“Sure,” he said. “Soon as I finish my fish.”
Pearl had already finished her fish, so she took the opportunity to go to the powder room. Shortly thereafter, Polly and her mustached friend glided by. Barney caught a glimpse of them, as he put a final bite of fish into his mouth, and his eyes narrowed.
“Where do I know that girl from?” he said.
“You recognize her, too, huh?”
“I don’t know. She looks kinda familiar.”
“Remember a few months ago when we were doing Uptown, one night?”
He winced. “You mean that night I went off training, a little.”
“Yeah. You went off training a little, like some guys fall off buildings a little.”
“Just don’t tell Winch and Pian.”
Winch and Pian were Barney’s managers, who were stricter than a Catholic upbringing.
“I won’t tell your ma, either. Particularly not where you know that girl from.”
“Oh, shit,” he said, as it came to him.
“That’s right,” I said. “That bar on Halsted? I knew the gal who ran the place, she was from East Chicago? Remember?”
East Chicago wasn’t a part of Chicago; it was in Indiana nearby. Nearby enough that my work took me there from time to time.
Barney glanced around to see if Pearl was coming back yet.
“We didn’t go upstairs with those girls, did we?” he said.
“We started to,” I said. “We were both pretty drunk.”
“God, if the reporters had got hold of that. I got a reputation.”
“The reporters wouldn’t print anything to darken your sickeningly pure name, you little shmuck. You passed out and Anna—that’s the gal that ran the place—laid you out on a bed. By yourself.”
He nodded, sort of remembering it.
“What about you, Nate?”
“Me?” I said. “I was drunk, too. But I went upstairs with one of the girls.”
Polly glided by in her man’s arms.
“That one?” he said.
I nodded.
“Oh boy,” Barney said.
Pearl came back, and she and Barney went down for a dance. Across the way, the girl in pink and white and the man in the gold-rim glasses and mustache were getting up to go.
Shortly after, so did I.
They took a cab again; gritting my teeth, I followed in one, too. The expenses were chipping away at my fifty-buck retainer; and my conscience, or that tattered thing that flapped in the wind of my brain where my conscience used to be, chipped at my concentration.
I didn’t know which confused me more: that my traveling-salesman client’s bride was a prostitute—possibly an ex-prostitute, giving her the benefit of the doubt—or that I’d screwed her once.
And, as I recalled, drunk or not, liked it.
5
Back in Uptown, the cab let Polly and her boyfriend off at the corner of Wilson and Malden, and they walked half a block to the Malden Plaza, a four-story residential hotel. It seemed a newer, more modest building than its neighbors, with their terra-cotta trimming and elaborate porches; this building had only some halfhearted gingerbread along the roof and over the entryway, was set back from the sidewalk without a porch, and seemed to have been squeezed in between the two more elaborate apartment buildings on its either side, on what might have been a mutual yard between them, by a landlord whose greed outdistanced his aesthetics.
Gray suitcoat still slung over his arm, Polly’s dapper Dan opened the front door for her and they stepped inside.
My cab went on by, and I got out a block down, near Saint Boniface Cemetery. Malden was an odd little street—existing a scant four blocks, connecting two cemeteries; the other one, Graceland Cemetery, was full of famous dead Chicagoans, in their fancy tombs—George Pullman was in a lead-lined casket under concrete and steel, to keep pissed-off union types from seeing him without an appointment, presumably. I walked down the little street, with death at its either end, coat slung over my shoulder, thinking about how my traveling-salesman client was likely to react when he heard about his wife.
It was a hot night, tolerable only when you thought back to the day, and a few people were still sitting out on porches, on the stairs, cooling off as best they could. Now and then people would look in the direction of the lake, wondering where the breeze was.
But it was ten-thirty, and a lot of people were in bed by now—possibly including Polly and her guest—and it wasn’t hard for me to find an empty stoop approximately across from the place, to sit on and seem like just another neighborhood joe trying to beat the heat.
I couldn’t stay here all night, though; if I’d brought my car up here instead of taking the El, I could’ve parked on the street and most likely got away with maintaining a watch. But an all-night stakeout wasn’t practical here. Sooner or later somebody—a cop possibly—would question my presence. I’d have to make my stay a short one.
From the look of the building, the flats within were probably single rooms. This was the address my client had given me for his and his wife’s home; so this was where they lived together, when he wasn’t on the road—meaning he must not’ve been making much, hawking his feed and grain. He’d said he made “good money,” but that’s a vague term. Just because his wallet seemed fairly fat didn’t mean anything—it could’ve been his life savings. Probably that fifty-buck retainer cut him deep.
Of course they hadn’t been married long; he’d said he just landed a new territory, so maybe they planned on moving up in the world soon. Nothing wrong with the neighborhood (if you didn’t mind cemeteries—and dead neighbors seldom keep you up at night with their loud parties). But this was the least classy building on Malden. Then, who was I to talk, a guy who slept in his office.
Half an hour dragged by. There were lights on in some of the windows, but most were dark; all were open. It wasn’t good weather to keep the windows shut. It wasn’t good weather period. I felt like I was wearing the heat; like it was something I had on. Something heavy.
Heavy like the guilt that had settled over me for having fucked pretty Polly one drunken night in a room over the bar on the corner of Willow and Halsted. And feeling guilty was stupid, as well as pointless: How was I supposed to know the little prostie would quit the business, and marry some poor putz who thought she was just a waitress or something? A pathetic chump who would then, thanks to God’s sick sense of humor, hire me to ascertain his bride’s virtue? A hardworking salt-of-the-earth salesman who wondered why his wife seemed to know things in bed that he hadn’t taught her….
I wondered if Polly really had quit hustling. Maybe dapper Dan wasn’t a boyfriend—maybe he was a john. Maybe, like her waitress job, this was something she was up to while her hubby was on the road, something designed to fight her boredom and keep her wearing nice clothes and build a nest egg to help move ’em both into a nicer apartment.
And if she was hustling, should I tell the husband?
Of course I should. I wasn’t paid to decide whether or not the information I turned up was good for my client’s health; if my client paid for me finding out certain information, he deserved to get it. And brother was he going to get it.
Maybe this was innocent; maybe they were in there having tea and milk. Polly wasn’t necessarily over there boffing that guy in the glasses. Right. He probably took ’em off first.
What the hell. I already had enough to tell my client what he didn’t want to know. I could get up off this stoop and walk over to the Wilson Avenue El and go back to the office and get a good night’s sleep, and to hell with traveling salesmen and traveling salesmen’s wives and guys that boffed traveling salesmen’s wives.
At that point, after having been in there an hour, the dapper Dan came out of the building and walked up to Wilson Avenue and hailed a cab.
I hailed one, too.
Followed him to a nice three-story apartment building, a big brick place that probably had flats running to six and eight rooms. It
was on Pine Grove Avenue, near the lake, near Lincoln Park. Dapper Dan had dough—more dough than a traveling salesman, that was for sure.
He went in, and my cabbie drove on.
I had him drop me at the El station. I’d planned to stay overnight at the room I’d rented, at the Wilson Arms, but now I couldn’t see any point in it. I did figure to give my client some more of my time, tomorrow, but I also figured to follow Polly around in my car, to hell with this cab noise.
So I didn’t return to Uptown till near seven the next night. I spent the day in Evanston investigating an insurance claim; why sit in that little hotel room, looking out the window at Polly’s sandwich shop? It wasn’t going anywhere. And neither would she, till after work.
My ’29 Chevy coupe with me in it was parked down the street when she came out of the S & S just after seven, wearing a light blue dress and a darker blue hat that fit snug to her head, and waited for her boyfriend to show up. That’s the way it seemed, at least: her behavior today was no different than yesterday.
Neither was dapper Dan’s.
With one exception: while he arrived in a cab again, he shooed it on, and they walked arm in arm, east on Wilson. He looked jaunty, with a straw boater and a white shirt with dark pinstripes and a blue tie and pale yellow slacks.
I got out of the car and shadowed them.
They walked under the El and across to a waffle shop on Sheridan. It was a small place, but at this point I figured I could risk them making me. After all, I’d pretty well established what was going on here; I’d already earned my client’s money—did it really matter whether Dan was her boyfriend, or just another john? Either way, she was fucking somebody who wasn’t her husband, and that’s all I’d been paid to find out. But for some reason, which I cloaked in giving my client his money’s worth, I couldn’t let go of this just yet.
They sat at a table; I sat at the counter. We all had waffles and bacon. We all had coffee.
Then we all went to the picture show. Viva Villa with Wallace Beery, which was playing at Balaban and Katz’s Uptown on Broadway. We didn’t sit together. And I didn’t get spotted. There were better than four thousand seats in the Uptown, all of them full; there wasn’t an air-cooled movie palace in town that wasn’t doing land-office business, and the cavernous, opulent Uptown, with its sculptures and murals and gold drapes, was no exception.
I almost lost Polly and Dan, when the show was over; the fancy lobby was mobbed, and I had just squeezed out onto the street when I saw them pull away in a Checker cab. I caught the next cab and fell in behind them.
Tonight, they went to his place, that fancy apartment house near the lake; maybe her room in the Malden Plaza was too cramped. Maybe she had a Murphy bed; speaking from experience, I can say that making whoopee in a Murphy bed’ll do till the real thing comes along—but Dan probably had six or seven rooms in his flat, one of which was no doubt a room with a bed in it that didn’t fall down out of a box or the wall.
It was too ritzy a neighborhood to risk my sitting-on-the-stoop ruse, so I stayed in the cab and headed back to her place, the Malden Plaza. There I took my position on a stoop opposite and waited for Polly to come home. After two hours, I decided she probably wasn’t going to.
So I walked over to the Wilson Arms and finally used that bed I’d paid for.
The S & S opened at six-thirty, so I wandered across the street at seven. I’d made a decision—in my sleep apparently, because there it was in my brain when I crawled out of the sack: I was going to talk to Polly.
I didn’t know what I was going to say—certainly not that I was a private detective checking up on her for her husband. Still, I felt the need to talk to her. To see if I could get her side of the story. Maybe even give her a break.
Or not.
I wasn’t sure. I just felt I somehow owed her this much. Possibly because I couldn’t remember paying her for that night over the bar on Halsted.
I took a counter seat and a pretty brunette with a cap of curls and blue eyes came up to take my order. I asked for scrambled eggs and bacon and orange juice, and while I waited for them, I glanced around, looking for Polly. There were only two waitresses here today—the girl behind the counter, and a poor harried thing with blond hair and too many tables.
When the brunette waitress delivered my juice, I said to her, “You’re shorthanded this morning.”
“I’ll say,” the brunette smirked. “Our other girl called in sick today.”
“Polly, you mean?”
“Yeah. I don’t remember you eating here before—”
“Sure. Bunch of times.”
“If it’d been at the counter, I’d remember you.”
She went away and I sipped the juice. Pretty soon she placed the eggs and bacon in front of me.
“Toast doesn’t come with it,” she said, “but I can get you some.”
“Please.”
When she delivered a little plate of toast, I said, “I know you’re busy, but I wondered if I could ask you something.”
She smirked again, but it was pleasant. “Make it quick.”
“Does Polly have a steady boyfriend?”
“Yeah. For the past few weeks she has.”
“Funny,” I said. “I thought she was a married gal.”
The waitress shrugged. “She was,” she said.
“Was?”
“Yeah. Excuse me, I got customers.”
“Uh, sure. I’m sorry.”
She came back a little later and asked me if I wanted coffee.
I said yes, and she poured me some, black.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said.
I found a smile for her. “That’s hard to believe. What did you mean, Polly was married?”
“What do you think? She’s divorced. Has been for two or three months. Why don’t you stop back when we’re not so busy and we’ll get acquainted?”
A
NNA
6
The woman who ran the tavern on the corner of Willow and Halsted wasn’t around, but the apron behind the bar traded me his boss lady’s home address for a buck. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty—unless you have a buck.
She lived about a mile north of the bar, at 2420 North Halsted, on the second floor of a big graystone three-flat. The ground-floor was unlocked; I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. She answered on the third knock, just barely cracking open the door, peering out at me with one large dark eye, startlingly dark against the white sliver of her face.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” she said. She had a low, melodious voice, and a Garbo-like middle-European accent.
“I’m Nate Heller,” I said, taking off my hat. “The detective. Remember?”
The dark eye narrowed.
“We met over in East Chicago, a couple times. And I was in your bar not so long ago. With Barney Ross?”
The dark eye widened and what little I could see of her redrouged mouth seemed to smile.
Then the door opened and Anna, a big dark-haired handsome woman in her early forties in a gray tailored suit with white frills at the neck, gestured for me to come in.
I did, and she took my hat and placed it on a small table in the entryway.
“Mr. Heller,” she said, smiling, but politely. Shrewdly? Cautiously. “What brings you here? And how did you locate me? I’ve only lived in this apartment a few weeks.”
“I’m a former Chicago cop, Anna,” I said, pleasantly. “I know all about bribing people.”
Her smile was reserved yet genuinely amused; she gestured again. “Come,” she said. “Sit.”
She showed me into a big living room where a thick carpet and dark expensive furniture bespoke money. And why not? There was always dough to be had when you ran a bar—particularly when you had B-girls and rooms upstairs.
“America’s treating you good, Anna,” I said, seated on a well-stuffed sofa, glancing around.
“I’ve been good to it,” Anna said, seated primly in a chair
nearby. It was warm in here, though not stifling; there was no electric fan, but the front windows were open. Anna seemed not to notice the heat. A little yellow bird in a standing cage was sitting silently nearby, taking the heat less well than Anna; too damn hot to chirp.
For a Romanian immigrant—probably an illegal one—Anna was doing very well indeed. She had to be: she was operating in Paddy Bauler’s ward, the forty-third, where nothing came free.
“You wouldn’t be fronting for somebody, would you, Anna?”
Her smile faded, but she wasn’t exactly frowning. “That’s a little forward, Mr. Heller, for a guest who hasn’t announced his intentions.”
She had that oddly formal, calculated manner of speaking of someone who’s learned English as a second language; I found it kind of charming—and somehow unsettling.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of my business what your business arrangements are. Say, do you own this building?”
My impertinence got another genuine smile out of her; her teeth were very white. And, unlike Anna, not first generation.
“I might,” she said. “It was my understanding you were no longer with the police—”
“I’m not,” I shrugged. “But I’m still a cop. Just because you go private, that doesn’t take the cop out of you.”
“It was also my understanding that you weren’t on friendly terms with the police.”
I shrugged again. “We try to stay out of each other’s way. I still have friends on the pickpocket detail. But you can’t testify against cops and not make some other cops not like you.”
“Even if the officers you testified against were guilty.”
“Every cop I know is guilty. But suppose the force was a bunch of lilies and all I did was pull a couple weeds…I’d still be seen as a squealer.”
Anna smiled like a wry sphinx. “The world of crime, the world of law. Two sides of the same coin.”
“A double-headed coin at that.”
“The last time we met you didn’t strike me as a philosopher.”
I shook my head. “I probably struck you as a drunk who wanted to get next to one of your girls.”
True Crime Page 4
