I told him my story. I told him that in the course of working in Uptown on a divorce case for a client, who would have to remain nameless, I’d stumbled upon a man who resembled John Dillinger. I’d reported this to Melvin Purvis and Samuel Cowley of the federal Division of Investigation. They had kept me informed as the inquiry developed, including the fact that two East Chicago, Indiana, police officers had corroborated my story through their own sources. For that reason, I’d been invited as an observer to the showdown at the Biograph.
I also gave him a detailed description of the way the stakeout had been conducted, and the manner in which the suspect had been taken down, though I did not mention that he’d been shoved to the pavement and shot in the back of the head. I said only that officers had swarmed toward him and shots had been fired.
No mention of Anna Sage, Polly Hamilton or Jimmy Lawrence.
I sipped my milk.
Frank Nitti would’ve been proud of me.
And Hal Davis gave me fifty bucks—two double sawbucks and two fins—and left.
I put the money in my pocket and walked outside. The heat was even worse today. I ought to go to the beach and find an umbrella to lie out under, and splash around in the lake when the shade got old.
Instead, I drove over to the morgue.
23
For a dreary-looking stone structure on a blistering hot July afternoon, the morgue was doing brisk business. About the only difference between it and the Biograph last night was the lack of a marquee, and the melodrama attracting the crowds was Chicago, not Manhattan.
The line to the front doors was a double one and, splitting off, extended well down the sidewalk in both directions; a steady stream was coming out the morgue doors, as well. Formal attire was not required, at this mortuary—the dressiest “mourners,” many carrying cameras, were men in shirt sleeves and women in summery dresses, and not a few females were in beach apparel, and many a male wore his undershirt. There were plenty of kids in the crowd, mostly boys with their thoughtful moms. The hot air was filled with hot air—a constant chatter not limited to the dead subject at hand added to the holiday mood. A guy in a big orange tie and orange cap was hawking orange juice a dime a cup out of a tray full of ice slung over his shoulder on a couple of straps, cigarette-girl style; the ice was melting quickly, but not as quickly as the paper cups of orange juice were going. Another guy, wearing a straw boater and no tie, was going around waving two handfuls of blood-stained swatches of white cloth, yelling, “Genuine guaranteed Dillinger’s blood!” More bloody swatches protruded from three of his four bulging pants pockets; apparently blood had been running down Lincoln Avenue like a flood, last night.
All this humanity, if you want to call it that, was being overseen by a handful of cops, uniformed guys still lacking their uniforms due to the heat wave, badges on their light blue blouses; but the caps and guns and nightsticks were still there. These were cops, no mistaking ’em.
I walked up to a burly Irish flatfoot in his forties, with red cheeks and light blue eyes; I didn’t know him, and hoped he didn’t know me—and would maybe take my reddish-brown hair as us having a bit of the Blarney in common.
“What’s the chance of getting in past this crowd?” I asked him.
He smiled and shook his head. “Slim and none.”
“What if I just wanted to talk to a morgue attendant and didn’t care about getting a view of the stiff?”
He scratched his head, still smiling. “Might be done. But they’re greedy lads, those boys.”
“Think you could pave the way for me?”
“Might be done.”
“Thanks,” I said, and shook his hand; mine had a buck in it. For a while.
He led me through the crowd, saying, “Make way, make way,” and introduced me to a pasty-faced, pencil-mustached, skinny fellow named Culhane. White-smocked Culhane had eyes like a gingerbread man and was about as animated. We were in a big reception area on the first floor, where the lines of people coming through the door turned into a mob, a vocal one, waiting to be let down the stairs by a police guard, who was only letting ten or so at a time go. There was no air conditioning and the place smelled stale and bad; body odor was on a rampage. Culhane curled a finger and led me to a corridor, where we were alone.
His voice was soft and oddly seductive. “I can take you downstairs and inside the cubicle with him.”
“Swell. How much?”
He pursed his lips and the tiny mustache went up at either end. “There’s a group down there right now that gave me fifty dollars.”
This wasn’t a morgue, it was a whorehouse.
I said, “How many in the group?”
That threw him momentarily; then he said, “Five.”
“Then I’ll give you ten.”
