True Crime

by Collins, Max Allan

  So I sat in a small room on the second floor by the open window, the fan on a table not far from me, blades clicking on the wire mesh as they whirled around, attempting to cool me. I had pulled up an easy chair and was as comfortable as possible, my tie loosened, my shirt unbuttoned.

  Down on the street, as morning headed toward noon, the sidewalks were filled with men in shirt sleeves and girls in light summery dresses. The dresses clung sweatily to the girls, which in many cases made for pleasant viewing; the equally sticky shirts of the men, with their underarm sweat circles, didn’t. There weren’t many school-age kids around—they were at the beaches, mostly—but matronly gals in shade hats and tent dresses prowled the sidewalks, carrying shopping bags, looking cross and wishing they were younger and weighed less. I wished I could grant them their wish.

  In this heat nobody but working stiffs stayed indoors. Even in cool weather, though, there’d have been plenty of activity on this street. Broadway and Wilson was the heart of Uptown’s considerable commercial district; parked autos lined either side of the street, and cabs prowled constantly by, often finding takers.

  Polly’s café was doing a brisk business, as people headed in for Cokes and lemonades. Cooling off was the priority of the day. College boys (or anyway college-age boys) sat on little stoops in doorways, or leaned against lampposts, often nibbling at ice-cream cones that threatened to melt down their arms, or drinking orange juice out of paper cups that gave them citrus mustaches. The boys were watching the girls in the summery, sweat-clinging dresses, the little rats. Shame on ’em.

  Hard times seemed not to have hit Uptown as hard as some parts of the city; but there were, now and then, reminders: several men wearing homemade sandwich signs wandered by, asking in bold hand letters: WANTED—A DECENT JOB. Then something personally descriptive, like FAMILY MAN, 43. In smaller letters beneath were printed job résumés, including phone numbers and addresses.

  From down the street I heard Louis Armstrong, faintly; I craned my head out the window. There was a shoeshine parlor down there, on Polly’s side of the street; the colored boys in their undershirts and wide pants were singing along with the Victrola, mimicking Satchmo, as they whapped the cloths across their customers’ hot feet. They even danced a little. But just a little. In this heat I was surprised they could sing. Jazz does wonders.

  Buttoning my shirt, snugging my tie, I went down to the bar and bought a bottle of cold beer and back up to the room and spent an hour drinking it; the last swig was warm as spit. By now there’d been any number of men going in the sandwich shop alone who might have been Polly’s boyfriend; but no one had stayed longer than it would take to have a Coke or anyway a sandwich. Polly was working the tables, and I caught a glimpse of her occasionally in the café window, taking an order at, or clearing, one of the front tables. Nothing seemed to be going on in Polly’s life today except waitressing.

  She still seemed familiar to me. And I still hadn’t placed her.

  By 2:00 P.M. my stomach was making noise, so I went down on the street and gave one of the college-age boys half a buck to go across the street and buy me a ham-and-cheese sandwich at Polly’s café. He didn’t ask why I didn’t want to cross the street myself; he just went for the sandwich, brought it to me in a paper bag five minutes later, and earned the quarter’s change. Maybe now he’d go rent himself an electric fan.

  The sandwich was okay, the bread was fresh at least, but another beer from the bar downstairs to wash it down was better. Afternoon came, and the heat let up a bit; down to the mid-nineties. Customers, many of them male, and unaccompanied, went into the café; but none stayed long enough to rate even a suspicious glimmer.

  By 7:00 P.M., I’d had five beers and as many trips to the hall john. The beers had taken no inebriating toll on me, spread out over the eleven or so hours I’d been here. But they—and the clicking bladed fan—had kept me awake, and alive. Evening was on its way—though it was still sunny out; who the hell’s idea was this daylight savings time crap, anyway?—and a reprieve from the communal hot seat would soon be in Chicago’s grasp.

  Shortly after seven, Polly Howard (or Hamilton, as she was calling herself here) stepped out of the café, wearing a pink-and-white print dress with a bow in front. She must’ve changed out of her waitress uniform in the back. Despite having worked a twelve-hour shift in unbearable heat, she looked rather fresh, her reddish-brown hair bouncing above her shoulders as she looked side to side, a small purse in her hands held like a fig leaf in front of her.

  Since she seemed to be waiting for someone, someone who might be about to pick her up, I hurried out of the room and down the stairs and then slowed to a saunter to find an inconspicuous spot on the street, to continue watch. I wandered up to the corner and picked up a Daily News from the stand; making like I was reading as I walked, I could see Polly standing there, patiently, waiting for her ride. Men and boys walking by gave her the eye, but got nothing back for their trouble.

  Maybe Polly was faithful to her traveling-salesman hubby.

  A cab pulled up and a man got out.

  He was a handsome, dapper-looking dark-haired man with a pencil mustache and gold-rim glasses and a tailored gray suit, suitcoat slung over his arm. He was hatless. Not tall. Not short.

  The cab stayed in place, motor purring as the man held the door open for Polly and she flashed him a smile that said her husband was in a lot of trouble.

  He got in after her, and the cab pulled away, east on Wilson.

  A second later I flagged the next eastbound cab and climbed in back and leaned forward and pointed.

  “Follow that car,” I said.

  4

  The red taillights of the Yellow cab up ahead of my Checker were soon headed south, down Broadway; when we cut over on Diversey, toward the lake, it was obvious we were headed for the Loop. The guy in the gold-rim glasses and mustache must’ve wanted to impress pretty Polly, because they could’ve almost fallen onto the El, as close to the Wilson Avenue Station as her café was. And here he was cabbing it downtown. Throwing his—and my—money around.

  That fifty-buck retainer was looking smaller and smaller.

  When they got out in front of the Morrison Hotel on Madison, just a few blocks from my office—which I’d vacated to be closer to Polly, remember—I really began to resent the way the guy was spending my money. The Morrison had a traveler’s lounge where I freshened up each day, thanks to an arrangement the landlord of my building had made for me. Being led here was like following your wife and her boyfriend to your own house. Somehow I was beginning to feel as much a sucker as my poor traveling-salesman client.

  Well, Polly and her pal probably weren’t here for the mattress—there were a few thousand less conspicuous places in the city for a one-nighter than a hotel in the heart of the Loop—so they had to be here for the nightlife.

  Which irked me, because the Uptown area—which they’d fled by cab—was, at night, the North Side’s Great White Way. A hodgepodge of nightclubs and restaurants, to be sure, with its share of sleazy joints, but also ritzy ones and everything between. Why come to the Loop? Except to impress a dame and blow your money. And mine.

  My cab went on by as the mustached man, his arm gently around the beaming Polly’s shoulder, went in the main entrance. I paid the cabbie around the corner—a buck for the ride and a dime tip—got out, made a note of the expense in my little notebook, and went around to the Clark Street entrance.

  The Morrison lobby was plush, lots of gray marble and dark wood and stuffed furniture and bronze lamps and a ceiling that went up to heaven, which by Chicago standards is a couple of stories. At the fancy marble-and-bronze check-in there was no sign of Polly and her boyfriend. I had a good idea where they were.

  A marble staircase led down to the Terrace Garden, a big shiny art-deco dine-and-dance spot the before-and-after theater crowd had made popular. We were in the “during” mode at the moment, where theater was concerned; but the place was still doing nice business. Gre
at to see so many people had money to spread around in times like these—too bad I wasn’t one of them.

  Polly and friend were seated at one of the round tables in the circular, terraced dining area that surrounded the sunken dance floor, where even now Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played their bouncy, mellow brand of hokum while couples in evening attire—white coats for the men, low-cut formals for the ladies—mingled with real people, a certain number of world’s fair tourists among them, who met the dress code (ties for men, no slacks for women) but would never make the society page. Part of the reason business here was so brisk was the pleasant, even icy feel of the air conditioning. A man could get used to not drowning in his own sweat, given half a chance.

  The food here was first-rate, but not cheap; I talked it over with my stomach and decided to take a table, despite being uncomfortable about calling attention to myself by dining alone—this was a couples crowd, almost exclusively, and I should probably just go stand at the bar. But what the hell. I ordered the boiled brisket of beef with horseradish sauce, made a mental notation of the expense (not wanting to take out my little notebook), and sipped some rum while I waited for my meal, watching Polly and her friend holding hands across their table, on the other side of the room from me, seated on the terrace level just above the dance floor, just as I was.

  Polly was animated and constantly smiling; it was a nice smile, but it tried a little too hard. He seemed taken with her, but was more reserved: she seemed to be doing most of the talking. They had cocktails—gin fizzes, it looked like—and took in a dance before their main course arrived. They danced right by me, at one point, and that’s when I recognized Polly.

  She, however, didn’t recognize me; or didn’t seem to, when I just barely glanced at them, between bites of brisket, over the little white fence that separated us, as they floated by.

  Still, there was no mistaking her.

  “Nate, you bum,” a familiar tenor voice said. “You’re supposed to be working!”

  I touched a napkin to my mouth and smiled up at my friend Barney Ross, who was wearing a tux he looked uncomfortable in and had a good-looking redheaded girl on his arm, which made a more comfortable fit.

  “I am working,” I said softly. “Why don’t you and your lovely friend fill these two empty chairs before you blow my cover?”

  Barney’s bulldog-cute face made an embarrassed smirk and the puppy-dog brown eyes rolled, and he pulled a chair out for his lady and sat down between us and shrugged and said, “So tonight I’m a shlemiel. I’ll pick up the check.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I got a client who’ll pick it up.”

  His grin turned lopsided. “Gee, that’s white of you, Nate. I think I’ll have lobster.”

  “I’m not that white, chum. I don’t pick up checks for rich guys, even when I’m getting expenses.”

  The redhead smiled at hearing Barney called “rich,” but it embarrassed him.

  “Rich, smich,” he said. “A few years, I’ll be out of work and borrowing from you.”

  “Keep playing the ponies and you may be right.”

  Barney’s only vice was gambling; that, and being a soft touch for his old West Side pals. We’d grown up together on Maxwell Street, when I’d been his family’s Shabbes goy (my father was a Jew, but nonpracticing; my late mother’s Catholicism never caught on with me, either). By the time I was a teenager, I was living in Douglas Park, but I’d come back Sundays to Maxwell Street where Barney and I worked together—Barney as a “puller,” a barker in front of the store who often physically yanked prospective buyers off the street and inside; and me taking over from there, with the sales pitch. A couple of roughnecks, but Barney was rougher, a scrappy little street fighter who’d had to fend for himself and his family since he was a kid of thirteen. That was when thieves shot Barney’s father in the Rasofsky’s hole-in-the-wall dairy, and killed him.

  By the way, in case you didn’t recognize the name, Barney Ross grew up to be another kind of fighter, namely the lightweight champion of the world. And just this past May he’d taken the legendary Jimmy McLarnin in NYC for the welterweight crown, as well.

  “This is Pearl,” he said, gesturing to the attractive redhead. “The gal I been telling you about.”

  I reached a hand across the table and took hers, shook it; her hand was smooth and warm and she had a nice smile. Her eyes were big and blue, and her nose was a little big. It looked good on her, though. She had a low-cut blue velvet formal on; her bosom was milky white and there was plenty of it.

  “So you’re Barney’s private detective friend,” she said.

  I put a finger to my lips in a shush gesture. “Let’s make that our little secret, for the time being.”

  Barney put an arm around her shoulder and said, sotto voce, “Like he said before, he’s working. He’s tailing somebody or something. Mum’s the word.”

  She crinkled her chin in an embarrassed, attractively earthy little smile. “Sorry.”

  “S’okay,” I said, smiling back. “Let me get you something from the bar…” I started to wave for a waiter.

  “Thanks, Nate, but no,” Barney said. “I’m in training, remember?”

  “But Pearl’s not. Are you, Pearl? And have you eaten yet?”

  They admitted they hadn’t, and I insisted they join me.

  “A man alone at a place like this sticks out like a sore thumb,” I explained. “Stick around and make me look legit.”

  They ordered—Pearl asked for a Pink Lady, and both of them had the baked finnan haddie à la Moir—and Barney said, “Pearl’s in from New York through the weekend, Nate.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “I, uh…wanted her to meet Ma, and my brothers and my sis.”

  “This sounds serious.”

  Barney almost blushed; Pearl just smiled.

  “Be true to this guy, Pearl,” I said, “or someday you might have somebody like me following you around.”

  Barney leaned forward conspiratorially. “Is that what this is about?”

  I nodded. “That pretty apple-cheeked lass and the mustached gent across the way are, well, naughty. Or so it would seem.”

  “His wife your client?” Barney asked.

  “Her husband,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Dirty business you’re in.”

  “Beats having some guy bash your head in.”

  He smiled a little, cocked his head. “If you’re trying to describe the way I make my living, let me remind you a couple things. First, I make my living by having some guy try to bash my head in—nobody’s quite got the job done yet. And second, my work pays better than yours.”

  I took a last bite of brisket. “Yeah, but you can’t eat on the job.”

  Pearl was watching us closely, and seemed to have figured out that Barney and me needling each other was just a sign of how deep our friendship ran.

  “Incident’ly,” he said, “Pearl’s got her own room, here. Just wanted you to know, before you got any ideas.”

  “Barney, with you everything’s got to be kosher,” I said. “Personally, I enjoy being a fallen angel.”

  “You’re getting your religions mixed up, Nate.”

  “It’s the Irish in me.”

  Barney lived in a suite here in the Morrison; and the hotel had even converted a portion of one of their exercise rooms in the traveler’s lounge into a mini-gym—good public relations, having a champ on the premises, accessible to the people.

  Pearl, trying to fathom what must’ve seemed at times to be psychic communication between Barney and me, said, “How did you know Nate was supposed to be working tonight?”

  Barney looked for a way to say it, but I said it for him.

  “Barney’s my landlord,” I said. “Has he taken you to his ‘Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge’ yet?”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “It’s about the only investment he’s made that doesn’t have four legs. Anyway, he owns the whole building, in case he
hasn’t mentioned it, and my office is there. In exchange for rent, I stay there at night and keep an eye on the premises. On nights my work takes me away from the building, I call the landlord, to warn him his night watchman’s not going to be around.”

  “Which is seldom,” Barney said, as if defending his generosity to Pearl, who looked at him with a warm glow that had admiration in it as well as love. I hoped it would last. I hoped they would never have some sorry son of a bitch like me following either one of them around.

  Their food came, and I asked Barney about his next fight.

  “Not till September,” he said.

  “McLarnin again?”

  With visible discomfort, he said, “McLarnin again. Fair’s fair—gotta give him another shot at it.”

  I’d seen that fight, and while Barney won by a wide margin, he’d taken some hard shots from McLarnin, who was a power-house hitter, particularly his short right cross, which had sent many a good man into dreamland. McLarnin was heavier than Barney, but not slow. The rematch would be no picnic.

  “I’ll have some tune-up bouts between now and then,” he shrugged. “No title defenses, though.”

  Across the way Polly and her date were heading down to dance some more; Lombardo was doing a version of “Pennies from Heaven” that would’ve made a marshmallow sick to its stomach.

  “Don’t you just love that,” Pearl said, looking out at the dance floor.

  “The music, you mean?” I asked.

  “Of course! What else?”

  “The finnan haddie?”

  She turned to Barney. “Make an honest woman out of me. Dance with me.”