Target Lancer

CHAPTER 7

After lunch, I decided to leave the Jag in the Pick-Congress parking ramp and shrugged on my Cortefiel raincoat, snugged on the Dobbs narrow-brim hat, and took a brisk, overcast walk over to the Monadnock Building.

Once upon a time it had been the largest office building in the world; today the Monadnock was a sixteen-story curiosity among its taller, often less-distinguished offspring. Even now the soot-gray brick structure with its flaring base and dramatic bay windows struck a moody yet modern pose that made it a good fit for a detective agency.

I went in the main entrance on West Jackson, walked down a corridor consisting of the ass-end display windows of stores facing Dearborn and Federal, ignored the distinctive open winding stairwells, and took the elevator to seven.

Though we’d taken over much of the office space on this floor, our main area remained the corner suite where the frosted glass-and-wood exterior had stayed the same for decades. The door had been revised slightly:

A-1 Detective Agency

Criminal and Civil Investigations

Nathan S. Heller

President

with in smaller lettering,

Louis K. Sapperstein

Vice President

Like Fred Rubinski out in Hollywood, Lou was a full partner now. Just not full enough to have his name in letters the size of mine.

There were no customers in the reception area, which made me sorry we’d expanded it. The walls bore the framed vintage Century of Progress posters that had been part of the agency since 1934, the furnishings blond Heywood-Wakefield numbers. The reading matter on the end tables included the usual suspects-Time, Newsweek, Redbook, Sports Illustrated-with a few battered ringers mixed in. Like a certain Life issue and a few decade-old true detective-type mags, covering cases of mine. I still got written up in such periodicals, but the covers had grown so sleazy of late, they no longer sent the right waiting-room message.

Our receptionist was a dark-haired looker in her late twenties called Mildred, a name that had always struck me as a bad parental joke. Mildred had a nice smile, was not stupid, but wanted to be Jackie Kennedy so bad I just couldn’t take her seriously. Today she wore a pale-pink dress with a cowl collar. She’d have worn a pillbox hat if I let her get away with it.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, giving me a bright-eyed welcome.

“Mildred,” I said, nodding.

A fairly typical conversation between Mildred and me.

The bullpen was mostly full, only a few agents out in the field-we always had a Monday staff meeting, and unless a case dictated otherwise, everybody was here. My fourteen agents were a wide range of ages and sexes, and we had a Negro and a Chinese guy, too.

Every A-1 detective had a police or military police background. Those not working a case were in business clothes, with those taking a break from fieldwork in street clothes. Their modern metal desks were widely spaced, because I didn’t care for cubicles. Most of the agents did not need privacy with clients because either Lou or I took the first meetings. A wall of windows provided a view onto Jackson Street showcasing the Federal Building, and another wall was strictly metal four-drawer files.

The office was run by Gladys Sapperstein, Lou’s wife. Gladys had been a gorgeous young woman when I hired her in the early ‘40s, who had interviewed warm but proved a cold fish, dashing any Hollywood fantasies I might have harbored about a private eye and his sexy secretary. I’d been made to suffer for my error by way of decades of Gladys’s business acumen and efficiency.

Several years into my employ, Gladys had married one of our operatives, a kid named Fortunato, and when he died in the war, she thawed out some. Not that she and I were ever an item, not by a long shot; and I thought she would never remarry, but then about ten years ago, she and my partner Lou announced that they’d gotten married by a judge over the lunch hour.

I suspected a longtime office affair, but said nothing, since I didn’t give a damn, other than my ego being bruised by the beautiful Gladys never having been tempted by my masculine charms. Lou was a strapping guy, sure, but a dozen years older than me-he’d been my boss on the Pickpocket Detail in the early thirties-and he was bald and bulbous-nosed and bespectacled, and what the hell was wrong with me? Well, I knew. Gladys saw me for the randy, unreliable fucker I was, and Lou for the right guy that he was.

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.”

“May I tell you what’s not possible? A Chicago police detective, and to his credit he tried to be as gentle as he could, indicated the official theory is that Tom had a woman in his room, and that she robbed and killed him.”

“Yeah. I don’t buy that.”

“I would understand if you did. Businessmen on out-of-town trips, they sometimes see women. Girls they meet in a hotel bar. Girls they pay for it. Sluts. Whores. But not Tom. You see, we’re still very … this is embarrassing to say … but there is … there’s nothing wrong with our sex life.”

I raised a hand to indicate she needn’t say more. “Jean, normally I might tell you that anything is possible, even in a good marriage. Good men slip, the best husband can make a mistake. But I don’t believe Tom was killed by a woman.”

“You seem very sure.”

“The evidence indicates a male assailant, no matter what the Chicago police may say. But it is possible that it was a robbery.”

“How so?”

I explained my bellboy theory.

“That seems a little … elaborate,” she said. “The planting of the glass with the lipstick, the Trojan wrapper and so on. Improbable, but not impossible.”

“No argument.”

“Still, Nathan…” Her eyes had a glint now. “It could have been something else … couldn’t it?”

She was smart. Tom had married a beautiful woman but she was much more than that.

“Yes,” I said. “A professional killer might well plan to leave behind a false trail … like the lipstick glass, the prophylactic wrapper. That’s not improbable at all.”

“A cold-blooded, premeditated murder, you mean.”

“I do. If the errand Tom ran on Friday night turned him into a loose end, then … that’s very possible.”

She nodded, as if I had just told her, Your car needs an oil change.

“What kind of loose end had Tom become?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. Possibly that money being traceable back to Hoffa’s man may pose somebody a problem. That’s just a guess. And I may be a loose end now myself.”

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Lou filled the silence with a question I should have asked. “Mrs. Ellison, when did you last speak to your husband?”

“Sunday evening. He’d eaten at the hotel. Must have been around seven. We didn’t talk long. He just said he felt stupid, this mess with the Bears ticket, especially how dull the game had been. We talked about the kids, some events coming up.”

A football game. A school musical.

She was saying, “I talked to him Friday night, too. After that burlesque club fiasco. And we spoke Saturday night. He’d taken a client and his wife to a matinee at the Shubert. I forget what was playing.”

They’d spoken every night he was away. I believed they really were still sweethearts. And it didn’t seem soppy to me. Not at all.

She turned from Lou to me. Sitting straight, business-like, purse firm in two hands. “All right, Nathan-what can we do?”

“Jean, it’s not going to be easy. If he was killed by a professional, for the kind of people we’re talking about … it can be hard, even impossible, to prove.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Tom says you’re an interesting man. He says people tell stories about you.”

Lou gave me a look, and I said, “Really. What kind of stories?”

“Tom says that you are a very tough hombre. That’s what he said, isn’t it funny? Tough hombre. That you sit in a fancy office in Chicago, but you’re more like some kind of … Bogart kind of detective.”

Lou grinned.

“I really don’t know what Tom meant by that,” I said.

“Tom meant that you have your own sense of justice. Your own way of doing things. That people you don’t like have been known to … just kind of go away.”

Lou stopped grinning.

I could have dissuaded her. I’m not sure why I didn’t. I could have said those were silly rumors, and just talk, people’s imaginations running away with them.

But I didn’t.

“Let me just say,” I replied gently, “that if the long arms of the law prove a little … short … I might sometimes find a way of evening a score. In certain situations.”

Lou’s eyes were wide. He was obviously surprised by what I was saying-not by the content of it, but that I uttered it out loud.

“I like the sound of that,” she said.

“You need to understand that I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it. And it might take years. Sometimes many years, before a score can be settled.”

“But maybe you could call me on the phone some night.”

“Maybe.”

“And just say, I don’t know, something like, ‘I think Tom would be pleased.’ Just something like that.”

I half smiled at the new widow. “I think that’s a phone call I might be able to make. Someday.”

She smiled back at me.

Then she lifted her chin, her expression regal now. “Well, I would very much like to hire you, Nathan. Things are obviously a little topsy-turvy right now, but I feel confident I’m well off. Tom has a big insurance policy, you know, his business is flourishing, and-”

I raised a stop hand. “Jean, no. This investigation was already paid for, by Tom.”

“No, I insist-”

“I’ll let you pay any expenses I incur. How’s that?”

“… All right.”

“And I’ll need your full cooperation. If any of my people come around wanting information about Tom or access to his private papers or anything at all, you have to provide it.”

“All right.”

“Good,” I said, rising. “I need to discuss the particulars of this assignment with Mr. Sapperstein … so for now, I’ll just show you out.”

I came around and helped her out of her chair, and she looked up at me and her lower lip began quivering. “Please, Nathan. Do something about this.”

“Count on it,” I said.

I walked her through the bullpen, which had cleared out by now. Lou trailed after. Gladys was framed in her office door, watching.

The reception area was empty, just a faint hint of Mildred’s perfume remaining-Joy, Jackie Kennedy’s favorite.

“Do you need someone to drive you?” I asked.

“No, I’ve done quite well today.”

“You have. But it’s going to hit you.”

“Oh, I know,” she said.

She took my hand, squeezed it, and-the picture of composure-stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind her.

Lou was at my side suddenly. “Somebody should drive her back to Milwaukee. You want me to?”

“She says no. She seems strong.”

That was when I heard something fall.

I went into the hall and she’d collapsed, she was curled up against the wall, one shoe off, the purse discarded, weeping, moaning, grief coming up out of her in wrenching wails. I picked the little thing up in my arms like a bride and crossed the office’s threshold and rested her on the reception-area couch.

I sat next to her and she crawled over and hugged me, hard, and wept into my clothes.

“I’ll drive her,” Lou said.

“You do that,” I said. “We’ll talk later.”

Anyway, I had someone to see.