by Steve Amick
“Forgive me, Mrs. Chesterton,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “I'm afraid I haven't been clear, but I meant this not so much as a business dinner but rather, socially—a chance for the two of us to—”
“Oh. Right.”
She was still thinking of Wink, actually—thinking he might walk in, back early from the printers, and it was with the further thought that perhaps if she opened herself up to such offers a little, she might not find herself at such a humiliating low point as she had the other night, lonely and drunk.
So she told him that would be fine, but reminded him that it hadn't been quite a year since her husband passed, so she would ask that he consider the socializing aspect of the dinner as being “very low key.” She felt rude saying it, but he seemed pleased all the same.
As they settled their plans, she agreed to meet him at the restaurant, thinking, for now, there was no reason to advertise to Wink or Reenie or anyone else for that matter that she was possibly—maybe—going on a sort of a date, of all things.
65
They figured they were safe enough, given it was September and a little cold to go into the water. The chance of unwanted company, it seemed to him, was slim. He wasn't sure which one of the two girls came up with North Shore Beach—it was a bit of an expedition, all the way up past the Loyola campus—and he hadn't been able to picture which beach it was before they arrived. But when he saw it, lurking quietly at the end of North Shore Avenue, he was glad they'd taken the trouble to travel so far. Oak Street Beach, for example, facing every window on the north side of the Drake Hotel, would have been far more convenient but far less private, open in a big expansive arc to the snooty Gold Coast—the home, of course, of Chesty's rich guardians—besides affording an unobstructed view to every driver and passenger among the constant stream of traffic whizzing along Lake Shore Drive.
This section of beach, in contrast, seemed like a secret; an afterthought tacked on, off to one side, of a residential dead end, shielded from the houses by a very comforting treeline. The nearest prying eyes, it seemed, would probably have to be way on the other side, unseen, over in Michigan, fifty miles to the east.
It was overcast, the big heavy gray sky, in fact, reminding him of Michigan, the time spent on his uncle's farm. It felt just about as isolated as that. The greatest potential for interruption, he felt, lay in the gulls. They pecked and jabbered at the sand, feeding off some sort of miniature fish that silvered the beach.
Even Reenie, normally game for most anything, appeared to be a little thrown by the carpet of dead sardine-sized fish. She kicked at them with the side of the sneakers she had yet to shed. Sal seemed more interested in getting the beach towels arranged in a position that would put them at nice angles and still frame the long perspective of the shoreline, while simultaneously pestering him about f-stops and the possible need for a filter to correct the overcast sky.
There wasn't any clever story here today or any sort of special props, other than the beach towels and suntan lotion they'd brought more as practical concerns than as gimmicks for visual gags. He'd suggested a picnic basket and an inflatable beach ball or perhaps an inner tube, but the girls had nixed both of these ideas. “Naw,” Reenie had said. “Gee, let's just go to the beach. You know?”
But now, planning to change into their suits by taking turns holding up the beach towel, ass out to Lake Michigan, Wink suggested he shoot that as well, maybe work it into more of a “narrative,” as the publishers of Wink and Titter had always encouraged them to do.
So Sal went first, and Reenie clowned it up, holding the towel but posing as well, cocking her hip and glancing over her shoulder with an uh-oh pout, as if they were being watched.
And, in fact, they were being watched. He didn't catch on till several more shots. They were both in their suits now, Reenie in one of those new two-pieces, lying facedown on her towel. Thinking “narrative,” he had Sal sit up on her elbows—great shot deep down the cleavage—and reach out, leering mischievously over her sunglasses, as if undoing the ties on Reenie's top. Then he shot another in which Reenie appeared to sit up—they could shoot a close-up later, maybe of Sal's hand smacking her on her back or a crab placed there or a splash of cold water—and he got off a couple of nipple peepers as she gaped, wide eyed, her mouth a perfect O, Sal grinning like a scamp, and then one more in which nothing showed, technically, but Reenie was up on both knees, clutching at her bosom, fingers splayed to reveal more flesh than hide it, looking like she had her hands full, a minor crisis.
He was about to shoot the capper—Sal standing behind her, being a pal now, tying her friend's top back up, when he heard a single evolution—one slow windup—of a police siren. It faded just as suddenly, but it was enough to make him trip over a leg of his tripod and make Reenie fumble for her top, and Sal scramble to cover herself with her towel, though they were in bathing suits, for the love of Mike, at a public beach, with no one else around—no children, clergy, old men with heart conditions. Not even a stray dog.
Just a cop.
The cop had pulled down there to “coop,” as Wink had heard it called. He was sure of it: when the guy cuffed them and put them in the cruiser, Wink noticed he had a pillow up front with him and a blanket, a thermos, a copy of Esquire, and what looked like a corned beef sandwich wrapped in waxpaper. This was probably his secret secluded spot where he took a nap every day, and no one was the wiser. Except today the guy pulled in, saw them shooting on the beach, and decided, since it had plopped right into his lap with virtually no effort on his part, he would do some bona fide police work for a change.
On the ride in to be booked, Wink tried to appeal to him. Remembering the guys who'd let him go, way back when he had just arrived in Chicago, he asked this guy if he knew them.
“A beat cop named Joe?” the officer repeated. “Seriously? You're asking do I know a Joe? Way down in the Loop?”
“Or the other guy. He had a partner.”
The cop was clearly laughing at him now. Wink was beginning to wish he still had his Purple Heart with him.
“Oh, this Keystone Kop doesn't know anybody!” Reenie sneered. “What are you talking about?” She leaned forward between him and Sal, getting up closer to the back of the cop's head, and Wink could see the flash of her dark eyes. He imagined she'd been nipping at her liquid courage right before the shoot began. “This clown's too busy sneaking off and taking naps to ever get to know any other cops, isn't that right?” Clearly, she was looking to take a different approach than he'd been hoping to try. He sort of doubted anger and ridicule would save the day, but it was too late now. Reenie was on a roll: “You're that dwarf in the cartoon picture, right—Sleepy? That's you? Listen, Melvin Purvis, aren't we keeping you from your beauty rest? Why don't you let us go and go back to your little cooping nest and curl up with your blanky? Have your little nappy-wappy?”
Sal managed to hook her friend with her elbow and pry her back in the seat. “Do us all a favor,” she said quietly. “Both of you just clam up, okay?”
He had to admit, as usual, of the three of them, Sal seemed to have the best plan.
It was Sal again who knew whom to call. Mort, the lawyer she'd used to file the trademark registrations, met with all three of them in a small interview room prior to sentencing. He was very reassuring in the things he said, and it was swell of the guy to leg it up there so fast, but Wink would have preferred if the guy were a little more smooth, less nervous, especially in talking to the girls and discussing exactly what did and did not happen. He had a bottle of what appeared to be antacid tablets that he popped like Junior Mints. Reenie had her own ideas for a legal defense, suggesting they file a Peeping Tom charge against the cop—maybe subpoena his call sheet from the switchboard, try to establish that he'd been parked there long enough to get his jollies, maybe even subpoena the blanket and see if it contained any traces of, as she put it, “horny cop sauce.”
Looking at the two of them there, sitting at the table with him,
it struck him that he shouldn't ever feel guilty about not making Reenie an “honest” woman. She was lovely and fun and a great pal and sexy as hell, but just seeing her idea of a normal reaction to life's curveballs like this, compared with that of an actual normal woman, say Sal, sitting next to her, made it clear in his mind that he'd done the safe and sensible thing by not making her a mother or a wife.
Her theory was entertaining, and as much as he would have liked to subscribe to it himself—the guy stroking off to the whole scene under his blanket, then buttoning up and busting them— he knew it wasn't true. The blanket was neatly folded, and the engine hood had still been warm when he leaned against it, getting cuffed. No, the cop was a pain, but he wasn't “having his cake and beating it, too,” as Reenie cleverly put it at one point.
It seemed clear, the shy way he looked at Sal, this Mort had maybe a little crush on her, and Wink worried at one point, when he started asking for specifics about who was actually exposed and who had done what and for how long, that he might be trying to divvy up the responsibility, maybe hang the bulk of it on Reenie. Except the facts didn't work that way, and anyway, he soon dropped that line of pursuit, telling them it was pretty clear-cut, that they'd all be okay.
Originally, the charges were obscenity and indecent exposure. The first charge was thrown out, early on, with the lawyer tossing around phrases like artistic expression and free speech, which, frankly, Wink didn't get, on account of they weren't shooting a movie and no one had said a goddamn word, but he figured why start now, since they seemed to be persuaded by this, leaving only the indecent exposure rap. Here, the fellow argued that no one was there; that her top had very briefly slipped off; that she wasn't “parading around” while thus exposed. In the end, this Mort character got it all reduced down to a fine of thirty dollars apiece for one count of disturbing the peace.
“The peace of who,” Reenie mumbled, “the seagulls?” But she managed to leave well enough alone with a jab of Sal's elbow.
“Let's just go home,” Wink said. “We're now, officially, a scourge on society.”
Reenie exhaled a small puff of a laugh. Sal didn't seem to hear. She was hanging back, still talking to Mort.
66
Just two days after the arrest at the beach, she received a certified letter from Chesty's uncle Whitcomb, the entire contents of which were:
Shame on you.
Am withdrawing my services forthwith.
Whitcomb P. Chesterton
It was even notarized by someone at his bank. And though he had been acting as a business adviser and custodian on her accounts, she'd never really thought of their relationship as a
“service.” When she showed it to Wink, he let out a heavy sigh and patted her arm, saying, “Well, why don't we just file this away under ‘Unkind and Completely Unnecessary Overreactions'?” and, balling it up, tossed it in the trash can and wrapped his long arms around her.
She didn't let go right away, and he added, whispering into her hair, “Not a very gentlemanly thing to do, I'd say” as he stroked it away from her eyes.
It helped. It really did.
Wink agreed that he must somehow know about their recent arrest. The only other explanation—that Chesty's elderly uncle bought girlie magazines and very recently just happened to recognize her—was too coincidental and far too disturbing to imagine.
Soon it became clear that word was somehow getting around. Tiny cousin Mia ventured away from the beauty shop just to appear in person before Sal to disown her—though Sal still remained fuzzy on exactly what level of relation the old crone was severing. And her “Next time you want the wigs, you forget it!” didn't bother Sal. But it did kind of hurt when she said, “Manuela, she would weep!” because Manuela had been Sal's mom.
Mia was the same woman who had, theoretically, made no bones about bilking the government during wartime and whose nephew Carlo was widely known to be using the barbershop as a front.
She tapped her bony talons so rapidly against the display counter, the clacking on the glass sounded like a woodpecker. “I know why you get the wigs. You make the dirty! You no get extra eggs, extra butter, extra benzina—it all for to make the dirty! Shame on top of your head!”
At which point, she reached up with a tottering little hop and rapped Sal sharply on top of her head.
“Ow,” Sal said. “What the hell?”
When she left the shop, she backed out the whole way, as if afraid to turn her back, and she was muttering puttana, which Sal felt pretty sure meant whore.
Two days after that, a brown-papered package the size of a foot-locker arrived by courier. Sal tipped the delivery boy and followed him back to the door to lock it behind him. The package had no return information on it, and she didn't like the looks of it.
Cutting the jute away, peeling back the butcher paper, she found it was a footlocker. She lifted the lid, saw something dark and mysterious topped by tissue and a regal-looking calling card embossed with the initials SEC. It was from Sarah Chesterton. She'd written:
For further “art projects,” dear Thought you might stay indoors with this. I must confess, I myself found it quite irresistible for such repose, in my day Not a word to Whitcomb!
It was furry under the tissue paper. And heavy. Bravely, she dug it out and lay it out on the floor. It was a full-size, luxuriant, snarling bear rug.
It felt as if a full minute passed before she could even move.
Less amusing, but equally disturbing, she received a call that same day from Mort Doerbom, explaining that the Herald Americanhad just run a small item about the arrest. “They didn't name the shop, Sal, nor include the address, but it does say that ‘those taken into custody are alleged to also operate a camera shop in the Loop reputed to be a front for degenerate smut.' ”
“Reputed? Who's reputing that?”
“Well, basically, they are. Just them. I'm sorry, Sal. But as long as it's all sort of anonymous, they're in the clear.”
She asked if it was in all the papers, and he said it wasn't in the Trib. Hearing that, she suspected that might have been why the stinkers at the Herald included that unnecessary information about the shop. They probably knew of her occasional association with the Trib. Or Wink's great photo for them back in May.
Rotten stinkers …
“Also …,” he said.
“Also? There's an also?”
Mort tended to cough a lot as he spoke, at least lately. She didn't remember any sort of tic like that when he'd been an occasional customer.
He told her he'd received a phone call from a Mr. Jericho Price, who he believed was a boxing promoter, but he presented himself as a “free speech advocate,” a phrase Sal had never heard and imagined Mr. Price had cooked up for the occasion. “He asked to cover my expenses, Sal. I told him there weren't any. I hope that was, well …”
She could tell he was feeling a little awkward about this. It probably wasn't quite the picture he'd had of her when he first started coming into the camera shop, back when she was a married, decent woman, and how much easier that might be for him now, if she weren't the kind of woman who owned a genuine bearskin rug, on which she very well might pose naked for photographs.
67
Something was different this time. These guys had shinier suits and noses that looked broken. They didn't flop out their badges, and they didn't scour the room as they talked but kept their eyes on him the whole time, staring him down.
Also, they didn't pepper him with questions. They approached, and he expected to hear the usual Are you a subversive? but what they said wasn't even a question:
“It's not so good, the things you're doing.”
He asked for clarification on this, and the guy said, “What could it mean? It means what it means, friend.”
The other guy took this opportunity to jab him in the chest with a big finger. “Yeah. That's what it means.”
At the door, as they left, the first one almost smiled. “We'll be seeing you.”
Wink had a strong feeling they would, even when he didn't know they were there.
68
Shopping for proper stockings one day, ones with actual price tags in an actual store, Sal found herself blurting it out, for no real reason she could understand, telling Reenie that she'd been seeing Mort Doerbom.
“The character got us off the hook up at the beach?” Reenie shot her the elbow and, of course, a wink. “That's the way, kiddo! Just about time you start, I'd say.” Privately, Sal thought Reenie was hardly the one to be preaching about moving on, but let her friend continue her chatter. “An attorney at law, no less! Say, he got any friends? I can't seem to reel in any of these good-looking artsy-fartsy boys.”
Sal could see that she meant to poke fun at Wink, saying that. Yet she noticed it didn't seem to keep her from giving the guy an occasional thrill.
“Maybe I'll pick out an Uncle Moneybags for myself,” Reenie announced. “Some sweet, sweet sugar-daddy who'll put me through art school.”
She was clowning around, but the Uncle Moneybags comment kind of stung. Sal told her it was nothing like that, that yes, Mort had taken her for a nice dinner, but mostly, she was just trying to get out there and give it a try again while keeping it very casual, taking “baby steps.” She explained that he was a camera bug and belonged to several clubs that went on bimonthly photography excursions, and that was more the type of thing she'd been doing with him. “Like this evening,” she said, “we're going to tour an applesauce factory.”
Reenie eyed her blankly. “You're putting me on. Is that some kind of slang for something?”
“Like banana oil?” Sal had to laugh. “No, it's an actual factory that makes applesauce. We'll be taking pictures.”
