Chicago Max

by Gary Inbinder

Table of Contents

Chapter 2: A New Case for the New Year

part 1

The mercury shot up twenty degrees on New Year’s Eve. A cold, steady rain mixed with melting snow, running through gutters and drainpipes, flooding viaduct underpasses, creating waterfalls cascading down over the eaves of innumerable slanting rooftops. A bad time for frail old folks, lungers and those susceptible to influenza, pneumonia and rheumatic fever. A good day for the undertakers.

Max sat at a paper-strewn desk in his fifth-floor office on Lake Street, in a business block near the Clark and Lake elevated station on the north end of the Loop. Trains rumbled by at regular intervals, rattling the green-shaded, three-part window behind his swivel chair. The steam radiator next to his corner file cabinet clanked loudly and gave off a little heat. The noise did not disturb him any more than grunting hogs and clucking chickens would bother a farmer.

Outside, under a leaden sky, the tall buildings seemed to dissolve in a rain-swept blur of muddy brown brickwork. Max sipped cold black coffee and chewed an extinguished cigar while studying a photograph under the pale yellow glow of an electric gooseneck lamp.

Max’s pal, Gus Merkel, a sports reporter and a good source of information, had retrieved the photo from his newspaper’s morgue. The rotogravure, dated September 20, 1901, was a portrait of the well-dressed young man Max had spotted in conversation with Moe Weinberg at the First Ward Ball.

Max removed the cigar stub from his mouth and dumped it into a shiny brass spittoon conveniently located alongside his desk. “Prescott Fielding III,” he muttered. “What were you doing at the First Ward Ball in the company of a two-bit hoodlum?”

Prescott Fielding was the son of one of Chicago’s richest men, a real-estate developer and speculator on the grain exchange. Max recalled an incident from a few years ago, around the time the newspaper published the photograph. Back then, the young man had displayed an inclination toward fast women, games of chance, and booze. These tendencies had led Fielding junior to seek out the company of the city’s lowlifes, most particularly those who inhabited the notorious First Ward.

Max rubbed his rough chin and grinned. That’s it! he thought. The lad was involved in the ruckus at the Everleigh Club. The Everleigh Club was widely known as one of America’s premier brothels. Located on South Dearborn within Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John’s fiefdom, the place raked in the dough with a generous cut finding its way into the aldermen’s pockets.

One early morning in September 1901, following a night of boozing and losses at the poker table exceeding five grand, Prescott Fielding III got too rough with one of the Everleigh sisters’ “butterflies.” The young woman retaliated with a shot from a .22 caliber popgun. The small bullet lodged in the youth’s right buttock.

The Everleigh sisters called the doctor who regularly examined the girls for signs of the clap; he gave the youth a shot of morphine, bent him over a billiard table and extracted the slug. The parties kept the incident quiet by mutual consent. However, the sisters banned the young man from the Everleigh Club permanently; soon thereafter, Fielding’s family sent him abroad to “complete his education.” Max got the whole story through the precinct-house grapevine.

The newspaper morgue photograph appeared with a society page announcement of Prescott Fielding III’s departure from the New York piers on the SS Teutonic. Max thought: Young Fielding’s back in town, and in bad company, too, So what’s in it for me?

The year 1905 had been a good one for the detective business; Max wanted 1906 to be better. Jobs like photographing the millionaire and his little girlfriend in the Coliseum stairwell paid all right, but Max was looking for something bigger, something special that would make Chicago take notice. He had a hunch, an instinct that his chance observation of a meeting between a black sheep heir to a great fortune and a loan shark could lead him to that “big break.” At any rate, he’d consider it over the next couple of days, nose around and see if he could pick up something of interest.

There was another matter on his list of things to do to start the New Year. He could afford an assistant, and he was considering a certain young woman for the job. Olga Boyer — born Boyarova in Minsk; her name had been changed at Ellis Island — was a clerk in a small shop on Wabash Avenue that sold sheet music, Victor Talking Machines and recordings.

Olga was a petite blonde in her early twenties with a face more aptly described as well-scrubbed and comely than pretty. Max liked the face; she had nice, even white teeth, a cute nose, high cheekbones, and full, naturally red lips. Her smile appealed to him; he visualized it on many occasions when nothing else was crowding his mind. A good kid, he thought. She’d brighten up the office.

Max was attracted to her, but the real reason for the attraction was something he kept hidden, like old letters in a shoebox buried in the back of a dark closet. For some reason, he did not want to think about her the way he did the other women in his life. If someone questioned him on the subject of Olga, he would reply, “She’s not my type.”

The reasons for his attraction to Olga that he would admit to others, and to himself, were her interests in opera and detective work. She had recommended Caruso’s new recording of Quest o quella, a record that Max played to exhaustion. Moreover, she kept asking him about his cases; he explained them while maintaining confidentiality and censoring the more lurid details. Her curiosity about the most sensational stuff was, like her sexual appeal, a characteristic that he chose to ignore.

Max picked up a pencil and opened his new desk calendar to January 2, 1906. He penciled in two notes: See Olga about job. Telephone Weinberg. Then he closed up shop and set out for Otto’s Tavern on North Avenue, where he would say goodbye to the old year with the aid of Otto’s excellent Tom and Jerries.

* * *

North Avenue was a quagmire of slush. Streetcars clanged, squealed, and clattered up and down the mid-street tracks, vying for the right of way with horse-drawn vehicles of all kinds: carts, drays, buggies, hansoms and a few sputtering, chugging automobiles, honking, weaving and skittering around the slower traffic at a breakneck ten miles per hour.

Intermittent raindrops sprinkled down from a slate-colored sky. Electric and gaslights winked on. Max stopped at the news-stand in the North and Robey elevated station to pick up five ten-cent Havana Coronas and a copy of the Record-Herald. He stuck one cigar in his mouth without lighting it, deposited the rest in his breast pocket, tucked the newspaper under his arm and exited the station. Max turned up his coat collar against the rain and proceeded west in the direction of Otto’s.

Otto’s Tavern was an old German supper club in a changing neighborhood that was becoming increasingly Polish. Jimmy Dolan, the cop on the beat who had patrolled the area for twenty years, once said, “I guess the Krauts and the Polacks get along, all right, until they don’t.” Officer Dolan made this observation to then Detective Lieutenant Niemand in the course of a homicide investigation. A German baker had caught his wife in bed with a Polish teamster. The baker proceeded to chastise the adulterous couple — with an axe. After several minutes of swinging, hacking and chopping, he picked up the pieces, mopped the spattered blood, brains and guts, and cremated the remains in the bakery oven.

Max followed the trail of evidence, obtained a confession from the now remorseful baker, and attended the hanging in Cook County Jail. The calculated drop proved insufficient to break the stout baker’s neck, and he danced at the end of the rope for several minutes before departing this vale of tears.

When Max opened the frosted-glass door of Otto’s Tavern and entered the smoke-filled barroom, the crowd was already thinning, the waiters clearing tables and stacking chairs, the lights dimming, the bartenders cleaning up and serving the last drinks. It was New Year’s Eve and they would close early to spend the evening with family and friends.

Max walked to an open space at the long oak bar and put a boot up on the brass foot railing. He scanned the area and spotted Otto in conversation with Jimmy Dolan, in uniform and helmet, at the other end of the bar. Max smiled and called out, “Hey, barkeep! How about some service down here?”

A big man in a white apron, with a pink, bald head, broken nose, squinting blue eyes and a nasty scar on his right cheek, glared in Max’s direction and then broke out in a wide grin.

“Max, you old son-of-a-gun! Trust you to show up New Year’s Eve fifteen minutes before closing.”

Otto and Dolan walked over to Max. They exchanged handshakes and New Year’s greetings. Then Otto said, “You got time for one Tom and Jerry on the house.”

“Thanks, pal,” Max replied. “I got something for you guys, too.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out two coronas, and handed them to his pals.

“That’s bully,” Otto said as he stuffed the cigar in his shirt pocket. “I’ll save mine for midnight.”

“Me, too, Lieutenant,” added Dolan. Dolan still called Max by his former police rank, a habit Max no longer bothered to correct.

“I’ll start mine,” said Max as he removed a match from its holder on the bar, struck it on a thumbnail and lit his stogie. He drew in a couple of deep puffs and blew smoke rings before adding, “It’ll go well with my Tom and Jerry.”

“Here’s to 1906,” Otto said as he served his last three drinks of the old year. “Health, wealth and good fortune to us all!”

Their mugs clinked in a toast and they drank down the warm, potent, sweet and spicy mixture.

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2015 by Gary Inbinder