True Crime (5 page)

I didn’t know which confused me more: that my traveling-salesman client’s bride was a prostitute—possibly an ex-prostitute, giving her the benefit of the doubt—or that I’d screwed her once.

And, as I recalled, drunk or not, liked it.

Back in Uptown, the cab let Polly and her boyfriend off at the corner of Wilson and Malden, and they walked half a block to the Malden Plaza, a four-story residential hotel. It seemed a newer, more modest building than its neighbors, with their terra-cotta trimming and elaborate porches; this building had only some halfhearted gingerbread along the roof and over the entryway, was set back from the sidewalk without a porch, and seemed to have been squeezed in between the two more elaborate apartment buildings on its either side, on what might have been a mutual yard between them, by a landlord whose greed outdistanced his aesthetics.

Gray suitcoat still slung over his arm, Polly’s dapper Dan opened the front door for her and they stepped inside.

My cab went on by, and I got out a block down, near Saint Boniface Cemetery. Malden was an odd little street—existing a scant four blocks, connecting two cemeteries; the other one, Graceland Cemetery, was full of famous dead Chicagoans, in their fancy tombs—George Pullman was in a lead-lined casket under concrete and steel, to keep pissed-off union types from seeing him without an appointment, presumably. I walked down the little street, with death at its either end, coat slung over my shoulder, thinking about how my traveling-salesman client was likely to react when he heard about his wife.

It was a hot night, tolerable only when you thought back to the day, and a few people were still sitting out on porches, on the stairs, cooling off as best they could. Now and then people would look in the direction of the lake, wondering where the breeze was.

But it was ten-thirty, and a lot of people were in bed by now—possibly including Polly and her guest—and it wasn’t hard for me to find an empty stoop approximately across from the place, to sit on and seem like just another neighborhood joe trying to beat the heat.

I couldn’t stay here all night, though; if I’d brought my car up here instead of taking the El, I could’ve parked on the street and most likely got away with maintaining a watch. But an all-night stakeout wasn’t practical here. Sooner or later somebody—a cop possibly—would question my presence. I’d have to make my stay a short one.

From the look of the building, the flats within were probably single rooms. This was the address my client had given me for his and his wife’s home; so this was where they lived together, when he wasn’t on the road—meaning he must not’ve been making much, hawking his feed and grain. He’d said he made “good money,” but that’s a vague term. Just because his wallet seemed fairly fat didn’t mean anything—it could’ve been his life savings. Probably that fifty-buck retainer cut him deep.

Of course they hadn’t been married long; he’d said he just landed a new territory, so maybe they planned on moving up in the world soon. Nothing wrong with the neighborhood (if you didn’t mind cemeteries—and dead neighbors seldom keep you up at night with their loud parties). But this was the least classy building on Malden. Then, who was I to talk, a guy who slept in his office.

Half an hour dragged by. There were lights on in some of the windows, but most were dark; all were open. It wasn’t good weather to keep the windows shut. It wasn’t good weather period. I felt like I was wearing the heat; like it was something I had on. Something heavy.

Heavy like the guilt that had settled over me for having fucked pretty Polly one drunken night in a room over the bar on the corner of Willow and Halsted. And feeling guilty was stupid, as well as pointless: How was I supposed to know the little prostie would quit the business, and marry some poor putz who thought she was just a waitress or something? A pathetic chump who would then, thanks to God’s sick sense of humor, hire me to ascertain his bride’s virtue? A hardworking salt-of-the-earth salesman who wondered why his wife seemed to know things in bed that he hadn’t taught her….

I wondered if Polly really
had
quit hustling. Maybe dapper Dan wasn’t a boyfriend—maybe he was a john. Maybe, like her waitress job, this was something she was up to while her hubby was on the road, something designed to fight her boredom and keep her wearing nice clothes and build a nest egg to help move ’em both into a nicer apartment.

And if she
was
hustling, should I tell the husband?

Of course I should. I wasn’t paid to decide whether or not the information I turned up was good for my client’s health; if my client paid for me finding out certain information, he deserved to get it. And brother was he going to get it.

Maybe this was innocent; maybe they were in there having tea and milk. Polly wasn’t necessarily over there boffing that guy in the glasses. Right. He probably took ’em off first.

What the hell. I already had enough to tell my client what he didn’t want to know. I could get up off this stoop and walk over to the Wilson Avenue El and go back to the office and get a good night’s sleep, and to hell with traveling salesmen and traveling salesmen’s wives and guys that boffed traveling salesmen’s wives.

At that point, after having been in there an hour, the dapper Dan came out of the building and walked up to Wilson Avenue and hailed a cab.

I hailed one, too.

Followed him to a nice three-story apartment building, a big brick place that probably had flats running to six and eight rooms. It was on Pine Grove Avenue, near the lake, near Lincoln Park. Dapper Dan had dough—more dough than a traveling salesman, that was for sure.

He went in, and my cabbie drove on.

I had him drop me at the El station. I’d planned to stay overnight at the room I’d rented, at the Wilson Arms, but now I couldn’t see any point in it. I did figure to give my client some more of my time, tomorrow, but I also figured to follow Polly around in my car, to hell with this cab noise.

So I didn’t return to Uptown till near seven the next night. I spent the day in Evanston investigating an insurance claim; why sit in that little hotel room, looking out the window at Polly’s sandwich shop? It wasn’t going anywhere. And neither would she, till after work.

My ’29 Chevy coupe with me in it was parked down the street when she came out of the S & S just after seven, wearing a light blue dress and a darker blue hat that fit snug to her head, and waited for her boyfriend to show up. That’s the way it seemed, at least: her behavior today was no different than yesterday.

Neither was dapper Dan’s.

With one exception: while he arrived in a cab again, he shooed it on, and they walked arm in arm, east on Wilson. He looked jaunty, with a straw boater and a white shirt with dark pinstripes and a blue tie and pale yellow slacks.

I got out of the car and shadowed them.

They walked under the El and across to a waffle shop on Sheridan. It was a small place, but at this point I figured I could risk them making me. After all, I’d pretty well established what was going on here; I’d already earned my client’s money—did it really matter whether Dan was her boyfriend, or just another john? Either way, she was fucking somebody who wasn’t her husband, and that’s all I’d been paid to find out. But for some reason, which I cloaked in giving my client his money’s worth, I couldn’t let go of this just yet.

They sat at a table; I sat at the counter. We all had waffles and bacon. We all had coffee.

Then we all went to the picture show.
Viva Villa
with Wallace Beery, which was playing at Balaban and Katz’s Uptown on Broadway. We didn’t sit together. And I didn’t get spotted. There were better than four thousand seats in the Uptown, all of them full; there wasn’t an air-cooled movie palace in town that wasn’t doing land-office business, and the cavernous, opulent Uptown, with its sculptures and murals and gold drapes, was no exception.

I almost lost Polly and Dan, when the show was over; the fancy lobby was mobbed, and I had just squeezed out onto the street when I saw them pull away in a Checker cab. I caught the next cab and fell in behind them.

Tonight, they went to his place, that fancy apartment house near the lake; maybe her room in the Malden Plaza was too cramped. Maybe she had a Murphy bed; speaking from experience, I can say that making whoopee in a Murphy bed’ll do till the real thing comes along—but Dan probably had six or seven rooms in his flat, one of which was no doubt a room with a bed in it that didn’t fall down out of a box or the wall.

It was too ritzy a neighborhood to risk my sitting-on-the-stoop ruse, so I stayed in the cab and headed back to her place, the Malden Plaza. There I took my position on a stoop opposite and waited for Polly to come home. After two hours, I decided she probably wasn’t going to.

So I walked over to the Wilson Arms and finally used that bed I’d paid for.

The S & S opened at six-thirty, so I wandered across the street at seven. I’d made a decision—in my sleep apparently, because there it was in my brain when I crawled out of the sack: I was going to talk to Polly.

I didn’t know what I was going to say—certainly not that I was a private detective checking up on her for her husband. Still, I felt the need to talk to her. To see if I could get her side of the story. Maybe even give her a break.

Or not.

I wasn’t sure. I just felt I somehow owed her this much. Possibly because I couldn’t remember paying her for that night over the bar on Halsted.

I took a counter seat and a pretty brunette with a cap of curls and blue eyes came up to take my order. I asked for scrambled eggs and bacon and orange juice, and while I waited for them, I glanced around, looking for Polly. There were only two waitresses here today—the girl behind the counter, and a poor harried thing with blond hair and too many tables.

When the brunette waitress delivered my juice, I said to her, “You’re shorthanded this morning.”

“I’ll say,” the brunette smirked. “Our other girl called in sick today.”

“Polly, you mean?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember you eating here before—”

“Sure. Bunch of times.”

“If it’d been at the counter, I’d remember you.”

She went away and I sipped the juice. Pretty soon she placed the eggs and bacon in front of me.

“Toast doesn’t come with it,” she said, “but I can get you some.”

“Please.”

When she delivered a little plate of toast, I said, “I know you’re busy, but I wondered if I could ask you something.”

She smirked again, but it was pleasant. “Make it quick.”

“Does Polly have a steady boyfriend?”

“Yeah. For the past few weeks she has.”

“Funny,” I said. “I thought she was a married gal.”

The waitress shrugged. “She was,” she said.

“Was?”

“Yeah. Excuse me, I got customers.”

“Uh, sure. I’m sorry.”

She came back a little later and asked me if I wanted coffee.

I said yes, and she poured me some, black.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said.

I found a smile for her. “That’s hard to believe. What did you mean, Polly
was
married?”

“What do you think? She’s divorced. Has been for two or three months. Why don’t you stop back when we’re not so busy and we’ll get acquainted?”

The woman who ran the tavern on the corner of Willow and Halsted wasn’t around, but the apron behind the bar traded me his boss lady’s home address for a buck. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty—unless you have a buck.

She lived about a mile north of the bar, at 2420 North Halsted, on the second floor of a big graystone three-flat. The ground-floor was unlocked; I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. She answered on the third knock, just barely cracking open the door, peering out at me with one large dark eye, startlingly dark against the white sliver of her face.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” she said. She had a low, melodious voice, and a Garbo-like middle-European accent.

“I’m Nate Heller,” I said, taking off my hat. “The detective. Remember?”

The dark eye narrowed.

“We met over in East Chicago, a couple times. And I was in your bar not so long ago. With Barney Ross?”

The dark eye widened and what little I could see of her redrouged mouth seemed to smile.

Then the door opened and Anna, a big dark-haired handsome woman in her early forties in a gray tailored suit with white frills at the neck, gestured for me to come in.

I did, and she took my hat and placed it on a small table in the entryway.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, smiling, but politely. Shrewdly? Cautiously. “What brings you here? And how did you locate me? I’ve only lived in this apartment a few weeks.”

“I’m a former Chicago cop, Anna,” I said, pleasantly. “I know all about bribing people.”

Her smile was reserved yet genuinely amused; she gestured again. “Come,” she said. “Sit.”

She showed me into a big living room where a thick carpet and dark expensive furniture bespoke money. And why not? There was always dough to be had when you ran a bar—particularly when you had B-girls and rooms upstairs.

“America’s treating you good, Anna,” I said, seated on a well-stuffed sofa, glancing around.

“I’ve been good to it,” Anna said, seated primly in a chair nearby. It was warm in here, though not stifling; there was no electric fan, but the front windows were open. Anna seemed not to notice the heat. A little yellow bird in a standing cage was sitting silently nearby, taking the heat less well than Anna; too damn hot to chirp.

For a Romanian immigrant—probably an illegal one—Anna was doing very well indeed. She had to be: she was operating in Paddy Bauler’s ward, the forty-third, where nothing came free.

“You wouldn’t be fronting for somebody, would you, Anna?”

Her smile faded, but she wasn’t exactly frowning. “That’s a little forward, Mr. Heller, for a guest who hasn’t announced his intentions.”

She had that oddly formal, calculated manner of speaking of someone who’s learned English as a second language; I found it kind of charming—and somehow unsettling.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of my business what your business arrangements are. Say, do you own this building?”

My impertinence got another genuine smile out of her; her teeth were very white. And, unlike Anna, not first generation.

“I might,” she said. “It was my understanding you were no longer with the police—”

“I’m not,” I shrugged. “But I’m still a cop. Just because you go private, that doesn’t take the cop out of you.”

“It was also my understanding that you weren’t on friendly terms with the police.”

I shrugged again. “We try to stay out of each other’s way. I still have friends on the pickpocket detail. But you can’t testify against cops and not make some other cops not like you.”

“Even if the officers you testified against were guilty.”

“Every cop I know is guilty. But suppose the force was a bunch of lilies and all I did was pull a couple weeds…I’d still be seen as a squealer.”

Anna smiled like a wry sphinx. “The world of crime, the world of law. Two sides of the same coin.”

“A double-headed coin at that.”

“The last time we met you didn’t strike me as a philosopher.”

I shook my head. “I probably struck you as a drunk who wanted to get next to one of your girls.”

“As I recall, you succeeded.”

“Right. Which is sort of why I’m here…”

“Sort of?”

“How well do you know Polly Hamilton?”

“Is there some reason why I should answer that question?”

“Is there some reason why you shouldn’t?”

She thought about it.

“I could insult you and offer you money, Anna,” I said, making a show of looking around the joint, “but I hate giving money to people who’re doing so much better than me.”

Annas smile shifted gears to madonna-like. “I won’t ask you for any money, Mr. Heller. I will ask if you’d like some tea, or coffee? Or something stronger?”

“How about something cool—ice water?”

“Fine.”

She rose and left the room; I thought I heard something off to the right. Like somebody moving around in the next room. There were six or eight rooms in this flat, at least. From the sound I heard, maybe she was taking in boarders. Or maybe some of her girls were staying here with her.

She returned with ice water for me and coffee for her; she didn’t seem to feel the heat, despite her almost wintery apparel.

“What’s your interest in Polly, Mr. Heller?”

“It has to do with a job I’m on. Nothing criminal, I assure you; Polly’s not in any trouble. Not…legal trouble.”

“What other kind is there?”

“Oh, well—there’s man trouble.”

“I’ve heard of that,” she allowed, sipping her coffee.

“Is Polly married, Anna?”

“She was. To a policeman in East Chicago.”

“A policeman?”

Anna nodded. “She met him when she was working for me.”

“At the Kostur Hotel?” That was where Anna ran her brothel, in Gary; there’d been an infamous speakeasy and gambling casino in the basement, called The Bucket of Blood. Shootings and stabbings were commonplace, though Anna was known to run a clean, straight house upstairs.

“Yes,” Anna admitted. “At the Kostur.”

“That’d be a few years ago. Polly looks pretty young to have worked for you at the Kostur, what, eight years ago?”

“She looked even younger then.”

“I bet she did. How’d she happen to meet a policeman?”

Now Anna
really
smiled. “However could a girl meet a policeman in a brothel?”

“Sorry. That was dumb. So she married a policeman.”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t last.”

“It didn’t last.”

“Could you describe him for me?”

“Why? Mr. Heller, you’re really overstepping—”

“Please. Humor me. There’s no harm in it.”

She sighed. “He’s a tall man, rather lean. Brown hair, with a bald spot. Not unpleasant to look at.”

That didn’t sound like my client.

I hadn’t taken the brunette waitress back at the S & S too seriously when she said Polly was divorced; after all, my client had told me his wife was working under her maiden name, and—particularly if she was running around on him and possibly even hustling—she very well might not be spreading around the fact that she was married.

I tried again. “Her husband’s name wouldn’t have been Howard, would it?”

“No,” Anna said. “Keele. Roy Keele.”

“And they were divorced only a few months ago?”

“That’s right.”

My client had told me he and Polly had been married over a year. So much for the notion that my traveling salesman might be her second husband, on the rebound from Keele.

“Tell me,” I said. “Has she had any steady boyfriends?”

“Yes,” Anna said, nodding. “Several. Lately, one who calls himself…” And she paused here, as if what followed would be significant. “…Jimmy Lawrence. Says he works at the Board of Trade.”

“Gold-rim glasses, pencil mustache, kind of medium build? Nice dresser?”

She kept nodding, seeming suddenly vaguely troubled. “That’s him.”

“Who before that?”

She touched a finger to her cheek, thinking. “I believe—I’m not sure, mind you—I believe it was a traveling salesman.”

That was more like it. Now I could begin to make sense of this.

“Was his name Howard? John Howard?”

“I don’t know. I never knew his name. Why don’t you ask Polly?”

“That would be awkward, at least at this point. The traveling salesman, is he a blond man, also with wire glasses and mustache?”

“Why, yes.”

“Physically a bit similar to this Jimmy Lawrence?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“Nothing. I had a client who lied to me, is all. A man who said he was a husband when he was really just a jilted boyfriend. Who was afraid no self-respecting private detective would take on his case, if he weren’t the girl’s spouse.”

“He doesn’t sound like he’s from Chicago.”

“No,” I said. “He just passes through here, obviously.”

I stood.

“Thank you, Anna. And thanks for the ice water.”

“Are you going to talk to Polly?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why? I’ve finished the job I was hired to do. And I’ve answered the questions that had my curiosity up. You needn’t show me out, and thanks again….”

She reached out and touched my hand; her touch was warm, her hand was trembling. Trembling! This cool cucumber was trembling….

“Why, Anna,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, her face impassive, but her hand still trembling against mine. “Please—sit down. I’d like to talk to you. I need to talk to someone, and…you would do nicely. You’re almost a policeman, after all.”

I sat down.

Her dark eyes seemed very soft, then, and compelling; this big attractive woman had the ability to seem strong one moment, vulnerable the next—like many madams, she’d got out of hustling herself early enough to hold onto her looks; but had hustled long enough to remember how to push a man’s buttons.

Leaning forward in her chair, hands folded in her lap, she said, “You spent a night with Polly once.”

“In a manner of speaking. I was drunk, and I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time…I’d had some of that
other
kind of trouble—woman trouble. You’ve heard of that.”

My effort to lighten this conversation wasn’t having much effect: Anna’s ready smile was nowhere to be seen.

“She liked you,” Anna said.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

“She said she did. And you, maybe you liked her, a little?”

“I liked her in the sack, Anna, to be blunt, but that’s as far as it went. I was drunk, remember? And if you do remember, you’re one up on me.”

Her face looked pale and tragic, the dark eyes hooded, the red mouth a thin line. “I thought you might be interested in…helping her.”

“Well…sure. I guess. Anna, I’ve been shadowing her for a couple of days, and she hasn’t recognized me, even up close. We’re not bosom buddies.”

“But you’d help her, if you could. You’d help anybody in trouble.”

“Not really. But make your pitch. You’ve got my curiosity back up, if that’s what you’re after.”

She stood and paced; whether for dramatic effect, or out of actual nervousness, I didn’t know. I still don’t.

She stopped and said, “Polly may be in dangerous company.”

“How so?”

“This Jimmy Lawrence. She brought him here. For dinner. Polly, and several of the other girls, are more than just employees to me—they’re family. And I often invite them here. Have Romanian specialties, which I cook myself. I’m famous for my culinary arts, for my dinner parties.”

“I’m convinced. But you’ve drifted off the point, Anna.”

She paced some more, then sat down next to me; put a hand on my knee. She smelled good—face powder and exotic perfume. She might have been as much as fifteen years older than me, and I was very much aware that she had been in the cold-blooded sex business for decades, that she’d been a hustler then and a madam now; nevertheless, she had a sultry sensuality that made me uneasy.

“My son Steve and his girl, they’ve gone out with them. Several times.”

“Gone out with who?”

“Polly. Polly and her boyfriend Lawrence.”

“So?”

“Do you know how much danger they’re in?”

“Who’s in? What danger?”

“My son Steve! And his girl. They’re just kids. In their twenties.”

“So am I, Anna, and your point eludes me.”

“Do you know what the other girls at the sandwich shop call Lawrence, behind his back?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Dilly.”

“Oh. What’s that stand for? Has he got a pickle in his pocket, or what?”

“No,” Anna Sage said. “They think he looks like Dillinger.”