“Please. Not on an empty stomach.”
Stege’s face was impassive, but his voice had an edge in it. “I know you, Heller. You were always for sale. You were always in it for yourself. You’re smooth in your way. You have a crude sort of wit. You almost fooled me. But I’m a cop with a cop’s instinct. And I think you and Zarkovich and O’Neill are bound up in this together. It doesn’t take me giving you the third degree to find that out.”
“You don’t have to give me the third degree at all. Zarkovich and O’Neill beat you to it.”
Stege laughed humorlessly. “Of course they did.”
“Not personally. They sent two of their strong-arms, and
“Why?”
“Because I was trying to stop this from going down! And you can see how successful at it I was.”
Stege sighed coldly. “I don’t believe you. But I intend to investigate this matter thoroughly, and if I can nail those East Chicago cops to the wall, I will, so help me God.”
“Expose crooked cops, Captain? That’ll make the police look bad in the public’s eye. Are you sure you want to do that?”
He stood. “Your irony is heavy-handed, Heller. I’m unimpressed.”
I stood. “Did you ever see Sally Rand dance, Captain?”
“What? Uh, well…yes.”
“Were you impressed?” I was unbuttoning my shirt.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I took the shirt off and shined the lamp on me.
Stege said, “My God…they did feed you the goldfish.”
“Yes they did.”
He sat back down. So did I, after I put my shirt on.
I told him most of it—with the exception of meeting Nitti face-to-face; I kept my thoughts about the Outfit’s connections to Dillinger on a theoretical level. And, for the moment, I left out my notion that the dead man might not be Dillinger; one step at a time, after all.
He took out a small pad and wrote down the names Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton; he’d heard about two women being with Dillinger at the theater, but the feds had refused to give the names even to the Chicago cops.
I told him how I’d been chosen for my role at least partially because I would take my information to the feds, rather than the cops, since I was on the outs with the local P.D.—particularly the head of their Dillinger Squad, one Capt. John Stege.
“So even I played an unwitting role in this farce,” Stege said.
“Just some more heavy-handed irony,” I said, “only I can’t claim it as mine.”
He stood slowly; he seemed beaten down.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t think the dead man is Dillinger.”
Stege gave me a look like I was a candidate for the loony bin. “Don’t be ridiculous—one of my men has already been to the morgue and shook hands with the corpse. It’s Dillinger all right.”
“It doesn’t look like Dillinger.”
“Plastic surgery,” Stege said, repeating the by-now-familiar litany.
“This whole elaborate setup might’ve been staged to put a patsy in Dillinger’s place, and let the real Dillinger ride off into the sunset.”
“Poppycock.”
“Well, if you feel that strongly about it, Captain…”
“No,” Stege said, shaking his head solemnly, “John Dillinger’s dead. No getting around that. But I aim to find out who put him on the spot…and that includes those crooked East Chicago bastards and Anna Sage and Polly Hamilton.”
“Be my guest.”
He walked toward the door and I followed him. We stopped by the door to the bathroom.
“Is this the commode?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Mind if I use it?”
“It’s out of order. Best I can do is a chamber pot.”
“Ah, never mind. It’ll keep. Thanks for the information, Heller. Thanks for the names of the two women. Very helpful. We’ll want to talk to them as soon as possible.”
