Макс Коллинз - True Crime

Now, in the white, modern compact kitchen, where mosaic white tiles chilled my feet, she scrambled some eggs and put me to work squeezing some oranges; she made some American fries, too, and toast, and we sat in the big modern living room, the one little lamp on, the city lights coming through a wall of windows, with the plates on our laps and our feet up on an ottoman.

“Where’d you learn to cook like this?” I said.

“Back on the farm. And I’m a bachelor girl pushing thirty, Heller. If I can’t cook by now, I won’t ever learn.”

“You can cook,” I confirmed. “Why don’t you give up show business and marry me? I’d let you cook like this all the time. Hell, I make good money. It only takes me a year or so to make what you make in a week.”

She made a crinkly closed-mouth smile, while she dealt with a bite of breakfast. Then she said, “If that’s a serious proposal, I’ll give it some thought. But you might as well know I’ll never give up show business. You have to take me and my fans, too.”

“Which fans are those? Feathered, or men with their mouths open?”

“Fans in general. You don’t disapprove of what I do, do you?”

“No,” I said, meaning it. “It’s harmless. And you’re good at what you do. I admire that. It’s really very lovely, your act.”

“Thanks, Nate,” she said. Nibbling on a corner of toast. Eyes sparkling. Corners of her mouth upturned. “I could go for you in a big way. I really could.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

Her smile faded; she wasn’t mad or anything, just all of a sudden serious. She put a soft, warm hand on my bare arm.

“You’re ‘all the boys,’ Nate. I’m no floozy.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest...”

“I know you didn’t. But you got a right to think I sleep around. Any man who had me on my dressing room floor’s got a right to think I might be a trifle... promiscuous. But I’m not. You’re the first man up here in a long time. That ‘oil millionaire’ you checked up on for me, he only dreamed of getting up here.”

“You mean you never cooked him breakfast?”

“Not an egg. Got me?”

“I gotcha.”

“Good. Just ’cause I take my pants off to make a buck doesn’t make me a...”

“No it doesn’t. And if I implied that, shame on me.”

She leaned over and gave me a buttery kiss, buttery from the toast.

“Thanks, Nate.”

“It’s okay, Helen.”

She smiled at that; she had a rather wide smile, too wide by some men’s standards, but I thought it was her best feature.

I figured we’d shut the book on this subject, but she went on, looking off distractedly toward the windows and the lights of the Gold Coast. “It’s just that I wasn’t raised to entertain men in my rooms. I was raised to believe in virtue triumphant, honesty prevailing... the old homilies, the old values. They don’t hold up in the real world too well, though, do they, Nate?”

“Not in Chicago they don’t.”

“Not anywhere. Not in these times. Not since the Crash. How can a man who’s been at his job thirty years suddenly not have a job? How can it be that businesses that have been around for generations suddenly aren’t anymore? I had friends jump out of windows, Nate. With accuracy.”

“Things are getting better, Helen. A little.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just feeling guilty.”

“Why?”

“For being a bad girl and taking off my pants to make a buck. It isn’t what my daddy wanted out of me, and it isn’t what I wanted out of me, either. I wanted to be a ballerina. I wanted to be an artist. An actress.”

“A girl’s gotta eat.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, eating a last bite of American fries. She chewed somberly, swallowed and said, “Maybe I feel guilty ’cause I get thousands of dollars for strutting around with my pants off, while men with families are getting peanuts for working in a factory or something. Or getting nothing at all, ’cause they can’t even find a factory to work in. It just isn’t right.”

“Why don’t you give all your money to the poor, then?”

“Don’t be silly! I can’t feed the world! I’m not that well off, I... you’re needling me, aren’t you? That was the point you were making.”

I shrugged, smiled, chewed.

“I don’t know, Nate. I eat caviar, and people a few blocks away are in soup kitchens; I wear mink, and pregnant women in Hoovervilles are wearing rags. I pay five hundred bucks a month to sublet this fancy-ass flat from a fag who’s in Florida, and over in Little Italy, not a mile from here, families are living in basements for six bucks a month. How do you expect me not to choke on my success a little?”

I sipped my orange juice. “Pay your taxes. Find a church to give some money to. That’s a start. Support some charities, if you like. But don’t climb on the cross. It’s hard to hold those fans with your hands nailed like that.”

She smiled crookedly. “There’d be too many lechers like you trying to climb up there with me.”

“That’s the ticket,” I said. “These are sad times, Helen. Your heart can break every time you walk down the street, if you let it. And there isn’t much you can do in this life but your job, if you’re lucky enough to have one, the best you know how. And try not to hurt too many people along the way. And maybe buy an apple from a guy on a street corner, once in a while, even if you don’t like apples.”

She studied me; she had a pale, beautiful look, right then, that I can see before me now.

“You’re okay, Heller,” she said. “This town hasn’t got the best of you yet.”

I laughed a little. “Oh yes it has. Many times.”

“Here I been bellyaching about my silly concerns, and it’s you who’s been so troubled and preoccupied all night. What’s going on with you, Heller? And why exactly did you show up unannounced at one of my shows, on a Thursday night? Last I heard from you, you planned to come by on Friday...”

“I was just anxious to see you.”

“Horseflop. What’s eating you? Come on, Heller, spill!”

I sighed, thought it over.

Then I said, “Can you keep something to yourself, even if it’s pretty hot stuff?”

She blinked, shrugged. “Sure.”

“You got newspaper pals, and I—”

“This won’t be in any of the boys’ columns, I promise you.”

“I know it won’t. This is front-page stuff, Helen. Ben Hecht would come back to cover this.”

“Now you gotta tell me.”

I told her.

I gave her chapter and verse on the events of the week, from my traveling-salesman client to the guy who seemed to be Dillinger.

“I know I ought to walk away from this,” I said, “but I feel a sort of... I don’t know, responsibility for Polly Hamilton. Not ’cause I... slept with her once. That was nothing — it was just business. But my client hired me to follow her, and that’s business of another stripe. Now, I know he hired me to see if she was cheating on him — he didn’t pay me to be her bodyguard or anything. But he clearly cares about her, and here I am, leading her into a potentially dangerous situation. Potentially, hell — she’s going to be in the middle of a goddamn shooting gallery.”

“You really think the federal men will just start blasting away at Dillinger, then.”

“Hell yes. And I’m not even sure the guy’s really Dillinger. I feel a certain responsibility for putting that poor bastard’s head on the block, too — and even if it is Dillinger, I’m not crazy about setting him up for an execution. That’s a job for a judge and jury.”

“If you feel this way, why don’t you just warn Polly Hamilton? Get her out of there?”