Herda: Solid Stiehl

SOLID STIEHL: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF HYMIE STIEHL When Hymie Stiehl, one of Chicago’s most notorious raconteurs, learns that pal Jungle Jim Alavera has disappeared, he knows what he has to do. Realizing that Alavera is still alive but in growing danger, Stiehl fakes his own death only to reemerge in drag to try to locate his ball-playing compadre. After Stiehl’s “snitch,” Jimmy the Mole, tracks Alavera to a small brownstone in New Town, Hymie and his college-professor sidekick decide to pay the jock a surprise visit. But when the two walk into a ransacked apartment with the water still warm in the bathtub, Stiehl realizes things are getting serious.

By the time he reunites with his sidekick, the girl has confessed to having an affair with ballplayer Alavera while dating the college president. Hymie points out that she omitted one small detail from her confession–that she was also dating mobster Sammy the Bull Romano.When Alavera shows up unexpectedly, vowing to protect the woman he loves, Stiehl reminds him he won’t have to: “The Mob already has you dead and buried.” Not for fooling around with Bull’s girl, Stiehl adds, but for failing to throw the 2016 All Star Game, costing Romano a cool million in bets.In a showdown in Bull’s penthouse suite, all hell breaks loose as the cops learn that Sammy has been killed after buying college prez Alexis and a dirty city alderman one-way tickets to the morgue. They arrest the philandering girlfriend, followed by Alavera, and finally Stiehl’s sidekick before Stiehl steps in to set the record straight and reveal to the D.A. who the real murderer is–and why.