by David Mamet
“Why’d they kill her?” Hersh said.
“Apparently these things happen,” Mike said.
The offices of Mid-Continental Insurance were on the fourth floor of the Monadnock Block.
Mike’s press card obtained him an interview with Mr. Everett Shields, head of the Claims Department.
“We very much appreciate your interest,” Mr. Shields said.
“I would do whatever I could,” Mike said, “to help your company, as our interests, it seems, are the same. Those interests are human interests.”
Mr. Shields nodded as if he considered Mike’s avowal not only true, but laudable.
“We had a claim,” Mr. Shields said, “upon”—he consulted the sheet of paper on his desk—“the contents of a safe. A wall safe. The residence leased to Jacob Weiss, Three Ten East Lake Shore Drive . . .”
“A safe,” Mike said.
“The articles insured . . .” He gestured to the sheet, giving Mike to understand that the safe’s contents were not his to divulge. Mike inclined his head in respect. “We sent our investigator to . . .” He checked his notes. “To the apartment. The safe was opened, and empty.”
“And you contacted the police . . .”
“We did,” Mr. Shields said.
Mike took out his notebook, to proclaim his status as champion of the truth.
He opened it, and laid it down on the desk. He took no notes. The trick had been taught him as a cub reporter, by an old City Desk hand. “The notebook? You’re a reporter; what does a ‘reporter’ do? He’s nosy. The notebook? You don’t use it, you have established yourself as someone so engrossed that you have forgotten even your profession, so wrapped up are you in their tale.” The trick had sharpened his memory and Mike had never taken a note in his life.
“. . . and they responded instantly.”
“The police,” Mike said.
“Yes.”
“Was that unusual?”
“It was . . . ,” Mr. Shields said. “Yes. Especially that interest in an old claim . . .”
“Why?”
“Well. They, as we both know, have more important things to do.” Mr. Shields waved his hand at the window, and Chicago beyond.
Mike chuckled appreciatively. “But they’re obligated. To solve the crime.”
“In theory, yes,” Mr. Shields said. “But . . .”
Mike sat, not immobile, but still. Deciding to let it come. The El ran by, outside the window. Mr. Shields rubbed his temples.
“It was, yes. We’d made the request, actually, as a matter of form.”
“A matter of form, why?” Mike said.
“As the safe’s contents”—he put his finger on the page—“were of limited value. Our procedure requires a notification of the police. Usually done by the policy’s holder. But, in this case . . .”
“Who held the policy?”
“Jacob Weiss.”
“But Jacob Weiss was dead,” Mike said. “He’s been dead a year.”
“Yes,” Mr. Shields said.
“Well, then,” Mike said. “Who made the claim?”
“I . . . ,” Mr. Shields said as he peered at the form, “I’m not permitted to disclose . . .”
“Wait,” Mike said. “You said an old claim.”
“An old claim?”
“You said the police were interested in an old claim.”
“Yes, they were more interested in that.”
“In?”
“In the diamond brooch. It was reported stolen a year ago.”
“It wasn’t in the safe?” Mike said.
“Oh no,” Mr. Shields said, “it was . . . it was stolen by a Pullman porter.” He pointed at the page. “We paid that claim.”
“Then,” Mike said, “could you suggest why the police are interested in it now?”
Chapter 28
The trinket Ruth Watkins had attempted to pawn had been reported by Jacob Weiss as stolen from his wife’s jewelry case on the Empire State, en route from their excursion to New York, back home to Chicago one year previously.
The insurance claim led to Ruth Watkins’s demise.
Weiss, Mike and Parlow reasoned, out of town for the week and loveless, had, on his return, emptied his wife’s jewelry case on the train, to dump in the lap of Lita Grey. The wife discovered the loss. The Pullman porter was accused and tried, and went to jail.
“Yeah,” Marcus said, “that shit went missing, nobody in the compartment, save the porter. The exception, anyone of sense, the man who filed the claim, and/or, his wife. ’Cause, who standed to gain? This fellow, William White, worked for the New York Central all his life, s’if that mattered, four children, then they plant him with some piece of slum, some German-silver piece-of-shit ladies’ watch, wu’nt even on the list of the articles supposedly stolen, now he’s downstate doing five pieces ’cause some white man, cheating on his wife, screws the insurance company, pays off the cops, plant some evidence on this man; and I will tell you, sure as hell as I am standing here, it came down, Jackie Weiss, Hebe that he is, is also, card-carrying, a white man. Says to the railroad cops, his bitch starts screaming, ‘Look here: sometimes, you know, a man needs a little piece of strange pussy.’ The one cop? Looks at the other. They know where the jewelry went. Cop says, ‘Maybe we plant some piece of shit in the porter’s pocket.’ Jackie Weiss gives ’em a card, says, you’re downtown, stop by the Chez, as my guests. Now, you see, he’s no longer, now, a white man, but, of course, a Hebe, and they ain’t going to flake the porter for the fucken round of beef, and a couple a’scotch. Jackie, he clears his throat, ‘And, of course’ (he says, something like that), ‘I appreciate the trouble, and the paperwork, et cetera,’ peels off two fifties from his roll, looks in their eyes, here’s two more fifties, everyone’s now relaxed, insurance company’s going to pay, William White, as soon as it comes down, knows, he’s going away. Justice is served.”
“How would you know that?” Mike said.
“No,” Marcus said, “you ain’t been paying attention.”
“What did I miss?” Mike said.
“You missed?” Marcus said. “You missed what’s going on.”
“What’s going on,” Mike explained, “is anyone linked to Jackie Weiss is turning up snuffed. Doxy and the maid. Paying attention, go on the run, clothes on their back. What do they need? They need money. What do they do?”
“They pawn their swag,” Parlow said.
“They’ve got to pawn their swag,” Mike said. “That’s all they’ve got. Whoever’s looking for ’em? Trace the junk and find the girls.
“Guys hunting for them? Go to the insurance company. ‘What have you got that’s missing, Little Love Nest?’ ‘Nothing much.’ ‘Oh. What’s this old claim here?’ ‘This? Diamond brooch. Got stolen off the train.’”
“Except not,” Parlow said.
“He gave it to the girl. Everyone saw her wearing it at the club. She’s got to cash it in. Find the brooch and find the girls. How can they find ’em? Send the cops to shake down the pawnbrokers.”
“Ah,” Parlow said, “I see you’ve become like the proverbial Young Widow, who, once again, is beginning to sit up and take notice. What?”
“. . . They put the cops on the send . . .”
“. . . And who is ‘they’?” Parlow said. “Mike?”
“The question, then, becomes: who’s got the juice to motivate the cops?”
“Where are you going?” Parlow said.
Ruth Watkins was dead, William White was downstate doing the remainder of five years, and Mike Hodge sat in the offices of Domaine Dixon, attorney-at-law.
Dixon was a slim black man in his forties. He was well dressed, his hair processed and marcelled into waves, a trim mustache on his lip. On his office walls were diplomas from Atlee Junior College, the Chicago School of Law, a plaque from the Negro Attorneys’ League, and a panoramic photo of the 394th Infantry Regiment, Colored, in reserve, at Douaumont.
“Well, the adversary system,�
�� Dixon said, “truly as it appears to come from English Common Law, is a throwback to the pagan, or Roman, trial by ordeal. In France, and, indeed, in the Romance countries, the law is in the hands, not of a jury, but of a procurator. His job, supposedly, is to find the truth.
“Our job here, is, each side, each to adopt a lie, which might easily be compared to a weapon, and to see which fiction will prevail before an audience of the uninformed.”
Mike smiled. “You writing a book, Mr. Dixon?” he said.
“In fact I am not,” Dixon said. “If I were, I might discharge some of these observations. Why do I share this insight with you?”
“Because,” Mike said, “you have a guilty conscience.”
“Yes, I have a guilty conscience,” Dixon said. “An attorney must have either a guilty conscience or no conscience at all.”
“What about the Reformer?” Mike said.
“The Reformer,” Dixon said. “I suppose.” He turned his head and looked down, through the blinds, at the street below, State Street, the Stroll. “Everything changes,” he said. “The Reformer? Might be the odd dervish, enjoyed getting his spirit broken, or he might persist, and evolve into the Crank, or the Martyr.”
He pointed down at the life on the street. “I’m a race man,” he said. “I am an American Negro, and I wouldn’t change my state for any in the world. The price, for everything of worth has a price, is a broken heart.”
Mike nodded in understanding. Though Dixon’s head was turned to the glass, Mike knew Dixon could see Mike’s reflection. Further, he sensed that Dixon could remark his sympathy independent of sight or sound, through that telepathic sense which blessed the trial lawyer and the confidence man. “He speaks in the rhythmic cadences of a Cicero,” Mike thought, “of course he likens our jury system to a Roman contest of guile. He is the gladiator. What is his sword and shield? A soft demeanor, a glib tongue, and a total crock of shit.”
He’d noted, from his first days as a cub on the Tribune, that the two difficulties in reporting were to get the subject to talk, and to get him to stop. Crouch had advised him: “It’s the dirty water, when you turn on the tap. Let it run; let it run, eventually, it may run clean.”
The advice proved true more often than not. Additionally, Crouch had taught him, listen for their lies. Why do we lie? To obtain something from our listener. What is it? Sympathy, cash, absolution, exemption, listen to it. Listen to what they say, alright, but the meat of the thing might be in what they want.
What did Domaine Dixon want?
“He wants me to understand him as tragic,” Mike thought. “He tells me he is a race man. He looks down on the Stroll, performing sad love for his beleaguered people. Alright. But why tell me?”
“William A. White,” Dixon said, “International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, husband, father.”
“‘Deacon of the church,’” Mike bet himself. “He says that, he sold him out.”
“Deacon of the church,” Dixon said.
Dixon continued his biography of the framed man, but Mike had come to the conclusion. Dixon had sold William White out. And he wanted Mike distracted from the betrayal.
“A trinket supposedly taken from his wife’s jewelry case, and let me ask you something, as I asked the court.”
Now, having determined Dixon’s role, Mike allowed himself to enjoy the performance. “Smart as you are,” Mike thought, “you don’t see that boat has sailed. You shopped the deacon of the church out, and sent him downstate. Who paid you?”
Mike cherished the revelation of Domaine Dixon’s perfidy, as an unexpected appearance of a beautiful phenomenon of nature—a rainbow, or a red-winged blackbird—common as dirt, but striking when unexpected. “God love you,” he thought.
“. . . the brooch, worth, let us say, less, less than fifty dollars. Why would a man with a family, with children, with a secure position in the community, why would he resort to theft? For, surely, he’d had ample opportunity before: the railroad patrons whom he served are, on the most part, wealthy, certainly well-to-do; and travel,” he confided, “deadens in many, as we know, a natural wariness. They are secluded, thrown together, many away from their husbands or wives, waited upon by those, of my race, supposed to respond to nothing save the traveler’s whims. These travelers are easy targets for the thief. But, but: William A. White was not a thief.”
“I believe you,” Mike thought, “and I believe that Mickey the Dunce could have got the man off.”
“Then why was he convicted?” Mike said.
“He was convicted,” Dixon said, “one, out of the white animus, excuse me, for the Negro race.” Mike nodded. “Two? Two . . . ,” Dixon continued.
“Like most men who think they understand men,” Mike thought, “this man only understands fools.” But he had hit his groove, and there would be no new information forthcoming, so Mike was free to nod at intervals, and let his thoughts drift. William White had no money for his defense. Somebody paid Dixon; if asked who, his lie would be “the concerned of the community.” But it wasn’t true.
Mike had read the transcript of the trial, and Dixon’s defense was desultory to the point of malpractice. If he’d been concerned for his client, for the community, or for the race, he would have fought. And if he’d fought he would have won.
Dixon did not take the case pro bono, he was paid; the neophyte errors he had made would have drawn rage from any legitimate backers, so he was not being paid to defend the client, but to accept the damage to his own reputation. He was being paid to throw the case.
Dixon came to a period. He stopped and mimed That is the sad conclusion.
“White was the porter of Pullman Five,” Mike said.
“Yes, that’s right,” Dixon said.
“But he claimed he hadn’t set foot in Pullman Five, until the theft. He claimed that he was summoned, by the conductor, from the dining car.”
Dixon looked at Mike.
“The cook crew put him in the dining car with them, until the con sent for him. He hadn’t been in Pullman Five,” Mike said.
“It was his car,” Dixon said.
“It was, and he made it up, and went for coffee. Jackie Weiss and his wife arrived. White was in the galley. They get comfy, five minutes later, White gets called.”
Dixon nodded his respect. “The railroad officer put my client in the car during the time the couple were unpacking,” he said.
“You didn’t cross-examine him,” Mike said.
“What would have been the point?” Dixon said.
Mike walked down the stairs from Dixon’s office.
Someone had paid him to ensure William White went away.
Someone had sent a homicide lieutenant to investigate the murder of a Negro maid.
Mike stepped out onto the Stroll. The afternoon was wearing into evening.
In the interregnum, the barbershops, hairdressing salons, and pool hall had just begun to give their charges up to the street. These Negroes had, in the main, come from day—or straight—jobs, as porters, domestics, casual laborers, or were in transition from the Life of the Day, among the whites, to the Life of the Night, in their own precinct and with their own kind.
Many had come home from work to beautify or fortify themselves, and would retire for two or three hours of rest before reemerging into the nightlife of the Stroll.
There were, of course, idlers and street people, hustling goods or services, papers, shoeshines, notions, sex, tickets (real or counterfeit) for various of the night’s entertainments, liquor, cigarettes, and drugs.
There were the ropers and doormen for the clubs, out early, smoking and chatting. There were crap games in the alleys, and on the loading docks on the side streets off of State Street.
There were the most beautiful women Mike had ever seen, walking, purposefully, to work at the clubs: cigarette girls, performers, B-girls, waitresses, semipro prostitutes; there was a countercurrent of women having finished work at the shops, the millineries, clothing stor
es, manicure and beauty salons, tailor shops, and restaurants.
The men, lounging, strolling, entering or leaving the occasions of the afternoon, eyed the women, Mike thought, with a respectful frankness. But the banter, and the competition for the best comment or riposte, ceased as soon as the inhabitants were aware of the white man.
The life stopped in that portion of the street within his orbit, and he left.
Chapter 29
The Kedzie Baths had been there since the beginning of time. Some wag from the Trib quipped they’d found Algonquin arrowheads in the steam room.
The baths possessed the unusually conjoined attributes of being cheap and clean. Mike and Parlow had discussed the odd and pleasant conjunction. Unable to agree on a more interesting interpretation, they had adopted, with some regret, the unsatisfying conclusion that the baths did a good job simply and well, and that the world beat a path to their door.
The men found it exotic that anything was done on the square. “And the outrageous novelty,” Parlow said, “of this new economy, is, look here: you can’t get a drink, coke, a blow job from the Chinese girl . . .” He stopped, searching for the services universally available at any all-night baths, but absent at the Kedzie. Brought his open hand down to signify that he had not quite finished. “Hop,” he added, and the list was done.
“The beauty being: who do they have to pay off?”
“They don’t got to pay off no one,” Mike had said. The simple audacity of the business plan stunned them. Since the revelation, they’d treated the baths and their own with respect and humble thanks, as they would the sworn protectors of some ancient shrine or monument. That the baths were precisely what they appeared to be they found quietly delightful, their enjoyment tempered only by the rational fear that their delight, if too often or forcefully expressed, might attract the notice of the gods. So, after their preliminary evaluations, Parlow and Mike elected simply to enjoy the anomaly, which, like all things under the sun, would, of course, in time, change for the worse. But it continued reasonable and clean. The men had not shared their discovery widely. It was not their wish to balk others of enjoyment but to limit the corruption inevitably brought about by the irreverent.