by Otto Penzler
“About what?”
“About coming home and finding Rich Miller sitting in my living room, or my kitchen.”
“Who is this Miller?”
“Well, he works for me, or anyway he did till last week. I fired him. I got tired of him flitting and flirting around with Rose.”
“What do you know about him?”
A big dumb shrug. “He’s just this knockabout guy who moves around a lot—no wife, no family. Goes from one cheap room to another.”
“Why would your wife take to some itinerant worker?”
A big dumb sigh. “The guy’s handsome, looks like that asshole in the movies—Ronald Reagan? He’s got a smooth way, real charmer, and he knows about antiques, which is why he and Rose had something in common.”
I frowned. “If he’s such a slick customer, why’s he living in cheap flops?”
“He has weaknesses, Mr. Heller—liquor, for example, and women. And most of all? A real passion for the horses.”
“Horses over booze and broads?”
“Oh yeah. Typical horseplayer—one day he’s broke, next day he hits it lucky and’s rolling in dough.”
I took the job, but when I tried to put one of my men on it, Vinicky insisted I do the work myself.
“I heard about you, Mr. Heller. I read about you.”
“That’s why my day rate’s twice that of my ops.”
He was fine with that, and I spent Monday through Thursday dogging the heels of Rich Miller, who indeed resembled Dutch Reagan, only skinny and with a mustache. I picked him up outside the residential hotel at 63 rd and Hal-stead, a big brick rococo structure dating back to the Columbian Exposition. The first day he was wearing a loud sport shirt and loose slacks, plus a black fedora with a pearl band and two-tone shoes; he looked like something out of Damon Runyon, not some bird doing pick-up work at a moving company.
The other days he was dressed much the same, and his destination was always the same, too: a racetrack, Washington Park. The IC train delivered him (and me) right outside the park—just a short walk across the tracks to the front admission gate. High trees, shimmering with spring breeze, were damn near as tall as the grandstand. Worse ways for a detective to spend a sunny day in May, and for four of them, I watched my man play the horses and I played the horses, too, coming out a hundred bucks ahead, not counting the fifty an hour.
Miller meeting up with Rose at the track, laying some bets before he laid her, was of course a possibility. But the only person Miller connected with was a tall, broad-shouldered brown-haired guy with the kind of mug janes call “ruggedly handsome” right down to the sleepy Robert Mitchum eyes. They sat in the stands together on two of the four days, going down to the ground-floor windows beneath to place similar small-time bets—ten bucks at the most, usually to Win.
Still, Miller (and his two-day companion) would bet every race and cheer the horses on with a fist-shaking desperation that spoke of more at stake than just a fun day at the races. Small-time bettor though he was, Miller was an every-day-at-the-track kind of sick gambler—the friend only showed twice, remember—and I came to the conclusion that his hard-on was for horses, and if anybody was riding Rose Vinicky to the finish line when her hubby wasn’t home, this joker wasn’t the jockey.
“That’s why,” Mullaney said, nodding, “you decided to stake out the Vinicky home, this morning.”
“Yeah.”
Mullaney’s huge chest heaved a sigh. “Why don’t we talk to the girl, together. Little Sally.”
Little Sally had a build like Veronica Lake, but I chose not to point that out.
“Sure,” I said.
We did it outside, under a shade tree. A light breeze riffled leaves, the world at peace. Of course, so is a corpse.
Sally Vinicky wasn’t crying now—partly cried out, partly in shock, and as she stood with her hands figleafed before her, she answered questions as politely and completely as she no doubt did when the nuns questioned her in class.
“I went in the back way,” she said. “Used my key.”
Which explained why I hadn’t seen the girl go in.
“I always come home for lunch at eleven, and Mom always has it ready for me—but when I didn’t see anything waiting in the kitchen ... sometimes soup, sometimes a sandwich, sometimes both, today, nothing… I went looking for her. I thought for a minute she’d left early.”
“Left early for where?” I asked.
“She had errands to do, downtown, this afternoon.”
Mullaney asked, “What sort of mood was your mother in this morning, when you left for school?”
“I didn’t see her—Mom sleeps in till nine or sometimes ten. Does some household chores, fixes my lunch and…”
“How about your father?”
“He was just getting up as I was leaving—that was maybe a quarter to eight? He said he had to go to the court at ten-thirty. Somebody suing us again.”
I asked, “Again?”
“Well, Mom’s real strict—if a guy doesn’t work a full hour, he doesn’t get paid. That starts arguments, and some of the men who work for Mom and Dad sometimes say they’ve been shorted… Oh!”
Mullaney frowned. “What is it?”
“We should check Mom’s money!”
The blanketed body had already been carted out, and the crowd of neighbors milling around the house had thinned. So we walked the girl in through the front. Sally made a point of not looking into the living room where a tape outline on the floor provided a ghost of her mother.
In her parents’ room, where the bed—a walnut Victorian antique as beautiful as it was wrong for this house and this neighborhood—was neatly made, a pale brown leather wallet lay on the mismatched but also antique dresser. Before anyone could tell the girl not to touch it, she grabbed the wallet and folded it open.
No moths flew out, but they might have: it was that empty.
“Mother had a lot of money in here,” Sally said, eyes searching the yawning flaps, as if bills were hiding from her.
I asked, “How much is a lot, Sally?”
“Almost twelve hundred dollars. I’d say that’s a lot!”
“So would I. Why would your mother have that kind of money in her wallet?”
“We were going for a trip to California, as soon as my school got out—me, Mother, and my aunt Doris. That was the errand Mother had to do downtown—buy railroad tickets.”
Mullaney, eyes tight, said, “Who knew about this money?”
“My dad, of course. My aunt.”
“Nobody else?”
“Not that I can think of. Not that I know of. I wish I could be of more help…”
I smiled at her. “You’re doing fine, Sally.”
A uniformed officer stuck his head in. “Inspector, Captain Cullen says Mr. Vinicky is here.”
Sally pushed past Mullaney and me, and the uniformed man, and the girl went rattling down the stairs calling, “Daddy, Daddy!”
When we caught up with her, she was in her father’s arms in the yellow-and-white kitchen. He held her close. They both cried and patted each other’s backs. Cullen, seated at the kitchen table, regarded this with surprising humanity.
“I want you to stay with your aunt tonight,” Vinicky said to his daughter.
“Okay. That’s okay. I don’t want to sleep in this house ever again.”
He found a smile. “Well, not tonight, anyway, sweetheart. They let me call your aunt—she’s on her way. Do you want to wait in your room?”
“No. No, I’ll wait outside, if that’s all right.”
Vinicky, the girl still in his arms, looked past her for permission, his pudgy face streaked with tears, his eyes webbed red.
Mullaney and Cullen nodded, and a uniformed man walked her out. The father took a seat at the kitchen table. So did Mullaney. So did I.
Seeming to notice me for the first time, Vinicky looked at me, confusion finding its way past the heartbreak. “What… what’re you doing here, Mr. Heller?”
“I take it… I take it you told these gentleman why I hired you.”
“I did.”
“Did you see anyone go in, Mr. Heller? Did you see that bastard Miller?”
“I didn’t.” I hadn’t reported to him yet. “Mr. Vinicky, I spent four days watching Miller, and he always went to the track—that’s why I came here. I don’t believe he was seeing your wife.”
But Vinicky was shaking his head, emphatically. “He did it. I know he did it. You people have to Jind himl”
Cullen said, “We’re already on that, Mr. Vinicky.”
I asked the captain, “Do you need his address? He’s in a residential hotel over on—”
“We know. We sent a detective over there already—next-door neighbor says this guy Miller used to hang around here a lot. Only now Miller’s nowhere to be seen—his flop is empty. Ran out on a week’s rent.”
Vinicky slammed a fist on the table. “I told you! I told you!”
Mullaney said, “We need you to calm down, sir, and tell us about your day.”
“My day! Tell you about, what… this? The worst day of my life! Worst goddamn day of my life. I loved Rose. She was the best wife any man ever had.”
Neither cop was nasty enough to mention that the bed-room dick this weeping husband had hired was sitting at the table with them.
Vinicky’s story was unremarkable: He’d got up around eight, dressed for the court appearance, stopped at the office first (where he was seen by various employees) and then took breakfast at a restaurant on Halsted. From there he’d gone to the post office, picked up a parcel, and headed downtown by car to Municipal Court. He had littered the South Side and the Loop alike with witnesses who could support his alibi.
“You’re being sued, we understand,” Mullaney said.
“Yeah—but that’s nothing. Kind of standard with us. Rose is… was… a hard-nosed businesswoman, God love her. She insisted on a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.”
Mullaney was making notes again. “Did Miller ever complain about getting shorted?”
“Yeah. That’s probably why he was… so friendly with Rose. Trying to get on her good side. Sweet-talk her into giving him the benefit of the doubt on his hours. I was a son of a bitch to ever suspect—”
Cullen asked, “Could you give us a list of employees who’ve made these complaints, over the last two years?”
“Sure. No problem. I can give you some off the top of my head, then check the records at the office tomorrow for any I missed.”
Mullaney wrote down the names.
When that was done, I asked, “Did your wife have a wedding ring?”
“Yes. Of course. Why—wasn’t it on her… on her?”
“No rings.”
Vinicky thought about that. “She might’ve taken it off to do housework. Was it on her dresser? There’s a tray on her dresser…”
“No. What was the ring worth?”
“It was a nice-size diamond—three hundred bucks, I paid. Did the bastard steal it?”
Mullaney said, “Apparently. The money in her wallet was missing, too.”
“Hell you say! That was a small fortune—Rose was going to buy train tickets with that, and cover hotel and other expenses. She was treating her sister to a trip to California, and Sally was going along… It was robbery, then?”
“We’re exploring that,” Mullaney said.
Vinicky’s eyes tightened to slits. “One of these S.O.B.s who claimed they were shorted, you think?”
The inspector closed his notebook. “We’re exploring that, too. This list should be very helpful, Mr. Vinicky.”
I gave Mullaney the eye, nodding toward the backdoor, and he and I stepped out there for a word away from both the husband and Captain Cullen.
“How long will you boys be here?” I asked.
“Another hour, maybe. Why, Nate?”
“I have a hunch to play.”
“You want company?”
“No. But I should be back before you’ve wrapped up, here.”
I tooled the Buick over to 63 rd Street, a lively commercial district with all the charm of a junkyard. Not far from here, Englewood’s big claim to fame—the multiple murderer H.H. Holmes—had set up his so-called Murder Castle in the late 1880s. The Vinicky case could never hope to compete, so maybe I could make it go away quickly.
In the four days I’d kept an eye on Rich Miller, I’d learned a handful of useful things about the guy, including that when he wasn’t betting at Washington Park, he was doing so with a guy in a back booth at a bar called the Lucky Horseshoe (whose only distinction was its lack of a neon horseshoe in the window).
The joint was dim and dreary even for a South Side gin mill, and business was slow, midafternoon. But I still had to wait for a couple of customers to finish up with the friendly bookie in the back booth before I could slide in across from him.
“Do I know you?” he asked, not in a threatening way. He was a small sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed, sharp-chinned sharpie wearing a derby and a bow tie but no jacket—it was warm in the Horseshoe. He was smoking a cigarillo and his sleeves were rolled up, like he was preparing to deal cards. But no cards were laid out on the booth’s table.
I laid mine out, anyway: “My name is Heller, Nate Heller. Maybe you’ve heard of me.”
The mouth smiled enough to reveal a glint of gold tooth; the dark blue eyes weren’t smiling, though.
“I’m gonna take a wild stab,” I said, “and guess they call you Goldie.”
“Some do. You the… ’Frank Nitti’ Heller?”
By that he meant, was I the mobbed-up private eye who had been tight with Capone’s late heir, and remained tight with certain of the Outfit hierarchy.
“Yes.”
“You wanna place a bet, Nate? My bet is… not.”
“Your bet is right. I’m not here to muscle you. I’m here to do you a favor.”
“What favor would that be?”
“There’s a murder a few blocks away—Inspector Mullaney’s on it.”
“Oh. Shit.”
And by that he meant, imagine the luck: one of the honest Chicago cops.
“But, Nate,” he said, and I got the full benefit of a suspiciously white smile interrupted by that gold eyetooth, “why would Goldie give a damn? I have nothin’ to do with murder. Any murder. I’m in the entertainment business.”
“You help people play the horses.”
The tiny shrug conveyed big self-confidence. “It’s a noble sport, both the racing and the betting.”
I leaned toward him. “One of your clients is shaping up as a suspect. The favor I’m doing you is: I’m talking to you, rather than just giving you over to the inspector.”
Eyelids fluttered. “Ah. Well, I do appreciate that. What’s the client’s name?”
“Rich Miller.”
The upper lip peeled back and again showed gold, but this was no smile. “That fucking fourflusher. He’s into me for five C’s!”
“Really. And he’s made no move to pay you off? Today, maybe?”
His laughter cut like a blade. “Are you kidding? One of my… associates… went around to his flop. Miller pulled outa there, owin’ a week’s back rent.”
Which, of course, I already knew.
Goldie was shaking his head, his tone turning philosophical. “You never can tell about people, can you? Miller always paid up on time, before this, whereas that pal of his, who I wouldn’t trust far as I could throw him, that crumb pays up, just when I was ready to call the legbreakers in.”
“What pal of Miller’s?”
He gave me a name, but it meant nothing to me. I wondered if it might be the guy Miller had met at Washington Park two of the days, and ran a description by Goldie.
“That sounds like him. Big guy. Six four, easy. Not somebody I could talk to myself.”
“Hence the legbreake
rs.”
“Hence. Nate, if you can keep that goody-two-shoes Mullaney off my ass, it would be appreciated. He’ll come around, make it an excuse to make my life miserable, and what did I ever do to that fat slob?”
I was already out of the booth. “See what I can do, Goldie.”
“And if you ever wanna place a bet, you know where my office is.”
When I got back to the brown-brick house on South Elizabeth Street, the Catholic school girl was hugging a tall slender woman, who might have been her mother come to life. On closer look, this gal was younger, and a little less pretty, though that may not have been fair, considering her features were taut with grief.
Sally and the woman who I took to be her aunt were beneath the same shady tree where Mullaney and I had stood with the girl, questioning her, earlier.
I went up and introduced myself, keeping vague about the “investigative job” I’d been doing for Mr. Vinicky.
“I’m Doris Stemmer,” she said, Sally easing out of the woman’s embrace. The woman wore a pale yellow dress with white flowers that almost didn’t show. “I’m Rose’s sister.”
She extended her hand and I shook it. Sally stayed close to her aunt.
“Sorry for your grief, Mrs. Stemmer,” I told her. “Have you spoken to Inspector Mullaney yet?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”
“But you’re a private detective, aren’t you? What were you doing for Sylvester?”
“Looking into some of the complaints from his employees.”
Her eyes tightened and ice came into her voice. “Those men were a bunch of lazy good-for-nothing whiners. Doris was a good person, fair and with a great heart, wonderful heart. Why, just last year, she loaned Ray three hundred dollars, so we didn’t have to wait to get married.”
“Ray?”
“Yes, my husband.”
“What does he do, if I might ask?”
“He started a new job just last week, at an electrical assembly plant, here on the South Side.”
“New job? What was his old one?”
Her strained smile was a signal that I was pushing it. “He worked for Sylvester in the moving business. You can ask him yourself if Rose wasn’t an angel. Ask him yourself if she wasn’t fair about paying their people.”
