“Right.”
I opened the door for him and, as an afterthought, he turned and offered me his hand. Surprised, I shook it.
Then he walked like a little general down the hall with the burly plainclothes man in attendance. Off to do battle with the East Chicago police; and to find a bathroom.
I closed and locked the door. Opened the bathroom door and Polly Hamilton, fists on her hips, was burning at me.
“You gave him my name!”
“Did you think it was going to be a secret? The dead man had your picture in his watch, you know.”
“I—I forgot he had that picture…”
“Well, you were at the scene when he was killed. Lots of people saw you. Come on out of that bathroom, Polly.”
She did. She looked forlorn. But pretty.
“I can’t go home. They’ll be waiting.”
“Face the music, or better, go see the feds. They’ll probably shield you.”
She looked up and her eyes did a little dance, like maybe she was remembering something Anna Sage told her along the same lines.
Then she got angry with me, or mock-angry. There was some coquettishness in it.
“Why did you tell him all that?” she wanted to know.
“He’s a cop and he asked me.”
“Oh, you’re such a shit.”
“I thought you had special memories of our night together?”
That made her smile; I still liked her smile.
“I need a place to stay,” she said. “No one would think of looking for me here…”
I was tempted. I admit I was tempted.
But I said, “Try the YWCA,” and pushed her out the door. Hoping Stege was long gone by now.
Before I shut the door she stuck her tongue out at me, and said, “Fuck you.” A strange combination of childishness and adultness. Or is that adultery?
Then I went back to the desk and sat. Looked at the federal wanted poster for Dillinger spread out there, where Stege had left it. His irony was a little heavy-handed, too. Looked at my watch. It was after one.
I called her anyway.
“Helen,” I said into the phone. “Did I wake you? Is that offer for me coming over tonight still open?”
“Yes,” Sally said.
22
The next afternoon, around three, I was sitting in my shirt sleeves having a bagel and a glass of cold milk in the deli- restaurant below my office. Milk was almost never my drink of choice, but coffee was out of the question—the day was steaming hot, so who the hell needed coffee?
I hadn’t been upstairs yet, having just got back from Sally’s. She’d been good to me last night—we didn’t talk at all; in fact, we didn’t do anything except sleep together—just sleep. And it was exactly what I needed.
What I didn’t need this afternoon was a reporter, but suddenly that’s exactly what I had: Hal Davis, of the
“I been looking for you,” he said.
“Sit down, Davis, you’re making me nervous.”
He sat. “You’re a hard man to find.”
“You seem to’ve found me.”
“Pretty wild carryings-on at the morgue last night.”
“I saw the papers.”
He told me about it anyway. “I don’t know how the word got out so fast, but there they were, before the body was even cold, swarming like flies. Couple thousand sweaty souls crow-din’ around the morgue like they were waiting for Sally Rand to go on.”
He meant nothing personal by that; Sally and I hadn’t made the gossip columns yet.
“And that son of a bitch Parker scooped us all,” he said, shaking his head with admiration.
He meant Dr. Charles D. Parker, one of numerous assistants to the coroner’s pathologist, J. J. Kearns. Parker, however, also happened to be a stringer for the
Soon the meat wagon delivered Dillinger—and exclusive
