Chicago Max
by Gary Inbinder
Chapter 2: A New Case for the New Year
part 2
Dolan wiped his mouth and grey-streaked ginger moustache with the back of his hand. “Ah, that warms you down to the soles of your feet. Nothing like a Tom and Jerry to keep out the winter chill.”
“You can say that again,” Max replied as he finished his drink and took a few more puffs on his cigar.
Dolan moved closer and lowered his voice as though he were about to communicate something important. Otto leaned over the bar in anticipation. Dolan began with a commonplace question: “So how’s the shamus business, Lieutenant?”
“Can’t complain, Jimmy. I’m doing all right.”
“I heard you was at the First Ward Ball. Did you see the battle of the century? Mamie Reilly versus Fatso Kowalski. I hear it was a regular pier-sixer.”
Max smiled wryly. “Yeah, it was a lollapalooza. But I didn’t stick around to see who won.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too. I also heard you was working that night.”
Otto’s eyes darted between Max and Dolan, but he said nothing.
“You hear a lot, Jimmy. I guess you’ve been talking to Big Mike?”
Dolan lifted his helmet and scratched his forehead. “Word gets around, Lieutenant. Captain Crunican don’t like private dicks snooping around the aldermen’s shindigs.”
The Hawk’s eyes narrowed, but he kept his answer friendly. “I work my side of the street; I don’t stick my nose where it don’t belong. Mike knows that. As for Crunican...” Max paused and chose his words carefully. “The captain knows I’m on the level.”
Dolan’s face wrinkled in a knowing grin. “Well, I guess that’s all right then. Anyways, I seen something last week that might interest you.”
Dolan piqued Max’s curiosity. The veteran patrolman was always good for a lead or a tip. “Oh, what was that?”
“You know Bugsy Battaglia and Vito Capucci?”
“I’ve heard of them. They work for Big Jim Colosimo. I saw them doing the snake dance at the ball.”
“OK, now guess where I seen them.”
Max shook his head in mock exasperation. “Come on, Jimmy. Don’t play games. Otto’s gotta close and go home to the wife and kiddies.”
“Yeah, I gotta close,” Otto added for emphasis.
“All right,” Dolan replied. “Last Thursday it was, around eight p.m. I seen them going into Ike Burns’ joint, on Armitage. At first I thought they made a wrong turn somewhere, got lost and figured they was in Little Hell across the river with the rest of the dagos. But they seemed to know where they was going. So I asked myself, what are the South Side boys doin’ hanging around with the Burns mob? I don’t think they was wishin’ Ike a Merry Christmas.”
Ike Burns’ joint was a pool hall, bowling alley and bar, with a regular high stakes poker game in a back room. Ike also ran the local numbers racket. Burns made monthly “donations” to police “charities.” Jimmy Dolan was the precinct bagman who made the collections. The joint was definitely off-limits to members of the South Side mob and their compatriots in the slums near the gas works between Goose Island and Sedgwick across the river, the location of Death Corner in the neighborhood known as Little Hell.
Otto broke in with an observation. “Maybe Ike and Big Jim have some deal in the works?”
Max shook his head. “Not likely. Anyway, Big Jim wouldn’t send two low-level soldiers as emissaries to the enemy. That’s not his style.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Jimmy said. “More likely them two is freelancing.”
Max nodded his head as if in agreement, but he said nothing. This was good information, something he’d store away in his file-cabinet memory, for future reference.
There was an awkward moment of silence before Dolan said, “Well, as long as I don’t see them breakin’ any laws, it’s no business of mine.”
The bar cleared out in a hurry. After a few more minutes of small talk, the trio decided to call it a night. Otto walked Max and Dolan to the door. Dolan left first, Max stayed on for a moment.
“If you’ve got nothing planned for tonight, Max, maybe you’d like to join me and the family? We’re having a party with friends. A real old-country New Year’s Eve, with plenty to eat and drink. There’ll be some nice single girls there, too.”
“Thanks, Otto; that’s really thoughtful of you, but I’ve made other arrangements.”
Otto had a good idea what those “arrangements” were, but he tactfully made no comment. They shook hands and Max turned and headed east on North Avenue. Otto watched for a minute until Max disappeared in the slanting raindrops and shadows. Otto sighed and shook his head. Then he went back into the darkened tavern to finish closing.
* * *
Max turned the corner onto Paulina Street, and walked south. The temperature had dropped and the wind kicked up. Rain turned to sleet; ice crusted over bare branches and telephone wires. The frost-sheathed tree limbs glittered like crystals in reflected gas light. Fence posts sparkled as if freshly coated with a radiant silver paint. The neighborhood was quiet except for the sound of a tinny upright and a light, sweet tenor voice singing In the Gloaming. In backyards across the street, dogs barked an accompaniment.
He stopped at the gate of an iron fence bordering the small front yard of a two-story frame house. Max was about to pay a call on Violet Novak. Violet was a thirty-year old widow. Her husband had died of typhoid fever two years earlier. The late Mr. Novak had managed a warehouse on Goose Island, near the North Avenue Bridge. Vi was his bookkeeper, and she still worked in the office. Max had met her while shopping at a local grocery store, a few months after her husband died. Their relationship soon developed into a subject of local gossip.
Max opened the gate carefully, to keep the creaking to a minimum. He walked up the slick pathway to the back stairway that led to Vi’s rented, second floor flat. He climbed the stairs stepping lightly, holding on to the slippery banister all the way up to the narrow wooden landing. Out of the corner of his right eye, he noticed a lamp-lit, second story window next door, a shadowy female form and the stirring of a chintz curtain. Damned busybody, he thought. He knocked softly at Vi’s door.
After a moment, he heard a lock click and the sliding of a bolt. The door opened a crack; a pair of bright green eyes and full, red lips greeted him. The door opened wide. “Come in quick,” Vi whispered, “before the neighbors see.”
Max stepped over the threshold, and Vi shut the door behind him.
Max smiled. “I’m afraid Nosy Parker next door had a peek.”
Vi smirked and gave a light laugh. “Oh, her; the widow Bielinski. Your visit will be the first hot news flash of 1906.”
Max looked straight into her sparkling eyes. She’d fixed herself up nicely, and he appreciated the effort. She wore her dark brown, naturally curly hair swept up and neatly pinned in a pompadour. Vi powdered her face and rouged her lips, but not too much. The effect enhanced her smooth skin, oval face and fine features. Her only facial imperfection was a slightly too-long nose but, if anything, it added to her charm. She wore an ivory-colored, floral patterned silk kimono in the fashionable Japanese style; Max guessed what she was wearing underneath her robe. She smelled as though she had just stepped out of a warm, scented bath.
Vi approached him on small feet in high-heeled slippers that barely raised the top of her head to the level of his chest.
“Here, let me take your hat and coat, and get out of those galoshes. I don’t want you tracking slush all over my clean carpet.”
Max removed his rubber overshoes and left them by the door. Then he handed the black derby and overcoat to Vi. She carried them to a hall closet, placed the hat on a shelf and retrieved a hanger for the coat. Vi turned and faced Max with a sensual pout.
“Come on, lover. Don’t tell me you didn’t bring a gift? No flowers, no candy, no perfume?”
Max pulled out a pint flask from his inner jacket pocket. “The best five-year old bottled-in-bond. It’ll go down nice on such a cold night as this.”
“Oh, is that all? That’s as much for you as it is for me.”
Max stroked his moustache and cracked a wide smile. “There’s something else, baby. It’s real big, and just for you. Why don’t you come over here... and unwrap it?”
She hung up the coat and then came to him with a sly, seductive grin that matched his. She bared a row of even white teeth and licked her rouged lips with the tip of her pink tongue. Stopping just out of reach of his greedy hands, she undid the sash and let the kimono slip down from her shoulders.
Max had guessed right about what she wore underneath.
Copyright © 2015 by Gary Inbinder
