other first name given.
“Arthur went off his rocker when I came in, tipsy. He demanded the truth-so I told it to him! It was all innocent enough, but got him goin’. He talked days on end about Doc Peacock, about how he was going to even the score.”
“Do you think he did?”
The redhead laughed again, said, “Honey, that Dr. Peacock whose puss has been in the papers ain’t the guy I dated. My Peacock was much better looking-wavy hair, tall, a real dreamboat. I think my pick-up just pulled a name out of his hat.”
“Your husband didn’t know that. Maybe he evened the score with the wrong Peacock.”
She shook her head, not believing that for a minute. “Arthur just isn’t the type. He’s a poor, weak sister. He never had enough pep to hurt a fly.”
It was all conjecture, but I turned it over to Stege, anyway. Thompson’s alibi checked out. Yet another dead-end.
The next day I was reading the morning papers over breakfast in the coffee shop at the Morrison Hotel. A very small item, buried on an inside page, caught my eye: Dr. Joseph Soldinger, 1016 North Oakley Blvd, had been robbed at gunpoint last night of $37, his car stolen.
I called Stege and pointed out the similarity to the Peacock case, half expecting him to shrug it off. He didn’t. He thanked me, and hung up.
A week later I got a call from Stege; he was excited. “Listen to this: Dr. A.L. Abrams, 1600 Milwaukee Avenue, $56 lost to gunmen; Dr. L.A. Garness, 2542 Mozart Avenue, waylaid and robbed of $6. And there’s two more like that.”
“Details?”
“Each features a call to a doctor to rush to a bedside. Address is in a lonely neighrhood. It’s an appointment with ambush. Take is always rather small. Occurrences between ten and eleven p.m.”
“Damn! Sounds like Mrs. Peacock has been right all along. Her husband fought off his attackers; that’s what prompted their beating him.”
“The poor bastard was a hero and the papers paint him a philanderer.”
“Well, we handed ’em the brush.”
“Perhaps we did, Heller. Anyway, thanks.”
“Any suspects?”
“No. But we got the pattern now. From eye-witness descriptions it seems to be kids. Four assailants, three tall and husky, the other shorter.”
A bell was ringing, and not outside my window. “Captain, you ever hear of Rose Kasallis?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“I tracked a runaway girl to her place two summers ago. She’s a regular female Fagin. She had a flat on North Maplewood Avenue that was a virtual ‘school for crime.’”
“I have heard of that. The West North Avenue cops handled it. She was keeping a way-station for fugitive kids from the reform school at St. Charles. Sent up the river for contributing to the delinquency of minors?”
“That’s the one. I had quite a run-in with her charming boy Bobby. Robert Goethe is his name.”
“Oh?”
“He’s eighteen years old, a strapping kid with the morals of an alley cat. And there were a couple of kids he ran with, Emil Reck, who they called Emil the Terrible, and another one whose name I can’t remember…”
“Heller, Chicago has plenty of young street toughs. Why do you think these three might be suspects in the Peacock case?”
“I don’t know that they are. In fact, last I knew Bobby and the other two were convicted of strong-arming a pedestrian and were sitting in the Bridewell. But that’s been at least a year ago.”
“And they might be out amongst us again, by now.”
“Right. Could you check?”
“I’ll do that very thing.”
Ten minutes later Stege called and said, “They were released in December.”
January 2 had been Silber Peacock’s last day on earth.
“I have an address for Bobby Goethe’s apartment,” Stege said. “Care to keep an old copper company?”
He swung by and picked me up-hardly usual procedure, pulling in a private dick on a case, but I had earned this-and soon we were pulling up in front of the weathered brownstone in which Bobby Goethe lived. And there was no doubt he lived here.
Because despite the chilly day, he and Emil the Terrible were sitting on the stoop, in light jackets, smoking cigarettes and drinking bottles of beer. Bobby had a weak, acned chin, and reminded me of photos I’d seen of Clyde Barrow; Emil had a big lumpy nose and a high forehead, atop which was piled blond curly hair-he looked thick as a plank.
We were in an unmarked car, but a uniformed man was behind the wheel, so as soon as we pulled in, the two boys reacted, beer bottles dropping to the cement and exploding like bombs.
Bobby took off in one direction, and Emil took off in the other. Stege just watched as his plainclothes detective assistant took off after Emil, and I took off after Bobby.
It took me a block to catch up, and I hit him with a flying tackle, and we rolled into a vacant lot, not unlike the one by the Caddy in which Peacock’s body had been found.
Bobby was a wiry kid, and wormed his way out of my grasp, kicking back at me as he did; I took a boot in the face, but didn’t lose any teeth, and managed to reach out and grab that foot and yank him back hard. He went down on his face in the weeds and rocks. One of the larger of those rocks found its way into his hand, and he flung it at me, savage little animal that he was, only not so little. I ducked out of the rock’s way, but quickly reached a hand under my topcoat and suitcoat and got my nine millimeter Browning out and pointed it down at him.
“I’m hurt,” he said, looking up at me with a scraped, bloody face.
“Shall we call a doctor?” I said.
Emil and Bobby and their crony named Nash, who was arrested later that afternoon by West North Avenue Station cops, were put in a show-up for the various doctors who’d been robbed to identify. They did so, without hesitation. The trio was separated and questioned individually and sang and sang. A fourth boy was implicated, the shorter one who’d been mentioned, seventeen-year-old Mickey Livingston. He too was identified, and he too sang.
Their story was a singularly stupid one. They had been cruising in a stolen car, stopped in a candy store, picked Peacock’s name at random from the phone book, picked another name and address, altered it, and called and lured the doctor to an isolated spot they’d chosen. Emil the Terrible, a heavy club in hand, crouched in the shadows across the street from 6438 North Whipple. Nash stood at the entrance, and Goethe, gun in hand, hid behind a tree nearby. Livingston was the wheel man, parked half a block north.
Peacock drove up and got out of his car, medical bag in hand. Bobby stuck the gun in the doctor’s back and told him not to move. Peacock was led a block north after Emil the Terrible had smacked him “a lick for luck.” At this point Peacock fought back, wrestling with Bobby, who shot the doctor in the head. Peacock dropped to the ground, and Emil the Imbecilic hit the dead man again and again with the club. A scalpel from the medical bag in one hand, the gun held butt forward in the other, Bobby added some finishing touches. Nash pulled up in the doctor’s car, Livingston following. The corpse was then tossed in the backseat of the Caddy, which was abandoned three blocks away.
Total take for the daring boys: $20. Just what I’d made on the case, only they didn’t get five bucks expenses.
What Bobby, Emil and Nash did get was 199 years plus consecutive terms of one year to life on four robbery counts. Little Mickey was given a thirty-year sentence, and was eventually paroled. The others, to the best of my knowledge, never were.
R Peacock moved to Quincy, Illinois, where she devoted the rest of her life to social service, her church and Red Cross work, as well as to raising her two daughters, Betty Lou and Nancy. Nancy never knew her father.
