Beame said, 'It's a long shot. Dutch. But Jimmy had so few friends…'
Reagan thought about it; his face was so earnest it hurt. 'Can't think of anything, sir. I'm really sorry.'
I shrugged. 'Like the man said, it was a long shot. Thanks, anyway.'
'Sure. Oh, Mr. Heller. Could I have a word with you? Could you step in the studio for a second?'
'Fine,' I said.
Beame looked curious, and Reagan said, 'I want to ask Mr. Heller to look up a friend of mine in Chicago. No big deal.'
Beame nodded, and Reagan and I went into the studio, a room hung with dark blue velvet drapes, for soundproofing purposes, though the ceiling was crossed by more trees, bark and all, attached to which were various stuffed birds, poised as if in flight, though they weren't going anywhere.
'I didn't want to talk in front of Mr. Beame,' Reagan said. 'I
'Oh?'
Beame was watching us through the window; stuffed birds watched us from tree beams above.
'Yeah. He was in with a rough crowd. Hanging around in speakeasies. Drinking. Fooling around with the ladies, using that term loosely, if you get my drift.'
'I get it. You know what joints he might've been frequenting?'
Reagan smiled on one side of his face. 'I'm no teetotaler. I'm Irish.'
'That means you might know where some of those places are.'
'Yeah. Jack Hoffmann and I used to hit some of 'em, occasionally. And those I haven't been in. I know about. Why?'
'You working tonight?'
'No.'
'Busy?'
'Are you buyin'?'
'That's right.'
'I live at the Perry Apartments, corner of East Fourth and Perry. I'll be waiting out front at eight tonight. Swing by.'
'I'll do that.' I said, and we shook hands, and he smiled at me. and it was an infectious smile.
'Irish, huh?' I said.
'That's what they tell me.' he said, and went back in his announcer's booth, which was visible through a window in the left draped wall, where a bulky WOC microphone could also be glimpsed.
In the rustic reception room, Mary Ann's father said, 'What was that all about?'
'Old girl friend of Iris he wants me to check up on.'
'Oh.'
'Nice guy.'
'Yes. Yes, he is. Now, then. I've made an appointment with Paul Traynor, for ten o'clock, at the newspaper. In the meantime, I've got to stay up here and get to work. I'll leave you at my daughter's mercy.'
'Come along,' Mary Ann said, taking my arm as we got on the elevator. 'That appointment's at ten and it's only half past eight now. I'm going to take you on a tour of my favorite place in the world. Or anyway, the Tri- Cities.'
'Really? And what's that?'
' 'A Little Bit O' Heaven.' Ever hear of it?'
'Can't say I have. Where is it?'
'Next door.'
Soon I was walking with Mary Ann across an oriental courtyard, past a thirty-foot-long writhing rock-and-tile and chipped-stone snake, by two idols with human heads and monkey bodies, under shell-and-stone umbrellas, through a four-ton revolving door inlaid with thousands of pearl chips and semiprecious stones, into a big pagoda of a building in which ancient hindu idols coexisted with Italian marble pieces that luxuriated in lushly lit waterfalls; where rock gardens and pools and ponds and fish and fauna and petrified wood and growing plants and shells and agates came together to form a place I and no one- had ever seen the like of before. Trouble was, I wasn't sure I wanted to.
I said little as she led me around; she was enthralled- I wasn't. The money that had been sunk into this combination rock garden and museum seemed excessive, considering the times. This was not a curator's notion of a museum, it was a collector's conceit, a conglomeration whose sum was considerably less than its parts.
'This is B. J. Palmer's personal collection, you know,' Mary Ann said, as we stood in front of an immense black idol, a sign telling us this 'Wishing Buddha' was over a thousand years old. 'I think it's wonderful of him to open it up to the public like this.'
'We paid a dime.'
'What's a dime?'
