conference that the good commissioner is a little thin-skinned on that particular subject. Okay, I need some quotes that I — and all the other clowns in the pressroom — can use.”

“That’s right, you’re here as usual representing that syndicate of your own, right? Including that jackass Farmer; tell him to go — oh, the hell with it. Okay, pull out your notebook and your pack of Luckies and I’ll buzz Elsie to bring more coffee. This could take a while.”