August 1933 in Chicago was surprisingly cool, unless you were a crook, in which case it was hotter than usual. We were suffering through one of those periodic anti-crime drives the city subjected itself to now and then, and since the Capone/Nitti Outfit got a free pass on its fun and games, small fry like the Blonde Tigress and her “mob” (two male accomplices) got the brunt.

Did the Blonde Tigress have a damn thing to do with the policeman who got himself shot in a Cook County courtroom? No. She and her gang of two merely got caught up in the over-reaction when the Honorable John Prystalski, the county’s chief judge, ordered all the other judges back from summer vacation to work through the jammed-up docket. Two-hundred-thirty-five defendants got the book thrown at them that August, including three death sentences.

And that was before the Blonde Tigress had appeared in the dock….

In my big under-furnished one-room office on Van Buren, I sat at my desk, working on a pile of retail-credit checks, with the window open behind me to let in a cool morning breeze and the occasional rumble of the El.

I tried to let the phone ring five times before answering, but was short enough on clients to settle for three. “A-1 Detective Agency,” I said. “Nathan Heller speaking.”

“Nate, Sam Backus.”

My hopes sank. Backus—small, nervous, with ferret features—was with the Public Defender’s Office, which made him the kind of criminal attorney who couldn’t afford my help.

“Hiya, Sam. Any of your clients get a ticket for the hot squat today?”

“No, but the day’s young. Listen, I got the Tigress.”

I sat up. “What?”

“You heard me. Eleanor Jarman is my client.”

All summer, the Blonde Tigress case had been plastered across the front pages, and the radio was all over it, too. The so-called Blonde Tigress—a good-looking lady bandit with “tawny hair” and a “voluptuous figure”—had led her two-man mob on a series of stickups all around the West and Northwest sides. The Tigress was said to carry a big revolver in her purse and a blackjack, too, one of her male accomplices using the gun, the Tigress adept with the jack. The usual target was the small merchant, grocery stores and other shops, the robbery victims often roughed up for intimidation or maybe just the hell of it.

After the August 4 hold-up of a clothing shop near Oak Park—and the murder of its seventy-year-old proprietor—sometime waitress Eleanor Jarman, her live-in guy George Dale, and Dale’s ex-fighter buddy Leo Minneci had been identified as the perpetrators and brought in by two top Detective Bureau dicks.

“Well, she’s guilty as sin, isn’t she?” I asked him cheerfully. “Maybe you can arrange for her to sit on her boyfriend’s lap when they fry him, and save the state on its electricity bill.”

“Nate, I think she’s being railroaded. These characters Dale and Minneci are stick-up guys, sure, and there’s no doubt Dale pulled the trigger on the old boy. But Eleanor’s just the girl friend. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Are they being tried separately?”

“No, but each has separate representation from the Public Defender’s office.”

I was shaking my head. “If she’s innocent in this, why was she charged? Didn’t Tuohy and Glass make the arrest? They’re as close to real detectives as the police department gets.”

“Nate, you know about this clean-up and crackdown campaign that’s going on. When did you ever hear of somebody getting arrested for murder in this town and then have the trial go on the same damn month?”

“Okay, you stumped me. But I—”

“Think it through, Nate. This is about the papers looking for a hot story, and what’s better than a sexy baby leading her ‘gang’ on a bunch of robberies?”

I shifted in my chair. “Listen, I don’t care if she’s guilty or not guilty. I’d be glad to work for you, Sam, if you were a real criminal lawyer with some scratch to spend.”

“That’s the good part about all this press nonsense, Nate. Think about the publicity! There’s no bigger story right now.”

“Then I’m right—there isn’t any money in this.”

“Actually, pal, there is.”

That got my attention, but I said, “Don’t call me ‘pal.’ Makes me nervous. When do I ever see you, Sam, when we aren’t in a courtroom?”

“Nate, if you take this case, you can peddle your story to one of the papers afterwards, with my blessing. And I’ve got a true detective magazine that’ll pay even better. That’ll beat any of your five-dollar-a-day action, any time.”

“That’s ten and expenses, and what do you have in mind?”

“Just meet with my client. See if she doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

“So then you have no case?”

“…I have no case. I need you to go get me one.”

If I was the private eye who cleared the Blonde Tigress, I’d be in demand with every criminal lawyer in town.

“I can meet with her,” I said, “any time today.”

 

Now a guy can get some pretty funny thoughts sometimes. And by funny, I mean stupid. But while I’d been around, I was only twenty-eight, and I couldn’t keep from wondering if some exotic, erotic encounter might not occur between the Blonde Tigress and me, behind the closed door of that First District Station interrogation room. The matron standing guard would hear the muffled sounds and wonder what might be happening in there, between the curvaceous blonde gun moll and that handsome six-footer with the reddish brown hair, and dare she interrupt?

I was expecting the combination Jean Harlow and Mata Hari that the papers had been pumping, and in my defense I must say that they’d taken some fairly fetching photos of Eleanor Jarman. And the woman seated at the scarred table in a brick-walled enclosure whose windows were barred and throwing appropriately moody shadows—was certainly attractive, albeit in a quiet, modest, even mousy way.

Her hair was not tawny, at least not by my standards—more a dishwater blonde, curling-ironed locks framing her heart-shaped face. I’d call her pretty, or anyway pretty enough, with big gray eyes that dominated her face and a nice mouth, full lips lightly rouged. Prisoners awaiting trial were allowed street clothes—in this case, a simple white dress with angular blue stripes and a white collar with a bow, the stripes giving the faintest unintentional prison-uniform touch. She had a nice shape, but “voluptuous” was torturing a point.

She gave me a big smile and stood and held her hand out for me to shake. The smile was disarming—I might have been a brother she hadn’t seen for some time.

“Thank you for this, Mr. Heller,” she said warmly, as I took a chair at the table, her at the end, me alongside.

“I haven’t agreed to take the job, Mrs. Jarman,” I said, and took my hat off and tossed it on the table. “I said I’d have a talk with you and see.”

Her smile remained but she put the teeth away and nodded. “It’s because Mr. Backus can’t afford to hire you. But what if I could?”

“Could what?”

“Afford to hire to you.”

I squinted at her. “How could you afford to hire a private detective if you can’t afford your own lawyer?”

She shrugged and half a smile lingered. “That was strategy, Mr. Heller. I could’ve hired a lawyer, not an expensive one, but I do have some money salted away. It’s just, well…”

And I got it.

“If you could hire a criminal attorney,” I said, “it would make you look more like a criminal. Somebody pulling off heists all summer could afford counsel. Smart.”

“I’m not rich. But I could offer you one hundred dollars.”

“I charge ten a day and expenses. That’ll take you a fair way.”

“Fine. I’ll have it sent over to your office.”

“You’re not what I expected.”

She grinned. “Not a Tigress?”

“Not the femme fatale the papers paint, and not the victim Sam Backus would make you, either.”

“What, then?”

“A smart, resourceful cookie.”

“Thanks. Could I call you something besides ‘Mr. Heller’?”

“Sure. Nate’ll do. And I’ll call you Eleanor.”

They had provided a pitcher of ice water and I served us up some. The breezy afternoon was making its way through windows that were open onto their bars.

“Do you need to hear my story, Nate, before you say yes?”

“I want to hear your story, but I already said yes to your hundred dollars.”

She had a whole repertoire of smiles, and she gave me another one, a chin-crinkler. But the gray eyes had a sadness that fit neither her happy kisser nor her business-like brain.

She started with the story of her life, which didn’t take long, because it wasn’t much of one. She was from Sioux City, Iowa, daughter of immigrant German parents who died in a flu epidemic when she was fourteen, just the right age to start working as a waitress in a joint near the stockyards. She married Leroy Jarman, who told her she deserved better, and gave her two sons and put her to work as a laundress. Earlier this year, after Jarman took a powder, she moved to Chicago, where she continued to do laundry in her little apartment while taking care of her two boys. A neighbor introduced her to George Dale, and her life changed.

“George never said what he did for a living,” she told me. “I always figured it was something a little shady, but hell, I ran a beer flat in Sioux City, so who was I to talk? Anyway, he always had plenty of dough and we lived in nice apartments.”

Then she got to the meat of the matter: the crime.

She and her boy friend George and George’s friend Leo were on their way to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. They were running early and decided to stop and do a little shopping; George had spotted the clothing store sign and pulled in, saying he needed some shirts. They had all three gone inside.

“George was talking to Mr. Hoeh up in front,” she said. Her eyes were not on me; they seemed to be staring into her memory. “The old man was getting shirts from behind the counter and laying boxes out for George to see. Leo wasn’t interested, and just hanging by the door. I was in the back of the store, looking at ties and other boys clothing—my sons are nine and eleven—and was caught up in making some selections.” Now she looked at me, gray eyes wide and earnest. “Then I heard the sound of a scuffle.”

“Was the old boy still behind the counter?”

“No, he was coming around after George, who was heading out.”

“Leaving you in back of the store?”

“No, that’s the other thing that alerted me that something was wrong—George was calling, ‘Eleanor! Hurry!’”

“What did you think was happening?”

“Honestly, I had no idea. I guess I thought the old man had gone off his rocker or something. Leo was there at the door, holding it open, but Mr. Hoeh was attacking George. Then all of sudden George had this gun….”

“You didn’t know George had a gun?”

She shook her head. “And the old man wrestled with George, had a hold of his wrist and twisted the thing around, and it went off!”

“And the old boy got hit?”

“No! Leo did—in his hand, his left hand I think. Leo yelled something like, ‘Jesus, George, you shot me!’ Then George shoved Mr. Hoeh away, and I was coming up from the back of the shop now, and I followed them out onto the sidewalk—I was the last one out, kind of trailing the old man, who was all over George. Why did he do that? He knew George had a gun!”

I shrugged. “It was his store. A guy his age, builds a business, he might do anything to defend it. Go on.”

“I know Mr. Hoeh was old, but he was big and tough, slugging and swinging, and I almost jumped on his back, trying to pull him off George, trying to stop this.”

“You must’ve have known it was a hold-up by now.”

She shook her head firmly. “No. I wasn’t thinking, not rationally, anyway. It was all so fast. I just knew George was in trouble and this crazy old man was attacking him.”

“All right. What happened then?”

She swallowed; no smiles now. “The old man shoved me away. That’s when George shot him. Twice.”

I drew in a breath; I let it out. “And Mr. Hoeh died before he made it to the hospital.”

“I know.” She was shaking her head, eyes glued to the scarred table top. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea George was some kind of…stick-up man. But I can’t believe he did that, with me along.”

“You’d never been along before?”

“No. Never.”

“They say something like sixty witnesses have identified you and George and Leo in a whole slough of other robberies. Thirty-some?”

“I don’t care what they say. These witnesses are only saying what the police tell them to. Do you think they had us stand in the show-up line? No. Hell, no. They’d haul their witnesses into the women’s cell block and point at me and say, ‘That’s her, isn’t it? The Tigress?’ And I’ll bet they’ve done the same kind of thing with George and Leo.”

“That’s not a point I’d care to argue. You’re not saying that this was a spur of the moment thing for George, that he suddenly decided to become a stick-up artist on his way to a Cubs game? He didn’t grow that gun.”

She got out another smile: a bitter one. “No. I understand that now. I believe George and Leo have been at this a long time. George had been throwing a lot of money around and that’s where it came from, obviously. They saw an opportunity with that old man alone in that shop, and they took it—putting me in this fix.”

“You’re not saying there’s another ‘Tigress’ working with George and Leo?”

“Why not? And, anyway, I’m no ‘Tigress,’ and if there is a real female accomplice, she probably isn’t, either.”

I frowned at her. “You think George has another girl friend who goes out on robberies with him?”

“No. But Leo might.”

“Is Leo married?”

“Yeah. Does that mean he can’t have a girl friend?”

“If it did,” I said, and grinned at her, “I’d be out of business.”

“It’s also possible,” she said, “that George and Leo pulled some robberies, but on their own. Without a female accomplice, and we’re taking the blame for some other bunch.”

“You each have your own lawyers.”

“Yeah. Our stories don’t exactly jibe. Leo says he had no idea George was going to pull a robbery at that haberdashery. George says there wasn’t any robbery.”

“Then why did George have the gun?”

She held her hands up in surrender. “I think it was the old man’s. Look, they don’t exactly let me talk to George and Leo. You’ll have to ask them, if you can…. Well, Nate? Do you think you can help?”

“I’ll give it a hundred bucks worth of college try,” I said.

“Do you believe my version of what happened?”

“I don’t exactly believe you. But I don’t exactly disbelieve you, either. I’ll keep an open mind. How’s that?”

“That’s the best I could hope for,” she said, and offered me her hand to shake.

The handshake lingered and her gray eyes sent me the tiniest signal that her gratitude might be shown in ways beyond that hundred bucks.

Which is as close as my Tigress daydream came to playing out.

 

In the hallway of the First District Station, a new modern facility, I encountered an old-fashioned cop—Captain John Stege, who greeted me much as I’d expect: “What the hell are you doing here, Heller?”

Stege was a fiftyish fireplug with a round white face and round black-rimmed glasses. He was in shirtsleeves and a blue bow tie, which was about as casual as he ever got, a revolver on his hip.

“Fine, Captain,” I said. “How are you?”

The owlish cop frowned at me. “Get your ass in my office.”

I was an irritant to Stege because I confused him: when I’d been on the Detective Bureau, not so long ago, I’d ratted out some corrupt coppers, which he considered disloyal of me, and yet he was one of the most honest flatfeet on the force.

I sat across his desk from him. The office was as small and clean and compact as he was. He just looked at me, asking no question but clearly expecting an answer.

“I’m doing a job for Sam Backus,” I said.

“Since when does the Public Defender’s office have money to hire investigators?”

“Since never.” I shrugged. “Maybe I’m doing it out of a sense of public duty.”

His tiny eyes tightened behind the lenses. “Hell—not the Tigress? That’s it, isn’t it? You figure you can peddle your story to the papers!”

“I don’t care what anybody says. You’re a detective.”

The door to the office was open. I was sitting there with my hat on. He told me to close the door and take off my hat. I did so. What was this about?

“I’m glad you’re on it,” Stege said.

“What?”

“Something smells about that case.”

“Oh, you mean like taking witnesses down to the cell block and pointing to the suspect, in lieu of a line-up?”

He tasted his mouth and it obviously wasn’t a pleasant flavor. “Something like that. This clean-up campaign, I never saw so many corners cut. If I can help you, let me know. I mean, keep it on the q.t.—but let me know.”

“This is so sudden, Captain.”

“Don’t get cute. It’s just that lately I feel like we’re working for these yellow damn journalists—trying to make ourselves look good instead trying to do our jobs.”

I sat forward. “They’re taking this to trial right away. I could use some help.”

“All right.” Stege squinted at me meaningfully. “But don’t ask to see the files—I won’t go sneaking around on honest cops. Anyway, the papers told the story accurately enough, if you take out the ‘Tigress’ hooey.”

“Do you think Dale and Minneci were part of this stick-up gang hitting small merchants on the West and Northwest Sides?”

“They could be. And so could that woman, for that matter. There’s definitely been a rash of robberies where two men and a woman go in to a store, once they’ve established no other customers are around. They’d make a lot of noise, one of the men and the woman, too, yelling and threatening and even shoving, waving a gun and a blackjack around.”

“That’s not a stupid approach.”

“You don’t think sticking up innocent merchants is stupid, Heller?”

“Sure. My old man ran a bookshop on the West Side, remember? Anybody kills a shop owner for what’s in his till, I’d like to take their tonsils out with a penknife. But by making a big commotion, intimidating their victim? It can make turn the whole thing into a big blur. Hard to get a good identification out of somebody who’s been put through that. What was the woman’s role?”

Stege shrugged. “Like I said, she was part of the show. Apparently she’d come in with a big handbag and the man would dip into it and that’s where the gun came from. She was the one waving the blackjack around, and some victims claimed they’d been struck by it.”

“They’d clean out the cash drawer?”

“Yeah, and sometimes help themselves to some merchandise. This woman, in clothing shops with female apparel, she’d pick herself out some pretty things and take ’em along.”

“Women do love to shop.”

Stege grimaced; helping me was hard on him. “I don’t want you bothering the dicks on this case. They’re good boys. I’m afraid all this pressure for arrests and publicity may have got the better of ’em, is all.”

“I won’t even talk to them,” I said. “Who I want to talk to are the Tigress’s little cubs—George Dale and Leo Minneci.”

The little round-faced copper nodded and reached out his pudgy little fingers for the phone.

 

Within an hour I was sitting in another interrogation room, smaller but also with brick walls, barred windows and a scarred table. I might have still been at the First District Station, but I wasn’t: this was the Cook County Jail on Dearborn, and a cell block guard was ushering in the first name on my dance card: George Dale.

Dale was tall, maybe six two, a good-looking guy with an athletic build; he had a certain Lothario look undercut by thinning brown hair. Dale was in a white shirt, open at the collar, and brown suit pants with dark shoes and white socks.

The guard deposited him across the table from me. Dale wasn’t in handcuffs or leg irons or anything—just a big guy with a friendly face, unless you knew how to read the coldness of his dark eyes. And I did. I was glad I wasn’t packing my nine millimeter, because this character could have made a reasonable go of taking it off me.

“What’s the idea?” Dale asked. “Where’s my lawyer? If I’m talking to another copper, I want my lawyer.”

“My name’s Heller, private operative. Working for your sweetheart’s attorney.”

He sat forward, some life coming into the hard eyes. “How is Eleanor? Is she doing all right?”

“She’s sweating the hot seat like you are. I think I can help get her out of this, if you can confirm she wasn’t an accomplice.”

“She’s innocent as a newborn baby!”

“Well, let’s not get carried away, George….”

“Look, Heller, I’m no stick-up man. I’m a gambler. I make my money on dice and poker, you ask around. This is all just a terrible misunderstanding. An accident.”

“An accident.”

“Yeah. That old man was crazy! I wanted to buy some shirts, and I wanted ’em in quantity—said I’d buy half a dozen if he’d give me a decent discount. He said his price was firm and I tried to haggle and he just shook his head and gave me a nasty look. I had this box of shirts in my hands, and he yanked it away, and I yanked back, and he shoved me, and I shoved him back.”

“Across the counter, this is?”

“Yeah!”

“He was seventy, wasn’t he?”

“So they say, but he was a wild man! After I shoved him, he pulled the gun out from under the counter and came around and chased me, waving the thing. It was, you know, close quarters, and I tried to grab it away from him, and it went off and shot Leo through the hand. Then we ran out on the street—Eleanor was in back of the store and came running up behind us. The old fellow and me, we were struggling over the gun, and Eleanor was pounding him on the back, and he kind of tossed her off, like you’d toss off a kid that jumped you. Then the gun just…went off.”

“Just went off. Twice.”

“Well…yeah. I was scared. He was vicious.”

“Okay, George. Maybe we should start over.”

He shook his head. “Look, I didn’t pull any stick-up. They found fourteen bucks in the cash drawer, you know.”

“Right. But you had a roll of bills in your pocket adding up to three hundred bucks.”

“That was my money! I don’t deny I shot the old man. But it was an accidental type thing.”

“George. Don’t kid a kidder—you’re a seasoned stick-up artist, and you stopped at that clothing store for a smash and grab.”

He just sat there, the eyes going hard again. “I don’t say I’m a saint. But Eleanor was never in on anything illegal I ever done, and these witnesses that say we were some kind of gang, the three of us, it’s a goddamn lie. The cops are just looking to clear a bunch of robberies off their books, in one fell swoop.”

“The three of us, you said. Where does Minneci figure in?”

“He was just along for the ride. I’m sorry he got his hand shot up.”

“Going to the Cubs game.”

“Right.”

I didn’t press. The story held water like a paper sack, but it was close enough to Eleanor’s to make them both look credible. Of course, they’d known for several days that the cops were after them and had had time to get their stories straight before getting hauled in.

Leo Minneci was a dark, handsome guy, or anyway handsome if you didn’t mind the cauliflower ears and the flattened nose. I never met him before, but I remembered him from his pug days—he’d been a pretty fair heavyweight, going up against Tuffy Griffiths and other headliners.

He wore a blue workshirt, sleeves rolled up, and blue jeans with his left hand bandaged. He had a confused expression, like a stranger had called to him from across the street.

Seated opposite me, he asked, “What’s this about? You another cop?”

“I’m a private dick working for Eleanor Jarman’s attorney. I’d like to get your version of what happened at that clothing shop.”

He shrugged. “Listen, I’m one of them victims of circumstance you hear about.”

“Really. I always wanted to meet one of those.”

“This has nothing to do with me. It’s Dale and that dame of his. I was just riding with them to a ball game. We was running a little early, and I said I could use a shirt and we stopped at that place. We were only in there a coupla minutes before Dale pulled a gun and stuck up the old guy. I tried to keep George from shooting the geezer and I, you know, wrestled with him, and the thing went off and…” He raised his bandaged mitt. “…got a bullet through the hand.”

“Did Eleanor know anything about the stick-up?”

He shook his head. “I think it was, what you call it, spur of the moment on George’s part. Look, I got a wife and two kids. I do all right with day labor, and I wouldn’t risk putting them in a bad spot.”

“What’s your wife’s name?”

“Why?”

“I’m just gathering information, Leo. Don’t get jumpy.”

“It’s Tina. You want the address?”

I wrote that down.

I left the jail feeling better about my client. George Dale might or might not be a stick-up artist, and Leo Minneci might or might not be his accomplice; but their stories both put Eleanor Jarman on the sidelines.

 

I talked to half a dozen of the merchants on the witness list. Advertising that I was working for the Tigress would have turned them into clams, so I would just tell them I was a detective, and flash my little private investigator’s badge, and that’d do the trick.

Mrs. Swan G. Swanson (no joke) was typical. She was the proprietor of a little gift shop across from the clothing store on West Division Street. This was a busy shopping area, the treetops of fashionable, sleepy Oak Park visible above the bustle of commerce and traffic on this late afternoon.

She was about sixty-five, five foot five in heels and maybe one-hundred-and-sixty pounds that still had some shape to them, well-served by a cotton dress with white polka dots on dark blue; with that pretty face highlighted by nice light blue eyes behind round wire-framed glasses, she was who you hoped your wife would turn out to be at that age.

“Detective Heller,” she said, in a whispery soprano, “it was one of the most vicious things I ever saw.”

“I know you’ve been over this several times, but I’m new on the case. Don’t spare the details.”

She nodded. “Two men came running out of the store. The first man was dark and he was holding onto his hand, which was bleeding, dripping all over the sidewalk. The other man was struggling with Mr. Hoeh, who ran after them. Mr. Hoeh was very brave, fighting hand to hand with a man holding a gun.”

Very brave or very dumb.

“Then this wildcat of a woman, a blonde, came out and was swinging this blackjack around and was hitting Mr. Hoeh with it. Mr. Hoeh sort of stumbled and stopped fighting and the woman stepped to one side and the man with the gun shot Mr. Hoeh—twice! And then when Mr. Hoeh was on the sidewalk, bleeding, dying, that vixen kicked him! Kicked him right in the face!”

“That is vicious. Tell me, when did you notice the blackjack?”

“Oh, uh…well, right away, I guess. When she started swinging it.”

“I was just wondering if the detectives you spoke to earlier had mentioned that the Tigress sometimes used a blackjack. Did you notice the blackjack at the time? Or when they mentioned this to you, did you remember you’d seen it?”

She frowned. “Actually…I guess I just thought she was pounding on him. But on reflection, I was sure, pretty sure, she had a blackjack.”

“What does a blackjack look like, anyway?”

The light blue eyes froze behind the lenses. “Uh…well, it’s black, obviously. It’s a sort of wrench, isn’t it?”

When I grew tired of talking to these witnesses who’d been played like a kazoo by the Detective Bureau, I had a Coke and a grilled cheese at the drug store on the corner of Austin Boulevard and Division. Then I called the First District Station to see if that dedicated little public servant Captain Stege was still in his office.

He was, and I asked, “Was there anything in the reports about Hoeh having any facial injuries?”

“Just minor stuff, from the scuffle with Dale, I understand.”

“Then nobody kicked him in the face?”

He grunted a laugh. “I saw that in the papers, some of the witnesses saying that. But, no, Heller, nobody kicked the old man. The two bullets were enough.”

“Usually are. I read something about a cache of weapons being collected at the apartment where the dicks caught up with Dale and Eleanor. Was there a blackjack among the stuff?”

“No. Pretty good arsenal, though—four revolvers and a shotgun.”

Dale had said he was no saint.

I went back to the office, not because I was as dedicated as Captain Stege, but owing to the fact that I lived there, with the Murphy bed to prove it. There was a Depression going on, as you may have heard, and I had an arrangement with the building’s owner to keep an eye on things at night in exchange for rent.

That evening I needed to get over to the Century of Progress, where I was doing some security work—without the World’s Fair, my summer would have been a bust—and I was just getting ready to go when a knock rattled the pebbled glass of my door.

“Come in,” I said, wondering what I’d done to deserve two clients in one day, but it wasn’t that at all.

For a moment I thought Leo Minneci had escaped and come around, because this was a dark young man who resembled Minneci strongly. On a closer inspection, he was smaller and younger than Leo, without the flattened nose, and better dressed—white short-sleeved shirt, red tie, white summer slacks and white bluchers—also a boater-style straw hat, which was in his right hand.

“I’m Tony Minneci,” he said. “Leo’s brother. I have something for you, Mr. Heller.”

I gestured to the client’s chair and he came over and filled it.

“This may seem a little strange,” he said. “I’m not here because of my brother.”

“Oh?”

“I’m kind of mad at Leo. He got me in trouble.”

Then I remembered—the car used in the robbery, whose license number had been reported by three or four witnesses, turned out to belong to Tony here, a University of Illinois student working as a grocery clerk for a summer job.

“Leo asked to borrow my car that day,” his young doppelganger said, “but I said no. Then he took it, anyway.”

“Did you know Leo was doing stick-ups? Is that why you didn’t want him using your wheels?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about that. It’s just my car, is all. Let him get his own car.” He got into his pocket and fished out some bills—twenties. He put five of them on my desk. That was a lot of cabbage for a college-kid grocery clerk to haul around. A well-dressed college-kid grocery clerk.

He smiled shyly. “That’s to cover what you’re doing for Eleanor.”

“You’re Leo’s brother, but you’re running an errand for Eleanor? Why?”

“She’s a nice girl. She’s innocent in all this. We were friendly.”

“You and Eleanor?”

“No, all of us, Eleanor and George and Leo.”

“This is the same Leo? Let-him-get-his-own-car Leo?”

He shrugged. “I get along fine with my brother. We don’t agree on everything under the sun, but—”

“What don’t you agree with? Him sticking up stores?”

“Look, Mr. Heller, my brother may not be perfect, but he does his best to keep that wife of his happy. If he did do something he shouldn’t have, you can blame her for it.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s a nag, that’s why. You should go talk to her. See for yourself. If you ask me…nothing.”

“Make your point, Tony.”

“They got two kids now, Mr. Heller, but she was a wild one, Tina. She got my brother in all kinds of scrapes, and then she trapped him, far as I’m concerned.”

“How?”

“Back when he was boxing and making good money, she got pregnant on purpose to bag him. If I was on this case? I’d see what her alibi was, the day of that robbery, and all those other robberies.”

“Does your sister-in-law know you feel this way?”

“No.” He shrugged again. “I’m nice to her. Leo asked me to keep an eye on her, and the two kiddies, make sure they’re okay. I’m on my way there now, as it happens.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s broke. I’m gonna give her some grocery money.”

“You are a nice guy, Tony. Why don’t we go over there together?”

He frowned. “Why would you want to do that?”

“She’s on my list to talk to. Maybe you could pave the way for me, a little.”

“Well…okay. I don’t see why not. You’ll see, I don’t let it show, how I feel—my only interest is in those two little kids. My nephews.”

“Sure. You have a car?”

“Yeah.” He got to his feet and put the straw hat on. “You want a ride, Mr. Heller?”

“No, I have the address. I’ll meet you over there.”

 

The Minneci apartment was four handsomely furnished rooms over a florist shop on the corner of Madison and Homan. These were fairly nice digs, suggesting hubby Leo had been doing all right for his little family before the cops took him away.

Tony Minneci introduced me as a private detective trying to help clear Leo. Tina Minneci—tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender—immediately warmed to me, and seemed genuinely bewildered that anyone could ever think her gentle, loving husband could have robbed or hurt anybody. (It would have been impolite to point out that gentle, loving Leo used to bash other guys’ brains out for a living.) She wore about a buck’s worth of cotton house dress, blue plaid with a ruffled collar, nicely feminine, and her narrow face would have been pretty with a little make-up and a good night’s sleep.

She sat us down at a round wooden table in the kitchen; a highchair was shoved to one side. She had a pot of coffee going as well as a bottle of milk in a saucepan on the stove.

We all had coffee while we sat and talked—quietly, because she had just put baby Jimmy down for the night.

“He’s a good boy,” she said, almost whispering, “unless something wakes him—then look out!”

I said, “You have another child, don’t you?”

“Yes—Leo, Jr. He’s six. He’s been with his grandparents since…since Leo, Sr., went away. They have a nice flat on the West Side—Daddy has a little restaurant over there, and does pretty well.”

“I see.”

“Little Jimmy and I may be joining Leo, Jr. I may have to move back in with my folks—my rent here is due in a week and I’m flat broke.”

I nodded toward the living room. “You have a pretty nice place here. This isn’t exactly a Hooverville.”

“I know, but we didn’t have any money stashed away in the bank or under a pillow, either. Leo’s always been a good provider. He made a really decent living as a fighter, and when that dwindled, he always brought enough in to keep us comfortable.”

“Where did he work?”

“No one place, but he always had something going. He did day labor, sometimes he helped out at the gym where he used to train.”

I kept my tone easy. “You don’t think that money could’ve come from…somewhere else?”

Her eyes flared. “Mr. Heller, my husband is an honest man. He got in with a bad crowd, is all. I always thought George Dale was a slickster.”

“What about Eleanor Jarman?”

Mrs. Minneci gave up a benefit-of-the-doubt shrug. “She always seemed all right. She has two little ones of her own to look after, you know.”

Tony sat forward; his straw boater was on the table next to his coffee cup like an upturned soup bowl. “Listen, I got some grocery money for you, Tina. Five bucks I squeezed out of my clerk job. If I go over there with you, I can get the employee discount.”

Mrs. Minneci turned her dark eyes on me and explained: “The little grocery store where Tony works part-time is just a block from here…. You’re a sweetheart, Tony, but I can’t leave Jimmy here alone, and I’m not about to wake him.”

“I can babysit,” I said, “if you’re not gone too long.”

She beamed at me, then frowned with parental concern. “What would a nice young man like you know about taking care of a baby?”

“This nice young man used to go out with a nice divorcee with three kids, two in diapers. I know all about changing ’em, and I wield a mean milk bottle, too.”

Mrs. Minneci glanced at her brother-in-law, who shrugged and said, “Mr. Heller’s reliable. No worries. We can be over there and back in fifteen, twenty minutes.”

A small discussion (“Do you mind? Are you sure?”) followed, but finally dutiful Tony took the sister-in-law he claimed to despise—although I’d seen no sign of that—out the door and into the hall and down the stairs.

The tricky part was that slumbering kid. Jimmy was in a crib in the bedroom where I needed to poke around. So I did my quietest, most careful work, and I’d like to say I was able to pull off the find because I was a real professional, but a blind man could have pawed around and come up with the stuff.

Under the bed, in a trio of clothing boxes, were lovely fashions, long-sleeved wool and rabbit’s hair numbers, stylish with Ascot ties and metal buttons and all the most fashionable current touches. Stege had said the Blonde Tigress had helped herself to pretty things on the robberies, and these brand-new, never worn dresses certainly qualified.

Most damning were two items dropped on top of the final box I opened, nestled on a long-sleeved rayon satin two-color frock with a bow at the neck: a blonde wig and a blackjack.

Some things never go out of style.

I thought about laying all this stuff out on the kitchen table, like a meal; but instead I just put the caboodle away and went out and helped myself to another cup of coffee. Something about the set-up made me think maybe I should have taken that bottle of warm milk out of that pan instead.

They returned in just over twenty minutes, with their arms full of grocery sacks and Tina Minneci all smiles. She was saying, “I think I’ll have the folks send Leo, Jr., home for a few days. We can eat like a proper family again. How can I thank you, Tony?”

Tony was all smiles, too, but his eyes kept flicking toward me expectantly. I pitched in with my hostess and her brother-in-law and helped unload the groceries sacks and turned the cupboard shelves from empty to full.

Leaning back against the kitchen counter, looking happy and with a hint of how lovely she really could be, Tina Minneci said, “Any trouble with Jimmy?”

“No,” I said. “Slept like a baby.”

That made her laugh. “Shall we sit down, and I’ll try to answer the rest of your questions?”

“I don’t have any more questions, thanks. You’ve been very gracious, Mrs. Minneci. Tony, isn’t it time we were going?”

Tony nodded and we made our goodbyes and we started down the steps and I waited until we were two-thirds of the way before I tripped him and sent him rattling down those stairs in a pile of arms and legs until he knocked up against the closed door.

I stood over him in the little entryway and he gazed up at me, astounded. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“That’s the clumsiest frame I ever saw.”

He got to his feet, brushing off his white pants. He picked up his boater, which had cracked. “You busted my hat!”

“I should bust more.”

His chin stuck out at me. “Listen, my brother is a boxer. He’s taught me a thing or two. I can take a punch.”

“Can you take a slap?” I asked, and slapped him four times, twice per cheek, ringing like gunshots in the stairwell.

Then I grabbed him by the shirt front and slammed him into some little wall-mounted mailboxes, which probably hurt. He was crying.

“I’ve seen low,” I said. “But framing your own sister-in-law…. Did Eleanor put you up to it?”

“I’m not talking to you!”

“Question is, am I talking to the cops?”

“You work for us!”

“Shut-up.” I shook my head. “Get the hell out of here. You make me sick.”

He and his busted boater scooted out. Under normal circumstances, he might have been able to give me worse than I’d just dished out to him. But I had righteous indignation on my side, which I admit was something new.

 

The next morning, Eleanor Jarman and I sat in the same interrogation room as before. Her arms were folded, her eyes cold, her mouth a wide tight line, straight as a ruler’s edge.

My arms were folded, too, but I was smiling. “Here’s the deal. I keep the hundred. I intend to send thirty bucks of it to Minneci’s wife, to help out on her rent. But I keep the rest—you’re getting off cheap, because if I sold what I know to the papers, you’d really be sunk.”

I had just filled her in on a bunch of stuff, including that I knew Leo’s brother was part of their little gang, possibly fencing boodle, certainly providing the car.

She gave me a gray-eyed glare. “I ask my lawyer for the shiftiest private eye around, and you’re what he comes up with? A goody two-shoes?”

“This isn’t about right or wrong. This is about me not being stupid. Scratch that—it’s about me not liking being taken for stupid. You and George and Leo have been knocking over little shops since, when? April, May?”

She just shrugged.

“The clothes I found under Mrs. Minneci’s bed were strictly fall and winter items.”

Her eyebrows went up. “If I wanted to frame her, and had a bunch of stolen summer frocks of my own, why didn’t I just have that dope Tony stick some of those under that bitch’s bed?”

“Because you girls don’t wear the same size. She’s tall and skinny, you’re short and curvy. You had to frame her with clothing that would fit her—and that dope Tony, as you accurately put it, went out and bought new things…fall and winter items that just hit the stores.”

“You said you found a blonde wig and a blackjack.”

“Yeah. The wig was new, but the blackjack wasn’t. You really did go around terrorizing small merchants with that thing, didn’t you?”

She sighed and her face softened. She unfolded her arms and put her hands on the scarred table and leaned forward. “Listen, Heller—dumbbell Tina wouldn’t’ve served any time. That was just to muddy the waters and help get me off—when the cops looked into it, she’d probably have alibis for some of those robberies, maybe including the Hoeh thing.”

“Probably. Maybe.”

“And as for waving around that blackjack? That was just theater. I never slugged anybody, I never kicked anybody. These are hard times, as you may have noticed, and these hands…” She held them up; they were cracked and almost arthritic-looking, fifty-year-old hands on a woman not thirty. “…these hands had done all the laundry they could take.”

“But the cops wanted to make themselves look good, and the papers went along, turning you into a Tigress.”

She smiled. “Hey, fella, I was a tigress, but that was part of the show. Scare ’em, rattle ’em, and get them to give up their money. And we lived pretty darn good these last few months.”

“Until Gustav Hoeh didn’t cooperate.”

Her smile faded. “I hate that. You can believe me or not believe me, I don’t give a damn. But the truth is, I never wanted anybody hurt. This was just about some fast, easy cash.”

“That gun you hauled around in your bag for George—you never thought he’d use it?”

“No. He’s a coward at heart.”

“Hell, Eleanor. Don’t you know? That’s who uses guns.”

 

Some of the details I never got. I was only on the case for two days, so I never found out exactly what hold Eleanor Jarman had over Tony Minneci, and I have no idea what became of Tina and her two boys after I sent the thirty-bucks rent money.

On the witness stand, Eleanor wore a pretty blue frock (where had she picked that up, I wondered?) and told her sad tale of being an orphan and waiting tables and doing laundry. She denied knowing that Hoeh’s store was going to be robbed, while Dale had changed his story to put the blame on Minneci, who told a similar story with Dale cast as the heavy. Assistant State’s Attorney Crowley went after the death sentence for all three, but only George Dale got the chair; his last act, in April of 1934, was to write Eleanor a love letter.

As for Eleanor, she and Leo each got 199 years, a sentence designed to beat any reasonable chance of parole—and the longest stretch ever assigned a woman in Illinois.

That should be the end of the story, but the Blonde Tigress had other ideas. For seven years Eleanor served her time at Joliet as (to quote the warden) “an industrious, obedient, and model prisoner in every respect.” Then, on the morning of August 8, 1940, she wore a guard’s dress stolen from a locker and used a rope fashioned from sheets to go over the ten-foot wall.

Supposedly she had heard her youngest son had threatened to run away from home. The story goes that Eleanor Jarman returned to Sioux City, spent some time with her two boys, and then disappeared, not turning up till she met with family members briefly in 1975 before vanishing again.

No one, except perhaps her blood relatives, knows how Eleanor spent the rest of her life or where. My take on it was that she was neither the Tigress of the press nor the victim she pretended to be. And maybe seven years was enough time for her to serve, though numerous attempts by her family to get her pardoned went nowhere.

Anyway, the part I liked best was how she got out of prison.

By stealing a dress.