The Collection (132 page)

“But he's a real cop and you're not. Bring him with you and
I'll let you go up with him.”

I sighed. “He's a busy man, Mrs. Radcliffe. If I get him to
write you a letter, on police stationery, asking you to let me borrow a key,
will that do?”

“Guess so. Or even if he tells me over the phone.”

I wondered how I'd been so stupid as not to think of that
short cut. The phone, I'd already noticed, was a pay one, on the wall behind
me. I got a dime out of my pocket and started for it.

But she said, “Wait a minute. How do I know you'd dial the
right number? You could call any number and have somebody there to say his name
is Chudakoff. He gave me his card.
I
'
ll
dial it.” Apparently
she'd put the card on a stand right beside the door; she was able to get it
without leaving the doorway. She held out a hand. “I'll use your dime, though.”

While she dialed, I grinned to myself at how suspicious she
was---and how right. I
could
have set it up with Uncle Am to have
answered “Missing Persons. Chudakoff speaking.”

She finished dialing and I heard her say, “Mr. Chudakoff
please.” She listened a few seconds and then hung up.

“He's out of the office, won't be back till tomorrow
morning. You can try again then, if you've got another dime.”

I sighed and decided to give up till tomorrow. Well, at
least that's run the investigation into a second day.

I said, “All right, I'll be back then. Mrs. Radcliffe, do
you know any of Albee's friends?”

“A few by sight, none by name. And, like I told Mr.
Chudakoff, I wouldn't have an idea where he might of gone to, if he's really
gone. Unless to see his father near Kenosha, and you say it's him that's
looking for Albee.”

I tried a new tack, not that I expected it to get me
anywhere. “Has Albee been a good tenant?”

“Except a couple of things. Played his phonograph too loud a
time or two and others on the third floor complained and I told him about it.
And something I don't hold with personally---he's brought a girl here. But
that's his business, the way I look at it.”

Well, I didn't pursue that. I had the girl's name on my
list. I thanked Mrs. Radcliffe, and left. I'd be back tomorrow, I decided, but
first I'd make sure Chudakoff would be in his office ready for the call.

Next on my list was a Jerry Score, identified by Chudakoff
as Albee's closest friend. Chudakoff hadn't got anything helpful out of him,
but I could try. Especially as he lived only two blocks away, on Walton Place.

It turned out to be a rooming house building pretty much
like the one in which Albee had his pad, except with four stories and more
rooms. Again I got silence in answer to buzzing the room, and again I tried a
landlady, whose name turned out to be Mrs. Proust, although this one labeled
herself “Proprietor.” This one was big, fat and sloppy, and the heat was
getting her down.

But she gave me the score on Jerry Score. He wouldn't be
home; he was out of town for the day. She didn't know where, but he'd said he'd
be back tomorrow. And she was sure he would be, because he was playing the
second lead in a play for the Near Northers, a little theater group, and was having
to rehearse almost every afternoon and evening. She told me where they were
rehearsing and would be playing, an old theater on Clark Street that had once
been a burlesque house and was now used only by little theater groups. And yes,
she was sure he'd be there tomorrow afternoon because that was the last
rehearsal before the dress rehearsal.

She was panting by then and invited me in for a cold lemonade,
probably because she wanted one herself, and the lemonade tasted good and she
was bottled up with talk. Yes, she knew Jerry pretty well, he'd been with her
for years. His job? He was a door-to-door canvasser, vacuum cleaners, and did
pretty well at it. He liked that kind of work because he could set his own
hours and that let him go in for amateur theatricals. He'd wanted to be a pro
and had once made a try at Hollywood, but had given up and came back. He gave
her duckets and she'd seen him act and thought he was pretty good. She was show
people herself; back when, she'd been a pony in a chorus line, with a traveling
troupe that had once played the very theater Jerry was now acting in.

Yes, she knew Albee Nielson. Not real well, but she'd met
him a few times, and had seen him act too. Yes, he'd been with the Near
Northers, but not in the current play, and Jerry had told her, she thought
about a week ago, that Albee had left town.

In case she might be holding something back---although she
sure didn't sound as though she was---I trotted out the poor old father bit for
her, telling her that finding Albee for his father was the reason I wanted to
see Jerry Score.

It didn't help, but she'd have helped if she could. Jerry
hadn't told her where Albee had gone, and she didn't think Jerry knew. I
believed her and was convinced she couldn't tell me more than she had about
Albee; that is, anything that would be helpful in finding him.

Not that she wasn't willing to keep on talking---about
anything at all. I had to make my escape or soon she'd have been bringing out
her press clippings and theatrical photos of two dozen years ago. But I liked
her and promised to come back some time, and meant it.

It was five o'clock. The next name on my list was Honey
Howard, Albee's inamorata. She lived a taxi jump away, on Schiller Street a
couple blocks west of Clark Street. But the Graydon Theater, the ex-burlesque
house that was now used only by little theater groups like and including the
Near Northers, was on Clark just a block or two from Schiller, so I decided to
take a taxi there, and walk to Honey's from the theater. Probably I'd find no
one at the theater, but if they'd had an afternoon rehearsal without Jerry
Score and it had run late, someone might still be there.

I used the phone in the hallway near Mrs. Proust's door to
call a cab and waited for it outside. Surprisingly, for such a rush hour, it
came fairly quickly, and it was only five-thirty when I disembarked in front of
the Graydon.

I walked through the lobby, its walls ornate with plaster
nymphs and satyrs, and tried the doors but found them locked. But there'd be a
stage entrance around off the alley and I headed for it, neared it just in time
to see a distinguished-looking elderly gentleman turn a key in the lock of the
door and come toward me. I begged his pardon and asked if he was connected with
the Near Northers.

He smiled. “You might almost say I
am
the Near
Northers, young man. I started the group four years ago and have been manager
ever since and director of every alternate play we've put on since. I'm
directing the current one. What can I do for you?”

I introduced myself and told him I was interested in Albee
Nielson, and why.

He told me that he didn't know a lot about Albee personally,
but he'd be glad to tell me what he did know. Where should we talk? We could go
back into the theater, or there was a quiet bar a block down the street if I
cared to have a drink with him.

It was half past five and I decided on the drink. I'd be
eating soon, maybe before I looked up Honey Howard if my talk with the little
theater group's manager-director ran very long.

He introduced himself, while we walked, as Carey Evers. The
name sounded vaguely familiar to me, and it occurred to me that

his face was slightly familiar too. I asked him if I'd ever
seen him before, possibly on television or in movies.

Quite probably, he told me, if I ever watched old movies on
late-late shows. He'd started in them about the time they were making the
transition from silents to talkies. He'd played bit parts and character roles.
Never important parts, never starred, but he'd been in a hundred and sixty-four
movies. A great many of them were B's, most of them in fact, but they were
still being rerun on television. He'd never tried to make the transition to
television per se. He'd retired seven years ago.

We were in the bar, sitting in a booth over drinks, by that
time. He stopped talking, waiting for me to start asking my questions about
Albee, but instead I asked him how much time he had.

He glanced at his watch. “An hour or so. Dinner date at
seven, but it's near here; I won't have to leave until a quarter of.”

“Good,” I said. “Then keep on about yourself for at least a
few more minutes. How you came to Chicago after you retired, and how you
started the Near Northers.”

He'd bought a place in Malibu when he'd retired, he told me,
but he'd never liked California. “Hated the place, in fact. And I'd been born
and raised in Chicago---broke into show business here, night club work---and
didn't go to Hollywood till I was almost thirty. And I found myself homesick
for Chicago after I had nothing to do out there, so I sold the Malibu place
within a year and came back. Bought a house on Lake Shore Drive, but near the
Near North Side, my old haunt.

“And after a while, found myself bored with nothing to do,
and homesick for show biz again, and discovered little theater. Worked with two
other groups, and then started my own. It's wonderful. I work fourteen hours a
day, except when I rest between plays, and love it.”

He grinned wryly. “And these kids love me---if only because
I'm angel as well as manager-director.” He explained that almost all little
theater groups operated at a deficit, especially if they wanted to do good work
and put on good plays, the public be damned, and still keep ticket prices low
enough so they'd have a good audience to play to.

Carey Evers had retired not rich but with a lot more money
then he'd be able to use during the rest of his life, and could think of no
better way to spend it, and his time; as long as he remained strong and healthy
enough, he'd keep on doing what he was doing. He loved it.

In answer to a question, he told me that no, the actors
didn't make any money out of it; they worked for the love of acting, for the
fun of it, and some of them with the hope of learning enough to become
professionals someday. And two kids out of the original group he'd started with
four years ago were now doing bit parts in television, another was now an
announcer on a Chicago television station.

“Do you ever lend any of them money?” I asked, and then cut
in before he could answer. “Wait. That's none of my business, but this is: Did
Albee Nielson ever borrow or try to borrow money from you?”

He nodded. “About three weeks ago, he came to me and tried
to borrow five hundred. I turned him down. In the first place, I never lend
money in amounts like that and in the second, I didn't believe his story, that
it was for an operation for his father. I knew enough about him to know that
his father was solvent, and I knew Albee was working steady---he was then---but
playing the horses. I put two and two together.

“And from what I've learned since, my addition was correct.
In fact, in the week or so after that he apparently ran a few hundred more in
the hole trying to get out.”

“Was that the last time you saw him?”

He nodded. “That was when we were casting the current play
and I asked him if he wanted to try out for a part. He didn't. It was too bad;
he's a pretty good actor. I'd say almost but not quite professional, or
potentially professional, caliber. He had the lead role in two plays we've put
on, strong supporting parts in several others.”

“What else do you know about him? Especially his personal
life?”

He talked a while, but I didn't know any more when he'd told
me all he could than I had when he'd started. Yes, Jerry Score was his closest
friend, Honey Howard was his girl. And other things I'd already learned.

I asked him if he knew where Jerry Score was today. It
turned out in Hammond, Indiana, for the funeral of an uncle. “Went there a
little early to have some time with his family. The funeral's tomorrow morning,
and Jerry will rush right back for afternoon rehearsal. He'll probably come
right from the train, so you'll do better finding him at the Graydon than
trying his room. We start rehearsal at one-thirty.”

“Will I be able to talk to him during rehearsal, or should I
wait till after?”

“During. He's not on stage
all
the time. Ed, would
you like a ducket or two for the show, Thursday evening? Or any night through
Sunday, for that matter; we run four days.”

I told him I'd manage to make it one of the four but would
just as soon kick through with a paid admission to help the cause.

Then he asked me about me, and about being a private detective,
and
I
got to talking. And was still going strong when suddenly I saw
that it was ten of seven and reminded him about his appointment. He lost
another half minute giving me a fight over the check---it was only for two
drinks apiece---then gave up and ran.

I paid the check and left more slowly because I was trying
to decide whether to call on Honey Howard first, or after eating. I was
beginning to get pretty hungry, but duty won when I realized I'd have a better
chance of finding her in now than maybe an hour later when she could have left
for the evening.

It was another stone front; it was my day for stone fronts.
One mailbox had two names on it, Wilcox and Howard, and the number six. But
there was no bell button and the door wasn't locked so I went in and started
checking room numbers, found Number Six on the second floor, and knocked.

A tall, quite beautiful colored girl opened the door. But
very light colored---far from Hershey-bar---so I felt sure she would be the
Wilcox of the two names on the mailbox, Honey Howard's roommate. I asked her if
Miss Howard was there. She said yes, and then stepped back. “Honey, someone to
see
you.”

And Honey appeared at the doorway instead. Hershey-bar, yes,
but petite and
very
beautiful, much more so than her tall, light
roommate.