The old man frowned. “I’d hoped…”
“Your case won’t lie dormant. I’ll stop at the Dijon now, on my way back to the office. I think I’ll clear this up in half an hour, but if I don’t, my girl will put the wheels in motion—inquiries to relatives, friends, old employers, credit bureaus, and so on. And, of course, we’ll call an agency in Vegas. I keep in touch with my answering service. If anything important comes in over the weekend, I’ll let you know.” Forbes reached for a notebook and a ball-point pen. “What’s her age? Description?”
“About twenty-three. Blond, blue eyes. Height, maybe five-four. Lush figure—here, this might help. It’s the only one I have. I’d appreciate your returning it after you make copies.”
He gave Forbes a Polaroid photograph. For identification purposes it wasn’t much good. Iris had been too far from the camera when it had been taken. A tiny figure in a two-piece bathing suit, she stood with hands on hips, legs spread slightly, on the end of a pier extending into what was apparently a small lake. A wooded shoreline loomed behind her, and to her left something jutted from the water—a tiny island on which a single tree grew.
“Nobody can make much out of this,” Forbes said. “But I’ll ask my photofinisher to blow her up. It’ll cost though. Who took it?”
“Her father. On her last visit home with him before he died. She’s from Indiana, around LaPorte. It fell out of her purse one day. She was reluctant to let me have it, but I insisted. Make all the enlargements you’ll need.”
Forbes slipped the photo into his pocket. “She ever married?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Family?”
“Father died last year; her mother, when she was a child. I don’t know if she has other relatives or not.”
“Special boyfriends? Girl friends?”
“Can’t help you there either.”
“Personal habits? Idiosyncrasies? Behavior patterns she might follow no matter where she went?”
“Let’s see—she’s a heavy smoker. Kents. Drinks dry Manhattans, likes Italian food, has black coffee and buttered toast for breakfast. And first thing every day she reads The Wall Street Journal.”
“What’s she like? I mean—people meeting her, what impression would they come away with?”
“Iris?” St. Clair pondered that. “Soft-spoken. Not shy, just a good listener. Has no illusions about herself. Not very bright, but ambitious. Wanted to get rich, she liked to talk about money.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“That’s all that comes to mind.”
“Keep thinking about her.” Forbes put the notebook away. “My girl has your number. She’ll phone you later this afternoon. Tell her anything else that occurs to you. She’ll also ask more questions. We have a missing persons form. And don’t worry. Even if I don’t get a lead at Iris Dean’s hotel, we’ll probably find her with a ten-cent phone call.”
“Thanks.” The old man hesitated. “One more thing. Please keep my name out of this. I’d rather not get involved in any way with the kind of people she worked with.”
“Your name won’t be disclosed,” Forbes replied, “unless you authorize it.”
* * * *
The Dijon, a boxlike red-brick apartment hotel fourteen stories high, was a short drive from the Historical Society. The carpeting in the lobby was threadbare and the furnishings were worn. Behind the desk a short, gray-haired woman peered uncertainly at Forbes through thick bifocals and asked, “Can I help you?”
“I think so. I’d like some information about a girl who used to live here. Iris Dean.”
“You a policeman?”
“Private investigator.” Forbes reached for his wallet. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about. A matter of routine.”
“Just a minute.” She hurried to a door behind her and rapped on it.
A short, fat, fiftyish man in shirtsleeves peered out. “Yeah, Lucille.”
She nodded to Forbes. “A private detective. Asking about Iris Dean.” She said it as though Forbes had just made an obscene proposal.
Two close-set, suspicious eyes focused on Forbes. “I’m the manager. Let’s talk inside.”
Lucille raised a panel and Forbes went into a tiny office. He settled on a straight-backed chair while the manager flopped into a swivel chair behind a desk littered with balance sheets. A name plate identified him as HARRY HOUSER.
Still eying Forbes, Houser lit a cigarette. “What’s your name?”
“Julian Forbes. Here…”
The manager examined Forbes’s card with great interest.
“As I told your clerk,” Forbes went on, “it’s a routine inquiry. Iris Dean hasn’t done anything wrong, someone just wants to know where she is, and that she’s all right.”
“Who’s your client?”
“Sorry. But if you want to check on me, I suggest you call—”
“Call, schmall. I call nobody. And tell you nothing until I know who you’re working for.”
Politely Forbes said, “I don’t understand. I don’t care about anything that went on in this hotel. All I want is to be sure the girl’s alive and well. But I get the impression you don’t want me to learn how alive and well she is.”
Houser scowled. The hand holding the cigarette seemed a trifle unsteady. “Look, I ain’t got the foggiest notion where she is. She lived here three years and checked out Tuesday morning. The last any of us saw of her she was walkin’ out the door lugging a suitcase.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Shoes and a dress. I’m no fashion expert, that’s all I remember.”
“After living here three years, she’d stuffed all her possessions into a single suitcase?”
Houser hesitated. Then he said, “No, she left some stuff. Said she’d send an express company for it later.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“You can’t.” The manager looked down. “Our bellboy put it in a storeroom, but someone stole it. A maid maybe. Or a sex nut. Mostly it was old clothes in a big box. Dresses, underwear, costumes she’d wear at work. You’d be surprised the sex nuts I run into in this business. The box sat in a corner of the lobby half a day, some kook with a fetish coulda seen it.”
“The storeroom locked?”
“Supposed to be. But someone forgot.”
“Iris have close friends in the hotel?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What was her room number?”
“Four-oh-three.”
“I’d like to talk to other guests on her floor. Longtime residents especially.”
Houser’s fingers drummed on his desk. “No, I don’t wanna disturb ’em.”
“Mr. Houser—”
“Stow that.” He leaned forward. “Forbes, I don’t like snoopers prowling around. It could give the place a bad name. A half-dozen people saw Iris Dean leave. There’s nothing nowhere says I gotta let you make a nuisance of yourself three days later. Beat it. And if I see you in my hotel again, I’ll call the cops and charge you with trespass.”
“All right. For now.” Forbes rose. “By the way. Iris Dean’s possessions—you report their theft to the police?”
“Sure. If there’s anything I hate more than a snooper, it’s a thief.”
Houser followed Forbes to the street. And driving to the Loop, Forbes thought, Strike one. Finding Iris Dean won’t be a matter of asking a few questions at the Dijon after all. And Harry Houser—either he nursed a deep-seated hatred of all investigators or he was hiding something.
All of a sudden Forbes wanted a better look at Iris Dean. Twenty minutes later he got it, peering through a magnifying glass at the picture St. Clair had given him.
Her face? Oval-shaped, almost Oriental in contours. Pug nose, wide mouth half open in a broad smile. High cheekbones and hair cut short, with b
angs hanging low over her brow. And the rest of her? As St. Clair had said, a lush figure. Big breasts, good hips, and legs just a bit thick at the thighs.
Forbes put the magnifying glass down. “Think you can do anything with it?”
“Sure.” The young man, a clerk in a Loop camera store that handled Forbes’s photographic work, reached for an order blank. “The lighting’s good, she’s in focus. You want full figure or head and shoulders?”
“Full figure.” Forbes paused. He thought of St. Clair’s limited budget, and then of Harry Houser’s odd attitude. What the hell, he’d already decided to charge St. Clair half rates, so now he would absorb some of the expenses too. If Iris was found with a routine inquiry to Vegas, which Forbes still thought very likely, he could always give the prints to St. Clair as souvenirs. So he said, “Make fifty copies. Get ’em to my office as soon as you can Monday.”
CHAPTER 2
The sign on the door said Forbes & Associates, Investigations. There was only one associate though. And at the moment he would be in Winnetka, probing the drinking habits of a sales manager being considered for a promotion.
As Forbes walked in, a disturbingly speculative look flared in Helen Gerlach’s ordinarily placid brown eyes. The look vanished as Forbes hung his hat on a clothes tree.
“You find that nice old man?” she asked.
She was a slim girl, almost hipless, with firm little breasts pushing up under a simple beige dress. Her nose was too large, her mouth too small, and her chin receded; but there was a warmth and honesty about her which Forbes found uncommonly appealing. Her hair was auburn. She was twenty-eight years old, but if you were rude enough to ask, she’d claim twenty-four.
“Yes,” he said. “And for your information, he’s not so nice. He called you a Miss Slimbottom.”
“He did this morning too.”
“You slap him for getting fresh?”
“An old dear like that? I chucked him under the chin. What’d he want to see you about?”
“Missing person. I’ll dictate the details later, but her name’s Iris Dean. Last job waitress, Gus-A-Go-Go.
Lived at the Dijon Hotel. Told people she went to Vegas. Have someone there look into it, but check sources here too. The Dijon won’t help, but phone guests on the fourth floor. She had four-oh-three.” He paused. “Also call Jack at Burglary. Ask if the Dijon’s manager reported a theft of the girl’s clothes from a basement storeroom.”
As Helen wrote that down, her brows arched a trifle. “Jack? You think something funny’s going on?”
“Man’s intuition. Invariably mistaken, don’t take it seriously. The photo shop will deliver prints of the girl Monday. When they arrive, mail the original and negative back to St. Clair.”
Forbes went on to his inner office, a tiny cubicle with a window overlooking Randolph Street. It was a good location, near City Hall and the Civic Center and just a block from Barry Axburn’s law firm. Axburn, a top trial lawyer and powerful backstage political figure, was Forbes’s best client and a close personal friend as well.
Forbes began thumbing through his mail. Helen strolled in and hovered beside him.
“So what else,” Forbes drawled, “is new?”
“Bill Curley called from Winnetka. He said that sales manager polishes off a half-gallon of gin every weekend. Gordon’s. He also said he can’t make it at dawn tomorrow for the trip to Iowa, as you’d planned. He suggested you meet him at nine instead.”
“When he calls again, tell him to be ready at five A.M. And that if he’s not there he’s fired. Anything more?”
“Ralph Jaraba phoned personally. My old boss said he knows you do a lot of night work, but he emphasized that it’s crucial that you be at the big blast for the Senator tonight. Now, what’d he mean by that?”
“High-level politics.” Forbes winked. “Don’t worry. If this deal goes through, you’ll be among the first to hear. That all?”
“I guess so.” She walked behind him and ran one hand through his hair, which was straight, brown, and tinged with gray at the temples. “All except us. Excuse me for being forward—but what’s wrong? It’s been nearly a month since you used that key to my apartment.”
Damn—but she had every right to ask, of course. “You know how it’s been lately.”
“Sure. Busy, busy. And tonight the Senator, Jaraba, and Axburn. And over the weekend Curley and Iowa.” She spun the chair around and settled in his lap. Wistfully she smiled. “I’m afraid Rose Huff was right. She warned me we might get involved. Proximity and chemistry, she said. Single man, single girl, alone in an office together—and if they’re at all compatible, it’s bound to happen. But after a while the man’ll break it off, for one reason or another. So the girl not only has to find another man, she has to find another job.”
“Nonsense.”
“Julian, I know what’s troubling you. It’s that conscience of yours. Three generations of policemen. But why can’t you just accept this for what it is? Something that happened, something neither of us has to be ashamed of. Maybe it won’t last forever; but while it does, let’s enjoy each other.”
“In my innocent way”—Forbes smiled—“I thought I was a man of the world. But—”
“You think any less of me? For being honest with you?”
“Of course not. All the more.”
“All right then.” She cupped his face in her hands. “So when do I really see you again? Monday night? You’ll have to be back from Iowa by then, there’s that important appointment Tuesday.”
She kissed him. Lightly at first, then harder. He responded, and as his arms tightened around her, he thought, Forbes, you damned fool, it never should have happened, but it did, and you still don’t want it to stop, do you?
She broke away. His gaze fell on the ash tray. He didn’t smoke. Neither did Helen, but three cigarette butts lay in it, all mutilated in a peculiar fashion, the paper torn off at the unburned end.
“My son’s been here,” he said. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Eric? Yes, he—”
“I don’t like that.” He frowned, and Helen got to her feet. “He shouldn’t prowl around my desk while I’m gone. He might see something he’s not supposed to see. Even if he is my son, there are confidential documents in here that are not for the eyes of a nineteen-year-old boy. What’d he want?”
“Nothing. He has no afternoon classes today. He just had some time to kill. He was meeting some other boys later and—”
“In the future,” Forbes said, “tell Eric to wait someplace else.”
* * * *
When the Senator arrived, the string quartet tucked in a corner struck up “There’ll Be a Hot Time.” Lean, pink-cheeked, and silver-maned, the Senator plowed into a mob of politicians, campaign contributors, and hangers-on gathered in a Loop hotel, his entourage close behind. Sent to Congress by an Eastern state, he had been catapulted to prominence by nationally televised committee hearings on organized crime. It was no secret that he’d now set his sights on the White House, if not next year then certainly within a decade.
The Senator shook many hands, including Julian’s, acknowledging Forbes’s presence with a polite but meaningless “Glad to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.” And after the Senator floated away, Ralph Jaraba tugged at Forbes’s sleeve, winked, and said conspiratorially, “The Senator’s on the eighteenth floor. Come up to the suite right after.”
Then Jaraba floated away too, shaking hands and making small talk, his thick face frozen in the politician’s social smile. He was host at this affair, a reception for the Senator preceding a fund-raising banquet in the hotel’s grand ballroom. He was spending the money because he hoped to be elected governor of Illinois next year, and with Barry Axburn behind him it was generally conceded that he might make it. Already the nomination was practically in his pocket.
Dutifully Forbes moved around shaking hands and making small talk himself. He was on Jaraba’s team now. He had never been good at small talk, but he would have to get used to it. This was only the beginning, part of the new career.
Jaraba was the key to that. Like the Senator, his political fortunes had been enhanced by his stand against crime. He published a chain of community newspapers and each January issued an increasingly popular supplement called the Hoodlum Directory, with photos of Chicago gangsters and lists of Syndicate-dominated businesses. Reporters wrote the text, but the Directory’s originator and editor had been Victor Huff, a private detective and old family friend.
Huff verified the listings and dug up new ones through police sources and his own underworld contacts, often scooping the Chicago dailies with his Syndicate disclosures; but last fall he’d been killed in a motorcycle accident. In his private life he’d been something of an eccentric, gravitating through several businesses before becoming a detective. Axburn had used his influence to get Forbes named as Huff’s successor.
Jaraba, who privately either liked you at sight or couldn’t stand you, had liked Forbes. And he had been impressed. Unlike Huff, Forbes had some administrative experience and could even mount a podium and give an acceptable, if over-rehearsed, speech on crime before civic groups. And for Forbes the first concrete result of this new association might come tonight.
Overhead the lights flickered. It was a signal for guests to leave for the banquet downstairs.
Forbes turned, almost bumping into a woman who had come up behind him. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. No harm done.” Her glass had been empty anyhow. She wore an orange cocktail dress and was thirtyish and tall, almost as tall as Forbes. Good figure, thick head of black hair, Roman nose, full lips, and a gently rounded chin. Overall, remarkably attractive.
“I’m Julian Forbes. And you’re…”
“Alice Hemingway.”
A wedding band glittered on her left hand.
“You in politics too, Mrs. Hemingway?”
“No. But I…” She hesitated. “Mr. Forbes, I already knew who you were. And I wonder if we could—well, we couldn’t discuss it here. Not in this crowd. I wouldn’t want to be seen going into your office either.”
The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel Page 58