Chicago Lightning

“You knew about that money, didn’t you, Stemmer? The money Rose was going to use to treat your wife to a Hollywood trip. And you could use eleven-hundred bucks, couldn’t you, pal? Hell, who couldn’t!”

He shoved me again. “You don’t take a goddamn hint, do you, Heller?”

“Here’s a hint for you: when a bookie like Goldie gets paid off, right before the legbreakers leave the gate? That means somebody finally had a winner.”

His face turned white.

“Sure, she let her brother-in-law in the front door,” I said. “She may have had you pegged for the kind of welsher who stiffs his own sister-in-law for a loan, but she probably thought she was at least safe with you, alone in her own house. That should’ve been a sure bet, right? Only it wasn’t. What did you use? A sash weight? A crowbar?”

This time he shoved me with both hands, and he was trying to crawl in on the rider’s side of the Ford, to get behind the wheel, when I dragged him out by the leg. On his ass on the grass, he tried to kick me with the other leg, and I kicked him in the balls, and it ended as it had begun, with a scream.

All kinds of people, some of them cops, came running, swarming around us with questions and accusations. But I ignored them, hauling Stemmer to his feet, and jerking an arm around his back, holding the big guy in place, and Cullen believed me when I said, “Brother-in-law did it,” taking over for me, and I quickly filled Mullaney in.

They found four hundred and fifteen bucks in cash in Stemmer’s wallet-what he had left after paying off the bookie.

“That’s a lot of money,” Mullaney said. “Where’d you get it?”

“I won it on a horse,” Stemmer said.

Only it came out sounding like a question.

After he failed six lie detector tests, Raymond Stemmer confessed in full. Turned out hardnosed businesswoman Rose had quietly fired Stemmer when she found out he’d been stealing furniture from their warehouse. Rich Miller had told Rose that Ray was going to the track with him, time to time, so she figured her brother-in-law was selling the furniture on the side to play the horses. She had given him an ultimatum: pay back the three hundred dollars, and what the furniture was worth, and Rose would not tell her sister about his misdeeds.

Stemmer had stopped by the house around nine thirty and told Rose he’d brought her the money. Instead, in the living room, as she reached for her already burning cigarette, he had paid her back by striking her in the back of the head with a wrench.

Amazingly, she hadn’t gone down. She’d staggered, knocked the ashtray to the floor, only to look over her shoulder at him and say, “You have the nerve to hit me?”

And he found the nerve to hit her again, and another ten times, where she lay on the floor.

He removed the woman’s diamond wedding ring, and went upstairs and emptied the wallet. All of this he admitted in a thirty-page statement. The diamond was found in a toolbox in his basement, the wrench in the Chicago River (after three hours of diving). His guilty plea got him a life sentence.

About a week after I’d found Rose Vinicky’s body, her husband called me at my office. He was sending a check for my services-the five days I’d followed Miller-and wanted to thank me for exposing his brother-in-law as the killer. He told me he was taking his daughter to California on the trip her mother had promised; the sister-in- law was too embarrassed and distraught to accept Vinicky’s invitation to come along.

“What I don’t understand,” the pitiful voice over the phone said, “is why Rose was so distant to me, those last weeks. Why she’d acted in a way that made me think-”

“Mr. Vinicky, your wife knew her sister’s husband was a lying louse, a degenerate gambler, stealing from the both of you. That was what was on her mind.”

“…I hadn’t thought of it that way. By God, I think you’re right, Mr. Heller…. You know something funny? Odd. Ironic, I mean?”

“What?”

“I got a long, lovely letter from Rich Miller today. Handwritten. A letter of condolence. He heard about Rose’s death, and said he was sick about it. That she was a wonderful lady and had been kind to him. After all the people who’ve said Rose was hard-hearted to the people who worked for us? This, this…it’s a kind of…testament to her.”

“That’s nice, Mr. Vinicky. Really is.”

“Postmarked Omaha. Wonder what Miller’s doing there?”

Hiding from the legbreakers, I thought.

And, knowing him, doing it at the dog tracks.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

George Hagenauer discovered the Vinicky case in an obscure true-detective magazine. I have compressed time and omitted aspects of the investigation; and some of the names in this story have been changed.

UNREASONABLE DOUBT

In March of 1947, I got caught up in the notorious Overell case, which made such headlines in Los Angeles, particularly during the trial that summer. The double murder-laced as it was with underage sex in a lurid scenario that made “Double Indemnity” seem tame-hit the front pages in Chicago, as well. But back home I never bragged about my little-publicized role, because-strictly speaking-I was the one guy who might have headed the whole thing off.

I was taking a deductible vacation, getting away from an Illinois spring that was stubbornly still winter, in trade for Southern California’s constant summer. My wife, who was prent and grouchy, loved L.A., and had a lot of friends out there, which was one of the reasons for the getaway; but I was also checking in with the L.A. branch office of the A-1 Detective Agency, of which I was the president.

I’d recently thrown in with Fred Rubinski, a former Chicago cop I’d known since we were both on the pickpocket detail, who from before the war had been running a one-man agency out of a suite in the Bradbury Building at Third and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.

It was Friday morning, and I was flipping through the pages of Cue magazine in the outer office, occasionally flirting with Fred’s good-looking blonde receptionist-like they say, I was married but I wasn’t dead-waiting to get together with Fred, who was in with a client. The guy had just shown up, no appointment, but I didn’t blame Fred for giving him precedence over me.

I had seen the guy go in-sixtyish, a shade taller than my six feet, distinguished, graying, somewhat fleshy, in a lightweight navy suit that hadn’t come off the rack; he was clearly money.

After about five minutes, Fred slipped out of the office and sat next to me, speaking sotto voce.

My partner looked like a balding, slightly less ugly Edward G. Robinson; a natty dresser-today’s suit was a gray pinstripe with a gray and white striped tie-he was a hard round ball of a man.

“Listen, Nate,” he said, “I could use your help.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“You’re not tied up today-I know you’re on vacation…”

“Skip it. We got a well-heeled client who needs something done, right away, and you don’t have time to do it yourself.”

The bulldog puss blinked at me. “How did you know?”

“I’m a detective. Just keep in mind, I’ve done a few jobs out here, but I don’t really know the town.”

Fred sat forward. “Listen, this guy is probably worth a cool million-Walter E. Overell, he’s a financier, land developer, got a regular mansion over in Pasadena, in the Flintridge district, real exclusive digs.”

“What’s he want done?”

“Nothin’ you can’t handle. Nothin’ big.”