Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (7 page)

He just grinned at me, a happy bulldog. “When I called Richardson, he told me to get the hell in and develop those negatives. That’s a switch, huh? Heller pictures in the paper, and no Heller in the pictures!”

That was just how I wanted it.

“You guys are really going with an extra on this?” I asked him, as he swung his car around, giving me a view of Lieutenant Haskins and a patrolman taking apart newspapers and covering the halved corpse.

“You bet your lily-white ass,” Fowley said. “The
Examiner
’s gonna be all over this baby.”

I looked at the overlapping peaks of newsprint, covering her entirely, except for red-painted toenails—like Peggy’s—sticking out from under the pages.

“You already are,” I said.

4

Elizabeth Short—who I knew as Beth—had come into my life the previous October. I would be lying if I said she meant much more to me than any number of showgirls, waitresses, and secretaries with whom I’d had short-lived affairs. Beth was memorable chiefly because she resembled Peggy Hogan; otherwise, she was just another pretty young starry-eyed thing filled with dreams but no real plans.

As I attempt to share my memories of this ill-fated girl, please keep in mind that the several months prior to Peggy and me reconciling (and marrying) are something of a blur. Like many a spurned lover, I wallowed in self-pity, and when I got sick of that, I would turn to a bottle, and drink myself into a stupor.

Even my work, which I always relished, had become a mind-numbing bore. Due to extensive Chicago press coverage of my roles in such high-profile cases as the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Cermak assassination, and the Sir Harry Oakes murder, I had acquired a certain minor celebrity. This made it advisable for me to take initial meetings with clients—who sometimes wanted an autograph, and always wanted an assurance that the president of the A-1, Nathan Heller himself, would be handling their oh-so-vital retail-credit-check/divorce-case/personnel investigation, personally.

So I took these meetings, and my half a dozen operatives did the work. Most of them were, like me, ex-Chicago cops; the senior man was Lou Sapperstein, who took on the more challenging, which is to say rewarding and interesting, jobs.

Closing in on sixty, Lou—with bald pate, graying temples, bowtie, and tortoiseshell eyeglasses—looked more like an accountant than a private cop. Useful in shadow jobs, his appearance was deceiving: he was one lean, hard op, and little slipped past him—including my state of mind and lackluster performance.

“This finnan haddie has more color than you,” Lou said, pointing to his plate.

We were having lunch at Binyon’s, a dark-paneled businessman’s bastion just around the corner from our offices at Plymouth and Van Buren.

I said, not really giving a shit, “What’s your point, Lou?”

Shifting in the hard booth, Lou flinched facially and said, “Every day you come in hungover, half the time you forgot to shave, you fall asleep on your couch, you barely stay awake through client conferences, and look at you, a guy who’s never really been much of a tippler, drinking your damn lunch.”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t hungry. And this is only my second one.”

By that, I meant rum and Coke.

He pointed his fork at me. “Maybe you need to get back out in the field. Get back to some investigative work.”

“Fine. Something lively comes in, I’ll take it on myself.”

“Do I dare let you? Better you fall asleep in the office than on surveillance, or the middle of an interrogation. Has your malaria kicked back in or something?”

I sipped my lunch.

“Listen, Nate, we’ve known each other for a long time . . . but I’m not a hired hand now.”

A while back, I had given Lou a percentage of the business—not a big one, just a taste, to repay him, and motivate him, so he didn’t get stolen away by the Hargraves Agency, or go out on his own.

“You’re also not my boss,” I said. “And it’s been a long time since you were.”

That he’d been my boss on the pickpocket detail had long been a source of friendly kidding between us, but my remark came out sounding not all that friendly.

“I’m also not your conscience, Nate, or your fairy fuckin’ godmother . . . but I would say you need to get over this.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Jim Ragen’s niece. I’m talking about Peggy Hogan.”

I just looked at him.

He glanced away, embarrassed. “I know. I know. I’m way out of bounds. Your personal life is nobody’s business but yours. . . . Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

He had a bite of his fish; then he had another.

I swirled my drink and looked into its blackness. Without looking up, I said, “What do you suggest I do?”

“Are you asking?”

“What, you want me to ask twice? If you think my . . . if you think I’m adversely affecting the business by my, I don’t know, fuck, attitude . . . go ahead. Tell me what to do.”

He thought about that for a second.

“I never thought I’d hear myself have to say this,” he said, “considering you’re just about the randiest son of a bitch I ever knew . . . but, Nate, really, truly—you need to get laid.”

That remark caught me by surprise, and actually made me laugh—first time I’d laughed in weeks. But there was truth in his remark: Lou knew I hadn’t been out with a woman since Peggy dumped me. I hailed a passing waiter and ordered a steak sandwich and French-fried potatoes, which—along with not asking for a third rum and Coke—was my way of telling Lou I was going to try to rejoin the human race. Thus ended this rare personal chat between Lou and me.

In light of the housing shortage, I had held on to a “suite” (a living room with kitchenette and a bedroom) on the twenty-third floor of the Morrison, Chicago’s tallest hotel. I’d stayed off-and-on at the Morrison—which was at Madison and South Clark, a few blocks from the A-1 offices—for almost ten years, and the fact that I still resided in a hotel seemed emblematic of the sorry state of my life. I should have been married by now, preferably to
Peggy, and—assuming my connections and money could get past that aforementioned housing shortage—either living in a Gold Coast apartment or a suburban bungalow, pursuing the glorious postwar life I’d fought for.

The Morrison was also home to the Boston Oyster House, which dated back to just after the Great Fire and rivaled Jim Ireland’s as Chicago’s premier seafood restaurant. It was an elegant yet informal basement dining room refreshingly free of the usual cornball nautical trappings, other than a scattering of marine landscapes. I ate there several times a week, as it was both convenient and good, and—unlike, say, the Berghoff, another of my haunts, which ran to no-nonsense, rather grizzled waiters—orders were taken and delivered by waitresses, many of them attractive and young.

This is not to say that I was trolling for female companionship, after Lou Sapperstein’s pep talk: I was just hungry. For food. No kidding. I swear.

The aquamarine uniform with the white collar and cuffs was designed to look primly attractive, not alluring, but her slender, shapely figure had an agenda all its own. I spotted the new girl when I first came in, but it was from a distance, and all I got was the general effect of that classy chassis topped off by a china-doll face and lots of dark curls, shoulder length and yet piled high.

That and the way she walked: a sensuous, swinging sway that would have done a runway model proud.

I slipped a fivespot to the maîtresse d’—the warm friendly, unfortunately named Pearl Kuntz, the head waitress now for several decades—for the privilege of having the new girl wait on me.

“All right, Nate,” the fleshy, perennially blonde Pearl said, eyeing me suspiciously. She wore a black uniform, and was tucking the five in a side pocket. “Just don’t make a madam out of me.”

“I have nothing ungentlemanly in mind.”

“It’s not your mind that worries me, Nate.”

She was showing me to my small table against a wall, where a gilt-framed whaling oil painting awaited to keep me company.

“You’ve never forgiven me for that pass I made at you in ’32, have you, Pearl?”

“Sure I have, Nate. What I haven’t forgiven is you not making one since ’38.”

We grinned at each other, and she handed me a menu and trundled off.

It wasn’t until the waitress arrived to take my order that I got my first good look at her, which knocked the wind right the hell out of me.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, her voice low, rich, husky. Her eyes were clear and cool and the same aquamarine as her uniform; that china-doll effect was due to a bright red lipstick and a light shade of pancake over a naturally pale complexion.

“No,” I said, lowering my menu. “It’s just . . . you remind me of someone.”

Amusement twitched her full lips; her pencil tapped rhythmically on her order pad. “An old girl friend, by any chance?”

“Not very original, is it?”

“Not very.”

I was shaking my head, astounded. “But I’m not kidding. You really are a ringer for her.”

The amusement disappeared and the translucent eyes fixed on me, and she stopped tapping the pencil. “That isn’t just a line, is it?”

“No. It isn’t.”

Dark eyebrows—thick, unfashionably so—tightened over the gorgeous, limpid-pool eyes. Her voice was soft—private. “You really cared for her.”

“Yeah. I really cared for her.”

“She isn’t . . . please excuse me for asking . . . she isn’t dead, is she?”

“No! No. She’s fine . . . it’s just ‘us’ that’s deceased.”

She smiled a little. “I get you. . . . Now, what can I get you?”

I ordered a long-standing menu favorite, Pearl’s Special—surprisingly, not a seafood dish, but a porterhouse steak with baked potato—back on the menu now that ration books were ancient history.

In Chicago, the coffee was usually served, like the salad, with the meal; but I asked this lovely waitress to bring mine right away. I took it with cream and sugar.

“Tough guy like you?” the waitress asked, a twinkle in those aquamarines, now.

“What makes you think I’m a tough guy?”

“Miz Kuntz says you’re a private eye, Mr. Heller. A famous one, at that.”

“Make it ‘Nate,’ and there’s no such animal as a famous private eye; or if there was it would be bad for business.”

“Why?”

“Because when people recognize you, it’s darn hard to spy on ’em.”

She laughed at that. “Okay. Cream and sugar, it is.”

“Anyway, don’t you think the world tastes nasty enough, without voluntarily swigging something bitter?”

“You’re right. I don’t even like coffee. Not even with cream and sugar.”

Pearl, from her post at the front of the restaurant, was giving me the evil eye.

“You better pay attention to some of your other customers,” I advised her.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” she said regally, and glided away. That walk; what a walk—like sex on springs . . .

I glanced over at Pearl, who was frowning at me, and blew her a kiss; she turned away before I could see her smile—she thought.

“So what’s your name?” I asked the lovely waitress, as she delivered my grilled-onion-topped porterhouse, sour-cream-slathered baked potato, and Russian-dressing-crowned head-lettuce salad.

“Well that depends,” she said, placing the plate before me, brushing nicely close, her Chanel Number Five blotting out the rising aroma of the steak; her full lips somehow managed a pixie smile.

“Depends on what?”

“Whether you like Betty or Beth. I’m Elizabeth Short, and both Betty and Beth are short for Elizabeth.”

A silly little joke, which she’d probably told a couple thousand times, but I found it amusing and chuckled accordingly. Goddamn, it felt good to flirt again! I felt human—I felt like me.

“You’re much too poised and chic for ‘Betty,’ ” I said, and she was—inordinately so, for a waitress, to where I wondered if it was an affectation or a put-on. “So I’ll go with ‘Beth.’ ”

“Good choice,” she said, obviously pleased. “That’s my preference, too.” She nodded toward my steaming steak. “The chef said I should mention that’s really, really rare. If you want it cooked some more, just say the word.”

“Much as I’d like the excuse to talk to you again,” I said, carving into the porterhouse, seeing a deep, satisfying red, “this will do nicely—far as I’m concerned, the only way a steak can be too rare is if it’s still grazing.”

Now she chuckled at my silly little joke, and sashayed away.

I was pretty well stuffed from the porterhouse and trimmings, but—looking for an excuse to prolong my relationship with the waitress (and telling myself that her striking resemblance to Peggy had nothing to do with it)—I ordered dessert. The house specialty was a mocha layer cake, one of the restaurant’s fabled slabs of which would probably knock me into a coma.

“Ooooo, I just love chocolate,” Beth said, writing down my order.

“Hey, wait a minute—why don’t you cancel that, and let me take you out for dessert, when you get off? When is that?”

She was frowning, but not in displeasure. “Well, uh . . . it’ll be fairly late, we’re open until eleven, you know. . . .”