True Crime

I thought about it a second, then did.

It was better this time.

“You need a new girl,” she said, and enfolded me in her arms.

“Maybe I need a new actress,” I said into her neck. Her sweet, talcum-smelling neck.

She pushed me away, gently, keeping me within her arms. Her eyes, her smile, were knowing and yet gentle, very gentle.

“I’m just a Missouri farm girl,” she said. “Scratch most any actress, and that’s what you’ll find. We’re not special. Just playing at being special.”

“Shush, Helen.”

The floor was wooden but her silk robe was cushion enough.

Now all I needed was another client.

2

He was waiting outside my office door, hat in hand.

My office was at the dead end of a hall on the fourth floor of the building on the corner of Van Buren and Plymouth, just a stone’s throw from the exclusive Standard Club. But don’t get the wrong idea: it was also just a healthy spit away from a couple of flophouses. Chicago’s an open-minded place—bums and bankers, whores and debutantes, crooks and cops. There’s room for everybody, here. Just don’t ask me to sort out who goes in what slot.

The building my office was in was full of marginal businesses and second-rate doctors and third-rate lawyers and possibly one first-rate detective who deserved better. So if anybody shlepped up three flights and stood outside my office, he was either a bill collector, a process server or a potential client. Walking down the corridor, the wood-and-mostly-glass walls of offices on either side of me like a tank I was a fish in, I studied this bird and tried to sort out his slot.

He was a pale blond man with a darker blond mustache, immaculately groomed in a tailored brown suit with a yellow-and-brown bow tie. The hat in his hand was straw, with a chocolate band; he had a thin, rather pointed nose and eyes the color of slate behind wire glasses. He looked rather harmless, and from the way he stood, head bowed a bit, he seemed shy, even a little timid. Which either made him a client, or a process server. Process servers study looking timid, you know.

On the chance that he might be a client, however, I did not turn around, but kept walking; approached him.

“Mr. Heller?” he said. He smiled tentatively; the skin of his face pulled tight over his cheeks. Like he’d never smiled before. Even tentatively.

“That’s right,” I said, and he stood to one side as I unlocked the pebbled-glass door.

“I’d like to inquire about your services,” he said.

I smiled and made a gracious gesture with one hand. “I’d like you to,” I said, and he nodded, and stepped inside.

Mine was a good-size office, but there was no outer waiting area, just one big room, with cream-color plaster walls. A big scarred oak desk was opposite the door, and behind the desk were windows, several of which I immediately opened to let a little air in. Out the windows was a view of the El. There was also a brown leather couch with tears repaired with brown tape, a wooden filing cabinet, a hat tree and, against the right wall as you came in, a big brown cabinet.

“Is that a Murphy bed?” my potential client asked.

I got him a chair and he sat across from my desk, which I got back behind and said, “Yes. Were like Pinkerton’s. We never close.”

He shrugged. Seemed embarrassed to have brought it up. “I just…wondered. You just don’t often see a Murphy bed in an office.”

“I live here,” I said, taking my suitcoat off and tossing it on the desk, loosening my tie, rolling up my sleeves. It was hot, and, unlike Sally Rand, I had no fan. “If you’d like to take your coat off, be my guest. Make yourself at home.”

He waved that off, despite a faint beading of sweat along his forehead, but did place his hat on the edge of my desk, saying, almost incredulously, “You live here?”

“I try not to advertise it, because it doesn’t impress my other clients any more than it’s impressing you. But I have an arrangement with the landlord to live in the office in exchange for rent. I’m a night watchman of sorts.”

“I see.” He folded his arms, crossed his legs; tried to hide his second thoughts about hiring me.

“Times are hard,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

“It’s been in all the papers,” I said.

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I…I’m not bothered by your lack of…”

“Of a secretary. Of associates. Of decent furniture. I’m relieved.”

He smiled again, a little nervous twitch of a smile; his face was tight as a mask. “I’m not a wealthy man, myself. I probably couldn’t afford someone like…Pinkerton’s or Hargraves. What are your rates, Mr. Heller?”

“Ten dollars a day and expenses.”

He nodded, stroked his mustache, adjusted the way his glasses were sitting on his nose.

“Is that too high for you?” I asked. “I assure you I’m fully qualified. I was on the police force here for a number of years….”