True Crime

Cockily, Purvis said, “We know for a fact that Dillinger had plastic surgery just within this past month or so. This afternoon agents from this office picked up two of the ring involved in Dillinger’s several face-lift operations— Louis Piquett’s personal private investigator, and the doctor who performed the operation. And this office will be making more arrests in the days to come.”

That sounded like a fucking press release. I said so.

“You’re an annoying man,” Purvis said, his Southern sense of manners apparently infringed.

“If Dillinger did have plastic surgery this past month or so,” I said, “how could he be completely healed so soon? The skin on his upper lip would at least look pink, for instance. Nothing looked pink about that stiff, believe me.”

Purvis was shaking his head, scowling. “Where are you getting your ‘facts’? Newspaper files? What description are you going by? What’s the basis of your comparison? Get serious, Heller.”

I took a folded-up piece of paper out of my front right pants pocket and spread it out on the table.

“Division of Investigation identification order number twelve-seventeen,” I said, pointing to the federal wanted poster for John Dillinger. “Given to me by my friend Captain John Stege as a souvenir of this little episode.”

Both Purvis and Cowley just stared blankly at the poster. Purvis was swallowing, like his mouth was suddenly dry.

I said, “And as you well know, the physical description of the fugitive on this ID order is detailed and exact. Notice the eye color listed: gray.”

Cowley gestured toward the paper, as if afraid to touch it. “This is what you compared the autopsy report to?”

“Yes, and if any reporter in town gets ahold of that report, and does the same thing, some very messy questions are likely to get asked.”

Purvis looked at the poster with wide, empty eyes; he too didn’t touch it. Just stared at it.

“You may be lucky,” I said. “The newshounds seem satisfied with the abbreviated report Kearns read into the record at the inquest. So far, apparently, nobody has thought to bribe a peek at the actual report—except me.”

Purvis started to say something dismissive, but I interrupted. “There’s more, gentlemen. Your corpse has some things Dillinger did not have—a tattoo on the right forearm; scars from bullet wounds in places Dillinger never got shot; black hair, not brown; thin, arching eyebrows instead of bushy straight ones; and a tooth—the top right incisor, to be exact.”

Purvis was shaking his head again, but slowly, now. “This is ridiculous. Sheerly ridiculous. You’re basing this on an autopsy conducted in a carnival atmosphere…and comparing that report to data gathered from hither and yon, over the years, on a fugitive.”

Cowley, bleakly, said, “Mel, much of the ID order description comes from Dillinger’s Navy records, remember?”

“Right,” I said. “And the Navy physical he got was surely pretty accurate.”

Defensive, Purvis said, “How can you know that? Were you there?”

“No I wasn’t, and maybe you’re right. Maybe the Navy doctor was drunk that day. But the coroner’s pathologist, Kearns, isn’t a drinking man. That autopsy was carefully handled, despite the ghoulish goings-on at the morgue. Kearns is a top doc; he’s done every major murder in Chicago from Bobby Franks to the Saint Valentine’s crowd. And he was assisted in this by another doctor, and a medical stenog was recording everything. This was not your typical Cook County foul-up.”

“Ridiculous,” Purvis said, softly.

“I’ll tell you something else the dead man had that Dillinger didn’t: a bum ticker.”

Cowley sat up straight. “What?”

“A bum ticker. The corpse had a rheumatic heart condition. He’d had it a long time, since he was a kid. How could he have passed the Navy physical with that? How could he have played baseball like he did? Not to mention certain other strenuous activities he’s been involved in this past year or so.”

Cowley finally picked up the wanted poster and glanced at it.

“Maybe,” he said, “his heart condition was something he knew about but kept to himself. Maybe it was what made him live the reckless way he did.”

“It won’t wash,” I said. “That’s some other guy on that slab down there at the morgue.”

“Who then?” Purvis demanded.

I shrugged. “Maybe he is a guy named Jimmy Lawrence. One of Anna Sage’s pimps from East Chicago or something. Most likely he’s a small-timer on the run who had some plastic surgery a while back and was hiding out, with the help of some friends. Or some people he thought were friends. When Frank Nitti needed a patsy to stand in for Dillinger, this poor shmuck got elected.”

Purvis stood again; paced with his hands in his pockets, checking his wristwatch now and again, nervously. He said, “Nitti. You see Nitti under every bed. I don’t see him even vaguely figuring in this. Not vaguely…”

I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Anna Sage is a madam and connected to the mob. Zarkovich has Capone ties going way back, and probably engineered the Crown Point escape for Dillinger. Even the Biograph theater has Nitti’s name on it—there’s been a bookie joint over the theater for years and, hell, Nitti’s got a lock on the movie projectionist’s union, so what better place to rub out the patsy?”

Cowley, his face ashen, his eyes haunted, said, “Why did you do it, Heller? Why’d you go to the morgue? Why are you stirring things up?”

“It’s something you two wouldn’t understand. It’s called being a detective.”