Most of the next week I spent investigating insurance claims for Retail Credit in Jackson Park. Business was so good, I spent seventy-five dollars of Capone's money on a '29 Chevy that was the first car I ever owned: a dark blue coupe with a rumble seat. It made me feel like a rich man, but the people I called on reminded me I wasn't. Not that they were well-to-do- they lived in typical Chicago two-, three-, and six-flat buildings but anybody with steady work and a nice place to live who could afford insurance seemed well-to-do these days. I called on a few merchants, and a lawyer; and a professor at the University of Chicago campus, whose claim was the only one that smelled phony to me: a family heirloom, his grandmother's diamond ring, which now was his wife's, was missing, having been "lost on an outing"; but the description of the ring was specific enough that I thought I might be able to turn it up at one of the North Clark Street pawnshops, and planned to advise Retail Credit as much.
The tree-lined boulevard that I followed out of the university campus was the site of the midway of the last world's fair, the Columbian Exposition. The only overt reminder of that fair- which had begun with much fanfare about the success of the modern age and had ended with the city in the throes of a depression- was the Fine Arts Palace, which had later become the Field Museum, and now was turning into something called the Museum of Science and Industry. Restoration was under way as I drove by, scaffolding still up, as workers worked at getting the joint ready to house exhibits for the next world's fair, opening in May.
I remembered my father talking about the '93 fair: he hadn't liked it; he found it offensive, union man that he was. Within the White City of the fair- its arcanely classical buildings out of sync with Chicago's reputation as the birthplace of modern architecture- fairgoers had lined up for rides on the first Ferris wheel, and men gawked at Little Egypt, while outside, in the Gray City, jobless men had wandered looking for parks to sleep in that weren't littered with Greek and Roman buildings.
Each day as I drove back to the Loop along Leif Eriksen Drive at twilight, angular-shaped structures would rise like a mirage along the lakefront; overtly modern buildings and towers not quite finished, some of them with their skeletons still showing, poked at the sky-, testing it. The winter had been kind, thus far, and snow and cold had not got in the way of the continuing construction of this futuristic city upon land that had, in part, been dredged from the lake.
The new fair was coming: the Century of Progress General Dawes insisted on celebrating, even if it wasn't really a hundred years yet; who was counting?
On the site of the fair, less than a year ago, was a Hooverville. The jobless, the homeless had been made to give way for the Century of Progress. Well, what the hell, maybe the prosperity the fair would bring the city would give the jobless a job or two. And losing the lakefront sure didn't cost Chicago her Hoovervilles.
And the Hoovervilles were my next stop, where Jimmy Beame was concerned. As good a way as any to avoid spending Sunday in my office. And the Hoovervilles wouldn't be closed for the Sabbath, either.
I started with Grant Park, which didn't qualify as a Hooverville, but was an outdoor hotel for the down-and-out just the same; nobody dared put up any shacks there, of course, since the cops would put a quick end to that. But otherwise, as long as things didn't get out of hand, the cops looked the other way- they about had to, since they'd long since stopped picking up vagrants: there wasn't room in the jails to accommodate thai big a crowd.
I walked up there, past the Adams and Congress hotels, and soon was showing Jimmy Beame's smiling well-fed face to gaunt, unshaven men in suits that had once cost more than mine but now were held together with safety pins and string. The men in Grant Park- Lincoln Park was the same- were those who had not succumbed to moving into a Hooverville; they had not accepted their rung on the depression ladder, and were usually not panhandling, yet, were still trying to eke out existences doing odd jobs, like shoveling snow, which is where one old codger I talked to told me he'd got the extra topcoat he had folded up to use as a pillow on the bench he had staked out for himself, this bitter cold Sunday morning.
And there was snow to shovel, now: it had finally hit Chicago; no blizzard, but the few inches we'd got mid week were clinging to the ground, thanks to the consistently cold weather. The old guy with two topcoats was in the minority?; most of the men didn't have even one. and this tall, tough, skinny old bird might be man enough yet to wake up tomorrow morning and still own two.
"I ain't seen this boy," he said, looking at Jimmy Beanie's smiling face. "The gal he's with's a pretty little thing. Like to've met her when I was in my prime."
"That's his sister."
"Looks it." the old guy said.
"Have you eaten today?"
"I ate yesterday."
I started to dig in my pocket; he put a hand on my arm.
"Listen," he said "You plan on showing that picture around? Asking these has-beens and never-wases if they seen this kid?"
I said that I was.
"Then don't give anybody a red cent. Word gets around you're giving out dough, you'll get more information than you can use and none of it'll be worth a slug."
I knew that. But this poor old bastard was in his damn seventies, and out in the cold like this…
He must've known that was going through my mind, though, because he smiled and shook his head.
"Just 'cause I'm the oldest kid on the block, don't make me the neediest or the worse off. If I had some information for you, I'd take your dough. But I don't, so I won't. These other boys won't take that attitude, though. See, I been in this game since before hard times. I been riding the rails twenty years, ever since a woman I lived with for fifteen years throwed me out for reasons that are none of your business. But these other boys… they don't know how to handle this life. It's new to 'em. So don't give any money away. You can't have enough to handle the business you'd do."
I shook his hand, and forced the buck in mine into his. He gave me an almost angry look, but I said, "You worked for that. Your advice was worth it."
He smiled and nodded, and stretched out on his bench for a snooze, the folded topcoat under his head.
Around the base of the statue of Alexander Hamilton, the founder of the Treasury of the United States, sat several more down-and-outers, and I could see they were the sort of man the old hobo had referred to: guys in their twenties, thirties, forties- men who'd had jobs, who'd played by the rules, who'd believed that for the man willing to work there was always work- sitting at the base of Hamilton's statue with faces that still had pride in them. But there was confusion, too, and anger, and as the months passed and these men moved into a shack in one of the Hoovervilles that dotted the outlying parts of town, those faces would rum blank, frozen, and by something more than just the cold.
One of the men, sitting on a step with a Sunday Tribune next to him, had his suitcoat off, and his vest, and was wrapping some newspaper around his trunk, and then buttoned his vest over himself and the papers, and then wrapped some more paper around himself and the vest, before climbing back into the suitcoat.
He noticed me watching him, and had a smile left in him and shared it with me. "Keeps ya from freezin', they tell me," he said.
I didn't have a snappy answer. I managed to say, "Bet it does," and he said, "Gotta make sure you keep one over your heart."
"Oh?"
He shrugged. "That's if you plan on waking up."
"Ever see this guy?"
I showed him the picture.
He studied it. Said. "Any dough in it if I have?"
"No," I said.
"I haven't seen him. I wouldn't even've seen him if there was dough in it."
"Thanks for your trouble." I said.
"Don't mention it," he said, and spread out the rest of the newspaper and lay down on it. He didn't put any on top of him, like blankets, though: there was just enough wind to make that inadvisable.
I showed the picture to the rest of the squatters on Hamilton's pedest
al. None of them had ever seen Jimmy Beame; most of them liked the looks of Mary Ann; some of them seemed past caring about the looks of a Mary Ann, even in an abstract way. I questioned some more men, who sat on benches along the lakefront, looking out at the nearly completed city of tomorrow where a sea of shacks had been, not so long ago. One of the men, a gray-complexioned middle-aged guy in hat and topcoat, both of which had cost some dough, though the topcoat's burtons were mostly gone, hadn't seen Jimmy, either, but suggested I get a copy of the photo made and then he could help me show the picture around, and could turn an honest dollar. I turned him down, without a twinge- like that old guy said. I didn't have enough money to do the job without covering my heart over, and with something tougher than newspaper.
I drove to the Hooverville at Harrison and Canal. It was a vista straight out of Krazy Kat: a surrealistic town of shelters built from tar paper and flattened tin cans, scrap lumber and cardboard boxes, packing crates and old car bodies, chicken wire and flapping tarps, anything the city dumps could provide, with an occasional old stovepipe sticking out at an odd. raffish angle. The hovels were rather neatly arranged in a landscaped setting, with walks carved out of the earth and some trees and bushes planted- barren now, of course, except for a couple of evergreens, one of which had probably served as a Christmas tree; no weeds or rubbish in sight, just a strange little town in the snow, many of its occupants huddling around trash-cans, fires in which burned a vivid orange against the gray-white day. This, and a number of other Hoovervilles near the railroad yards and in vacant lots around town, had been around long enough to have become more than a temporary stop: these people lived here, men and women and children, people who seldom were able to wash themselves or their clothes, but who carried themselves with a quiet dignity that said they would if they could. And from the number of children and pregnant women, life here seemed to be going on.
It was the Hoovervilles like this that were the most promising to me in this search: some of these people had been here well over a year, whereas the hobos of the city and the down-and-outers of Grant and Lincoln Park were transient. If Jimmy Beame had come here by freight, in which case he would just about had to have fallen in temporarily with tramps, he could very likely have come back to a Hooverville to spend the nights during his fruitless search for a desk in Tribune Tower. So it was the permanent residents of the city's Hoovervilles who had the best chance of having seen him.
Nobody at Harrison and Canal had ever seen Jimmy Beame.
I hit three more Hoovervilles, the outlying ones, and called it a Sunday. The next morning I tried the loading platforms on lower Wacker Drive, and none of the men there could identify the picture; neither could the men under the Michigan Avenue bridge. The Hoovervilles near the railroad yards were perhaps the best bet, but I got nowhere. I ended up in Barney's speak about seven Monday night and drank mm till I stopped seeing unshaven faces wearing battered fedoras.
Then I spent two days on the near North Side, going up and down North Clark Street with that goddamn picture in my hand. North Clark Street was not the place to go for a man tired of looking at hobos; it was. in fact, hobohemia. Ramshackle old buildings with halfhearted store fronts catered to the drifters who had been the soul of the street since before hard times, and would be after: peddlers and street hawkers had every corner and many spots in between all sewed up. Just a few blocks from here were the fancy shops of North Michigan Avenue, where wealthy women in furs and jewelry bought more furs and jewelry. But this was North Clark Street: pawnshops, whitetile restaurants, chop-suey joints, chili parlors, poolrooms, sleazy theaters, cigar stores, newsstands, secondhand stores, mission soup kitchens, flophouses; a dingy, shabby street that at night turned into a "little white way" of bright lights and hot jazz, with cabarets and "open" dance halls where lonely men and women from the rooming houses could get acquainted and maybe set up some light housekeeping for a week or a year, as well as tens-cents-a-dance halls, where the hookers plied their trade.
But the hobos shuffling these streets, filling the men's hotels and rooming houses, hadn't seen Jimmy Beame; at least not the ones I talked to. Or on LaSalle, Dearborn, State, or Rush streets; or the cross streets below Chicago Avenue, where dozens of flophouses had a bed- or something like a bed- for a homeless gent… assuming he had a quarter a night or a dollar a week. And a lot of people in Chicago didn't.
Didn't have a quarter, and didn't know who the hell Jimmy Beame was, either. That would seem to sum up the hundreds of unshaven, shabbily dressed men I showed that picture to.
I spent a day trying the flops along South Clark. South State, and West Madison- stopped in at the Dawes Hotel for Men. the skid-row charity hotel the General had founded in memory of his dead son. And got nowhere.
Back to North Clark Street. Between Clark and Dearborn streets, in Washington Square, in front of the Newberry Library, was Bughouse Square. If my father were alive, and down-and-out. he'd be here: at night, crowds of men would stand along its curbstones, listening to the oratory of whoever was atop the several soapboxes, propounding upon the favorite topics: the evils of capitalism, and the nonexistence of God. The more intellectual of the drifters and down-and-outers would tend to find their way here, this focal point for reds and I.W.W. sympathizers, intellectuals and agitators. My father would have been at home here.
During the daytime, the soapboxes stood vacant, mostly, and the benches and curbs were taken up by the same sort of unshaven faces I'd been looking at all day for days now (not to mention in my sleep). The major difference was a number of these shabbily dressed citizens were reading newspapers, not wearing them.
A young man on the down-and-out, disillusioned by his rejection from the great newspapers he so idolized, might well end up in Bughouse Square.
I asked several men and got a negative response; then a pale, younger one with wire-frames and longish brown hair seemed to know the face.
"Yes." he said. "I know who this is."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. It's Mary Ann Beame. She lives in a studio in Tower Town. She's an actress."
Great
"Yeah. Well thanks, kid."
"Isn't that worth something?"
"Not really."
"I'm not begging or anything. I just think since I identified the picture…"
"It's the boy I'm trying to find."
"Oh. Him I don't know. Why don't you look up Mary Ann? Maybe she knows him."
Til try that."
"I could use fifty cents. Or a quarter. I could use some lunch."
"Sorry."
"I'm not a hobo, you understand. I'm an inventor."
"Oh really." I started to move away.
He got up from the bench; he wasn't tall; his eyes were brighter than a puppy's- in terms of shine, anyway.
"I invented a lens," he said, and reached in a corduroy jacket pocket and withdrew a round thick polished piece of glass double the size of a silver dollar.
"That's nice."
"It enables a person to see things a billion times bigger than they really are." He held it up for the sun to bounce off it: the sun was under a cloud.
"No kidding."
"I ground it myself, with emery cloth." He was walking beside me. now; he leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone, touching my arm. "I've been offered a thousand dollars for it. I'm holding out for five thousand."
I removed his hand from my arm. carefully, with a polite smile; I even made some conversation: "How'd you find out that lens was so strong?"
He smiled. Smug. Proud. "I experimented on a bedbug. I put a live bedbug under this glass, and I could see every muscle in its body. I could see its joints and how it worked them. I could see its face; no expression in its eyes, though. Bugs don't have much native intelligence, you know."
"Yeah, I heard that. So long."
He was behind me now. but calling out to me. "You couldn't do that with an ordinary lens!"
No. you couldn't.
I drank too much rum that ni
ght, and decided I had to get rid of this fucking case before it turned me into a lush.
In a little over a week I'd be going to Florida; tomorrow. I had to see Mary Ann Beame and tell her I couldn't find her brother.
So the next afternoon I drove north on Michigan Avenue, past the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower and the Medinah Athletic Club and the Allerton Hotel, toward the landmark those skyscrapers now dwarfed: the old water tower, a Gothic churchlike building with its tower thrust in the air like a gray stone finger- perhaps a middle finger, considering the talk circulating of late that the North Side's sole survivor of the Great Fire was to be torn down to speed the flow of Michigan Avenue traffic.
The water tower, at Michigan and Chicago avenues, gave its name to Tower Town. Chicago's Greenwich Village, and was at the district's center- though the exact boundaries of Tower Town were a bit hard to define. It vaguely encroached on the Gold Coast, north of Division Street, but came to an abrupt halt at Grand Avenue, on the south. It sneaked west of Clark Street, and crossed Michigan Avenue to move eastward into Streeterville. an area named after a squatter who lived in a shack (but which now ran to some of the fanciest apartment buildings in the city)- State Street was its main north-south road, and Chicago Avenue bisected it east-west.
True Detective Page 17