George was some kind of…stick-up man. But I can’t believe he did that, with
“You’d never been along before?”
“No. Never.”
“They say something like sixty witnesses have identified you and George and Leo in a whole slough of other robberies. Thirty-some?”
“I don’t care what they say. These witnesses are only saying what the police tell them to. Do you think they had us stand in the show-up line? No. Hell, no. They’d haul their witnesses into the women’s cell block and point at me and say, ‘That’s her, isn’t it? The Tigress?’ And I’ll bet they’ve done the same kind of thing with George and Leo.”
“That’s not a point I’d care to argue. You’re not saying that this was a spur of the moment thing for George, that he suddenly decided to become a stick-up artist on his way to a Cubs game? He didn’t grow that gun.”
She got out another smile: a bitter one. “No. I understand that now. I believe George and Leo have been at this a long time. George had been throwing a lot of money around and that’s where it came from, obviously. They saw an opportunity with that old man alone in that shop, and they took it-putting me in this fix.”
“You’re not saying there’s another ‘Tigress’ working with George and Leo?”
“Why not? And, anyway, I’m no ‘Tigress,’ and if there
I frowned at her. “You think George has another girl friend who goes out on robberies with him?”
“No. But Leo might.”
“Is Leo married?”
“Yeah. Does that mean he can’t have a girl friend?”
“If it did,” I said, and grinned at her, “I’d be out of business.”
“It’s also possible,” she said, “that George and Leo pulled some robberies, but on their own.
“You each have your own lawyers.”
“Yeah. Our stories don’t exactly jibe. Leo says he had no idea George was going to pull a robbery at that haberdashery. George says there wasn’t any robbery.”
“Then why did George have the gun?”
She held her hands up in surrender. “I think it was the old man’s. Look, they don’t exactly let me talk to George and Leo. You’ll have to ask them, if you can…. Well, Nate? Do you think you can help?”
“I’ll give it a hundred bucks worth of college try,” I said.
“Do you believe my version of what happened?”
“I don’t exactly believe you. But I don’t exactly disbelieve you, either. I’ll keep an open mind. How’s that?”
“That’s the best I could hope for,” she said, and offered me her hand to shake.
The handshake lingered and her gray eyes sent me the tiniest signal that her gratitude might be shown in ways beyond that hundred bucks.
Which is as close as my Tigress daydream came to playing out.
In the hallway of the First District Station, a new modern facility, I encountered an old-fashioned cop- Captain John Stege, who greeted me much as I’d expect: “What the hell are you doing here, Heller?”
Stege was a fiftyish fireplug with a round white face and round black-rimmed glasses. He was in shirtsleeves and a blue bow tie, which was about as casual as he ever got, a revolver on his hip.
“Fine, Captain,” I said. “How are you?”
The owlish cop frowned at me. “Get your ass in my office.”
I was an irritant to Stege because I confused him: when I’d been on the Detective Bureau, not so long ago, I’d ratted out some corrupt coppers, which he considered disloyal of me, and yet he was one of the most honest flatfeet on the force.
I sat across his desk from him. The office was as small and clean and compact as he was. He just looked at me, asking no question but clearly expecting an answer.
“I’m doing a job for Sam Backus,” I said.
“Since when does the Public Defender’s office have money to hire investigators?”
“Since never.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m doing it out of a sense of public duty.”
His tiny eyes tightened behind the lenses. “Hell-not the
“I don’t care what anybody says. You’re a detective.”
The door to the office was open. I was sitting there with my hat on. He told me to close the door and take off my hat. I did so. What was this about?
“I’m glad you’re on it,” Stege said.
“What?”
“Something smells about that case.”
“Oh, you mean like taking witnesses down to the cell block and pointing to the suspect, in lieu of a line- up?”
He tasted his mouth and it obviously wasn’t a pleasant flavor. “Something like that. This clean-up campaign, I never saw so many corners cut. If I can help you, let me know. I mean, keep it on the q.t.-but let me know.”
“This is so sudden, Captain.”
“Don’t get cute. It’s just that lately I feel like we’re working for these yellow damn journalists-trying to make ourselves look good instead trying to do our jobs.”
I sat forward. “They’re taking this to trial right away. I could use some help.”
“All right.” Stege squinted at me meaningfully. “But don’t ask to see the files-I won’t go sneaking around on honest cops. Anyway, the papers told the story accurately enough, if you take out the ‘Tigress’ hooey.”
“Do you think Dale and Minneci were part of this stick-up gang hitting small merchants on the West and Northwest Sides?”
“They could be. And so could that woman, for that matter. There’s definitely been a rash of robberies where two men and a woman go in to a store, once they’ve established no other customers are around. They’d make a lot of noise, one of the men and the woman, too, yelling and threatening and even shoving, waving a gun and a blackjack around.”
“That’s not a stupid approach.”
“You don’t think sticking up innocent merchants is stupid, Heller?”
“Sure. My old man ran a bookshop on the West Side, remember? Anybody kills a shop owner for what’s in his till, I’d like to take their tonsils out with a penknife. But by making a big commotion, intimidating their victim? It can make turn the whole thing into a big blur. Hard to get a good identification out of somebody who’s been put through that. What was the woman’s role?”
Stege shrugged. “Like I said, she was part of the show. Apparently she’d come in with a big handbag and the man would dip into it and that’s where the gun came from. She was the one waving the blackjack around, and some victims claimed they’d been struck by it.”
“They’d clean out the cash drawer?”
“Yeah, and sometimes help themselves to some merchandise. This woman, in clothing shops with female apparel, she’d pick herself out some pretty things and take ’em along.”
“Women do love to shop.”
Stege grimaced; helping me was hard on him. “I don’t want you bothering the dicks on this case. They’re good boys. I’m afraid all this pressure for arrests and publicity may have got the better of ’em, is all.”
“I won’t even talk to them,” I said. “Who I want to talk to are the Tigress’s little cubs-George Dale and Leo Minneci.”
The little round-faced copper nodded and reached out his pudgy little fingers for the phone.
Within an hour I was sitting in another interrogation room, smaller but also wit brick walls, barred windows and a scarred table. I might have still been at the First District Station, but I wasn’t: this was the Cook County Jail
