The Girls of Murder City (9 page)

The inquest, or coroner’s jury, was a pro forma proceeding that laid out the basic facts of a possible crime and served as a prelude to a grand jury. It rarely attracted much attention. But on this dreary afternoon, the benches were full of reporters and other observers. The lawyers weren’t surprised. The afternoon
Daily News,
which had hit the street less than an hour before, crashed the story across the entire front page in mammoth type: “One-Gun Duel Tragedy Told by Woman.” It held pride of place even over a gangland-murder story about the notorious bootlegger Dean “Dion” O’Banion, the Torrio gang’s chief rival, who was supposedly planning to surrender to police for questioning about the assassination of a fellow bootlegger. That morning, Maurine’s story in the
Tribune
had also gone on page one, but in a smaller slot and with a more demure—and incorrect—headline: “Mystery Victim Is Robert Law; Hold Divorcee.”

Everyone expected the follow-up stories, with the benefit of evidence from the inquest, to be juicier, and they wouldn’t be disappointed. Walter Law, the state pointed out, was younger than Belva Gaertner, a good ten years younger, which was how she liked her boyfriends. But the younger ones were getting harder and harder to come by, so she had been desperate to hold on to this one. “The motive which the state believes lies behind the case is this,” declared Assistant State’s Attorney Stanley Klarkowski. “Mrs. Gaertner had ensnared Law. He tried to break away, to stick to his wife and family. She killed him rather than lose him.”

Klarkowski walked through the details of the events that led Belva Gaertner to be in custody today. Sometime after midnight she and Walter Law, who had been seeing each other for about three months, parked near her apartment in a black Nash sedan. Belva left the car, presumably to go up to her apartment. At about one in the morning, two policemen walking their beat saw a woman open the passenger-side door and disappear into the Nash. Pausing, the cops noticed that the automobile didn’t go anywhere, but that was hardly unusual. Everyone had a closed car these days, especially cheating husbands. The morals court had recently called the closed car “a house of prostitution on wheels,” and that meant this was a situation for Vice. The officers quick-stepped to the corner to use a police call box. That was when they heard the shot.

Hustling back to the car, they discovered a man—shot through the head—and no sign of the woman they’d seen. The man’s body lay crumpled against the steering wheel, his arm dangling, a trickling bottle of gin just out of reach. There was an automatic pistol on the floor next to it.

Bert “Curley” Brown, manager of the Gingham Inn, at Sixty-eighth and Cottage Grove, stepped up to the stand. He was a big man with an easy, knowing smile. He acknowledged that Walter Law and Belva Gaertner had been in his establishment. “They didn’t have any gin,” he said. “Just ginger ale. We don’t allow gin. They didn’t display any gun in the café—though they may have talked about one—for I’ve always got my eyes peeled for guns. They were such a nice couple—I’m certainly shocked.”

Maurine didn’t think much of Brown, dismissing his testimony as “satire.” She wrote down the key questions the inquest brought up: Did Belva Gaertner murder Walter Law? Did she shoot him in self-defense? Did she accidentally shoot him? Did he kill himself? Did a third person do the slaying?

This much was clear: The officers, patrolmen David Fitzgerald and Morris Quinn, had no idea what they were dealing with when they called their station with the car’s license-plate number. It could have been a suicide or a robbery gone awry. It could have been a gang shooting—it was certainly gruesome enough to be an underworld hit. When the deputy coroner, Joseph Springer, arrived at the scene that morning, he checked the man slumped over the steering wheel. A bullet had punched through the man’s right cheek and exited through his left ear. Blood had flowed down the deceased’s chest and out the open car door, pooling on the cold ground. Springer picked up the automatic pistol on the car’s floor and opened the chamber. One shot had been fired. He retrieved the dead man’s wallet from his coat: Walter Law, automobile salesman.

The sedan, however, wasn’t Law’s. It belonged to one Belva E. Gaertner. Detective Sergeant William Corcoran testified that officers Fitzgerald and Quinn found Belva in her apartment, pacing the floor. There was a large bruise on her cheek, and it was clear that she had recently backed off from a state of hysteria. “We got drunk and he got killed—I don’t know how,” she told the officers. That was pretty much all she had to say.

While Maurine focused on the testimony, Forbes, more experienced than her younger colleague, found another angle. She made sure to sit near the widow, who was surrounded by family and friends. Much of what Mrs. Law was hearing surprised her, and she periodically sent forth small, quivering moans of distress. She squeezed her fists together at her sides and glared at Belva. She murmured something to her father-in-law that Forbes didn’t quite catch.

“No, daughter,” said Harry J. Law, patting Freda Law’s back while trying to maintain a stoic expression. “It’s not that woman’s fault entirely. Walter ought not to have gone out with anyone. He had a lovely wife and a fine baby. No, he did wrong, and we know it.”

Mrs. Law muttered again, and tried to stifle a sob.

“No, daughter,” Mr. Law whispered again, calm but forceful. “No, the times aren’t getting worse. Things were this way when I was a boy back in the Carolinas. But it was more quiet. A man has to stand up and fight against it. That’s all.”

The rundown of events took two hours, and Freda Law squirmed and muttered through all of it. Belva’s attention flagged early. Others, too, quickly lost interest: Yawns popped up here and there as the police testimony became redundant. Finally, a detective whispered in Klarkowski’s ear. “Bring him in quick,” the prosecutor replied. A well-groomed man in his thirties entered the room, his eyes darting, and took the oath. He said his name was Paul E. Goodwin and that he worked with Law, selling cars. It was clear that Belva and her lawyers had no idea who this man was or what he would say.

“Walter told me Monday that he planned to take out more life insurance because Mrs. Gaertner threatened to kill him,” Goodwin testified. “In a joking way he said he was afraid Mrs. Gaertner might shoot him. Three weeks before, he told me she locked him in her flat with her and threatened to stab him with a knife unless he stayed there.”

The testimony was better than Klarkowski could have hoped. The assistant state’s attorney had planned to have the inquest continued to the next day, so the police would have more time to tidy up their investigation, but Goodwin provided everything he needed. After that damning testimony, this case was definitely moving on to a grand jury and trial. Klarkowski turned to Joseph Springer, who was running the inquest. “The state is willing to let this case go to the [coroner’s] jury at once, without further delay,” he said.

The deputy coroner looked to the defense table. “Does Mrs. Gaertner wish to take the stand?”

Reilly rose, with Belva’s eyes following him up to his full height. “She does not, on advice of counsel,” he said. “Her statement to the police has been admitted in evidence. That is all she cares to say.”

With that, Klarkowski closed the show, adding the key pieces of Goodwin’s testimony to his summation. “I believe that when Law and Mrs. Gaertner returned from the café she tried to make him enter her apartment,” he said. “He, remembering the time she locked him in and held him there at the point of a knife, refused. Then she pulled the gun, perhaps. He tried to stop her, but couldn’t.” The prosecutor asked for a verdict.

As soon as the jury and the deputy coroner left the room, reporters swarmed over Belva, Klarkowski, and Freda Law. Klarkowski waved off questions, but Belva and Mrs. Law welcomed them. The two women sat in the bare-walled room of the police station, separated by only a few seats, answering questions, seemingly oblivious to each other. Back and forth they went, each serving as background noise for the other.

“At first, I felt rather sorry for that other woman because she was guilty of killing and everything. But did you see her come in? She was almost giggling. Oh, I never knew I could hate anyone so much.”

“Walter never did get along with his wife. He often told me that if it weren’t for his little boy he’d never live with her.”

“We had been married for four years and my husband was devoted to me. We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary only last Friday.”

“He was always a perfect gentleman, and I certainly never had any occasion to threaten his life. . . . He told me that the reason he wanted his insurance increased was because his wife had asked him to. About three weeks ago she went to a fortune teller and found out that her husband was going to die suddenly within eighteen days.”

“No, I don’t want her to hang. But I don’t want her to go to jail for a month or two and then step out.”

The two women could have gone on this way for some time, offering details and opinions about Walter Law, his marriage, and what should happen next, but after only twenty minutes, the coroner’s jury returned. The interviews ended abruptly.

“Walter Law,” the jury declared, “came to his death in the automobile of Mrs. Belva Gaertner from a bullet fired by Mrs. Belva Gaertner.”

Freda Law buried her head in her father-in-law’s embrace. Belva stared straight ahead and then blinked slowly. A reporter asked her a question, but she didn’t hear him. If she had come in giggling, she wasn’t going to leave that way.

The day after William caught her in bed with another man, Belva returned home as if nothing unusual had occurred. Over the three years of their marriage, she never showed any sign of feeling guilty. She never offered a hint that she regretted any of her actions. She did what she wanted, and that made it right.

Belva strolled up the front walk of the Gaertner estate, her head high, as expertly put together as always. She had no plans to talk to William about the events of the previous night; she was just going to go on with her life—with
their
life. But on this morning she was met with a surprise. The front door was locked. She knocked but received no reply. She banged and banged, and finally she heard shoes stepping toward the door. When it was opened, she found not a familiar, apologetic servant but a hard, strange face—a private detective—staring out at her. He wouldn’t let her enter.

Belva, steaming with such fury that her floppy hat risked burning to a cinder on her head, stomped downtown, where she employed a burly guardian of her own. They returned to the house and forced their way inside. William, hiding upstairs, called the police in a panic.

A car rolled up not long after. “What’s the matter?” the officer asked when he found a standoff in the marbled foyer.

Belva wheeled on the uniformed policeman, startled at the extreme measures her husband was taking. First a private bullyboy, now an official one. “I don’t know of any reason why we need the services of the police force here,” she snapped.

William gave her a reason: This wasn’t her home anymore. “She wants to stay in the flat,” he told the officer.

“Who is she?”

“My wife,” William said.

Ah. With that, the officer decided it was time to move on. The police hated domestic disputes, especially when they involved wealthy men who had influence. He advised them to take it up with their lawyers, then turned and beat a quick retreat back to the station house.

William already had a lawyer on retainer. He would be filing for divorce, citing cruelty. Belva went out and got her own lawyer—Charles Erbstein, perhaps the best-known attorney in the city. She also hired a set of private eyes to match those that William had. The dispute, inevitably, hit the papers. The
Tribune,
breaking the story on April 9, 1920, assumed the necessary mocking tone:

Eight detectives are comfortably ensconced at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Gaertner, 5474 Hyde Park boulevard. Mr. Gaertner filed suit for divorce last week and invited Mrs. Gaertner to leave. When she declined, he summoned the police. They were neutral.

Then he retained a private detective to watch the home. Mrs. Gaertner retaliated by employing one to protect her interests and watch the other. The husband came back with one more. She then supplemented hers as an assistant. That made it two and two. But Mr. Gaertner added a couple more and so did Mrs. Gaertner.

Now she is consistently followed as was Mary by her little lamb. The eight sleuths accompany her to the theaters, the shopping district, the telephone, even to the mail box.

“It’s a rather trying situation,” Belva told the
American.
“You see, between my husband’s corps of detectives and my own crew I hardly know where I’m at. I need help.”

She admitted she was “having a deuce of a time” remembering which detectives were hers and which his, and, bonding with a female reporter from the
Chicago Evening Post,
she asked how the reporter would handle the state of affairs. Ione Quinby, a cherubic twenty-eight-year-old with fashionable black bangs, took the question seriously. She looked about the expansive manse, with its high ceilings, marble floors, and expensive furniture beyond her imagination. There was a lot of territory to cover in this one building and a lot of opportunity for a bad apple to nick some pretty finery. “It seems to me,” Quinby said, “you should get a couple of neutral dicks to keep an eye on both crews.”