Dark Blonde (11 page)

I stopped at a newsstand and picked up a fresh copy of the
Sun-Times
. They played the ducked angle a bit softer than the
Trib
, citing Henry Gateswood’s long career and many contributions to the civic welfare, blah blah blah. There was respectful reference to the mysterious murder at the estate and a picture of a haggard Henry behind a bank of microphones, making the announcement. Julia was not in the photo.

After reading the articles, Rick felt it might be better to head for the office and try to get in touch with the Gateswood’s by phone.

When we got there the first thing I did was lock all but one smut picture and a financial summary page in the safe. These I folded lengthwise and slipped into my inside pocket, then dialed the Gateswood estate. The phone was consistently busy. While I kept dialing, Rick made notes about the case and looked over the expense ledgers I’d brought, then placed them in the safe.

 
“I’ve never been an accountant, but took enough classes to read a financial statement. Some of these amounts for the illustrious barrister are definitely excessive. Corresponding services provided are not explained. Unless he’s been handling matters extraneous and nefarious, matters we know nothing about, which, I might add, is commingling, illegal in political campaigns, then they won’t stand up to scrutiny. The state bar ethics committee would be a rapt audience.”

“Following you around is better than a Berlitz vocabulary course. You should have been one of those professors you were in thick with. Seriously, what worries me, safes can be cracked,” I said, pacing and looking down on Addison Avenue. “Once Brockway and Whipple know we have these pictures, they’d stop at nothing to get them, get at us. Gail lost her head over them. We can’t leave them here, given the Teamster guns at their disposal. I know six birds who could waltz in and blow our Little Goliath safe and be skipping down the street in ten minutes.”

“So who can we trust with them?”

“Only one man, Mister Chicago. I’ll call him and ask him to sit on the stuff. Mail it downtown before I see Brockway.”

I got a large manila envelope and addressed to Kup at the
Sun-Times
, wrote “Personal” on the corner, pasted postage and put all but the one photo and the summary page in it, then sealed it up. “It may help to take the summary page of the Whipple campaign expenses with me. I looked him up while you were Ebenezering those figures. He’s in the twenty-first floor of the London Guarantee Building.”

“Indeed? Twenty-first? High rent district. You might recall me discussing Fort Dearborn. The Guarantee was erected on the location of the old fort. Twenty-two stories of limestone with a trapezoidal ground plan. An architectural wonder for its day and a plethora of classical references and nuances.”

“I love it when you talk dirty, professor Anthony. As a dick you’d make a great museum curator. Remind me to stay away from college classes. By the way, I’m done with your Spiderman comics. Thanks.”

Rick didn’t skip a beat. He rarely did. At least he thought Spiderman comics were high art. “I believe you’ll find some brass inlaid strips in the sidewalks marking the exact site of the fort. Right off the Chicago river.”

“No time for history tours. I’m going to lay a photo on this guy and see if he swallows his tongue. See just how far he’ll push back. You sound like you’re related to this Dearborn guy. What was his dodge?”

“Secretary of War under Jefferson, I believe. Messed up awfully in attacking Canada for wiggy George; too slow, too little, too late. As a result they say ‘-aout’ up there instead of ‘-owt’, and have been dispatching their cold fronts to us ever since. He was so incompetent that they named the fort after him and Chicago is stuck with the history. Obviously East Coast disdain for the West.”

“Politics as usual. Fail the people and they stick your marble bust in some civic building, name a street or a park after you.”

“Yes, that too. I believe his bust is in a wall alcove off the lobby of the London Guarantee. Quite impressive. Grim-visaged chap. I’m sure he was convinced the Red Coats would take one look at his countenance and surrender everything north of Buffalo. I caught sight of the good general’s bust on one of those downtown walking tours right after I moved here. The English built the Guarantee, hence the name. They always did do things up royally.”

I wanted Rick to hear Julia’s story, and if possible, interview Henry Gateswood. I finally got through on the phone. Miss Mathews answered with her foggy chirp and announced she was just about to call me. I told her that was one of the ten great lies but it flew past her head like a silent 707. Miss Mathews wasn’t Dee today; she was all business. Henry and Julia needed to see me as soon as possible.

I hung up and made one of my many famous executive decisions. Having a junior partner meant those sorts of grand moments fell happily on my plate since Rick had wormed his way into a little arson job last year that led to the capture of a murder-for-profit ring. Afterward he just started showing up at the office every day.

“You’re assigned to head straight to the Gateswood’s. They want to see me, but I’d like to size Brockway up first, hear what Whipple’s legal beagle has to say for his client and himself first. Have a deal in mind for them. After that you might chase down those Scout leaders, see if they’ve noticed any boys who might’ve been abused. You know the signs better than I do.”

“Will do. This gives me the opportunity to see if Julia Gateswood stares at me the way she did at you yesterday. It’s a precipitous ledge you tiptoe upon. That sort of female, if she ever does offer an invitation, well, not many men could brush her off. She has the body of Venus. Not to mention the damndest eyes of intrigue and passion. Overall, quite magnetic. I tried to place the shade, quite unique. Nevertheless, my captain, go ahead, give me the rough stuff. I can handle that sort of woman at ease with the conviction that she’ll never offer. At least not to me.”

Rick wasn’t far off about the ledge I tiptoed on around Julia. She exactly stirred my insides, nudging them with a look or a gesture right up to the boiling point, which wasn’t difficult since I run warm as a rule. She wafted in and out of my mind like a siren goddess, but like Ulysses, I lashed myself to my duty. But the lashes might as well have been spaghetti.

I had trouble at first understanding why Julia would marry a guy like Henry. It was clearly a marriage of convenience, yet I couldn’t see her helping the guy off with his suspenders. I could see what Henry got from the compact, an attractive number on his arm, a look of success and youth, but why was it so important for her to be the political power behind the throne, if that was what she wanted? What did she want, really? And how could she tolerate her husband sacking with her sister, if what Miss Mathews claimed was true.

I settled on the idea that Julia was like many ambitious women, she wanted things just out of her grasp and in her case she aimed high, with images of the White House down the road. I couldn’t put into words just how she’d affected me, but I hadn’t been inoculated to her particular virus. Though I’d let my eyes rest on the charms of Miss Mathews, it hadn’t been that difficult to say no. A struggle, but doable. The libido is a wacky pinball game, with lights and buzzers and flippers and bells. Sometimes you run a high score up on luck, sometimes you roll it down out of reach of the flippers. The ball had a mind of its own, just like my libido. A bunch of lights and noise, but what do you have when the game is over? Julia would make easy what Dee couldn’t begin to touch in me, and no wouldn’t be a word I’d remember. And the memory of a Julia would never fade. Then there was Molly — had I forgotten about sweet sexy Molly, who never pressed me to commit? If she were here, would I still daydream about Julia?

“Rick, I doubt any man can handle a woman like Julia. That’s not what drives her.”

“Her maiden name also Gorovoy? When she married Henry she was farm fresh. Her first and his third, I believe.”

“Gail married a diplomat for about two weeks and had it annulled. Too busy testing ex- convicts for clap.”

“Well, my boy, one nice thing about having an old steady reliable dull partner. You can be in the more interesting of two places you need to be at once. Shall we rendezvous back here after I’ve counseled the stunning Cleopatra and her Mark Antony?”

“I’ll call you later at your place. And watch out for asps.”

We turned out the lights, locked up the office. In ten minutes I dropped Rick at his apartment.

He got out and stuck his head back in the window. “While I don’t believe Kermit Brockway would be directly connected to such a brutal slaying, his client Whipple could be. Don’t lose your head down a blind alley. I’ll handle the dark blonde with cultured velvet gloves.”

Gloria LeVeaux walked up right then and took Rick’s arm. They headed into the lobby, her drooling in his ear and rubbing herself on him as she swayed along. I watched them get into the elevator. Nice couple.

The London Guarantee Building stands next to the Wrigley building at 360 North Michigan, a prominent site at the Chicago River and the termination of Wacker Drive. It’s a bent shoebox on end, topped with a big candle and beachball. Columns run around the top few floors. Back in the days it was built architects must have been paid by the pound for bric-a-brac they slopped on.

A bunch of uniformed kids, hovered over by a nun, were huddled outside the Guarantee’s entrance, a few of them on hands and knees, rubbing the Fort Dearborn markers Rick had mentioned and chirping like a gang of excited chimpanzees. The cost of education.

I skirted the clump of tomorrow’s civic leaders, past one freckled satellite making wide circles around the excitement, his arms extended, tongue out, buzzing like a B-17 coming in for a landing with both engines on fire. He stopped and dug something out of his nose and attempted to show it to me and anyone else entering the building who might care to take note. He was as proud of it as he would have been of a gold star on his nasty little school paper. I figured him for a future internal medicine specialist. Or an attorney.

I went through arches and a revolving door into a vast, black and maroon lobby that any undertaker would be proud of. The Brockway, Wakeman, Hoover and Clovis firm was on the twenty-first floor. In fact, it was the whole twenty-first floor from what I could see. A dead-eyed pale stick about 25 drove the elevator to the floor I needed without a hitch. Peeking out of his inside uniform jacket was
True Crime
magazine with some thug sticking up a bank teller. “Don’t buy that rubbish,” I said stepping off the car at my floor, “you can’t use a silencer on a revolver.”

I pushed through swinging plate glass doors with polished brass frames heavy enough to keep anyone over 60 out, into a huge room with twenty-foot ceilings and a flat desk far enough away to run a couple of football plays. The outer area sported Middle Eastern carpets, pale bronze-colored walls, Danish teak furniture with dead green cushions that looked like they’d never been used, abstract paintings that the boy at the entrance might have related to, and a row of pedestals with busts of Caesar, General Henry Dearborn, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson and a few of their buddies I didn’t recognize. Sophocles wasn’t invited; evidently he didn’t come with the set.

On one wall was a picture of three smiling men in double-breasted suits flanking a sober FDR, the men beaming as if they’d been given a new loophole for their income tax. Along an adjoining wall there were dark framed photographs of bar association presidents, noted by platinum engraved plates, giving the name and listing the dates of service, beginning with a stout angry looking man with a handlebar moustache. Legal work must be taxing. None of the men in the photographs were smiling. They all shared the same intense scrutiny in their eyes, probably worrying about how long it took to pose.

The last picture was one of Kermit Case Brockway with the beginning date of 1960 and no ending date. He looked familiar. I took another walk down the wall and realized he could be related to old Dearborn himself. Same jaw, nose and hair economically piled in one main spot near the top of his skull. He had the look of a man you wouldn’t want to bother unless it involved the future of mankind, one who could convince you of almost anything by his stare.

A pixie redhead piece of girl-fluff sat off in a far corner behind a railing at a PBX, where no one might mistake her for someone important. As I approached the flat desk it grew larger until it looked like an aircraft carrier, but it was only a desk built to look like one. I could have rested halfway for lunch. Typing behind what could double for a conning tower, side to me, was a tall, trim, shapely brunette number as elegant as a Gershwin melody.

According to the lonely lacquered plaque at the edge of the great expanse of empty semi-gloss ebony surface that was her desk, her name was Miss Eloise Humboldt.

I could understand why management had placed six feet of mahogany between her and any man coming off the street.

She wore a dull-mauve business suit, tailored and flawless, which looked anything but dull on her, and under the jacket a royal blue shirt and one of those floppy bow ties of a lighter hue. Her cuffs extended out from her sleeves enough to reveal scalloped edges matching the line of handkerchief angled out from her coat pocket. Black pearl earrings of some size covered her lobes, and a double strand choker of the same marbles looked like they’d leave impressions on her formal ivory neck. Her dark tresses didn’t quite make it to her shoulders and were pinned back from her face, which was as clear and unstudied as a sleeping newborn’s. Her sole intense feature was a pair of eyebrows trimmed to sharp points, which contrasted with her easy features and framed her eyes with just enough intensity to give her a no-nonsense air.

Her clear eyes hinted warmth just out of reach, at least during office hours, and I thought I saw promise of warmer expression there for the right man at the right moment, but the right man would have to walk on water. Then I always see those sorts of things and have such moments. A woman like Miss Humboldt makes a man create such moments. Or pray for them.

I reached over her nameplate, stuck my card on the desk and asked to see Kermit Brockway. Now she had two objects on her desk and she glanced at the card like it wasn’t supposed to be there. She continued to type. When she flipped the carriage return with the nonchalance of a maestro tapping his baton, she slid her golden browns up my torso in a smooth once over. She was all business — all locked up in her little paperclip world, the gatekeeper to a bunch of sleazy advocates who were probably so busy lining their lint-free pockets they hadn’t advocated a worthy cause in twenty years.

“Mister Brockway is in conference. He is not making appointments for the rest of the afternoon.”

I wondered how much heat it might take to melt Miss Eloise.

“None?”

She lifted her chest another few inches, and boasted, “No appointments.”

It didn’t seem difficult to understand. No appointments, yet in conference. Either he was busy nibbling on a pastrami and rye with a six-pack of Pabst, or playing poker with Wakeman, Hoover and Clovis, and losing badly. If they were into pinochle, a fifth man would be in the way. Before I could think of a good comeback, or compliment her posture, she said:

“May I tell Mr. Brockway the nature of your business?”

“I’d rather tell Mr. Brockway and let him judge the nature of my business. My general business is on my card. My specific business has to do with a mountain that’s about to fall on his, or his client’s head. I thought he’d want to get out of the way.”

She picked up my card and held it under her pretty nose. It’s impressive what information you can get from reading something a second time. You see all sorts of things you missed just glancing while typing. I wasn’t sure what she’d missed, but my card was still a plain business card with my name, phone and “Investigations.” Possibly she was into numerology and was studying the phone number for luck. She eyed me again, this time trying to read the purpose of my visit in my face. She read the fine print in my eyes, looked at my broad shoulders again, gazed a half-second too long on my scar, and then back at the card like she was trying to think of how to curse in polite business-speak. She tapped her lower lip with a silver pencil. Her lower lip didn’t seem to mind. It was full and inviting as a pomegranate. Lucky pencil.

I winked and showed her a new porcelain crown then looked her over for chinks in her armor. I didn’t see any but the exploratory trip was pleasant easy work. The redheaded fluff perked up and threw a competitive sunbeam my way. Way over in the corner she probably hadn’t flirted all day. She looked feisty and fun, with a touch of naughty. Such a shame she had to sit in the corner staring at a dead switchboard in a cavernous room big enough for square-dance classes. I gave her a slower wink. She pursed her lips and looked down faking coy, but her smile wouldn’t stop.

“Perhaps if you could wait. I can see if Mister Brockway knows you.”

“He doesn’t. I don’t run in his circles. You might say I know Henry and Julia Gateswood and the District Attorney Gerard and several ladies with eyes almost as nice as yours.”

The names registered on her face, which fell like a bride’s first cake, then struggled to regain itself, held together by those sword-like eyebrows. She turned away and pushed a button on a phone and picked up the receiver. She said nothing and hung up.

“Mister Brockway is on an important call. I will take your card into him when he’s off the line.”

I thanked her and walked over to be the first to sit in one of the angular chairs with the dark green cushions. I sat there for a second and decided they’d paid too much. The PBX girl followed me with her eyes and smiled again, her coy attack a distant memory. Miss Humboldt said something across to her that sliced off Red’s smile.

Time passed and the only sound was light clicking of the little plugs going in and out of the PBX, the redhead clearing her throat now and then, and the buzzing of an airplane overhead. Miss Humboldt counted paper clips. Nobody came out the elevators or the office door. After fifteen minutes, during which I reviewed again Whipple’s financial summary, a light buzz came from Miss Humboldt’s phone. She picked up the receiver, turned her back to me and spoke quietly. Then she hung up, stood and smoothed her suit, and walked in through the office door with my card in her hand. Red waited until Miss Humboldt had gone through the door and blew me a kiss. Now I felt like being coy. It must have been contagious. Miss Humboldt came back in less than a minute and resumed typing, all without looking at me.

Another fifteen minutes went by. The switchboard was still quiet and there’d been no visitors. Maybe the place was losing dough; it’s hard to say about a place like that. They might have Fort Knox in their safe or be reviewing the eviction notice. Office space downtown turns over more than a flophouse except the janitorial service is better. Maybe Brockway, Wakeman, Hoover and Clovis had spent all the dough on the outer lobby and depended on Whipple’s campaign to float their petty cash fund.

Detectives in the movies never cool their heels in some outer office. They swagger in, flirt with the secretary who they later wind up in bed with, and bust a door down. My chin dimple and best smiles weren’t working on Miss Humboldt, and my shoulder was still sore from the last time I tried to break down a door. Still, the idea was becoming more attractive. The door behind Miss Humboldt didn’t look much stronger than her perfume. I thought of her in bed. Nothing.

I retrieved a pink marble ashtray from a table and lit a cigarette. Whenever you’re waiting for people in an outer office, lighting up will bring them in a hurry. It’s some sort of tobacco karma law that never fails. After one puff, the office door opened behind Miss Humboldt’s desk and two men came out joined at the shoulders and laughing like they’d just exchanged smutty jokes.

A tall, broad-shouldered silver buzz cut in navy pinstripe with a blue tie kept the door open with one hand and shook hands with the shorter, blocky man in brown suit, purple tie, tan fedora and white shoes. Shorty turned his back to the tall guy and clipped the smile off his face faster than switching off a light. He moved past me to the elevators, allowing me to take stock of him. He had extremely small and narrow feet and was barrel-chested. A too-large fedora like Edward G. Robinson wore in those gangster movies shadowed his face. He walked like he’d done heavy labor in his day, a few truckloads of lasagna ago. A gold ring with a nickel-sized insignia of some sort shone from one pinkie. He stuffed a cigar in his face with stubby fingers as the elevator doors opened and he stepped inside. Union big shots had nothing on this mug.

Miss Humboldt stood and said something low to the tall bird in the blue pinstripe. He looked over at me and said a few things loud enough for me to catch a word or two, “Gateswood” and “Don’t know him from Adam.” He went back inside his office and Miss Humboldt gave me a counterfeit shrug. I blew her the kiss that the little redhead had flown me and fished my cigarette out of the ashtray. After I’d finished it and two more, the redhead stood and wrapped herself in an angora sweater and took a raincoat from a hook near the office door. She was barely over five feet but when the curves had been passed out she must have been first in line, because she wasn’t missing any. I imagined she needed a little help in the morning to sit up.

Every body moves in a unique way. Once you study how someone moves, you can recognize them across a concourse, in a dim light or at night walking down a street. Noticing things like that is my business. I’d have a hard time forgetting the way Red moved across that lobby and into the elevator. Just past me she gave out a soft giggle and looked back over her shoulder. Feisty. Touch of naughty. A year ago I would have followed her and convinced her to take a long lunch, maybe call in sick for the afternoon. But a year can make a big difference in a person’s life.

I stood and fisted my hands high over my head, stretching and letting Miss Humboldt see that I carried a gun inside my jacket. “Time’s up,” I said, then walked straight for the office door and through it. She stood as I opened it and followed me in with short nervous little steps. She tried to pass me on the right, which is illegal in most states, but I was too quick for her. At the far end of the inner office the bird in the blue pinstripes had a receiver jammed on his ear with his feet propped up on a cherry wood desk behind a nine-foot door with brass letters Kermit Case Brockway. People who use three names are either hack writers or egomaniacs.