Sister Rosetta was sitting pale and stunned, staring at the smoking weapon in her suddenly palsied hand. She said, “Holy Christ, these bassards sure make racket!”
Willow lunged to rip the gun from her grasp. He sprinted to the bar. Nick Raponi took one look and his jaw dropped. He discarded the telephone and threw both hands high above his head. He said, “Anything you want, Tut, take it all—what the hell, Tut, easy come, easy go, right, old buddy?”
Willow growled, “Don’t be an ass!” He punched the clip release and cleared the chamber. He placed the .38 on the bar and thumbed the bullets from the clip into a perspiring palm. He said, “Let the old broad off the hook, Nick. It was just an accident—nobody got hurt.”
Raponi lowered his hands. He said, “What about my fucking five-hundred-dollar chandelier? What about my fucking plate-glass window?” His voice was quavery.
Willow said, “What about your plate-glass window?”
Raponi said, “Buggsy O’Doul just ran right through the sonofabitch!”
Willow said, “All right, she’ll square up with you.”
Raponi said, “I want five for my chandelier, two-fifty for my window, and a hunnert for the double coronary I damnnear had.”
“That’s pretty steep.”
“Best I can do, Tut—I got this old albatross on every rap but overthrowing the fucking government!”
“Okay, eight and a half. Let me talk to her.”
Raponi found his telephone on the floor and hung it up with an air of finality. Willow returned to the rear booth. He said, “Raponi wants eight hundred and fifty dollars to put the place back together.”
Sister Rosetta said, “Chicken foods.”
“You can come up with that much?”
“Sure, got loss moneys.”
Willow jammed the emptied Heffernan-Reese into her handbag. “The next time I see this thing, I’m gonna stick it where you’re gonna be mighty goddamn sorry I stuck it! Now go straighten up with Raponi and get out of here before he hikes the ante.”
Sister Rosetta nodded dazedly, struggled to her feet, and moved falteringly in the general direction of the bar. Florence Gambrello grabbed Willow’s elbow. She said, “Welcome to Raponi’s Old Naples Shooting Gallery.”
Willow said, “Yeah, Disneyland Midwest.”
Florence said, “Eight-fifty? What’s with Annie Oakley—she owns a bank?”
Willow backhanded sweat from his forehead. “No, she probably held up a stagecoach.”
“Tut, you don’t really believe that this old strumpet’s an honest-to-God nun, do you?”
“You don’t?”
“Not for one minute! She just doesn’t ring true.”
“Not now, but she may have seen better days. Nuns are people, aren’t they? Nuns can get drunk and kick up their heels and get off the straight and narrow, can’t they?”
“Oh, sure, but never to this extent! Look, I’m Catholic—I attended Catholic schools, I’ve known nuns by the dozens, and this ain’t no nun. If she was a nun, the Church would have stepped in and straightened her out a long time ago.”
“Maybe the Church has lost track of her—maybe the Church doesn’t know that she’s going around shooting up gin mills.”
Florence shook her head. “I don’t buy it. She probably busted out of some insane asylum in Idaho!”
“No, she may be crazy, but she’s done time as a nun, no doubt about it.”
“How do you know—you’ve seen credentials?”
Being of reasonably sound mind, Willow didn’t want to get further into the subject, and he shrugged the question off.
Florence sighed. “Well, she’ll be back, depend on it!”
“Not likely—not after this episode!”
Florence nibbled on Willow’s ear. She whispered, “Wanna bet your body, baby?”
16
Wednesday
Womer’s Wigwam had stood on East Adams Street long before the Eighteenth Amendment made A1 Capone a millionaire. Its lofty arched ceiling was swarming with little gilded angels blowing flüigelhorns or whatever it is little gilded angels blow, its tall-backed, cavernous wooden booths reminded Willow of carousel chariots, and its enormous ornate marble and mahogany bar would have looked perfectly at home in the grand ballroom of the Lusitania. There was no jukebox, just a splintered old player piano that cost a dollar a throw. Willow found battered rolls of “I’ll Forget You” and “Can’t We Be the Same Schoolday Sweethearts?” He handed these, along with a five-dollar bill to the frail, white-maned man perched birdlike on the piano bench. He shook off his change and the old guy blinked his gratitude. He said, “Which one you want first?”
Willow said, “‘I’ll Forget You.’”
“You won’t if I sing it.”
“You sing real good?”
“Not real bad.”
“Okay, tear off a chorus.” He located a pair of unoccupied barstools near the piano and watched Gladys Hornsby come in. She wore a dark blue suit, a charcoal blouse, and her tam, purse, and pumps were charcoal—that was good, nothing flashy to attract attention. Willow smiled. Gladys Hornsby would have attracted attention attired in sackcloth. The Lake Michigan breeze had flirted with her honey-blonde hair and she brushed a prodigal wisp back from her forehead. She swung onto her barstool. “I came directly from the studio and Joe Orlando stopped by just as I was leaving. The damned fool has been in another accident. He claims he was run down by a taxicab, but he was lying in his teeth.”
“Why?”
“It couldn’t have been a cab! It must have been a diesel locomotive. He’s a mess!”
The oldtimer at the player piano was pumping out “I’ll Forget You” and singing, “I’ll forget you when I can live without the sunshine; I’ll forget you when I can live without the rain…” His voice was high-pitched and shaky but he was seventy-five if he was a day, and he was entitled to that much. Willow ordered drinks and got right into the developments of the previous day. Gladys listened attentively and summed them up. “So she’s hired another detective, she knows that I’m still in Chicago, she’s heard about the Wow-Wee pictures, and she has a hunch that I’m being blackmailed because of them.”
“And she still has her gun.”
“With which she blew Raponi’s chandelier off the ceiling.”
“They’ll be sweeping up glass for a week.”
Gladys sighed, shaking her head. “See what I mean, Tut? She’s bad news! Get within a mile of Aunt Rosie and you’ve got a problem!”
“If you’re looking for an argument you’re talking to the wrong man.”
“Who’s her new detective?”
“She was so looped she couldn’t remember his name, but he knows his way around town—he’s come up with plenty and he’ll have the remainder shortly.”
“In a few minutes there won’t be any remainder!” The old fellow at the piano had finished “I’ll Forget You,” and he was making the switch to “Can’t We Be the Same Schoolday Sweethearts?” Gladys lowered her voice. “When we go in there, you check Sammy’s desk and I’ll take the filing cabinets.”
“Do I get to see the sexy pictures?”
Her wink was more tantalizing than Martha Strotman’s. “Tutto, by one o’clock you’re going to be looking at something a helluva lot sexier than pictures!” God, she was beautiful, Willow thought. Gladys nudged him sharply. “There’s Mattfeld, right on schedule!”
A lanky man carrying an attaché case had taken a stool at the far end of the bar. He wore a baggy brown suit and his thick-lensed spectacles straddled a beak that belonged on a young toucan. They watched as he ordered a bottle of beer and scanned the customers. Gladys said, “He’s looking for a woman on crutches.” She took a quick sip of her drink, mumbled, “Sit tight!” and popped from her barstool to head for the telephone booth. In a few seconds the bar phone jingled. The bartender hoisted it, spoke briefly, glanced up and down the bar, settled on Willow, and said, “You’re Mr. Mattfeld?” Willow frowned a no and the lanky g
uy reached for the phone. “I’m Mattfeld.” He had a voice like Minnie Mouse. In a matter of moments he’d returned the phone to the barkeep and ordered a corned beef sandwich. Willow drew a relieved deep breath. Mattfeld would be staying for a while.
Gladys returned to her seat, smiling. Out of the side of her mouth she whispered, “I told him that my chauffeur was ill and that I’d called a substitute. He bought it. Sammy’s office phone doesn’t answer, so the coast is clear.”
“Then let’s hit it!”
“No great hurry—don’t be obvious, finish your drink.” Gladys Hornsby was cooler than a July-morning cucumber. Willow grinned and she eyed him suspiciously. “What’s so damned funny?”
“Oh, nothing—nothing at all.”
“Come on, Tut, spill it!”
“Just thinking about July cucumbers.”
“Bastard!”
17
Wednesday
The noonday was blue skied, sunny, and warm. Cotton-puff clouds ambled purposelessly before the light west breeze that worried Lake Michigan’s dark waters. South Michigan Avenue swarmed with lunchtime activity, but the foyer of the old Walton Building was unoccupied and they went up the stairs quickly. At the top of the second-floor hallway Willow clamped a cautious hand on Gladys Hornsby’s shoulder. He said, “You wait here until I wave. If it looks like we’ll be getting company, go into a coughing spell.”
He was jittery, but the Flexner lock failed to challenge his abilities and Gladys came scurrying down the hallway at his signal. They slipped hurriedly into the stuffy little office and Willow eased the door shut behind them, relocking it, and making for Brumshaw’s desk. Gladys was at the first filing cabinet, her back to him, opening the top drawer and considering its contents. She said, “The folder—it’s
“Green with Hornsby lettered on it in black.”
“What shade of green?”
“Green, Glad—just green.”
“There’s lots of greens, Tut—grass green, pea green, jade green—what am I looking for?”
“I don’t know one damn green from another and I left my color wheel at home. You’re looking for a green folder about an inch thick.” He was at the front of Brumshaw’s desk, shifting papers, three-by-five cards, ashtrays, candy-bar wrappers, notepads, assorted odds and ends, trying to remember their approximate locations with an eye to returning them to their original positions on the cluttered surface. Gladys stood at the first filing cabinet, riffling rapidly through folders. The office was hot, and sweat was blooming on Willow’s forehead. Gladys chirped, “Oh, here’s Gloria Bennett’s file! Gloria replaced me at Wow-Wee, that flat-chested swamp turkey!”
“Skip it, Glad.”
“Gloria Bennett’s a pig!”
“All right, she’s a pig.”
“Compared to Gloria Bennett, I’m an unsullied Presbyterian missionary to Upper Maroovia!”
“Forget Gloria Bennett and find that damned green folder!”
“Great Danes are bush-league stuff to Gloria! Gloria took on a Shetland pony for the Chicago Bar Association last year. I heard she liked it—wanted to buy the pony!”
“Glad, cool it, for Christ’s sake!”
“Hell, Gloria Bennett could wear out a Percheron stud and send out for a tyrannosaurus.”
Willow walloped the top of Brumshaw’s desk with his fist. He hissed, “All right, Gladys, do we look for that fucking green folder or do we go home?”
“Okay, grouchy, okay!”
There wasn’t a folder of any color on the desk and Willow skirted it to take a shot at the drawers. He pulled up short, swallowing hard, his heart banging out an uneven bongo rhythm against his rib cage. He barked, “Glad, let’s get out of here!”
Gladys had moved to Brumshaw’s second filing cabinet, working feverishly. “In a couple of minutes—I’ll be quiet, Tut, honest!”
“You’ll be quiet in some other location—we’re leaving!”
“The hell we are—not until I find my file!”
“Piss on your file—now!”
The urgency in Willow’s voice spun her around. She stared at the body sprawled facedown behind the desk and her hands flew to her mouth. She gulped, “Yes, now.”
Willow was down on one knee, studying his discovery with stunned, blinking eyes. Willow was primarily a divorce detective—he’d steered clear of the blood-and-thunder bracket.
Gladys gasped, “Who is it?”
Willow said, “Well, it sure as hell ain’t the Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
“It’s—it’s Sammy?”
“It’s Sammy.”
“Has he had a heart attack, I hope?”
“Yeah, probably about the same time he got the back of his head blown off.”
“But, what—why—?”
Willow got to his feet. He said, “Gladys, don’t look—get over by the door and wait there.” He strode to the filing cabinets, whipping out his handkerchief and wiping the drawer handles. He said, “No green folder?”
Propped weakly against the door, her voice small, Gladys piped, “No—it isn’t here. Who—who killed Sammy?”
Willow shrugged. “Somebody with a reason—which probably narrows it down to half the populace of Chicago.” He ushered Gladys into the hallway, wiping both doorknobs and jerking the door shut with the toe of his shoe.
Gladys said, “You mean revenge?”
“Revenge—or maybe a green folder.”
“Someone would kill Sammy for my Wow-Wee poses?”
“You didn’t find ’em, did you?”
She shook her head slowly. She was wide-eyed—Gladys in wonderland. “Oh, merciful Jesus, this is terrible!”
Going down the stairs, Willow said, “You want to go up to Rosenbaum’s for chicken paprika?”
18
Thursday
He was two hundred and ten pounds of hard-nosed Chicago cop, heavyset, frayed at the edges, silvering at the temples, red faced, steel-eyed, hawk-nosed, tight-lipped, granitejawed, and there wasn’t a quarter ounce of pity in him. He wore a brown suede sports jacket, a white shirt open at the collar, baggy black slacks, and tan loafers the size of landing barges. His name was Buck Curtin, he was a lieutenant out of Homicide, and Willow had sat across a poker table from him just often enough to learn that he wasn’t easily bluffed. Over the years they’d had two or three run-ins, he’d knocked Willow down on one occasion, then pulled his police special to cut off Willow’s counterattack. He blew Willow out of bed at nine-fifteen on Thursday morning. Willow rubbed his eyes, mustered his very best deadpan expression, and stepped to one side, motioning him into the living room. Buck Curtin flopped at the far end of the couch and Willow sat at the other. Curtin said, “How come you ain’t so particularly surprised to see me?”
Willow yawned. “Wait’ll I wake up, then I’ll be particularly surprised, okay?”
Curtin said, “That’s fair. What’s new, Willow?” His voice was a mushy, whiskey baritone.
“Nothing hot enough to get me out of bed at nine-fucking-fifteen in the morning.” Willow dug a dilapidated package of cigarettes out of a bathrobe pocket. Curtin took one. Willow tossed the cigarettes onto the coffee table, held a match for them, and said, “What’s cooking?”
“You don’t know?”
“If I knew, would I ask?”
“Yeah, that’s right—would you?”
“Want coffee? I got some instant stuff.”
Curtin shook his head. He said, “Just how well did you know a hustler named Sam Brumshaw?”
“Did?”
“Uh-huh—that’s past tense.”
“Not very.”
“Well, that’s as good as you’re ever gonna know him.” Willow squinted, then shrugged. Curtin watched him through heavy-lidded eyes. “You were in Brumshaw’s building yesterday morning.”
“I was?”
“Yep, you and some sharp blonde quiff—just before noon.”
“Brumshaw’s office was locked. Out to lunch, probably.”
&nbs
p; “What was the occasion?”
“Chicken paprika?”
Curtin’s smile was humorless. “No levity, Willow—too early in the morning. What did you want from Sam Brumshaw?”
“The girl used to work out of Brumshaw’s agency—she wanted to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“You just went along for the walk—nice day, and all that.”
“That’s it.”
“She could have phoned him.”
“She probably could have.”
“Brumshaw owed her money?”
“Possibly.”
“How much?”
“I’m not her accountant.”
“The chickie—who is she?”
“Fashion model—name of Gladys Hornsby.”
“Right—Gladys Hornsby. Hot little cinder—saw her in a movie year or so ago—whammo!” Curtin’s eyes glittered appreciatively.
Willow kept his frown to himself. “She’s always wanted to be an actress.”
“Actress!” Curtin guffawed, an unpleasant sound. “You mean to sit there and tell me that you ain’t seen Becky Johnson Comes Home?”
“Never heard of it. I ain’t much on movies.”
“Too damn bad. I caught it at the Cracker Box on Lawrence Avenue. What happens is, Becky Johnson comes back to Kelly’s Corners and takes on the whole damn high-school football team—it’s Becky’s way of thanking the boys for winning the big one.”
“It’s a porn movie?”
“Porn? Hey, Willow, that fucking marquee couldn’t hold all them Xs!”
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