“Why the hell not.” I tugged at his belt. He slipped off my jacket. I lifted his shirt out of the waistband. He pushed my blouse over my shoulders. I giggled into his mouth. He whispered spicy words into my ear. I dragged him by his tie toward the bedroom. He followed. His eyes seductive. His grin irresistible. All I could think was, God, he’s gorgeous.
And then the lights went out, plunging the apartment into darkness. I yelped. Stamped my foot. And called out, “Mr. Daugherty! The fuses!”
My landlord called from next door. “Yeah, yeah ....” A few seconds later, his door opened and footsteps tromped downstairs.
Pennyroyal pulled me back into his arms. Only the sharp outline of his face appeared against the inky blackness. He caressed my face with the stroke of his fingertips, his touch light and almost tentative, as if asking permission. He lifted my chin and lowered his mouth once more. We kissed again, but the magic was gone. We separated, suddenly self-conscious. I buttoned my blouse. He tucked in his shirt. We cleared our throats. It was an awkward moment. Timing, I decided, was everything.
“Well,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Well,” he repeated.
“Could you do me a favor?” I asked Pennyroyal in the dark. “Could you get me a gun?”
He snuggled against me with his chin resting on the crown of my head and his arms wrapping me up like a big red bow. I drank in the essence of him, a mixture of animal magnetism and sexual frustration. He swallowed, and I felt his Adam’s apple move up and down. He was hedging.
“I’m not planning on actually using it,” I assured him.
“No one ever does,” he said, pulling back and wiping his eyes over my face. In the darkness, he would have made out the outline of my set jaw, the glint of my dilated eyes, and the frown of my pursed mouth. His lips traced the shape of mine, the kisses surprisingly gentle.
“Are you and Libby getting a divorce?” I asked.
“Haven’t worked it out yet.” He trailed tender lips along the curve of my neck.
Throwing my head back, I said, “When you work it out, I want to be the first to know.”
He laughed and kissed me again, working his mouth across mine and tasting sweetness along with bitterness.
“How’d the sting come off? Did you get your man?”
“What sting? Which man?”
“This is me you’re talking to.”
“Oh-h-h, that sting. Tomorrow night.” When his eyes sparkled, I knew it wouldn’t be tomorrow night, either.
The lights flickered, flared, and came back on. “You can stay if you want. In case whoever was driving the Fury followed me home.”
“If I get you that gun,” he said, running his fingers through my hair, “you can’t tell anyone where you got it.”
“I’m not a Palooka.”
He thought about it, but not for long, and reached under his jacket. His hand came away with a pearl-handled Remington. “Has a hair trigger,” he said. “Takes two .41 Rimfire short-caliber bullets.”
I turned the derringer over. “Is it clean?” I didn’t have to ask. Most cops carried untraceable firearms in case they found themselves in tricky situations.
“You do know how to use it.” His wasn’t exactly a question, more like an imploring wish.
“Do I know how to use it.” Mine wasn’t an answer, more like an immodest brag.
Pennyroyal raised his eyebrows, unsure if he ought to take me seriously.
“Daddy was a crack shot. Used to take me to the driving range every Saturday afternoon.”
He looked dubious until he remembered who ‘daddy’ was.
“I mean it,” I said. “Stay.” We both knew I didn’t really mean it.
He slung an arm around my shoulders and walked me to the door. After chucking me under the chin and giving me a parting kiss, he left.
Chapter 13
I SLEPT THROUGH the alarm clock and opened my eyes at a quarter of nine. Sunshine and bird songs made for a cranky awakening. Humidity blanketed the morning. The air was sluggish. Forecasts called for the lower nineties. I’d run out of coffee. The milk turned sour. I braced myself with a cold shower, a dry bowl of Cheerios, and an ice-cold glass of Coca-Cola. I dressed in something white, light, and sleeveless.
A parking ticket flapped against the Bel Air’s windshield, which didn’t brighten my day any. A traffic jam made me grouchy. The guard who told me I couldn’t park in Freddie Bickel’s space while he was out of town made me want to kill. Instead, I smiled sweetly and slipped him a fin. A pigeon dropping landed on my shoe. As long as it didn’t land in my hair, I figured this was a better day than most.
The Standard Tower was situated on a prominence just north of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Its Gothic architecture rose from a rectangular base, switched to a geometric square, and finished off its full forty floors with an octagonal tower. The modern bastion—dedicated to the power of the written word—paid homage to the wedding cake cathedrals of Medieval France, replete with gargoyles and griffins. To enter the lobby was to step into a tabernacle filled with the idols of journalism instead of the gods and goddesses of the seven celestial heavens. I’d been worshipping at its altar for a year and a half, and still got a rush of excitement every time I entered the hallowed halls. Today, though, I was ready to bite off the head of anybody who got in my way, yet I managed to put on a happy face and greet everyone with a hearty good morning, including the elevator operator.
When I waltzed into the City Room, it was humming like a hot water heater with a blown valve. Though news of Richard Byrnes’s unseemly demise finally appeared in the morning edition, most of the salient details had been left out, not the least of which were two well-placed bullet holes. Newsmen resented violations to their First Amendment rights, but clandestine agreements with City Hall came with the territory. Even if we understood it, none of us had to like it.
Metal desks stood in battle array. Typewriters clacked. Air conditioning hummed. Voices melded into a cacophonous chorus of complaint. Stripped to shirtsleeves, reporters hustled up and down the aisles, shouting battle cries and grumbling impatience.
Placed directly outside the senior editor’s office, an inconspicuous desk was marked with a nameplate inscribed with my name. I hardly ever sat behind it, on it, or near it since I was usually hustling out on the streets where reporters ought to be. Nobody had much to complain about because I always made deadline. Instead of heading to my desk, I made a left turn and sat down with one of the few reporters unembarrassed to be seen talking to me. I said just one word. “Pennyroyal.”
Sam Grado was typing two-fingered on a black Underwood typewriter. “What about the dick?” Before the war, Sam worked as a stringer for a paper in Philadelphia. As a war correspondent, he’d seen it all, from Omaha beach to Iwo Jima. After the war, he took a stint as a foreign correspondent with CBS. After a bellyful of exotic locations, he bought a one-way ticket stateside and landed an assignment with the Daily Standard. He wasn’t the ambitious type, but he was a pro. His telephone was always ringing with tips and inside information. He could give you the hot skinny on just about anybody in town, and he’d never once steered me wrong.
“Why isn’t he pulling duty downtown?” I don’t know why I never thought to ask before, but most homicide detectives worked out of the centralized Detective Bureau.
Gravity had bested Sam in the pull of his long face, the droopiness of his jowls, and the length of his chin. As khaki as a military uniform—drab, dreary, and dull—Sam never worked an agenda, aside from forcing me to drag the facts out of him. When I was direct, though, he always went straight to the point. “Because Bloody Maxwell needs a full-time dick. Because Arezzo’s unofficial headquarters ... otherwise known as the Sis-Boom-Bah Lounge ... is around the corner from Bloody Maxwell. And because Pennyroyal’s wife is the daughter of Arezzo’s second-cousin.”
I was too surprised to do anything more than nod. “Hello. Are we talking about the same Libby Pennyroyal?”
“Police lieutenant, right? Working the Organized Crime Division. Close your mouth, Iris. It’ll catch flies.”
After recovering from a stupor, I said, “Why’s it being kept quiet?”
“Why do you think?” His grizzly face made up for the lack of hair on his head. All in all, it was a kindly face. He always looked out for me as far as he was able, which wasn’t very far.
It was my turn to give him a tip. “She’s having an affair with his former partner.”
I could see his mind spinning. He was putting two and two together, and the answer wasn’t four. “Watch your step, Iris.”
I understood what he meant. A man whose wife was having an affair is usually on the hunt. Pennyroyal didn’t need excuses. He was always on the hunt. But for a woman working in the nearly exclusive male club of a city newspaper, it was important to assume an appearance of unflappability. “Always do,” I lied.
“Grenadine!”
I hesitated looking toward the source of the familiar and very grating voice. Brad Innes was standing in the doorway of his office. He crooked his finger before turning back inside. Silently laughing, Sam had already returned to pecking out his story one index finger at a time. I took my sweet time making the trip from Sam’s desk to my editor’s office. Clutching hands at my back, I paused just inside the doorway, fearful of what waited for me on the other side.
The office was standard fare. One well-used typewriter. One telephone. One window with a lake view. And a dozen sharpened pencils stuffed into a coffee mug. Brad had resettled himself behind his desk, sleeves rolled up and one arm slung across an ink blotter piled high with a month’s worth of morning editions. His chair was swiveled at an oblique angle so he could better focus on a framed map of Seattle. He motioned for me to shut the door. “Promise, Grenadine. I won’t do you on the desk. Not enough room.”
He possessed the usual good looks of a third-generation Irishman. Blue irises peered out from a face permanently set into a scowl. Silver sprouted at his temples. Scar tissue from a tracheotomy marked the base of his throat. He had a petite wife at home whose maiden name was Polish, making his children mongrels in the eyes of his family. He flagged me inside. “Sit down. Take a load off.”
“Privacy you want, privacy you got.” Girding myself for the grilling to come, I shut the door and occupied an armless chair facing his desk.
“The case of the green-eyed dick?” he said. “Off limits.”
“I see,” I said casually, even though my head was about to explode. “I take it the general sent down his marching orders.”
He shrugged and began folding a paper airplane. “Stick with soft news. You’re good at it.”
“I was first on the scene. Before the cops arrived.”
“Did I or did I not send you out on a no-brainer?”
I reminded him that I filed the O’Hare story last night.
“I meant the other no-brainer.”
“I can chew gum and walk at the same time.” When he lifted his eyebrows, I said,” “I put the Southern fried chicken up in a suite at the Harmon House. While he feels out the town, I’ll feel him up.”
His concerned older-brother face appeared. I had to look on the bright side. As self-appointed older brother, he never once made a play for me. And he’d been more than fair. What Monica intimated last night wasn’t far from the truth. The Grenadine name was probably the main reason Brad Innes rescued me from obits. “Just make sure to file your no-brainer story in time for the Sunday edition.”
When Brad brought me over, he rotated me like a Cadillac hubcap through advertising, circulation, copy desk, editorial, op-ed, and production, grooming his protégé for greater things to come. When classroom instruction ended, he sat me down and explained the realities of the news game. I’d have to work my buns off from here on out, earn every assignment and every byline, and hustle twice as hard as my male counterparts at half the pay. It was the first I knew I was earning slave wages.
“Have I ever been late?” I said.
I had told him straight up that I wouldn’t use my family connections. It was up to me, he said, but I would still have to come across with the goods. Unless I wanted to go back to writing obits, he added snidely. Or I could try my hand at the advice column. A slot was opening up on the gossip column, too, he heard. And the housewife column was always available. Had I been a man, I would have wiped the smirk off his face and walked out. Instead, I went home that night and poured my disappointment into a bottle of red wine. After a weekend of sulking and hiccupping, I realized Brad Innes had handed me a bright yellow daisy. I could throw it in the garbage or plant it in the ground.
“Speaking of which,” he said, “I don’t remember asking you to chase down a tip from the manager at the Harmon House Hotel.” He flagged his index finger in a suggestive manner. “You and Damian Kane aren’t―?”
“He’s married. Solid gold ring on his left hand.”
“When has that ever stopped a guy?”
A ’51 calendar hung behind his head. A date in August was X’ed out with black ink. For Brad Innes, time stopped on August, the eighteenth, the day his daughter Katie rode her bicycle through a stop sign and a Hudson broadsided her. She’d never be the same again. Neither would Brad.
“If you’re worried about the expense ...” Everybody assumed John Grenadine’s daughter was a pampered society chick. Not true, even though I went through the debutante routine, coming out at a bash at the Drake Hotel. Ever since, I received carte blanche at every high society event in town. I chose carefully, handpicking families and their crossbred sons and daughters descended from plantation owners and industrialists whose pedigrees were impeccable and pure Anglo-Saxon. Sweethearts and heartthrobs who didn’t have to prove themselves, except to prove they could marry well or take over the family business. The Grenadines were considered new money and not particularly clean money. The hoity-toity stomached us like a side order of broccoli, a fancy green vegetable that dressed up the plate but was studiously avoided because the word ended in a vowel. Most of my father’s clients had names ending in a vowel, so my acquaintances took the broccoli with a pat of butter and a dash of salt to aid digestion. But it didn’t mean I couldn’t get access to people, places, and favors.
“Just so the paper doesn’t have to fork over any dough.”
What was I going to tell him? That an industrial magnet owned majority interest in the Harmon House, and if he wanted to make deals unencumbered by unions and government graft, he had to suck up to the mob, which meant it was good business to play nice with the daughter of one of the Outfit’s most valued attorneys. So I didn’t tell him. Instead, I said, “Something you should know. Something Seagraves left out of her article.”
The report of how the mayor’s aide was found dead of suspicious causes in the Harmon Hotel skipped over details about two lead slugs and one saluting cucumber. The mayor’s official statement, expressing heartfelt sympathy to the family of a fine young man cut down in the prime of his life, appended an abridged bio of Byrnes’s accomplishments. You could rage at the unfairness, but in the scheme of things, how important was the untimely demise of a gray-suited bureaucrat? As it turned out, not much.
Brad said, “By article, you mean the lead story in this morning’s edition.”
“Page two,” I corrected him.
“Bylined.”
“Below the fold.”
“Accompanied by a photo taken at the crime scene.”
“Grainy and amateurish.” I started to get up. Innes gestured for me to stay put. I sat back down and crossed my legs. He wagged his hand impatiently. I spilled the beans. “Byrnes didn’t buy it at the hotel. Also, he was with a woman at or around the time of death.”
“Color of her hair?”
“I’m good, but not that good,” I said, but added, “Blonde.”
Innes finished folding the paper airplane and tossed it. It took a nosedive. He retrieved it.
“If you want me off the story―”
“You already assigned it to Monica Seagraves.”
“Miss Seagraves was given the privilege of writing one story. She doesn’t own it.”
“Miss Seagraves, is it?”
Innes had a thing going with her. Office hanky-panky behind closed doors. Lunch every Wednesday at the Ambassador East Hotel. A dozen red roses delivered to her apartment every Thursday morning. “You were right about the general. He called me personal.”
I gulped and waited. He launched the airplane again. It looped, took a nosedive like the last time, and crash-landed into a fleet of paper airplanes piled below the wall clock. “What did he say?” I asked.
“Ordered me to yank you off the story.”
“Any wiggle room?”
He picked up another paper airplane and ran his eyes down the wing. “None that I can see.”
“What if I refuse to be yanked?”
“Your name will be blacklisted. Not just in this town. All over Illinois. Wisconsin and Indiana, too. Throw in New York for good measure.”
“What about Peoria?”
“Peoria’s always available. I hear they’re looking for a part-time agony columnist.” He sent the airplane on a westerly trajectory. Once airborne, it hovered, looped halfway around the office, and landed on top of a bookcase. If Brad put as much energy into his job as he did his airplane fleet, he’d be next in line for Editor-in-Chief. “Ride with it, Grenadine.”
Unsure I heard him correctly, I said, “Say again.”
He spun his chair around and faced me. “Why do you think I hired you? To sit on your ass?”
“Not if you want to waste more brains, brazenness, brunette beauty, and brass-neck guts than a bangtail at the racetrack.”
“Then you know the odds, Grenadine.”
The Green-Eyed Dick Page 10