Murder at the Racetrack (17 page)

“I like that. The nearest blunt instrument. How the hell did you get to be a captain? What are you, Jake Arvey’s nephew?”

He came half out of his chair and threw a punch at me.

I slipped it, staying seated, and batted his hat off his head, like I was slapping a child, and the fedora fluttered to the
floor.

“You get
one
” I said.

The red in his face was fading, as he plucked the hat from the linoleum, and the embarrassment in his eyes was almost as good
as punching him would’ve been.

“Is that a threat, Heller?”

“This reputation of mine you’ve heard so much about— did you hear the part about my Outfit ties? Maybe you want to wake up
in a fucking ditch in Indiana, Captain…
That
was a threat, by the way.”

Into this Noel Coward playlet came another cop, a guy I did know, from the Detective Bureau in the Loop: Inspector Charles
Mullaney, a big fleshy guy who always wore mortician black; he had a spade-shaped face, bright dark eyes and smiled a lot.
Unlike many Chicago cops who do that, Mullaney actually had a sense of humor.

“What’s this, Captain?” Mullaney had a lilting tenor, a small man’s voice in the big fat frame. “My friend Nate Heller giving
you a hard time?”

Mullaney scooted a chair out and sat between us, Daddy arriving to supervise his two small children. He was grinning at Cullen,
but his eyes were hard.

“When you say ’friend,’ Inspector, do you mean—”

“Friend. Don’t believe what you hear about Heller. He and me and Bill Drury go way back—to the Pickpocket Detail.”

Captain Cullen said, defensively, “This guy found the body under suspicious circumstances.”

“Oh?”

For the sixth or seventh time, I told my story. For the first time, somebody took notes—Mullaney.

“Charlie,” I said to him, “I’m working through an attorney on this. I owe it to my client to talk to him before I tell you
about the job I was on.”

Frowning, Cullen said, “Yeah, well,
we’ll
want to talk to your client, too.”

I said, “Might be a good idea. You could inform him his wife is dead. Just as a, you know, courtesy to a taxpayer.”

Mullaney gave me a don’t-needle-this-prick-anymore look, then said, “The husband is in the clear. We’ve already been in touch
with him.”

Cullen asked, “What’s his alibi?”

“Well, a Municipal Court judge, for one. He had a ten-thirty at the court, which is where we found him. A former employee
is suing him for back wages.”

Sylvester Vinicky ran a small moving company over on nearby South Racine Avenue. He and his wife also ran a small second-hand
furniture shop, adjacent.

“Any thoughts, Nate?” Mullaney asked. “Any observations you’d care to share?”

“Did you notice the button?”

“What button?”

So I filled Mullaney in on the sportcoat button, pointed out the possible missing wedding ring, and the inevitability of the
killer getting blood spattered.

“She let the bastard in,” Mullaney said absently.

“Somebody she knew,” I said. “And trusted.”

Cullen asked, “Why do you say that? Could have been a salesman or Mormon or—”

“No,” I said. “He got close enough to her to strike a blow from behind, in the living room. She was smoking—it was casual.
Friendly.”

Cullen sighed. “Friendly…”

Mullaney said, “We’re saying ’he’—but it
couldn’t
a woman.”

“I don’t think so. Rose Vinicky was tall, and all of those blows landed on the back of her head, struck with a downward swing.”

Cullen frowned. “And how do you know this?”

“Well, I’m a trained detective. There are courses available.”

Ignoring this twaddle, Mullaney said, “She could have been on the floor already, when those blows were struck— hell, there
were half a dozen of them.”

“Right. But at least one of them was struck when she was standing. And the woman was five ten, easy. Big girl. And the force
of it… skull crushed like an eggshell. And you can see the impressions from multiple blows.”

“A man, then,” Mullaney said. “A vicious son of a bitch. Well. We’ll get him. Captain… would you give Mr. Heller and me a
moment?”

Cullen heaved a dramatic sigh, but then he nodded, rose, stepped out.

Mullaney said, “I don’t suppose you’ll stay out of this.”

“Of course I’ll stay out of it. This is strictly police business.”

“I didn’t think you would. Okay, I understand—your name is going to be in the papers, it’s going to get out that the wife
of a client was killed on your watch—”

“Hey, she was already dead when I pulled up!”

“That’ll go over big with the newshounds, especially the part where you’re twiddling your thumbs in your car while she lay
dead… Nate, let’s work together on this thing.”

“Define’ together.’”

He leaned forward; the round face, the dark eyes, held no guile. “I’m not asking you to tag along—I couldn’t ask that. You
have ’friends’ like Captain Cullen all over town. But I’ll keep you in the know, you do the same. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Why don’t we start with a show of good faith.”

“Such as?”

“Why were you here? What job were you doing for Sylvester Vinicky?”

Thing was, I’d been lying about this coming through a lawyer, though I had a reasonable expectation the lawyer I’d named would
cover for me. Really what I’d hoped for was to talk to my client before I spilled to the cops. But Mullaney wasn’t just
any
cop…

So I told him.

Told him that Sylvester Vinicky had come to my office on Van Buren, and started crying, not unlike his daughter had at the
curb. He loved his wife, he was crazy about her, and he felt so ashamed, suspecting her of cheating.

Vinicky had sat across from me in the client’s chair, a working man with a heavy build in baggy trousers, brown jacket and
cap. At five nine he was shorter than his wife, and was pudgy where she was slender. Just an average-looking joe named Sylvester.

“She’s moody,” he said. “When she isn’t nagging, she’s snapping at me. Sulks. She’s distant. Sometimes when I call home, when
she’s supposed to be home, she ain’t at home.”

“Mr. Vinicky,” I said, “if anything, usually a woman having an affair acts nicer than normal to her husband. She doesn’t want
to give him a chance to suspect anything’s up.”

“Not Rose. She’s always been more like my sweetheart than my wife. We’ve never had a cross word, and, hell, we’re in business
together, and it’s been smooth sailing at home and at work… where most couples would be at each other’s throats, you know?”

In addition to the moving business, the Vinickys bought and sold furniture—Rose had an eye for antiques and found many bargains
for resale. She also kept the books and paid off the men.

“Rose, bein’ a mother and all, isn’t around the office, full-time,” Vinicky said. “So maybe I shouldn’t be so suspicious about
it.”

“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.”