She had her own office now—between Lou’s and mine—and remained attractive, a busty, pleasingly plump brunette in her late fifties wearing jeweled cat’s-eye glasses.
I was about to step into my office when she emerged from hers, looking primly pretty in an orange and green cotton print dress.
She crooked her little finger. That was only slightly less intimidating than a cop turning his siren on.
“Good afternoon, Gladys,” I said, going to her. She rarely came to me.
“Nice to see you made it in.”
“I’m the boss, Gladys. I show up when I feel like it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s interesting. Lou is supposed to be semi-retired, and he’s here more often than you are.”
She never referred to Lou as “my husband” in the office. You would never guess they were married. In fact, she nagged me a hell of a lot more than she ever did Lou.
“Well, this is a surprisingly warm greeting for a Monday, I admit,” I said to her through a strained smile. “Was there something?”
“Don’t slip out after the staff meeting. You have a five-o’clock appointment.”
“That’s a little late for an appointment.”
“Well, she might get here earlier. But she’s driving down from Milwaukee, and has to stop at the morgue on her way, to make some arrangements.”
Gladys paused to cast me a condescending look.
“Oh shit,” I said. “You’re talking about Jean Ellison. My God, she just found out this morning her husband is dead, and she’s driving down here? That’s terrible. You should have talked her out of it.”
She just stared at me. She might have been a stone statue at Easter Island, albeit better-looking. I might have been a bug crawling across the wall.
“Mrs. Ellison,” Gladys said finally, “said that she felt sure you would see her.”
“She’s right, of course. You know who she is?”
“Yes. Her husband did some publicity for us, a few years ago. Very nice man. I take it he’s recently deceased?”
“Murdered. That’s where I was this morning—over at the Pick-Congress, having a look at the crime scene. Killed in his hotel room, money stolen.”
Something flared in her eyes. “Surely that’s a police matter.”
Gladys, ever since being promoted from receptionist to office manager, took a stern, proprietary interest in how I allocated my time.
I put a hand on her shoulder and she winced, just a little. “I want to promise you, Gladys, that if someone ever murders you in the night, I will not stray from my duty. I will continue to serve the clients of the A-1 and allow the honest, hardworking police of Chicago, Illinois, to bring in your killer.”
That made her laugh.
When I got to her like that, she would say, “Oh, you,” and slap my chest.
You now understand my relationship with Gladys Sapperstein in all its complex glory.
She was almost in her office when I said, “Lou here?”
“Yes. You want him?”
“Please.”
In my private office, I hung up my raincoat and hat in the closet. My inner sanctum was a spacious preserve immune to the changes of the outer world—even the outer office area. The central feature was the old scarred desk that dated back to my one room over the Dill Pickle in Barney Ross’s building on Van Buren. But there were also padded leather client chairs, a comfortable couch, wooden filing cabinets, and walls arrayed with framed, often signed photos of celebrities, sometimes celebrity clients, sometimes with me in the shots.
There was Helen, in full Sally Rand persona, standing coyly behind a fan, next to a shot of Marilyn Monroe in a white bathing suit, both signed to me with love. Funny to think Helen was still here, and Marilyn was gone.
“Nate?” Lou said. He was leaning in—I’d left the door open for him. No black rims for his glasses, strictly wire-frame. “You wanted me?”
“Yeah. Shut us in and sit yourself down. We have almost half an hour before the staff meeting. I need to fill you in.”
He settled his big, muscular frame into the chair opposite me as I got into my swivel number. He had on a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbow, navy-blue suspenders, and a matching clip-on tie. His fashion sense left something to be desired, but he was a hell of a detective. And partner.
“You heard that Tom Ellison was murdered,” I said.
“Yeah. Shame. Last night?”
“Apparently. I did a job for him Friday—it’s off the A-1 books, okay?”
He nodded.
I had no secrets from Lou. Or anyway few secrets. He even knew at least the vague outlines of Operation Mongoose. So he listened patiently as I filled him in about the 606 Club money drop, my talk with Jimmy Hoffa in a Wrigley Field men’s room, and the gist of what Dick Cain and I had discussed at the Pick-Congress this morning.
“The question is,” Lou said, “are
you
a loose end now? Or was this something else? Tom getting himself killed may have no connection to that errand he ran.”
“It’s possible. Also possible that he got himself killed because he didn’t just run the damn errand, like he was told—instead getting in touch with a private eye pal of his to back him up.”
Lou nodded. “So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know if Gladys mentioned it to you, but—”
“Mrs. Ellison has an appointment at five. Yes, I know.”
“Well, I want you to sit in on that meeting, and hang around after.”
He was nodding again. “Done. Anything else?”
“Yeah. If you wind up one of my pallbearers, wear a real tie, for Chrissake.”
Lou grunted a laugh, got up, and ambled out—he was graceful for a big athletic guy, and you’d make him for his mid-fifties, not early seventies.
I called Helen at my place.
“Listen,” I said, “I apologize, but I don’t think we should move you in right now.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Her voice had a nice lightness to it. “We can just head over to the Lorraine this evening, and get my bags, whenever you’re done with business. We’re past checkout anyway.”
“No, Helen. You don’t follow. I think maybe somebody else might drop around to see me, unannounced … and this time not to deliver football tickets.”
I told her briefly that a client I’d done a job for recently had been murdered.
“I don’t have any intention of putting you at risk,” I said.
“Don’t be a pussy, Heller. We’ll make the move tonight. Then you can take me out for a nice meal. Who knows, you might get lucky again.”
And the click in my ear said that was the end of it.
If I was so tough, why could all these women push me around?
After the staff meeting—two hours that ran to reports on the status of current cases and potential new clients—I headed back to my office. I was barely behind my desk when Mildred rang through.
“Your five o’clock is here,” Mildred said quietly.
“It’s not even four-thirty.”
“I know. She says she’ll wait.”
“I’ll be right out.”
There was a bathroom off my office, and I went in, took a piss, washed my hands, brushed my teeth, tossed some cold water on my face, and looked at myself, wishing a younger face would look back at me. I toweled off and let out the kind of sigh only a man well past forty can muster.
Time to greet my murdered client’s wife.
She was a petite honey blonde, thirtyish, with a Janet Leigh hairdo, wearing a simple gray dress with a rounded collar and a pleated skirt. Subdued clothing, but not widow’s weeds—only her pumps were black. Her pretty, rather delicate features were highlighted by understated makeup. Her white-gloved hands were in her lap, holding a small dark-gray purse. She looked as composed as a prospective teacher waiting for her interview with the superintendent of schools.
As I stepped into the reception area, I said, “Jean, I’m so very sorry.…”
She rose, smiled, and said, “It’s very nice to see you, Nathan. It’s been too long.”
She extended a gloved hand, as if being introduced to me at a cotillion, and I went over and took it, gently. Only the barest crinkling of her chin gave anything away. Her cornflower-blue eyes were not red and did not look particularly moist.
I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her and comfort her and let her cry her heart out. But I didn’t know her that well. She and Tom and I probably had dinner out, in a vaguely business-related way, half a dozen times, and that was several years ago. I’d been to their house in Milwaukee once, when I’d promised Tom I would keep my PR business with him, despite the move, which I hadn’t.
She might have been battling back tears or in shock or even not that devastated—how could I know what the state of their marriage had been?
So I said nothing more, and she said nothing more, as I took her gently by an arm and led her through the bullpen. My agents did not look up—they were well-trained to ignore clients heading back for a meeting with the boss, particularly clients personally escorted
by
the boss.
Just outside my door, I said, “I’m going to ask my partner, Lou Sapperstein, to sit in on our meeting. I trust him, and you can, too. Is that all right?”
“Certainly.”
I walked her to the client’s chair, and Lou—who’d been tipped off either by Mildred or Gladys or both—slipped into the office, shut the door, and went directly to Jean Ellison.
He extended his hand to her and she gave him a gloved one. “Lou Sapperstein, Mrs. Ellison. I am so sorry for your loss. I knew Tom and he was a fine man.”
“Thank you.”
I sat and asked if she would like coffee or tea or perhaps water, as Lou stood poised to take our orders. She declined.
Then I said, “I understand you had to come down here for … official matters. But if this is difficult for you, I could come to you in Milwaukee, later in the week. It’s not a problem. If you’d like some time to sort things out.”
“No. I’m here. I’m … I believe I’m rather in a sort of stunned state, Nathan. I haven’t cried yet. I feel something more like … anger than grief. Something that feels like it’s, I guess, bubbling up down deep.” She laughed and it was awful. “Like a volcano, I guess.”
I forced a small smile. “You have a son and daughter, I know. I apologize for not remembering their names.…”
“Mike is in junior high, Susie’s in the sixth grade. My parents live in Milwaukee—that’s one of the reasons Tom and I moved there, Dad had some very good connections with the Miller people.… Anyway, I’m afraid I did something very cowardly.”
A woman alone who had driven the hour plus from Milwaukee to Chicago, within hours or maybe minutes of hearing of her husband’s death, did not strike me as cowardly. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t know what to say.
Nor did Lou, who had positioned himself in a chair just in back of and to the right of her.
She explained without prompting: “I left it to Mom and Dad to tell the kids. That’s terrible of me, I know. But I left it to them. They seem … more stable, more reliable, than me right now. I couldn’t think of how I could tell the kids. Just couldn’t. What would I say?
Mike!
Dad can’t make it to your football game Friday night.
Susie!
You won’t see Dad at the school musical.”
Another short, awful laugh.
I said, “How can we help?”
She leaned toward me, just a little. “Before we speak, I must ask you, uh—your friend, Mr. Sapperstein?” She glanced back at him and smiled politely. Then her dry-eyed gaze fixed itself on me: “Is he aware of why my husband contacted you on Friday?”
That gave me a chill. A goddamn chill.
She knew.
Her husband had confided in her about his worries, the situation he’d got himself into trying to get into that unmemorable Bears game.
I had not seen this one coming. I figured she might be here to ask me to look into Tom’s death, because I was their former client, their sort of friend who was a private investigator … maybe at most Tom might have mentioned to her he was going to see me Friday, but
this
?
“Jean,” I said, sitting forward, “how much do you know?”
“I know about the football ticket and the envelope of money and the burlesque house and hiring you to go along, to
protect
him. I think I know all of it.”
The emphasis on
protect
had been the only sign that she perhaps blamed me a little. I’d been hired as Tom’s bodyguard Friday, and two nights later he was dead.
Trying not to sound at all defensive, I said, “I didn’t see Tom after the 606 Club. Everything appeared to go well—he passed along the envelope and left.”
I didn’t tell her the guy on the receiving end of the money drop was Jack Ruby, a little mobster I’d known for years. And I didn’t say I’d been invited to that Bears game, too, by Jimmy Hoffa himself.
“I blame myself,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Blame myself.” She settled back and sighed. The only sign of inner turmoil was the way she held onto that purse. Maybe she had a gun in it and was going to shoot me for letting Tom die. Maybe I wouldn’t blame her.
But she went on: “We don’t hide things, Tom and I. Even in business, he always runs things past me. We are close. We are still … sweethearts. Soppy as that sounds. He is a very loving husband, and a wonderful, attentive father. He does have to travel sometimes, but … he is the best husband a woman could ever dream of having, and the best father our kids could ever hope to have.”
Okay, so she was talking in the present tense. That was how she was handling it. Tom wasn’t dead yet. Even if she had just read me his obituary.
She was saying, “When he got the chance to take on those questionable clients, with the connections to this Hoffa gangster, I could have said no. But the money was good. The money was very good. We bought a new home. We put money away for Mike and Susie’s college. If I had just said, ‘No, Tom, not those people.’ If I had said that, I wouldn’t have had to go to that nasty-smelling place today and look at him on a tray with a tiny hole in his chest.”
I thought that might unleash the torrent, but it didn’t. The gloved hands strangled the purse.
“Do you think,” she said, “that this big shot Hoffa or the gangsters he runs with are responsible for Tom’s death?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”