rarity, an honest cop-was not thrilled to see me.
“I’m getting sick of you turning up at shootings,” he said.
“I do it just to irritate you. It makes your eyes twinkle.”
“ covereleft a crime scene.”
“I hauled the victim to the hospital. I told the guy at the drugstore to call it in. Let’s not get technical.”
“Yeah,” Stege grunted. “Let’s not. What’s your story?”
“The union secretary hired me to keep an eye on this guy Cooke. But Cooke walked in, while I was there, angry, and then Martin showed up, equally steamed.”
I gave him the details.
As I was finishing up, a doctor came out of Cooke’s room and Stege cornered him, flashing his badge.
“Can he talk, doc?”
“Briefly. He’s in critical condition.”
“Is he gonna make it?”
“He should pull through. Stay only a few minutes, gentlemen.”
Stege went in and I followed; I thought he might object, but he didn’t.
Cooke looked pale, but alert. He was flat on his back. Stege introduced himself and asked for Cooke’s story.
Cooke gave it, with lawyer-like formality: “I went to see Martin to protest his conduct of the union. I told Martin he ought to’ve obtained a pay raise for the men in one junkyard. I told him our members were promised a pay increase, by a certain paper company, and instead got a wage cut-and that I understood he’d sided with the employer in the matter! He got very angry, at that, and in a little while we were scuffling. When he grabbed a gun out of his desk, I told him he was crazy, and started to leave. Then…then he shot me in the back.”
Stege jotted that down, thanked Cooke and we stepped out into the hall.
“Think that was the truth?” Stege asked me.
“Maybe. But you really ought to hear Martin’s side, too.”
“Good idea, Heller. I didn’t think of that. Of course, the fact that Martin lammed does complicate things, some.”
“With all the heat on unions, lately, I can see why he lammed. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt Martin pulled the trigger. But who attacked who remains in question.”
Stege sighed. “You do have a point. I can understand Martin taking it on the lam, myself. He’s already under indictment for another matter. He probably just panicked.”
“Another matter?”
Stege nodded. “He and Terry Druggan and two others were indicted last August for conspiracy. Trying to conceal from revenue officers that Druggan was part owner of a brewery.”
Druggan was a former bootlegger, a West Side hood who’d been loosely aligned with such non-Capone forces as the Bugs Moran gang. I was starting to think maybe my old man wouldn’t have been so pleased by all this union activity.
“We’ll stake out Martin’s place,” Stege said, “for all the good it’ll do. He’s got a bungalow over on Wolcott Avenue.”
“Nice little neighbrhood,” I said.
“We’re in the wrong racket,” Stege admitted.
It was too late in the afternoon to bother going back to the office now, so I stopped and had supper at Pete’s Steaks and then headed back to my apartment at the Morrison Hotel. I was reading a Westbrook Pegler column about what a bad boy Willie Bioff was when the phone rang.
“Nate? It’s Jake.”
“Jake, I’m sorry I didn’t call you or anything. I didn’t have any number for you but the union hall. You know about what went down?”
“Do I. I’m calling from the Marquette station. They’re holding me for questioning.”
“Hell, you weren’t even there!”
“That’s okay. I’m stalling ’em a little.”
“Why, for Christ’s sake?”
“Listen, Nate-we gotta hold this thing together. You gotta talk to Martin.”
“Why? How?”
“I’m gonna talk to Cooke. Cooke’s the guy who hired me to work for the union in the first place, and…”
“What? Cooke hired you?”
“Yeah, yeah. Look, I’ll go see Cooke first thing in the morning-that is, if you’ve seen Martin tonight, and worked a story out. Something that’ll make this all sound like an accident…”
“I don’t like being part of cover-ups.”
“This ain’t no fuckin’ cover-up! It’s business! Look, they got the state’s attorney’s office in on this already. You know who’s taken over for Stege, already?”
“Tubbo Gilbert?”
“Himself,” Jake said.
Captain Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert was the richest cop in Chicago. In the world. He was tied in with every mob, every fixer in town.
“The local will be finished,” Jake said. “He’ll find something in the books and use that and the shooting as an excuse to close the union down.”
“Which’ll freeze wages at current levels,” I said. “Exactly what the likes of Billy Skidmore would want.”
“Right. And then somebody else’ll open the union back up, in six months or so. Somebody tied into the Nitti and Guzik crowd.”
“As opposed to Druggan and Moran.”
“Don’t compare them to Nitti and Guzik. Those guys went straight, Nate.”
“Please. I just ate. Moran got busted on a counterfeit railroad-bond scam just last week.”
“Nobody’s perfect. Nate, it’s for the best. Think of your old man.”
“Don’t do that to me, Jake. I don’t exactly think your union is what my pop had in mind when he was handing out pamphlets on Maxwell Street.”
“Well, it’s all that stands between the working stiffs and the Billy Skidmores.”
“I take it you know where Martin is hiding out.”
“Yeah. That secretary of his, her mother has a house in Hinsdale. Lemme give you the address…”
“Okay, Jake. It’s against my better judgment, but okay…”
It took an hour to get there by car. Well after dark. Hinsdale was a quiet, well-fed little suburb, and the house at 409 Walnut Street was a two-story number in the midst of a healthy lawn. The kind of place the suburbs are full of, but which always seem shockingly sprawling to city boys like yours truly.
There were a few lights on, downstairs. I walked up onto the porch and knocked. I was unarmed. Probably not wise, but I was.
The secretary answered the door. Cracked it open.
She didn’t recognize me at first.
“I’m here about our dinner date,” I said.
Then, in relief, she smiled, opened the door wider.
“You’re Mr. Heller.”
“That’s right. I never did get your name.”
“Then how did you find me?”
“I had your address. I just didn’t get your name.”
“Well, it’s Nancy. But what do you want, Mr. Heller?”
“Make it Nate. It’s cold. Could I step in?”
She swallowed. “Sure.”
I stepped inside; it was a nicely furnished home, but obviously the home of an older person: the doilies and ancient photo portraits were a dead giveaway.
“This is my mother’s home,” she said. “She’s visiting relatives. I live here.”
I doubted that; the commute would be impossible. If she didn’t live with Martin, in his nifty little bungalow on
