She had and I had forgotten, partly because I turned her down and partly because I thought nothing sounded duller than a charity costume ball held at a brauhaus.
“You don’t have to dress up,” Paulette said. “I suspect most of the men there won’t be wearing togas.”
“Egyptian men didn’t wear togas,” Val said. “Roman men did.”
Marvella handed me her coat, and I draped it over her shoulders. She smiled back at me, her gaze catching mine. “Sure you don’t want to come? A beer or two won’t hurt on a Saturday night.”
“It’s for the South Side Community Art Center,” Paulette said.
“Thanks,” I said, edging toward the stairs, “but Jim and I have a quiet night planned.”
“Someone could watch your boy,” Val said, and I got the sense that she would have if I had given her the chance. She apparently wanted to go about as much as I did.
“Sorry.” I smiled at her. “Maybe next time.”
She looked away, nodded, the smile on her face small. On an impulse, I picked up her coat and held it out for her the way I had done for Marvella.
As she slipped into the coat, I said quietly so that only she could hear me, “Chin up. You look lovely.”
“I look silly,” she said just as quietly, “but thank you.”
“Come on, ladies.” Marvella’s voice had an edge that it hadn’t had a moment earlier. “We’re going to be late.”
She opened the door and stepped outside, shivering theatrically.
“Sorry you can’t join us, Mr. Grimshaw,” Paulette said, heading into the frosty night.
“You’re the smart one, not letting them talk you into this.” Val gave me an impish grin and then followed her cousins into the cold.
The door swung shut behind them and Jimmy shook his head. “How come you let them go out like that and you don’t let me go out without mittens?”
“If I were in charge of them, they’d be wearing mittens too,” I said as I started up the stairs.
“They’d still get cold,” he said, and I grinned at him.
As we got closer to our apartment, I could hear the phone ring inside. I sprinted up the last few steps and unlocked the door. I managed to get inside and picked up the phone in the middle of a ring.
“Yeah?” I said, sounding as out of breath as I felt.
“Smokey?” Laura.
Jimmy walked in and closed the door, locking all three dead bolts before taking off his coat.
“Hey, Laura. We just got in.”
“I know. I’ve been calling.”
Jimmy hung his coat on the back of a chair and went into the half-kitchen—his coming-home ritual.
I turned my back so that he couldn’t see my face. I figured if she’d been trying to call all day, she had bad news. “What’s up?”
Behind me, glasses clanked.
“I was wondering if you’re still serious about that security thing.”
“Yeah, I am.” I shook off my coat, one arm at a time, and let it drop on the couch.
“Good.” She sounded hesitant. “Because Drew thinks that, um, we need you tomorrow.”
“You told Drew about my offer?” My voice sounded funny, strained, not quite my own.
In the kitchen, water ran for a moment and then stopped.
“Yesterday, after I talked to you. He thinks it’s a good idea. He wants to know if you have the same sense of these guys as he does.”
“What guys?”
Jimmy wandered into my line of sight, drifting in front of the coffee table, pretending to look at days-old copies of the Defender.
“The ones who’ve been running Sturdy. They want to have brunch tomorrow.”
“On Sunday? Isn’t that strange?”
Jimmy set his water on top of the pile, then sat cross-legged on the floor, no longer pretending that he wasn’t listening.
“Drew says no. He says they’re going to approach me informally to see how serious I am about voting my stock.” She still sounded hesitant. “I told him if it was informal, we really didn’t need security, and he says we do, just to let them know that we’re serious.”
Something in her tone alerted me. “You were going to go alone?”
“Well, initially,” she said. “I think I should be able to handle this.”
Now her voice sounded more confident. The hesitation came from parroting her lawyer’s words, words she wasn’t sure she believed in.
“Is he coming?” I asked.
“Drew? He insisted on it. He was here when they called.”
“At your office?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“At the apartment. He brought champagne.”
And I had fought with her over pumpkin pie that I didn’t even spring for. “That was kind of him.”
“He does things like that.”
Jimmy was frowning at me. I pushed my jacket aside and sat on the couch, bowing my head so he couldn’t study my face.
“So,” she said, “can you come to brunch tomorrow?”
“I have an appointment at three.”
“We should be done by then. We’re meeting them at twelve-thirty.”
“Where?” I asked.
“The Walnut Room. You’ll have to dress.”
“Laura,” I said, “this is just a hunch, but I doubt this place will let me in on a busy Sunday.”
Or any day, for that matter. My best suit wasn’t that nice and my color was all wrong.
She laughed. “They’ll take you, Smokey. It’s in Marshall Field’s.”
I didn’t think that would make much of a difference, but I’d already registered my complaint. “Do I need to bring a team?”
“A team?” She paused for a moment before understanding sank in. “A team of security people? No, I wouldn’t think so. I can’t imagine these men, no matter how angry they got, leaping across tables in a public restaurant.”
I hated asking the next question, but I did anyway. “Does Drew agree?”
“I didn’t ask him. It’s not his choice anyway. It’s mine. And I think one security person is enough, don’t you?”
“He’s more familiar with the situation than I am, Laura.”
Jimmy had his elbows on the table. He was staring at me. He was getting a black eye. I wondered if Althea had put ice on it. The swelling didn’t seem that bad.
“Just you, Smokey,” she said. “And I’ll pay double your average rate since it’s a weekend.”
“Laura, in my job, there is no such thing as overtime.”
“There should be.” She paused, so that I could argue with her. It seemed that we were always fighting about money. About her money. I didn’t give her my usual response. I was too tired to fight tonight. It could wait until she wanted to settle the bill.
When I didn’t say anything, she added, “I’m looking forward to seeing you, Smokey.”
“I’m coming tomorrow as the person heading your security team, Laura. You’ll only complicate matters if you let these people know we’re friends.”
She sighed. “I don’t like all these rules.”
“You’ll have to get used to them if you’re going to run Sturdy’s management team.”
Jimmy frowned, as if what I said made no sense to him.
“How do you know, Smoke?” Laura asked. “You don’t work in a corporate environment.”
“And now you know why,” I said, and hung up.
SEVEN
THE NEXT MORNING, I arrived later than I expected. I reached the Loop with half an hour to spare, but spent most of it searching for a place to park. I finally found an empty spot four blocks away from the huge Marshall Field building at the corner of State and Washington.
I didn’t expect State Street to be so busy on a Sunday, but it was bustling. People hurried from department store to department store, carrying packages and bags, and dragging children by the hand. If Christmas was a religious holiday, as Althea said, I wasn’t seeing much evidence of it here.
The entire Loop was decked for the holiday. Garlands hung from the light poles, and miniature Christmas trees stood in fake shelves specially built for that purpose on each poles’ base. Real evergreen trees, about three feet high, grew in pots that lined the edges of the sidewalks.
A manger scene that looked like it had been stolen from the façade of a Roman Catholic Church sat on the balcony above the elaborate cast-iron entrance of Carson Pirie Scott. Two blocks north of me, I could see long, gold trumpets sticking out over the pedestrians. Marshall Field’s wasn’t too far away.
Still, it took me a while to negotiate the crowd, which grew worse the closer I got to Field’s famous windows. People were lined up eight deep to see the displays, and employees were working politely to keep the lines away from the entrances. Adults dressed as elves handed out Frango mints as customers entered the store, and Christmas carols blared from speakers mounted nearby.
I made it inside only to feel even more overwhelmed. The main aisles were clogged. Signs pointed toward Santa’s Village and the Toy Center. White women bent over perfume displays and men waited behind them, arms crossed. Children cried and pulled at their parents, and more than one shopper crouched, taking display items from a toddler’s hands.
The noise was deafening—conversation and the whoo-whoo of an unseen toy train, “White Christmas” blending with music boxes playing “Jingle Bells,” sales clerks promoting a special, while children shouted and ran through the aisles. The smells were overwhelming, too—a jumble of perfumes mixing with the scent of the evergreen boughs that hung from every display case, the pungent odor of discarded mints that had been crushed against the tile floor.
It took me a while to find the escalators, even longer to find the directory that told me where the Walnut Room was. I managed to make my way up, staring at displays strategically placed in front of the escalators, and wishing I had money this year. I saw serving dishes that Althea needed, and bookends that would help Franklin’s desk.
As I passed the Toy Center, my eye caught a distant display that made me do a double-take. I thought at first that I was looking at black Barbie dolls, and then I read the sign explaining that I was looking at Barbie’s new friend Crissy. I wondered if Mikie and Norene would be willing to share one, and doubted I had the money for that either.
The line outside the Walnut Room went halfway around the seventh floor, and I knew I was going to have to bully my way inside to see if my party was already there. That was going to be a trick; the restaurant was as fancy as I had feared it would be.
I was about to go up to the hostess when someone caught my arm. “Smokey.”
I turned. It was Laura. I was relieved to see her. I hadn’t realized how besieged I felt.
“Hey.” I smiled at her, then caught my breath.
She, at least, looked like she belonged in this store. She wore a conservative blue-wool dress that flowed over her hips and fell to her knees. The dress accented the blue of her eyes. Her hair was pulled away from her face, and large teardrop pearls hung from her ears. Her makeup was light, but noticeable, since she hadn’t been wearing any most of the year.
With her other hand, she pulled a white man closer to us. He was as tall as I was, but not as broad. He looked like he was in his early thirties, which I thought young for a lawyer, but he radiated intelligence. His black suit was a little hip for Chicago—the jacket was longer than I’d seen and cut square at the bottom so that it flared slightly. He wore a striped shirt and a black tie that looked like silk.
“Smokey,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my lawyer, Drew McMillan. Drew, this is Bill Grimshaw.”
His gaze took in my ill-fitting secondhand suit, more than a decade out of style, and then returned to my face. He nodded without smiling or extending his hand.
“Smokey?” he asked in a Boston Brahmin accent that almost made it sound as if he’d said “Smo-kah.”
“It’s a nickname,” I said, with a cautionary glance at Laura.
He raised his eyebrows slightly, then said, “They’re already inside. I scouted out the dining area before you arrived. I don’t believe they saw me.”
“I suppose you’ll want me at a separate table?”
“It’s not necessary this time,” he said. “Laura trusts your opinion, and we do need a good security man with no ties to the city. Just listen and we’ll take it from there.”
I nodded.
“Shall we?” He held out his arm for Laura to take, but she ignored it. Instead, she kept pace with me, as if she were making certain people knew that I was with their party.
McMillan told the hostess which party we were meeting, and she led us into the Walnut Room. I stopped in astonishment, unable to help myself. Before me was the largest Christmas tree I had ever seen.
It went up at least two stories, its peak lost in an atrium that covered the room. It was decorated with thousands of white bulbs, all of which were on, and more ornaments than I could take in. The room, which was circular, surrounded the tree, and diners sat beside it as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
Laura smiled at me. “Eating here at Christmas is a Chicago tradition.”
McMillan didn’t notice. He continued to follow the hostess. From the back, he looked even younger; his dark hair and stylish suit gave him an air of expensive elegance.
Laura followed my gaze, apparently sensing my discomfort. “Come on.”
She touched my arm, and for a moment I thought she was going to take it, the way that she should have taken McMillan’s. But she didn’t, and we walked in companionable silence to a large, square table on the far side of the room. Four men were already seated there. They stood as Laura approached.
“Miss Hathaway,” said the one nearest us with a slight bob that was the Midwestern equivalent of a bow. None of us were fooled, though. He was only pretending at subservience.
“Mr. Cronk,” she said, smiling at him. “Gentlemen.”
They all murmured their hellos.
“Let me introduce you to my companions,” she said, still standing, which meant that they had to stand as well. “I’m sure you recognize Andrew McMillan, the head of my legal team, and this is Bill Grimshaw, who heads my security.”
“Security, Miss Laura?” one of the men asked. “I’m sure we don’t need security today.”
He didn’t even look at me as he spoke, but his message was clear enough. I wasn’t welcome here.
“Perhaps we don’t,” she said, “but I do.”
“This is just a friendly lunch, Miss Hathaway,” said a third.
“Why, who would think it was anything else?” Her smile was beautiful and gracious. “I don’t believe I finished the introductions.”
She turned first to the man who objected to my presence. He was portly and short, his hair so thin on top that he didn’t even bother with a comb-over. “This is Walter Donoghue, who has been with the company since Daddy started it.”
Donoghue extended a hand to McMillan who shook it. He ignored me.
“Next to him is Victor Recknagel, who has been with the company almost as long.” He was the other objector, taller, with an angular face and a thin blond mustache that made him look vaguely Prussian. He also shook McMillan’s hand, then looked my way, but his pale blue eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
“Then we have Eugene Parti, who is my godfather.”
She indicated the stoop-shouldered, white-haired man to Recknagel’s right. Parti shook McMillan’s hand, then smiled at Laura, his face softening as if he were applying for the job of Santa Claus.
“I’m remiss in my duties,” he said in a gravelly voice. “We should be in church, child.”
She laughed and his eyes twinkled. It was clearly an old joke between them. He winked at her, but she didn’t wink back, obviously pretending not to see it as she turned toward the man who had spoken first.
“And this is my father’s right hand man, Marshall Cronk.”
Cronk was the only one who looked directly at me. His eyes
were a startling green on his too-thin face, and they were cold, cold and dangerous.
He extended his hand, first to McMillan and then, surprisingly, to me. I took it, felt calluses as old as I was and a strength undiminished despite the years, and got the message. He was not afraid of anything, whether it was hard physical labor, other people, or threats from the outside.
We measured each other, and then relinquished the grip at the same time.
Laura sat down, and we all followed suit. I eased my chair closer to the table, careful not to snag the linen tablecloth. An elegant holiday bouquet of holly, complete with berries and trimmed evergreen boughs, graced the center of the table. The plate before me was real china with the Marshall Field’s logo, and the utensils were highly polished silver.
It had been a long time since I had had a meal in a place like this.
Waiters surrounded us almost instantly, pouring water into the long-stemmed goblets, removing the plates before our seats, and setting bread plates in their stead. Two bread baskets found their way to the table as Cronk ordered two bottles of wine without consulting any of us.
The menus were on calligraphed linen cards and we studied them as an excuse to avoid conversation. I made my choice quickly and used the rest of the time to watch the others surreptitiously.
Laura was nervous. She kept moving the card from hand to hand. McMillan pretended an ease he didn’t have. After making his decision, he leaned back in his chair almost as if he were detaching himself from the meeting. The other men betrayed their tension in the jerkiness of their movements, the way they snuck glances at each other as if everything were operating by a prearranged script.
We ordered food, drank wine, and the conversation was casual—the weather, the cost-of-living increase, and, briefly, the Bears. I didn’t say a word and neither did McMillan, although Laura held up her end beautifully.
We were halfway through the salads when the conversation turned.
“Did you get a chance to see the windows downstairs, Laura?” Parti asked.
“Not yet, Uncle Gene.”
Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 10
