Макс Коллинз - True Crime

I didn’t know what I was going to say — certainly not that I was a private detective checking up on her for her husband. Still, I felt the need to talk to her. To see if I could get her side of the story. Maybe even give her a break.

Or not.

I wasn’t sure. I just felt I somehow owed her this much. Possibly because I couldn’t remember paying her for that night over the bar on Halsted.

I took a counter seat and a pretty brunette with a cap of curls and blue eyes came up to take my order. I asked for scrambled eggs and bacon and orange juice, and while I waited for them, I glanced around, looking for Polly. There were only two waitresses here today — the girl behind the counter, and a poor harried thing with blond hair and too many tables.

When the brunette waitress delivered my juice, I said to her, “You’re shorthanded this morning.”

“I’ll say,” the brunette smirked. “Our other girl called in sick today.”

“Polly, you mean?”

“Yeah. I don’t remember you eating here before—”

“Sure. Bunch of times.”

“If it’d been at the counter, I’d remember you.”

She went away and I sipped the juice. Pretty soon she placed the eggs and bacon in front of me.

“Toast doesn’t come with it,” she said, “but I can get you some.”

“Please.”

When she delivered a little plate of toast, I said, “I know you’re busy, but I wondered if I could ask you something.”

She smirked again, but it was pleasant. “Make it quick.”

“Does Polly have a steady boyfriend?”

“Yeah. For the past few weeks she has.”

“Funny,” I said. “I thought she was a married gal.”

The waitress shrugged. “She was,” she said.

“Was?”

“Yeah. Excuse me, I got customers.”

“Uh, sure. I’m sorry.”

She came back a little later and asked me if I wanted coffee.

I said yes, and she poured me some, black.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said.

I found a smile for her. “That’s hard to believe. What did you mean, Polly was married?”

“What do you think? She’s divorced. Has been for two or three months. Why don’t you stop back when we’re not so busy and we’ll get acquainted?”

The woman who ran the tavern on the corner of Willow and Halsted wasn’t around, but the apron behind the bar traded me his boss lady’s home address for a buck. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty — unless you have a buck.

She lived about a mile north of the bar, at 2420 North Halsted, on the second floor of a big graystone three-flat. The ground-floor was unlocked; I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. She answered on the third knock, just barely cracking open the door, peering out at me with one large dark eye, startlingly dark against the white sliver of her face.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” she said. She had a low, melodious voice, and a Garbo-like middle-European accent.

“I’m Nate Heller,” I said, taking off my hat. “The detective. Remember?”

The dark eye narrowed.

“We met over in East Chicago, a couple times. And I was in your bar not so long ago. With Barney Ross?”

The dark eye widened and what little I could see of her redrouged mouth seemed to smile.

Then the door opened and Anna, a big dark-haired handsome woman in her early forties in a gray tailored suit with white frills at the neck, gestured for me to come in.

I did, and she took my hat and placed it on a small table in the entryway.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, smiling, but politely. Shrewdly? Cautiously. “What brings you here? And how did you locate me? I’ve only lived in this apartment a few weeks.”

“I’m a former Chicago cop, Anna,” I said, pleasantly. “I know all about bribing people.”

Her smile was reserved yet genuinely amused; she gestured again. “Come,” she said. “Sit.”

She showed me into a big living room where a thick carpet and dark expensive furniture bespoke money. And why not? There was always dough to be had when you ran a bar — particularly when you had B-girls and rooms upstairs.

“America’s treating you good, Anna,” I said, seated on a well-stuffed sofa, glancing around.

“I’ve been good to it,” Anna said, seated primly in a chair nearby. It was warm in here, though not stifling; there was no electric fan, but the front windows were open. Anna seemed not to notice the heat. A little yellow bird in a standing cage was sitting silently nearby, taking the heat less well than Anna; too damn hot to chirp.

For a Romanian immigrant — probably an illegal one — Anna was doing very well indeed. She had to be: she was operating in Paddy Bauler’s ward, the forty-third, where nothing came free.

“You wouldn’t be fronting for somebody, would you, Anna?”

Her smile faded, but she wasn’t exactly frowning. “That’s a little forward, Mr. Heller, for a guest who hasn’t announced his intentions.”

She had that oddly formal, calculated manner of speaking of someone who’s learned English as a second language; I found it kind of charming — and somehow unsettling.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of my business what your business arrangements are. Say, do you own this building?”

My impertinence got another genuine smile out of her; her teeth were very white. And, unlike Anna, not first generation.

“I might,” she said. “It was my understanding you were no longer with the police—”

“I’m not,” I shrugged. “But I’m still a cop. Just because you go private, that doesn’t take the cop out of you.”

“It was also my understanding that you weren’t on friendly terms with the police.”

I shrugged again. “We try to stay out of each other’s way. I still have friends on the pickpocket detail. But you can’t testify against cops and not make some other cops not like you.”

“Even if the officers you testified against were guilty.”

“Every cop I know is guilty. But suppose the force was a bunch of lilies and all I did was pull a couple weeds... I’d still be seen as a squealer.”

Anna smiled like a wry sphinx. “The world of crime, the world of law. Two sides of the same coin.”

“A double-headed coin at that.”

“The last time we met you didn’t strike me as a philosopher.”

I shook my head. “I probably struck you as a drunk who wanted to get next to one of your girls.”

“As I recall, you succeeded.”

“Right. Which is sort of why I’m here...”

“Sort of?”

“How well do you know Polly Hamilton?”

“Is there some reason why I should answer that question?”

“Is there some reason why you shouldn’t?”

She thought about it.

“I could insult you and offer you money, Anna,” I said, making a show of looking around the joint, “but I hate giving money to people who’re doing so much better than me.”

Annas smile shifted gears to madonna-like. “I won’t ask you for any money, Mr. Heller. I will ask if you’d like some tea, or coffee? Or something stronger?”

“How about something cool — ice water?”

“Fine.”

She rose and left the room; I thought I heard something off to the right. Like somebody moving around in the next room. There were six or eight rooms in this flat, at least. From the sound I heard, maybe she was taking in boarders. Or maybe some of her girls were staying here with her.

She returned with ice water for me and coffee for her; she didn’t seem to feel the heat, despite her almost wintery apparel.