White Collar Girl

by Renée Rosen

  “Calm down, Mildred. Jesus, just calm down and take the damn dog to the vet. . . . Well, you’re not helping matters with your hysteria. . . . Just tell Bobby his dog’s gonna be okay and hang up now and get him to the vet. . . .”

  When he got off the phone, I looked over. “Everything all right?”

  “Christ.” Henry shook his head. “Fucking maniacs out there.” He reached for the phone again, dialing with the eraser end of his pencil. “They think they can get away with murder. But I’m gonna teach that bastard a lesson.” He adjusted the receiver. “Yeah, get me Sergeant Tessler.” He turned back to me and said, “You can’t fuck with a member of the press.” He reached for the box of cereal on his desk and shoved a handful of Frosted Flakes into his mouth. “Yeah, Gil,” he said into the phone, “it’s Henry over at the Trib. Need a favor. Some asshole just hit my kid’s dog with his car and kept driving. Broke the dog’s leg. . . . Yeah, happened right in front of the house. . . . Just happened, so the son of a bitch is probably still driving around on the North Side. . . . Mildred said he was driving a green DeSoto. And it’s a big dog, a golden retriever, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some damage to the grille. . . . Yeah, thanks. I owe you one. Let me know when you find him.” He hung up the phone and said, “I’m gonna teach that son of a bitch a lesson—you can’t fuck with a member of the press.”

  When he said that for the second time, something clicked inside my brain. I came alive inside. I was reminded that I too was a member of the press and I had tools at my disposal that the average person didn’t. I felt a surge of control and hope. If Henry was able to use his connections to track down a driver who’d hit his son’s dog, I could certainly do more to find the man who killed my brother.

  Just thinking that some coward was still out there on the loose stirred my anger. Someone had robbed my family of its only son and they had robbed me of my parents. I wanted justice. I wanted someone to pay for what they’d done to Eliot. I had the means to investigate what happened, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to use everything at my disposal to get to the truth.

  I remembered the articles I’d read in the morgue, and the name Adam Javers popped into my head. He was the closest thing we had to a witness. Along one wall we had rows upon rows of telephone directories from every city across the country, around the world. I went and pulled the one for Chicago, riffling through the tissue-like pages until I reached the Js, and from there I looked up Adam Javers.

  The next day I was sitting beside him, a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair and narrow-set eyes. He was wearing a sweatshirt and had a whistle hanging about his neck. We were in the bleachers at the Wendell Phillips High School gymnasium. He was in the middle of coaching basketball practice while I spoke with him.

  “Could you tell me what you remember about that night?”

  “That was a while ago,” he said. “I don’t remember much other than what I already told the police. Hey—hey now—” He twisted about and yelled to a few of the boys on the court.

  I waited patiently until he turned back around and faced me.

  “Well,” he said, “I remember I heard those tires screech, and I turned to see where they were coming from. At first I didn’t see anything, but then I noticed something across the way and I realized it was a man—lying there along the curb. It took another minute before I realized what happened—you know, that he’d been hit.” He blew his whistle—the shrill chirp ripped through my chest.

  “Do you remember seeing the car that hit him?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Like I said, I just heard the tires. I didn’t see the car.”

  “Was anyone else around?”

  “It was right by the subway stop down on Grand and State. It was late but not that late. I’m sure there were other people around. You talk to anyone else? Maybe someone else remembers seeing the car.”

  I thanked Coach Javers and walked away broken. Of course there had to have been other people around. I’d always questioned that right from the very beginning. How could the police have said there were no witnesses?

  I went to a pay phone and called my buddy Danny Finn down at police headquarters. I told him I was investigating a hit-and-run that happened in 1953.

  “Can you help me with this?” I asked. “Can you pull the report?”

  Before I had the chance to explain that the victim was my brother, he said, “I can try. But c’mon, Jordan, we’re talking more than two years ago. Nothing new is going to turn up.”

  I went silent, listening to all the chaos in the background on his end, people talking, other phones ringing. Then I began to focus on the buses and taxicabs going by. My heart was sinking. All the hope I’d harnessed after watching Henry in action had dissipated. I felt worse now for having even tried to find the person responsible for my brother’s death.

  Chapter 10

  • • •

  It wasn’t that I stopped looking for Eliot’s killer, but after talking to Danny Finn that day, I had to acknowledge that I might never find the person responsible. Still, it was hard to let it go because I felt like I was turning my back on my brother. But I knew I had to accept that he was gone. I had to let it go, let him go. I didn’t want to end up like my parents. It was time to start living for me.

  That afternoon, during my lunch break, I went to look at an apartment in a six-story walk-up. There was a bulb burned out overhead. It was dark and musty smelling. As the landlord and I headed down the hallway where the light was better, I saw that he was wearing a sleeveless undershirt with ribbing that widened over his gut. A heavy chain attached to his belt held about a dozen keys, and it took him two tries before he got the right one.

  “This for you and your husband?” he asked as he threw open the door.

  I should have expected this question. I’d already seen three other apartments, and each time the landlord had asked the same thing. “No. Just me.” I dared to look inside. It was a dump. Less than seven hundred square feet, and every inch smelled of cat piss and the carpet had the urine stains to prove it.

  “Just you, huh?” He grunted and, without blinking, told me the place had been rented.

  “Then why did you bother showing it to me?”

  “Listen,” he said, “I’m not renting to you single girls, okay? Half the time you can’t pay your rent, and I ain’t got time to listen to your hard-luck stories.”

  “But I have a job.” I never would have taken that apartment anyway, but now it was a matter of principle.

  “I don’t care if you have a job. You dames are nothing but trouble. You can’t even change a lightbulb. I get calls every time the toilet won’t flush ’cause you broads keep putting your damn pads in there and none of yous knows how to use a plunger. . . .”

  I argued with him for a few more minutes before realizing it was futile. All the single girls I knew either lived at home or in crowded rooming houses for women. Except for M. She had her own apartment and it was nice. Far nicer than anything I could have afforded.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked once while we were taking a coffee break.

  “What do you mean?” M was waiting for the saccharin pellets to dissolve in her cup while leafing through a movie magazine.

  “How did you get your landlord to rent your place to you? And how did you get the price down so you could afford it? All the landlords I’ve met with won’t give me the time of day.”

  “Well, actually,” she said, closing her magazine, “it’s not in my name. My father rented it for me.”

  Well, that explained it.

  My head was still spinning after I’d left the apartment building and boarded the el car. The train was full, and I was standing until a woman in shorts got up and I took her spot. The wicker seat had left the backs of her thighs looking waffled.

  When I got to my stop and stepped out of the train, I spotted a familiar face on the platform. Scott Trevor. Well, my oh my. There was a nice symmetry about it, seeing as we’d met on the
el some four years earlier.

  Scott had been studying business law at Northwestern when I was a freshman at Medill. He lived in Evanston but had night classes at the downtown campus. I lived in the city but had classes up at Evanston, so we commuted into the city together in the evenings. If we had time, we’d grab a beer.

  He was wearing a suit and tie now. A far cry from the law student I used to see leaning against the platform wall, striking a James Dean pose. I could still picture him with the heel of his shoe butted up against the brick and his thumbs tucked inside his blue jeans pockets. He used to notice me, too, saddle-shoed, Peter Pan collared and bobby socked, clutching my book bag. I don’t remember who spoke to whom first or how we started sitting together on the el, but during his last year of law school, that’s what we did.

  Scott looked up and came rushing over as soon as he saw me, the two of us embracing on the platform like reunited lovers in a movie. But we were not lovers, only friends. There was a time when I’d desperately wanted him to ask me out, but he’d had a steady girlfriend. And if there’s one thing I learned about Scott Trevor, it was that he was a stand-up guy. He never would have cheated on his girl. It was just one more thing you had to love about the guy.

  We stood at the base of the stairwell and continued talking. Once again I noticed that I had newsprint smeared down the side of my tunic dress. Scott noticed it, too.

  “Ink,” I said, trying to rub the stains away. “It’s an occupational hazard. I’m at the Tribune now.”

  “The Tribune, huh? Well, good for you. Looks like your journalism classes paid off. How do you like being a reporter?”

  I laughed. “I don’t feel like much of a reporter. They’ve got me on the society pages, and once in a while when I’m lucky, they let me do something for the features department. Lots of weddings and fashion shows, cook-offs and home-decorating tips. The one time I actually had a real story, they gave my byline away.”

  “Give it time,” Scott said. “You’ll make your mark.”

  I smiled. Eliot would have said something like that. I looked into his eyes, and my heart lifted in my chest. I felt light inside. God, it was good to see him.

  Scott glanced at his wristwatch. “Listen, I have to be in court at three, but I have time for a quick cup of coffee if you do.”

  We went to Jimmy’s just a few doors down, tucked under the el. Even inside you could hear the trains roaring overhead. We sat in a corner booth beneath the Coca-Cola clock that chimed a little “Refreshing” chorus on the quarter hour. I glanced at Scott, thinking he was still as handsome as I’d remembered, one of those chiseled types with a strong chin and a genuine smile. He wore his dark brown hair brushed back off his forehead in a high quiff. I noticed he didn’t have a wedding band, but he wasted no time telling me about his girlfriend, Connie. I smiled extra wide, hoping to mask my disappointment.

  “She’s a secretary,” he said. “We work together in the state’s attorney’s office.”

  “Oh, really.” I gave an approving nod. “You did it.”

  “Yep. I’m an assistant state’s attorney now.”

  “You always said you wanted to do that. So, tell me, are you putting all the bad guys away?”

  “Hardly.” He pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and offered me one. “Not that I haven’t tried.” He lit our cigarettes and dropped the match in an ashtray that said, This was stolen from Jimmy’s. “Maybe I was a fool, thinking I could make a difference. I’ve been in and out of so many courts, prosecuting everyone from prostitutes to drunk drivers to murderers. I should have won. They were open-and-shut cases. I should have put the defendants away for years, but instead they ended up walking. After that happens enough times, you start thinking you’re an incompetent lawyer.”

  I propped my elbow on the table, my chin resting on my knuckles. “I can’t imagine you being incompetent at anything.”

  “I got so discouraged I thought about quitting.” He pinched the cigarette filter between his fingers before taking another drag.

  “Really? You were going to quit?”

  “Thought about it.” He nodded. “I felt like a failure—like I wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. Eventually though I started to wise up. I realized that something fishy was going on.”

  “Fishy?” My reporter’s ears perked up.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I have reason to believe that the defense lawyers are paying off the judges. They’re on the take. That’s why their clients are getting off.”

  “Wow—that’s huge. Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  I leaned forward, not wanting to miss anything. “What can you do to stop it?”

  “Apparently nothing. I’ve moaned and bitched about it, and all they do is move me to another court system, where the same damn thing happens. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a corrupt lawyer, and I feel like this city is crawling with them.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Everything inside me had come alive. Adrenaline pumped through me, and I was already composing the lede inside my head: Several Cook County lawyers and judges come under scrutiny for allegedly taking bribes. . . .

  I leaned forward even further and lowered my voice. “Would you be willing to go on the record with that?”

  “Whoa, Jordan,” he said with a laugh. “I’m talking friend to friend here. That’s all this is. I’m just venting.”

  “I know, but you have a story that needs to be told.”

  “Maybe. Maybe someday. But not now. Besides, I’ve got no real proof. It’d be my word against theirs.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “Okay, but let’s just say I wanted to do a piece on this—on the corruption inside the Cook County courts. Would you be willing to give me a quote?”

  He shook his head more emphatically this time. “No way. You can’t use my name.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Jordan?” He gave me a searching look.

  I held up my hands. “I won’t. I promise.” I thought for a moment, my mind still racing. “What about an anonymous quote?”

  “You know damn well that no paper would run a story like this with nothing more than an anonymous quote.”

  “I know. I know. It’s just that I need a story. A real story.” I was getting desperate.

  • • •

  The desperation stayed with me. All I wanted was to get closer to the action. I had some free time the next morning, so I took myself down to City Hall, flashed my credentials and entered a packed conference room where Mayor Daley was holding a press conference.

  I was there strictly as an observer and hid out in the very last row, one of the only women in the room. The reporters from the radio stations were all clustered together with the fellows from the AP and UPI. Men from the other papers were scattered throughout the room. I recognized Walter in the second row and saw the pipe protruding from his mouth each time he turned profile.

  Daley took to the podium and began talking about the city’s plans to crack down on slumlords. “Our citizens can rest assured that their homes will be properly heated with working toilets and plumbing. . . . We won’t stand up for their negligent standard complaints. . . .”

  Everyone exchanged puzzled looks while Daley kept blathering. No one had any idea what he was talking about. But this was typical of a Daley speech. Walter was always coming back from press conferences laughing over some blunder the mayor delivered, his favorites being “Alcoholics Unanimous” and “We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement.”

  For someone who supposedly hated members of the press, Daley certainly did spend a good deal of time with them. And for someone who was so challenged by the English language, he seemed to love to get up in front of a roomful of reporters who were there to capture his every flub.

  A political writer from the Daily News stood up and challenged the mayor, asking what kind of scrutiny would be practiced in order to ensure compliance.

  “Scrutiny?” Daley took o
ffense. His face went bloodred, and I half expected to see steam rising from his ears. “What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. How much scrutiny do you want to have? You go scrutinize yourself! I get scrootened every day, don’t worry, from each and every one of you. . . .”

  When the press conference ended several reporters approached Earl Bush, Daley’s press secretary, for clarification on several of the mayor’s statements. I was standing right there when I heard Bush say, “Don’t print what he said. Print what he meant.”

  Chapter 11

  • • •

  The following Friday afternoon the guys in the city room were clowning around, ganging up on Peter. Someone hid his eyeshade and he had worked himself into a state trying to find it.

  I was on deadline for a fashion feature on self-belted Bermuda shorts. And this was one of the more exciting assignments I’d been given lately. I had ten column inches for this piece, a lot of space to fill with seersucker versus linen, plaid versus solid.

  I was trying to focus when Randy started singing “See the USA / In your Chevrolet. . . .” Meanwhile, Walter and Henry were passing around the new issue of Playboy and debating who had the better centerfold, Jayne Mansfield or Bettie Page.

  “But did you see the jugs on Mansfield?” said Walter, banging his pipe against the ashtray. “I’d take a sultry blonde with a pair of jugs like that over a brunette any day.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Henry laughed and whistled through his teeth. “I wouldn’t kick Bettie Page out of bed. She’s got a sweet pair. . . .”

  “Guys—” I looked up, exasperated. “Do you mind saving the locker-room talk for later?”

  “What’s the matter, Walsh?” said Walter as he fired up his pipe. “Are we offending your delicate sensibilities?”

  “Oh, fuck off, you asshole.”

  “Whoa!” Henry laughed. “She told you.”

  The fellows were still giving me a hard time when Mrs. Angelo interrupted, calling me over to the features desk by waving a piece of copy above her head.