A few days later, the elder Dillinger, that dirt-poor farmer, paid to have the casket uncovered. Over the casket was poured concrete mixed with scrap metal; when that had set, some earth was shoveled in. Then four concrete slabs reinforced with chicken wire were buried, in staggered intervals, over the concrete-entombed casket.
Dillinger’s father did this, he said, to prevent “ghouls” from disturbing his son’s rest.
“If they want to get him out of there,” the father said, a smile cracking his weather-beaten face, “they’ll have to blast him out.”
The old man needn’t have worried.
Nobody wanted him out of there.
25
A month later I was starting to wonder if Sally might not be right about my chosen profession. My name had been in the papers—including my address, in the
“What good am I?” I asked her, as we lay in her soft bed, the silk sheets draped around us, Sally snuggled against me in the dark.
“You’re very good,” she said, smiling up at me.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Do you have to be so gloomy, Heller?”
“Am I getting you down with this talk?”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
She was a better dancer than actress; I told her so.
“Go to hell, Heller,” she said. Good-naturedly. Sadly.
“I was right on top of this,” I said, “and it didn’t do a damn bit of good.”
“Why don’t you get right on top of this,” she said, snuggling closer.
“I quit the cops ’cause I was sick of being used. I quit and went in business for myself because people kill people in this town as casual as flushing a toilet, which is fine, which is great, that’s their goddamn business. Just leave me out of it.”
She pulled away from me and sat on the edge of her side of the bed, her back to me.
“What the hell kind of detective am I, if I can’t stop something like this from happening when I see it the hell coming?”
She was lighting a cigarette.
“Not that I give a damn about Jimmy Lawrence, whoever the hell
She sighed and blew smoke out at the same time.
“Helen…you okay?”
I touched her shoulder and she flinched and I took my hand away.
“I’ve been going on about this too much, haven’t I?”
Without turning to me, she said, “It has been a month, Nate.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to get going again.”
“I thought maybe you were over it,” she said, wistfully. “It’s been almost a week since you last went into this song and dance.”
That made me bristle a little. “It isn’t a goddamn song and dance. It’s something that’s eating me. Sorry!”
She turned and smiled over her shoulder at me; breathed smoke out her nostrils like Dietrich. “Whatever happened to the strong and silent type? I didn’t think you tough detectives ever wore shirts made outa hair.”
That made me smile and I touched her shoulder again; this time she didn’t flinch.
In fact she was in my arms after that and I kissed her on the mouth and remembered why being alive was worthwhile.
I kissed her neck, whispered into her ear. “Sorry. Sorry. I won’t go on about it anymore. I’ll let go of it…”
She pulled back to look at me and smile, just a little.
“I don’t mind that what you were caught up in bothers you,” she said. “That quality in you is probably why I love you so damn much….”
In our time together, this was the first love had ever come up; in words, anyway. Hearing her say that was like getting struck a blow. Pleasantly struck. But struck.
She put a hand in my hair, roughed it up, smiled her sad wry little half-smile. “I just hate seeing it eating you up like this.”
“I love you, too, Helen.”
“I know. Quit the business.”
“What?”
