whatever suits you. The gentleman on your right is Officer Jackson. You can call him Officer Jackson. Officer Jackson is about to take his coffee to that seat over there where he can be alone with his thoughts.”
I shut up and drank my coffee from a thick, porcelin cup with a big handle. The coffee didn’t taste bad. It had no taste. My cup was more interesting. It had a branching crack in it. I followed the crack with my eyes and let the steam of the coffee hit my face. Kleinhans gripped his cup in two hands.
“Hot cup against your palm on a cold night feels good,” he said. I put on a wry grin and nodded my head knowingly. Kleinhans went on talking very softly into his cup without looking up at me.
“We got a call about you from Miami,” he said. “Well, anyway, my boss got a call. Seems you’re here to check up on something involving some of our good friends in the criminal world.”
I was ready to say something, but having started, Kleinhans wanted to finish his piece.
“I work out of the Maxwell Street Station not too far from here,” he went on, savoring the feel of hot porcelin in his hands. “I sort of specialize in gambling problems related to the citizens in question. Would you like a roll?”
I said no, but that I would like some cereal. The waitress brought him a cheese Danish and me a bowl of what looked like Rice Krispies. Crumbs fell from Kleinhans’ sugary Danish. He swept them off with the back of his arm. They snowed on the catatonic woman. She didn’t complain.
“Maybe we can be of service to each other,” Kleinhans went on. “I’ll tell you how to get in touch with certain people, and you keep me informed about what you find out. Now this isn’t exactly the way I’d play it with you if I had my way, but my boss says to treat you right. You’ve got connections. And who knows? You might come up with something I can use.”
“You mean you might be able to use me?” I said.
He nodded his head sagely and said “mmm” as he wiped sugar from his mouth with a napkin.
“We understand each other,” he beamed. “Here’s my office number and home number.” He pulled out a pencil and wrote two numbers on the napkin he had just used on his mouth. “Take it. Call me if and when, and at least “once a day.” He shrugged. “Trains and planes leave here every day for the bright sunshine of California. If I were you, Senor Peters, I’d get a ticket and head for the sun tonight. You’re not dressed for our weather.”
“I think I’ll stick around.”
“Figured you would,” he said, clapping my back with a broad right hand. “No trouble from you-” he pointed to me, “no trouble from me,” he pointed at himself. His pronoun references were unmistakable, but I wasn’t exactly sure of what his definition of trouble might be.
“It’s a deal,” I said.
“Nope. It’s the way I say things are going to be. We’re not partners, Mike Shayne. Now, we’ll drop you at a hotel where you can get some sleep, and you can give me call in the morning. You want to stay fancy or cheap?”
“It’s on MGM,” I said, “but I’m used to small rooms. Too much space makes me nervous.”
“We’ll compromise on the LaSalle.” He got up, threw some money on the counter, glanced at Officer Jackson, and turned away. Jackson wasn’t finished, but swallowed the rest of his donut and spilled some of his coffee on his uniform trying to get his money’s worth.
The unmarked cop car was right outside the door in a no-parking zone. Kleinhans and Jackson walked to it slowly. It was no more than a few feet, but pain shot through my head.
“How cold is it?” I asked, getting into the front seat as directed. Jackson drove. Kleinhans sat in back. I wasn’t a suspect, but one never knew.
“Eleven or twelve above,” said Jackson. “Not too bad.”
Kleinhans serenaded us with a whistled version of “San Antonio Rose.” He even
I said thanks and got out for my dash to the lobby, but Kleinhans called for me to lean over.
“If the bad guys don’t already know you’re here, they will soon. May even have been somebody at the station watching for you. I didn’t spot anybody, but we’re probably not the only ones who got a call about you from Florida.”
Officer Jackson looked out the opposite window. I was no fun anymore.
“I got you,” I said. “Goodnight.”
“Comparatively,” said Kleinhans rolling up his window. I waited for the car to pull away. It didn’t. So I went up the stairs into the lobby. The doorman tried to take my case, but I wasn’t letting it out of my hands again.
It was eleven at night. There were lots of people in the lobby to watch me make my way to the desk in a stiff summer jacket and unmatched pants with a conspicuous crease at the knee. The suitcase didn’t help. It was a second-hand piece I got for three bucks from a pawnshop owner in L.A. named Gittleson. I had muscled a teenage Mexican kid for him when the kid tried to buy a gun and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was a real class item for the LaSalle Hotel, yes I was.
The clerk on the desk gave me the electric smile with the eyebrows raised to ask what a creature like me wanted in a place like this. He looked like an unprissy version of Franklin Pangborn.
“I’d like a room,” I said, reaching for the desk pen and dipping it in the inkwell. I dripped ink on the blotter while I waited for him to produce the guest book.
“What kind of room?” he said.
“One with a bed and a bath,” I answered. “That’s what hotels usually have. It doesn’t have to be big, just warm.”
He tried to keep from nibbling his upper lip. I didn’t look enough like a bum or a nut to be thrown out, but I didn’t look quite respectable enough to stay. It was my running problem regardless of what clothes I wore, but it was more acute at the moment. People in the lobby were looking toward us, and both of us kept our voices down.
“I’ll pay two days in advance,” I said. “My name is Peters, Toby Peters of MGM.”
The clerk’s eyes opened in understanding and his head rose from despair.
“You’re a movie person?”
“Yes,” I said. “From Hollywood. I was there this morning.”
The clerk obviously believed movie people were exempt from decent dress. He turned the guest book toward me. I signed.
“Yes, Mr. Peters,” he beamed, “I’ve seen some of your work.”
“Good,” I said taking the key to 605 and shooing away the bellboy. I wondered which piece of work he had seen-the guy who fell out of my window in Los Angeles the year before when he tried to kill me, or maybe the flea bag desk clerk I had pushed around a few months ago.
A middle-aged couple got on the elevator with me. By middle age I mean they were a year or two older than me. The lower range of middle age went up miraculously each year, managing to stay just ahead of me. If I lived long enough, I might entirely eliminate middle age from my experience. Someday I’ll just wake up and admit that I’m old.
The thought depressed me almost as much as I depressed the couple on the elevator. I didn’t depress the elevator man. He just looked at his numbers and minded his own business. Up to now he was my favorite person in Chicago.
The couple got off at four. Before the door was closed, they whispered, “Who do you think-”
I got off at six, found the right door, and went in. My room was dark, carpeted, and small. I turned on the radio. Kate Smith was in the middle of “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” I checked my gun and my cash. They were both there. I couldn’t see anything out the window. It was frosted over. Light was coming through from LaSalle Street.
I went back in the hall and pushed the elevator button. It came up empty, and I offered the kid a quarter for the newspaper under his chair. He said I would get my own for two cents by riding down to the lobby. I didn’t want to face the lobby again.
“I’m in the movies,” I explained.
He understood, which was more than I did, and exchanged the paper for a quarter. I locked my door just as Kate sang “and every time I think of him, I’ll think of him that way.” I turned off the radio, ran a hot bath, took off my clothes and soaked my weary back while I read The Chicago Tribune, which told me it was “The World’s
