“I know—at ten-thirty or so.”
“Who told you?”
“I stopped at UBS yesterday afternoon—had a little chat with Joe Orlando.”
“Before or after his accident?”
“What accident?”
“A garbage truck ran into his Corvette—totaled it—he was vague about it. Was he cooperative?”
“Reluctantly, yes. Orlando called you?”
“Last night—to apologize for talking to the cops. Joe meant well—he wanted to get those pictures. He was skulking around and the cops thought he looked suspicious. They scared him half to death.”
“Orlando has diarrhea of the mouth.”
“He was trying to be helpful.”
“So was Neville Chamberlain. Gladys, Brumshaw was probably killed with a Heffernan-Reese .38.”
“And Aunt Rosie has a Heffernan-Reese.”
“Right.”
“The Heffernan-Reese isn’t a collector’s thing, is it?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re inferring that Aunt Rosie killed Sammy?”
“It’s possible.”
“Ridiculous! If Aunt Rosie’s going to kill somebody, it’ll be over a bottle of booze!”
“She’s a scatterbrain, Glad—she goes around tilting at windmills, you’ve said so yourself.”
“Granted, but she’s no cold-blooded killer! She went to Sammy’s office to talk bout the Wow-Wee photos. She had no idea that he’d been shot—she was stunned when I told her!”
“Or so she appeared. If she didn’t kill Brumshaw, who the hell did? Joe Orlando saw who went in and out of the Walton Building on Wednesday morning.”
“Joe Orlando couldn’t see the alley service-entrance!”
“What did Brumshaw tell Sister Rosetta about the Wow-Wee snaps?”
“He denied all knowledge of them, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“All right, Tut, answer your own question! If it wasn’t Aunt Rosie, and it wasn’t, I assure you, who killed Sammy? You’re the detective in the crowd.”
Willow found his cigarettes, lit one, and blew smoke into the mouthpiece. His head was threatening to fly off his shoulders and he had a raging thirst. He said, “Why not Joe Orlando?”
“Never! Joe doesn’t have a gun—he’s just a crazy, lovesick kid—he isn’t dangerous!”
“Gentle as a kitten, right?”
“Not always—he gets into fights, but he couldn’t kill! Tut, where do I go from here? Sammy’s been murdered, somebody has the Wow-Wee pictures, Casey Bucknell’s due back from Germany next week, and I’m on thin ice!”
“Hang on. If blackmail’s the object, you’ll be contacted, and damned soon. Where’s Sister Rosetta now?”
“I sent her home in a cab last night. I suppose that she’s back on North Austin Boulevard, making her rounds.” Gladys was winding down, the sharp edge leaving her voice.
Willow said, “Well, I’ll take another whack at finding her. If she gets nailed with that howitzer in her purse, the cops will eat her alive.”
“Do that, for God’s sake! Take that damned gun and throw it away—do something! This whole damned thing is about to come down around my ears.”
“Uhh-h-h, Glad, you got another minute?”
“Sure, Tutto.”
“Tell me about Becky Johnson Comes Home.”
There was a silence. Then Gladys said, “Oh, that old flick? I’ve been ashamed to mention it. Who told you about it?”
“A cop saw it at the Cracker Box.”
“The Cracker Box lets cops in free. Well, it was a Supereight thing, one of a thousand just like it. We did a couple of days in Waupaca, Wisconsin, but most of it was shot on the north side here in Chicago. I thought it might be a shortcut to legitimate acting. I must have been crazy! They were just using me.”
“That’s your world, Glad—everybody uses everybody.”
“I know—and you wonder why I want to buy a farm.”
“What if Bucknell stumbles across Becky Johnson Comes Home?”
“He won’t—not now. It’s an old movie by X-rated standards, and Casey doesn’t go for that sort of thing—he likes his thrills firsthand.”
“Which you provide.”
“Yes, which I provide.”
“Okay, I’ll work on what I have. In the meantime, don’t dwell on this—get drunk or get laid or something.”
“I’ll get drunk. When can I see you?”
“Why?”
“So I can get laid, you dumbbell!” She broke the connection and Willow sat on the edge of his rumpled bed, holding his aching head, considering those outrageous currents of fate that had nudged Gladys Hornsby back into the mainstream of his life, splashing through the years and the sleazy taverns and the shabby women and the nickel-and-dime divorce cases and the foaming amber torrents of Kennessy’s Light Lager, back to the capricious, audacious, anything-goes honey-blonde bit of fluff who’d dragged him into bed five minutes after she’d met him, who’d enjoyed standing-up sex on an elevated platform and taken her chances on getting away with it because that was how she was—anything worth having was worth a certain amount of risk. Gladys was a big girl now and big girls play for taller stakes. She was betting her body and a fair-sized chunk of her life that she’d be able to amuse Casey Bucknell until he dropped over from high blood pressure or a bum heart or diabetes or a fucked-up liver or a perforated ulcer or what-the-hell ever. With Gladys had come the bubbles in Willow’s wine, laughter, glorious golden tumult, a few tears, a sprinkling of skullduggery, and scads of utterly uninhibited sex. She was one of a kind, a classic, and Willow wouldn’t have changed a single hair on her lovely calculating head.
He got to his feet, scratched his ass, stretched, yawned, went into the bathroom, jolted down three aspirins with a long drink of water, and returned to bed. Sleep was the only established antidote for a hangover. Willow was a bona fide expert on hangovers.
22
Friday
At eleven-thirty Willow rolled out of bed, not quite up to a hundred-yard dash, but feeling considerably better than he’d felt four hours earlier. He took a tepid shower, shaved, dressed, got a cigarette going, and called the Apollo Lounge. No Sister Rosetta.
He called the Hermit’s Cave. Still no Sister Rosetta.
He drew a third blank at Mary’s Piano bar, but a man at Bobo’s Dugout said, yeah, she’d been in a little earlier—she’d had two drinks, as he recalled—she’d looked just a mite under the weather.
Willow tried Millie and Jake’s Watering Hole. Millie said that she’d seen Sister Rosetta go by, bearing north full speed ahead but she hadn’t come in, oh, thank You, Blessed Jesus!
Webster’s Whirlwind told Willow that she’d stopped for a few minutes and left in a huff over something, nobody had the slightest idea what.
Pete’s Place didn’t answer its phone and Willow remembered that there’d been rumors of license revocation at Pete’s. Something about Pete’s mother setting up shop in the back room—fifty bucks a copy. Willow wondered about that. He’d seen Pete’s mother and he’d rated her at twenty dollars, tops.
When Willow called the Tropical Lounge and asked about Sister Rosetta, the line went dead instantly.
He tried Raponi’s Old Naples Spaghetti House and Raponi said, “No, Tut, I ain’t seen that old hellcat since she shot up the joint.”
Willow said, “Did you ever get your new chandelier?”
“Yeah, it’s a corker! They installed it just before we opened this morning.”
“Maybe they should have connected this one to the electricity.”
“Oh, they did! The last one was hooked up, too.”
“How could you tell?”
Raponi said, “Fuck you, Tut!” and Willow went out to his Buick to drive east, then north. It was his favorite kind of day—warm, hazy, October blue, and there is no blue like October’s. The faint fragrance of burning leaves drifted from the west, bearing the ghosts of a thousand childhood yeste
rdays. Number 5031 North Austin Boulevard was a decrepit beige-brick two-flat, and Sister Rosetta would be occupying the second floor because the first-floor flat was vacant, a large crudely lettered posterboard sign in a window: FOR RENT—Call 455–7600—ASK FOR JIM. Willow leaned on the bell button and waited. Nothing doing. He went up the stairs and knocked. No response. He went down and rang again. No action. He peeked into the mailboxes. Both empty. He thought it over. Sister Rosetta’s lock was a Flexner, the Milquetoast of all locks, and he could be in her apartment in a hurry. Why not? He climbed the stairs and knocked once more to be certain. From the other side of the door a woman’s voice said, “Oh, hold your horses, dammit!” Her tone indicated exasperation. Willow waited the better part of a minute before the door swung open and Gladys Hornsby stepped onto the landing, a forefinger to her lips for silence. She closed the door quietly, took his arm, and whispered, “For God’s said, let’s hit the road before she wakes up!”
Willow stared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Gladys guided him down the stairs and out to the sidewalk. She glanced up at the second-floor windows apprehensively. “I was worried about her, so I thought I’d buzz over from the studios to see if she’d managed to get home in one piece.”
“Did she?”
“Oh, sure, she’s virtually indestructible! I found her flat on her face in the middle of the living-room floor, out like a broken lightbulb. I’d have answered the door sooner, but lifting Aunt Rosie is no bargain. If I’d known it was you, I’d have let you throw her into bed.”
“I have no overpowering desire to throw your aunt into bed.”
She tilted her head and her tongue darted in and out like a chameleon’s. “How about her niece—would she do?”
“Her niece would do just dandy.”
She gave him a long, level, smoky-blue-eyed stare. She said, “Oh, you’re damned right her niece would do just dandy! She’s a five-hundred-thousand-dollar sex trinket, remember?”
Willow switched channels. “I checked around and the old barnacle was hoisting a few this morning. How come she knocked it off early?”
Gladys giggled. “Worn out, probably—I think she spent the night somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“I undressed her when I put her to bed.”
“So?”
“Her panties were missing. Aunt Rosie’s human—she’s been known to appreciate an occasional roll in the feathers.”
“Does she have a steady jocker?”
“I doubt it—it was probably a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Did you happen to come across that Heffernan-Reese .38 while you were up there?”
“No, but I tried—it wasn’t in her handbag and I looked into every drawer in the apartment.”
“Did you ask about it?”
“Lord, no—she was incoherent!”
“Nothing particularly unusual about that.”
“I can’t imagine why she’d want to get rid of it, unless—”
“Unless she’d used it?”
Gladys nodded.
Willow shrugged. “Maybe it’s where she left her panties.”
Her eyes widened. “Jesus, you don’t suppose she raped somebody at gunpoint?”
“Well, why not?”
Gladys stared thoughtfully at the sidewalk before looking up to say, “Anyway, I got her into bed.” She reached to tug at his earlobe. “Which leaves you, Mr. Willow.”
“I’m easy.”
She snapped her fingers, craps-shooter style. “I’m parked just up the street. Follow me!”
Willow watched her walk to her car, her gray sharkskin slacks shimmering tight against her exquisite backside. She didn’t drive as far as Lincoln Park West. She stopped at the Roviana Motel on Foster Avenue. Her Mercedes-Benz convertible was a snap to follow in traffic. It was red, like Brumshaw had told him.
23
Friday
At 7:30 that evening Willow made his faltering way into Raponi’s, fear in his eyes, feeling like the aging boxer who’d survived fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali only to find Larry Holmes lurking in his dressing room. Florence Gambrello would be chewing on the bit, raring to go, and Willow had shot up his ammunition in another cause. There had to be a way around the scheduled revelry, but he’d be damned if he could find it. Florence sat at her table, drumming its top with impatient fingertips, and glancing repeatedly at her watch. Countdown to oblivion. She looked up, checked her watch again, smiled a lecherous smile, pinched his knee, and said, “It won’t be long now, lover!”
Willow said, “It never was.”
Florence said, “Anxious?”
Willow rolled exhausted eyes.
Florence said, “Bet you ain’t one-half as anxious as Florence!”
Willow said, “How anxious is Florence?”
Florence closed her eyes and slipped a hand under the tabletop to caress herself. She moaned softly, low and long.
Willow watched, fascinated—the way a condemned wretch watches the construction of his own gallows. He said, “That’s pretty anxious, all right.”
Florence muttered, “Oh, baby, what I’m gonna do to you!” She growled wet and deep in her throat, like a mastiff over a pork chop.
Willow groped through the dimness of Raponi’s taproom to sag onto a barstool. Raponi said, “Hey, Tutto, you see that new chandelier?”
Willow turned to peer into the dining area. “What chandelier?”
“My new one, the one I told you about.”
“It’s too damned dark to see it. Turn it on.”
Raponi looked horrified. “Can’t do that, Tut! I’d spoil the romantic atmosphere!”
“Romantic atmosphere? Christ, there ain’t nobody in here but you and me and Florence!”
“Oh, sure, but what if somebody came in before I could turn it off? Then where would I be?”
The door opened and two men entered. Raponi said, “So there! See what I mean?”
Willow said, “Since when did two men need a romantic atmosphere?”
Raponi frowned. “You can’t be sure these days. Now, you just take this case on Lilac Paths—Galahad Brooks shacking with a Czech soccer player—why, if you ever seen them two guys on the street, you’d never have the slightest idea they was madly in love!”
“Yeah, you’ve told me about Galahad Brooks. Give me a Kennessy’s, these tourists want to talk to me.”
Homicide Lieutenant Buck Curtin eased his considerable bulk onto the barstool next to Willow’s. His companion sat on Curtin’s left. Curtin’s smile was chilly. He said, “Six hours with that blonde radish—must of been a very eventful afternoon.”
Willow said, “Blonde radish?”
“That Hornsby slut—at the Roviana up on Foster—the one you met at 5031 North Austin at twelve-twenty this afternoon.” Curtin turned to his partner. “Twelve-twenty, wasn’t it, Jim?”
Jim yawned. “Yeah, twelve-twenty—something like that.”
Willow said, “You bastards are tailing me?”
Curtin spread big splay-fingered hands, the spitting image of concerned innocence. “Hey, don’t get us wrong, Willow. We just wanted the pleasure of your company and we didn’t want to mess up your love life.”
Willow splashed Kennessy’s Light Lager into the glass and said, “Considerate of you.”
Curtin nodded. “Well, we just do the best we can with what we got.” He laid a good-ole-boy paw on Willow’s shoulder. “Now, looky, Willow, me and Jim here, we got saddled with this Sam Brumshaw thing, and we’re talking to anybody who ever got within fifty feet of him. What can you tell us about Brumshaw’s two-bit prostitution operation?”
Willow lit a cigarette and parried. “Prostitution operation? I don’t quite follow you.” Once, just once in the life span of every mortal, there comes a light ethereal, dim at first but growing in intensity until it floods the recesses of the mind, the light that brightened the Khawak Pass for Alexander the Great in 329 B.C., the light that illuminated t
he vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in 1941 A.D., and now its aura flickered fitfully on Tuthill Willow’s dismal horizon, and in its distant glow he beheld hope where there had been no hope.
Curtin said, “The grapevine got it as how Brumshaw had a short string of whores hustling for him. The Hornsby broad knew Brumshaw and you’re laying her, so what’ve you heard?”
Willow glanced over Curtin’s broad shoulder at Florence Gambrello, poised at her table like some great, dark, ravenous bird of prey, and the light grew blinding in its brilliance, washing over him in a sudden roaring phosphorescent wave. Willow said, “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t prostitution a matter for Vice? You guys are Homicide bulls.”
Curtin chuckled a good-natured, oily chuckle. “Leave it to an old private dick to find a technicality! You see, this is an interlocking thing so it’s first come, first served, and me and Jim was at the head of the line.”
Willow scowled skeptically. “I don’t know about this—maybe you better get somebody out here from Vice.”
Little rusty barbs punctured Curtin’s cajoling whiskey baritone. He said, “Hey, Willow, just who it’s for happens to be a police decision. Now, maybe this spills over into Vice territory just a dribble, but that ain’t the fucking point!”
Willow pondered Curtin’s statement before saying, “Well, if that ain’t the fucking point, what is the fucking point?”
Curtin was breathing heavily. He said, “The fucking point is that an officer of the law has asked you a decent question in a civilized tone of voice. Now, are you going to answer the sonofabitch, or ain’t you?”
Willow pulled a wry face. “Okay, let’s see if I understand this. You think that maybe Sam Brumshaw got scragged because he had a couple hookers working for him, that he’d invaded mob territory, or he hadn’t greased the right people—is that it?”
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