You’ll Wait Forever

His wife was supposed to meet him at their regular restaurant at six o’clock but she was late. He didn’t mind. He was in love with her and he enjoyed sipping his drink and thinking of how she’d look when she hurried through the door, smiling and looking about for him, a little flustered and excited. When her eyes found him she’d smile with relief and come toward him with her quick graceful walk. She was a bright shining girl with hair the color of a new penny and eyes that seemed full of tiny dancing lights; and when she’d pulled off her gloves she’d smile into his eyes and tell him a funny, exciting story of why she was late.

So he didn’t mind waiting a while for her; she was worth waiting for, forever — for always and all time.

Their regular waiter, a stocky genial Austrian named Herman, smiled at him and picked up the empty Martini glass.

“Another, Mr. Halliday?”

“No, I’ll wait and have one with my wife,” he said.

“She’s a little late, eh?”

“Yes, a little bit. I guess she stopped to do some shopping when she left the office. She’ll be along pretty soon.”

“Maybe she stood you up, eh?” Herman smiled.

“That’s an idea,” Sam Halliday smiled, too.

He passed the time by looking over the menu. He knew it by heart but he read it the way a man will read a railroad timetable when he hasn’t anything else to read. There was tomato soup, onion soup and consomme. Shrimp cocktail or bluepoints. Whitefish, fillet of sole or salmon patties. Breaded veal cutlets, roast beef, pork chops, liver and bacon, steak. Pie, Jello, cheese cake. Coffee, tea or milk.

They ate here at this restaurant on Wabash avenue in Chicago’s Loop every Thursday night. Then they’d take in a show or, in the summer, walk over to Grant park to listen to the open air concerts. They always sat at the same table, they always had Herman as their waiter and they generally ordered the same food. There wasn’t anything exciting about it, but it was what they liked to do and they enjoyed it.

He found himself glancing up occasionally at the door. His wife worked as a typist for an insurance company on Randolph street, about a ten-minute walk from the restaurant. She was through at five-thirty, which gave her plenty of time to make their date at six. But she usually spent a few extra minutes in the powder room on Thursday nights; and even on the short walk to the restaurant she could generally find some little thing to stop and shop for.

He smiled unconsciously and went back to the menu. His thoughts drifted around to his own work — he was a bookkeeper for a local department store — and the minutes ticked away faster and faster.

He was thinking about his assistant, a young man who had spent three years with the army in Europe and was having a tough time getting adjusted to the humdrum routine of civilian life. He liked the youngster and felt grateful to him in a strange way; because of that he wanted to help him and he was thinking of how he could do it, without seeming obvious or intrusive.

The minutes flew by in a quickening stream.

She had to come soon — now!

When Herman came to his table again and asked him about a drink it was seven o’clock.

Sam Halliday looked at his watch with a start.

“She is late,” he said, feeling a slight quirk of annoyance. “Better bring me another Martini, Herman.”

While Herman was getting the drink he went to the phone booth which was located near the front door. He called her office and got the janitor on the phone. The janitor assured him that the office was empty. Everyone had gone home. He hung up and called their apartment. There was a chance — a bare one — that she’d forgotten it was Thursday night and had gone on home. But there was no answer at the apartment.

He went back to the table and finished his drink slowly. He sat there while the restaurant slowly emptied and another hour passed.

Now it was eight o’clock. Now, eight-thirty.

He wasn’t thinking about the young assistant now. He wasn’t glancing idly at the menu he knew by heart. His eyes were on the door and his hands on the empty glass were tight and strained.

Herman was a kind, tactful man. He, too, was watching the clock and the door.

“These women,” he said, shaking his head with mock despair. “My wife can never be on time. She will stop to buy a pair of socks for me and it will take her hours.” He smiled at Halliday uncertainly. “Your wife is the same, eh?”

“Yes, she’s like that,” Sam Halliday said, but he couldn’t smile.

When the hands of the big old-fashioned clock on the wall touched nine o’clock he stood up and walked quickly to the phone booth.

He didn’t know who to call, so he stood with his thumb holding the hook down, trying to think. He didn’t want to call the hospitals or the police because that gesture would somehow make his fears a reality. He knew, as an objective fact, that people were struck by hit-and-run drivers every day in the city. That every newspaper carried stories of abductions, kidnapings, of sex crimes. These things weren’t unusual. He read such stories every morning as he sipped his coffee in their small cozy apartment. But nothing like that could happen to Ann. Those things happened to other people. They happened to middle-aged men returning from work. To drunks. To girls with names like Mary or Evelyn or Sally or Janet.

Finally he released the hook, dialed Operator and asked for the police. The words sounded strange in his ears. He was thirty-four years old, a bookkeeper, a modest average man. Slightly taller than average, perhaps, but in no other way different from thousands who worked and lived and loved in the city of Chicago. And now he was asking a strange impersonal voice to connect him with the police.

“Central,” a voice said in his ear.

“I want the police,” Halliday said.

“This is Central Station,” the voice said. It was a laconic voice, a tired, uninterested voice.

“My name is Halliday. My wife is missing. I don’t know if I’m talking to the right department, but I’d like to report—”

“Try Missing Persons,” the voice cut in.

“All right. Thanks.”

“Just a minute. What’s your name?”

“Halliday, Sam Halliday. My wife’s name is Ann Halliday. She was supposed to meet me at six o’clock for dinner, but—”

“Hang on a second,” the voice said. There was interest in the voice now.

Sam Halliday loosened his collar. It was suddenly warm in the booth. He tried not to think.

“You’re Sam Halliday, eh?” The voice was back.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Okay, get down here right away. You know where Central Station is?”

“...No.” His throat was dry and tight. “What do you want me for?”

“Central’s at Eleventh and State. Check in on the ninth floor. Homicide.”

“Wait a minute. What’s all this?” His voice sounded loud and cracked in his ears. “What’s this got to do with my wife?”

“Your wife was booked on a murder charge two hours ago, Halliday. Better get down here.”

The building that houses Central Station is tall and new, but it is in a neighborhood of warehouses, railroad yards and cheap bars.

Inside, the lobby is littered with cigarette butts; and fat, sloppily dressed men with wise cautious eyes can be seen at all hours, talking in lowered voices, occasionally smiling at things that are seldom humorous.

Halliday hurried through the lobby to the elevator. He had the strange feeling that his mind had snapped. None of this could be real. Ninth floor. Homicide. Ann booked on a murder charge.

None of that was true. They’d laugh at him when he asked for his wife. They wouldn’t know of any phone call, because there hadn’t been any. There couldn’t have been.

He got off the elevator on the ninth floor and looked up and down the corridor uncertainly. At the end of the wide dirty hallway — on his left — were double, glazed-glass doors with Homicide Division lettered on them in solid black letters.

He walked toward them slowly. Noises from the building were around him but he seemed to walk in a vacuum. He turned the knob of the door, feeling the metal, cold and slick against his damp palm.

He stood there unmoving. He knew he had to push open the door, but for an instant he was without strength. His breath was coming with an effort — as if the vacuum he moved in was being pumped dry of its last oxygen.

He wet his lips and pushed open the door. A uniformed policeman sitting at a desk looked up at him. He was a young man, with a square red face.

Halliday let the door swing shut behind him, then walked slowly to the desk.

“I’m Sam Halliday,” he said.

“Okay,” the young cop said. “Take a seat.”

He went back to an involved doodle which he’d been drawing on a pad of scratch paper.

“My wife is here,” Halliday said. “She’s in some trouble. They told me to come down here.”

“Who told you?” The young copper didn’t look up.

“I don’t know. Someone I talked to on the phone. I called to report that she was missing.”

“Okay, okay, take a seat like I told you.”

Halliday looked down at the dark bent head of the young copper; watched with something like fascination as the pencil in his hands added a few more scrolls to the senseless figure on the pad. He bit his lip sharply. He forced himself to walk to the wall and take a seat in a straight-backed chair. His hands were trembling uncontrollably.

A few moments passed. Then the young copper picked up a phone on his desk. He twirled the dial. Then said: “Halliday’s here.”

He put the phone back and went on with his doodling.

A door behind the desk opened and a man in a gray suit came out. He glanced at Halliday.

“You Halliday?”

“Yes.” He stood up, holding his hat nervously.

“Okay, come on in here.”

He stood aside while Halliday walked through the door into a larger room, furnished with two cigarette-burned desks, a few chairs and dirty green window shades. A bare, two-hundred watt bulb burned from the ceiling.

The man closed the door and sat down in a chair.

“Sit down if you want to,” he said.

“I came down here about my wife,” Halliday said. “I phoned about ten minutes ago and somebody said—”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man said.

He was short but wide, with pale skin and eyes set in pouches of fat. He wore the gray suit, a greasy gray hat shoved back from his forehead, thick black shoes. His hair was black and the veins in the backs of his hands were the thickness of lead pencils. There was a smell of tobacco smoke and sour beer about him; a stale smell. He carried a gun under his left arm.

“I’m Sergeant Norrin. I been assigned to your wife’s case. Do you know anything about it?”

“I don’t know a thing. Somebody told me to come here. That’s all I know.” He came closer to the detective. “Where is she? Is she here? I’ve got to see her.”

“Take it easy,” Norrin said. “You’ll see her. Did you know a guy named Willie Peters?”

“No. But what’s that—”

“Did your wife?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe she knew somebody by that name before I met her. She never mentioned that name to me. What difference does it make?”

“Your wife shot a guy named Willie Peters,” Norrin said. “People generally know the people they shoot. You can see her now for a while. I’ll talk to you later.”

They took him to his wife. She was in a small room with a policewoman. She sprang up when he came through the door. He caught her in his arms and held her close to him. She sobbed his name over and over against his shoulder.

Norrin and the policewoman went outside.

He made her sit down then and he pulled a chair close to her and held her hand tightly.

“What’s happened, honey? Has everyone gone mad? Is the whole world turned upside down?”

She stopped crying and dried her eyes. Her face was pale and her eyes were swollen and red but she still looked wonderful to him. The bright coppery hair was disarranged and she needed lipstick. One of her stockings was twisted. But she never looked more wonderful to him because she needed him now as she had never needed him before. And he felt himself trembling with anger at whoever had done this to her.

“They keep saying I shot a man,” she said. “A man named Willie Peters.”

“What happened, honey?”

“I stopped at a cigar store to get some cigarettes.” She tried to smile. “You used to say I never got the habit — of buying.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I know. Anyway there were three or four men in the store. As I opened the door a shot sounded. I don’t know just what happened then. I screamed and I must have fainted. When I came to the police were in the store. I was on the floor and some men said I shot a man.”

“Men? What men?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Sam,” she said. She was crying again. “I kept telling them to get you, but they just kept asking me questions and then they brought me down here. I didn’t shoot anybody, Sam. Get me out of here. Take me home, Sam.”

“I’ll take you home, baby,” he said. “They’re out of their minds. I’ll talk to that Norrin. They can’t do this to people.”

“Please, Sam. I can’t stand it here.”

He found Norrin in the room with the desks and chairs.

“What’s all this about?” he said, and his voice was louder now. “What kind of a cock and bull story have you guys cooked up? My wife never had a gun in her hand in her life.”

Norrin looked up from his chair.

“Don’t go shouting at me, goddamit,” he said.

Halliday let out his breath slowly. This was the Law. This was Power. This was a fat man who smelled of sour beer who could be sensitive about the tone you used with him. He brought his voice down.

“What’s it all about? It sounds like everybody down here is nuts.”

“Nope. Your wife shot a guy named Willie Peters in a book joint on Wabash avenue. She walked in and blew a big hole in him. We got two witnesses who saw it. We got the pawnbroker who sold her the gun. We got her cold, fella.”

Halliday heard the words but they sounded like wild noises to him. Like Norrin was babbling.

“It’s all crazy,” he said, and this time he couldn’t keep his voice down. He knew he was crying. “She didn’t shoot anybody. You’re all lying.”

“It’s tough, fella,” Norrin said. “But we don’t play practical jokes around here. Better get her a lawyer. She’s going up to the grand jury as fast as we can make it.”

The lawyer that Sam Halliday retained was a young man named Nelson. He was short, with sandy red hair and short stubby fingers. After talking to Ann he investigated the evidence the State had presented to the grand jury — the evidence which had secured a true bill on a first degree murder charge. He talked to Sergeant Norrin and to the Assistant State’s Attorney assigned to the prosecution of the case.

“I want it straight,” Halliday said. “I want the truth. What are her chances?”

A week had passed. Somehow in that time Halliday had gotten accustomed to the realization that he wasn’t living a mad nightmare. His wife was in jail, charged with murder. The grand jury had turned in an indictment. Those were facts that he had to accept.

“They don’t look good,” Nelson said worriedly. He drummed his fingers on his desk then shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “Maybe you ought to try somebody else, Halliday. Damn it, I’m not running out on you, but I don’t know this criminal law business very well. I wouldn’t mind losing a civil case, but this—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

“You’re doing as much as you can,” Halliday said.

“Okay, I’ll keep at it. Now here’s the State’s case. They don’t mind telling me about it because it’s perfect. Your wife walked into a handbook at ten minutes of six, Thursday evening, March sixteenth. Here’s the story of what happened according to the State’s witnesses. There were three men in the place. Willie Peters, the man who was shot, and two men who operate the book. Their names are Bill Dineen and Sol Smith. These two men — Smith and Dineen — tell this story. Your wife came through the door and when she saw Willie Peters she stopped and said, ‘You asked for this!’ Then, according to their sworn testimony, she took the murder gun from her purse and fired one shot into his body. After that she screamed and fainted.”

Halliday pressed the palms of his hands against his temples. There were times during this week that he felt like breaking into insane laughter. Ann! His Ann, with the coppery hair and bright dancing eyes acting like a movie gun moll. “You asked for this!” Words that were like lines from a bad script. Something they’d see together in the neighborhood movie house and laugh about on the way home.

Ann with a gun in her hand firing a bullet into the body of a man called Willie Peters. The whole thing was too incredible to be taken seriously.

“Hang on to yourself,” Nelson said.

“I’m okay. Go on.”

“All right. Now about the gun. There’s a man named William Morton who claims he sold your wife the gun. Morton runs a pawn shop on South State street. He’s about sixty years old, been in the business all his life. He swears that she came in one day a week or so ago and bought the gun from him. The gun, according to his story, was left with him over a year ago and never redeemed. He has the pawn ticket and a description of the gun, everything all in order. That’s his story and he’s ready to go on the stand and swear to it.”

“He’s lying,” Halliday said. His hands were twisting together spasmodically. “They’re all lying. Can’t you see that?”

“Maybe I can,” Nelson said, “but that won’t do us any good. I’ve talked with your wife. She certainly seems innocent to me. But against the testimony of these eye witnesses we need more than my opinion. We need something to break the stories of the witnesses. If they’re lying we’ve got to prove it.”

“What are the police doing?” Halliday almost yelled. “Do they sit on their fat behinds and believe anybody who comes in with a wild story? Aren’t they checking these witnesses? Good God! Do they send people to jail or the electric chair without any investigation?”

“Take it easy,” Nelson said. “The police seem satisfied with the case they have. They seem convinced they have it sewed up and they’re not doing anything more about it.”

“When is the trial?”

“They’re working pretty fast. Probably within a month,” Nelson said.

The courtroom was crowded but quiet as the State presented its closing arguments.

Halliday sat beside his wife. On her other side was a stocky police matron. Nelson sat across from them glancing nervously at notes in his hand.

The State’s attorney — a graying, cautious man of about forty — didn’t bother to be dramatic. He had an airtight case based on facts. The jury of nine women and three men had those facts and he was content to remind them of their obligation.

He mentioned in his dry, precise voice what Bill Dineen and Sol Smith had testified.

Dineen, a middle-aged Irishman with reddened face and blood-shot eyes had been a good witness. So had Sol Smith, a dapper, cocky young man of about twenty-five.

They identified Ann as the girl who shot Willie Peters.

William Morton, a paunchy, silver-haired little man who looked like a kewpie doll, testified that she had bought the gun from him. Ballistics and fingerprint experts showed that Ann’s fingerprints were on the gun; that it was the gun which had killed Willie Peters.

The State’s attorney reminded the jury of these facts. He pointed out that the age and sex of the defendant was irrelevant. She was a murderess and the jury’s responsibility was to decide her guilt on the basis of the evidence produced.

Nelson made his closing argument after the noon recess. There wasn’t much he could say. Dineen and Sol Smith were bookies, race touts, Dineen had served time for forgery. Smith had been picked up for questioning many times. William Morton, the pawn broker, had done nine years of a twelve-year term for receiving stolen goods. These facts were interesting but inconclusive. The eyesight of these men was good, regardless of their backgrounds.

Nelson did a fairly good job but he didn’t have a single lever with which to pry apart the structure of evidence the State had built about Ann Halliday.

The jury was out three hours.

When they returned there was an expectant stir in the courtroom. The bailiff rapped for order.

The foreman of the jury rose and cleared his throat. The verdict, he announced in an almost apologetic voice, was murder in the first degree.

The bailiff had to rap for almost a minute to get order restored.

Halliday found Ann’s hand under the table. He pressed it hard. She looked at him and her lips were trembling. She said his name once in a low voice.

The judge was talking. There was no need to listen. First degree murder carried a mandatory death penalty. Halliday knew that because Nelson had told him.

He hung onto Ann’s hand and he felt her fingers tighten convulsively when the judge read the sentence. The words hit him with a physical shock. They were like something cold and hard driving into his stomach with rupturing force.

The police matron stood up and touched Ann’s shoulder. She looked at him and he saw that she was almost ready to break. There was terror in her eyes.

“Don’t let them, Sam,” she said with a soft moan.

“I won’t, Ann,” he said. “I won’t.”

She was led away and he and Nelson fought their way from the courtroom, trying to get past reporters and photographers. The glare of flash bulbs was continuous.

“I’m sorry,” Nelson said to him.

“You did all you could,” Halliday said.

“Is there anything else—”

“No,” Halliday said, almost savagely. “There’s nothing else I want anyone to do.”

He went to his apartment alone that night. It was a pleasant place, a four-room apartment that Ann had decorated and furnished. It was a bright and cheerful, exciting and colorful, with gay green drapes and low comfortable furniture. Every week Ann bought fresh flowers for the living room.

He sat down and put a cigarette in his mouth automatically. The flowers of a month ago were on the mantel and they gave the room a musty smell. He looked at them. They were daisies, brown and dried, and he wondered if he should throw them out. Ann couldn’t stand dead flowers.

He put a hand against his forehead and rubbed it slowly. There was something wrong with his mind. The flowers were dead, but what difference did it make? Ann wouldn’t see them again.

He had to make himself accept that fact. Then he could do something. He had to believe that Ann was going to die in a month or so. Get that set once and for all. Make it a part of his thinking. Like the fact that bread cost twelve cents a loaf and that their milkman was named Al.

That was all. Make it just another fact about Ann. Ann has bright coppery hair. Ann can’t carry a tune. Ann is going to die in a month.

One, two, three.

He laughed a little then and the sound of his own laughter in that bright room with the dead flowers made him shudder.

...The next morning they let him see her. He brought a small bunch of daisies. The police matron frowned but said nothing.

“They’re lovely,” Ann said.

“I thought the place needed cheering up,” he said, trying to smile naturally.

She was pale, but she had herself under control. She smiled, too.

“Is there any news?”

“I phoned Nelson this morning. He’s appealing the case. It looks pretty good. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worrying very much,” she said. “I still feel I’m going to wake up any minute and find myself in the apartment with the alarm ringing.”

He caught her hand hard, but there wasn’t anything to say.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here.” She almost grinned. “Thanks for the flowers, Sam. They’re beautiful.”

He went down to the street. It was a cold windy day and the neighborhood was dirty. He found a cab and gave the driver an address on South State Street.

William Morton’s pawnshop was on South State, near Harrison. The traditional gilt globes above the door were cracked and peeling, and the windows were streaked with dust. Halliday went inside the small cluttered shop and walked to the counter.

Morton was seated behind it reading the Racing Form. He recognized Halliday. He stood up and put the paper away.

“How are you Mr. Halliday,” he said. He could have been a country grocer or a small town doctor. The gold chain across his vest, the spectacles that perched on the end of his nose, the air of well-scrubbed, pink-cheeked friendliness all seemed out of place in a shop cluttered with mandolins, shotguns and imitation jewelry.

“I want to talk to you,” Halliday said.

“About your wife, I imagine.”

“That’s right.”

“I was sorry about that business, Halliday. I don’t like being helpful to the police. I don’t like informing on anyone, but with my record they don’t take no for an answer.” He shrugged his plump shoulders. “They showed me the gun and asked me what I knew about it before I had any idea of what it was all about.”

“You don’t remember when my wife came in here?”

“That’s the truth. Your lawyer made a lot of talk about that, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You remembered the gun, all right. You remembered my wife well enough to identify her,” Halliday said. “But you don’t remember the day.”

“It was close to six o’clock,” Morton said. “But the day I can’t remember. It was a week or so before the murder, I know that much. But one day is pretty much like another in here.” He waved a hand at the dusty stock. “I sit here and read the paper and take care of anybody who comes in. The rest of the time I look at this junk and wonder where I’ll find suckers to buy it. I’m open seven days a week so there’s no week-end to divide things up. Sometimes I forget it’s Sunday until I hear the bell ringing for Mass at St. Peter’s. Sunday, Saturday, Monday — they’re all the same to me.”

“Did she say what she wanted the gun for?”

Morton looked pained. “I went over that in court a dozen times. She just came in and looked around. Then she asked me if I could sell her a gun. And I did. She put it in her purse and went out.”

“You can’t sell a gun to a person who doesn’t have apermit, can you?”

“I’m not supposed to, but Sergeant Norrin gave me a break because I testified.”

“I see,” Halliday said. This was a point that hadn’t come up in the trial, but he didn’t know what good it would do now.

“Didn’t you make a sales ticket or receipt on the sale of the gun? That would have a date on it.”

“I didn’t because I wasn’t supposed to be selling her the gun in the first place,” Morton said. “Besides, I don’t keep records most of the time. I got the whole business in my head.”

Halliday nodded and walked out on the street. There had been a frame he knew; and that was why Morton wouldn’t risk naming a date. Because it might have turned out that Ann would have an alibi for a specific day. Whoever had planned the frame didn’t take chances. How to prove any of that?

He went into a restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee. When he finished it he walked to Wabash Avenue and caught a street car going north. He got off at Randolph Street and walked a few doors down to the handbook where the shooting had happened.

There were bright placards in the window advertising standard brands of pipe tobaccos and cigarettes. Most bookies used them to give their places a vaguely respectable appearance.

He opened the door and went inside. Sol Smith was standing behind a counter on which there was a green felt dice board. There was no one else in the place.

“Hello, Halliday,” Smith said.

“I just want to check on—” He stopped and shrugged. “Just anything, I guess. You know how the case came out. I can’t sit around and do nothing,”

“I know how it is,” Smith said. “A hell of a note.” He was slim, small, beautifully dressed. His nails were carefully kept, polished. “But I don’t know anything that will help.”

“Who was Willie Peters?”

Smith shrugged his well-tailored shoulders. “Just a guy out for a buck, like all of us. Horse player, gambler, that kind of guy.”

“Did you know him well?”

“You know. I’d seen him around. Not too well, I guess.”

Bill Dineen came out from a back door. He wasn’t wearing a coat and there were dark patches of perspiration staining the underarms of his shirt. He had a hat pushed back on his head and his skin looked blotched and red. He looked at Halliday, then at Smith, and back at Halliday.

“What the hell does he want?” he said.

“Take it easy,” Smith said. “He’s just looking around for some dope about this guy his wife shot.”

Dineen looked at Halliday. “We don’t know anything, buddy. We did our talking to the cops. You got a warrant or something?”

“I haven’t got anything,” Halliday said. “I’m just looking around.”

“Well, there’s nothing to see here.”

Smith was looking at Dineen. There was color in his face. “Will you shut that flannel mouth of yours? Go sleep off that load you’re carrying.”

“Go to sleep yourself,” Dineen said. “What’s this guy bothering us for?”

“His wife is in a bad spot,” Smith said softly. “He likes his wife. He wants to help her if he can. Do you understand that?”

The words meant nothing but the tone he used was something else. Dineen’s mouth worked loosely and he tried to smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He looked nervously at Halliday. “Sorry I was edgy. I know how you feel, fella. But we can’t help you.”

“Yeah,” Smith said, looking away from Dineen. “We were the two most surprised guys in the world. Willie Peters was standing right there talking to us — then the door opens and your wife comes in. Bang! Willie wasn’t talking anymore. That was all there was to it.”

Halliday heard the door behind him open. He looked around and saw a girl standing inside the door. She was smiling and when she walked toward the counter she swayed a little.

“Hello, boys,” she said.

“Hello, Ginny,” Smith said.

The girl stopped in the middle of the floor and looked down at the black and white linoleum squares. She kept smiling in a vacant sort of way, and Halliday realized there was an unnatural stillness in the room. He glanced at Dineen and Smith. Smith was watching the girl and his eyes were cautious. Dineen’s mouth was working loosely.

“He fell right here,” the girl said. She kept smiling, speaking in a singsong voice. “Little Willie fell right here. I wonder how much it hurt him? He used to moan like a baby if he cut himself shaving. I’ll bet he didn’t like it when that bullet went into him. One of the docs told me he didn’t bleed much. Did all of his bleeding inside where it didn’t show.”

She looked up at Halliday. “You’re her husband. I saw you in court. I saw her, too. She’s a nice-looking girl. Real sweet.” She kept looking at Halliday and her eyes started to burn and the smile slid off her face. “Yeah,” she said quietly, “a real sweet kid. Do you think she looked sweet when she blew that hole in Willie? Oh, I watched her in court. White-faced little tramp. Twisting her hands together, looking at you with big sad eyes. Did she look at Willie that way?”

“Was Willie Peters your husband?” Halliday asked.

Smith said, “They were friends. She’s been on the booze since it happened.” His voice was low but the girl heard.

She looked at him, weaving a little. “I guess I have,” she said. “When they burn her I’m going to have a little drink for Willie. I’ll say, ‘Willie, they just burned that sweet-faced little tramp that shot you. Does that make it any better, honey?’”

“This is her husband,” Smith said.

“I’ll drink to him, too, then. I’ll drink to all of you bums.” She started to cry and Halliday saw that Dineen was looking sick. Smith had nothing in his face.

“Need any dough?” he said.

“I’m all right.”

Halliday nodded to Smith and walked out of the place. He went down half a block and crossed the street. He came back on the opposite side of the street and stepped into a doorway where he could watch the front of the handbook.

He was going to know more about this Ginny. She might be a link to something else. No one had mentioned her in the trial. She hadn’t come forward herself. It was only luck that he’d come in contact with her.

He waited for an hour. Finally she came out and walked south on Wabash. He crossed the street and followed her, keeping a half block behind. She was easy to follow. She walked slowly, almost aimlessly.

She had once been an attractive girl. Now she was about thirty, hardened and cheap. The blonde hair was streaked from peroxide and the tan polo coat she wore needed cleaning. Her figure was still slim and her legs were those of a dancer — shapely, slender, muscular.

She passed Madison and turned in at a small bar. Halliday waited outside a moment then went in. The place was dark and there were brown wooden booths along the left wall. On the right a bar ran the length of the room. Two or three men were sitting at the bar drinking beer. The bartender was watching the traffic on Wabash.

Halliday saw the blonde. She was sitting in the last booth staring down at the table. He walked down and slid into the opposite seat of the booth. She looked up at him without recognition.

“I’m Halliday,” he said. “I talked with you a while ago at the bookie.”

Her eyes focused. “Yeah. What do you want?”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No.”

A sloppy waitress came over to their booth. Halliday ordered two bourbons with water. The waitress brought them back and looked at the blonde with the contempt that women who work feel for women who drink bourbon at eleven in the morning.

“I said I didn’t want a drink.”

“It might make you feel better.”

She drank the drink and shuddered. She fumbled for the water and drank some from the glass. Some of it went down her chin and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“I’m sorry about Willie Peters,” Halliday said.

“Did you know him?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why the hell are you sorry then?”

“You cared a lot for him. There must be something pretty good about a man a woman loves that much.”

“That’s bull. You want to know about Willie Peters? He was a little guy and he was fat. He wasn’t very clean, either. He’d wear a shirt for a week unless I took it off him. He wore white felt hats and his vest used to pull up about three inches at the waist and show his dirty shirt. He smoked cigars and let them go out. Then he’d chew on the cigar like a cow with her cud. That was Willie Peters. The big horse player. God, he thought he was hot. Always going to take the track for a ride. Always had a winner. He’d sit around our place with a dope sheet and come up with six winners. The funny thing was, none of his horses ever won. That would make a smart guy mad. Maybe a smart guy would have gone to work and said to hell with the horses. But not Willie. He never got mad. He’d laugh and keep trying. Never got mad at anybody.”

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

“How do you know?”

“You just told me you did.”

“Yeah, I loved him,” she said. “Now what do you want?”

“My wife didn’t kill him,” Halliday said.

“The jury thought she did.”

“The whole thing was a frame. I don’t know why, but that’s the God’s truth. Did your Willie ever mention her? Did he know her?”

From under layers of alcoholic fog her mind seemed to be turning that over slowly. “No, he didn’t mention her. He told me about everything. Always happy about everything.”

“He never cheated on you, did he?”

“Who else would have that fat little guy?” she said scornfully.

“Then he didn’t know her. And she didn’t know him. Yet Dineen and Smith claim she said, ‘You asked for this,’ and then shot him. That’s a lie. Someone else shot Willie Peters. Who would want him out of the way? That’s the person we’ve got to find.”

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

“Who didn’t like Willie Peters?”

Her face was hardening. “So then you’ll run to the cops. You want me to rat so you can save that wife of yours. Maybe she killed Willie. Maybe you’re just talking too fast for me.”

“I want to save my wife,” he said. “I also want the man who shot Willie Peters to get what’s coming to him. You want that too, don’t you?”

“I’m no squealer. I’ll take care of the guy myself if he did it. Now let me alone.”

“All right, Ginny, I’ll leave. But could I see you again sometime?”

She shrugged. “What difference does it make?”

He got her address and then he went out and hailed a cab. He went to the Criminal Courts building at Twenty-sixth and California. After asking questions and waiting for half an hour, he walked into the office of the State’s attorney who had prosecuted his wife’s case.

His name was Granville. He was graying, cautious, about forty. He sat behind a neat desk with his back to a window.

“What is it, Halliday?” he asked.

“I’ve been trying to find out something to break this frame-up against my wife,” Halliday said. “You and the police are through but I’m still working.”

“Now just a minute,” Granville said. “Believe me, I know how you must feel. But be reasonable. We haven’t ‘quit.’ We’ve closed the case. There’s a difference. The evidence was irrefutable and the decision was left to the jury. They made the decision and that’s where we step out.”

“Okay, put it that way. But I’ve found something. Willie Peters had a girl. I talked to her a half hour ago. She claims Willie Peters didn’t know my wife.”

“How would she know?”

“She knew all about him. She wouldn’t tell me everything because she doesn’t like the police. But she knows of someone who wanted to get rid of Willie Peters.”

“She wouldn’t say who?”

“No, she said she’d take care of him, herself. She was pretty drunk—”

“Oh,” Granville said.

“She knew what she was saying, though.”

Granville shrugged and lit a cigarette. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Do?” Halliday swallowed hard. “Well, that’s up to you, I don’t know how you work.”

“The case is closed,” Granville said. “I’m not just interested in convictions, Halliday. I like to see a little justice done, simply for variety’s sake. But what you’ve told me isn’t enough for me to suggest re-opening the case. You’ve talked to a drunken woman who thinks maybe somebody shot her boy friend. Tomorrow morning she’ll have forgotten she ever talked to you. Halliday, take my advice. Put your hope in an appeal and a better deal from the next jury. Don’t waste your energy chasing around these drunken hop-heads. They’ll tell you anything if you’re buying the liquor.”

“Okay,” Halliday said.

“You think I’m not cooperative.”

“What I think of you would get me ten years,” Halliday said.

He tried to see Ginny the next day and the day after, but it was a week before he contacted her. They went to a bar in her neighborhood, a small cheap place that smelled of gin and unwashed human beings. They sat on stools at the end of the bar and he ordered drinks.

“How’s everything?” he asked tonelessly.

“Okay,” she said. She wasn’t drunk. She’d been drinking but she was in fair shape.

“What kind of trouble was Willie in?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Somebody shot him.”

“Yeah, he was in trouble. Little fool. If your wife didn’t kill him I know who did.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

She looked at him bitterly. “I’m no squealer. I’ll get the guy who did it, but the cops won’t get him.”

“All right,” he said. “Have a drink.”

He saw her again three days later in the same place. She wasn’t drunk this time. Her eyes were clear.

“You look like hell,” she said. “Been sleeping?”

“I’ve stopped trying. It’s no use.”

“You’re crazy about this wife of yours, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “She’s not very big, you know. Built like you, but not as tall. That’s what really sticks in my mind. Doing that to someone so small. She’s holding up pretty well. She tries to smile when I’m there.”

“You been married long?”

“About three years. I’m older than she is. She was just out of business school when I met her. She was just twenty. I was thirty-one.”

“She likes you, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, I think she does.”

“You’re getting me mixed up,” she said irritably. She was quiet for a long while, staring moodily at her drink. “When does it happen?”

Halliday swallowed. It was a question he couldn’t ask himself. But he knew the answer. “Ten days,” he said.

“See me tomorrow night in here,” she said. “I’ve got to think.”

“You’ll tell me who it was tomorrow night?”

“I’m not sure I know. But Willie was trying to start a book. I told him he had to be in with the syndicate, but he just laughed. Said he was too small for them to worry about. He didn’t have a place, took bets on a street corner. They told him to lay off, but he laughed. He told me they were kidding.”

“And somebody in the syndicate killed him?”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it until tomorrow night. I’m not trying to make you sweat. But I got to think.”

“All right, Ginny.”

Sergeant Norrin was still wearing the gray suit and the greasy gray hat. He still smelled of tobacco smoke and sour beer. He listened to Halliday’s story, grunting occasionally.

“Maybe you got something,” he said. “But this babe — this Ginny — what proof has she got?”

“I don’t know. But if she knows the man — or thinks she does — we can work on him, can’t we?”

“Yeah, we can do that,” Norrin said.

They were in Norrin’s office with the dirty blinds and the cigarette-littered floor. Norrin was slumped in his chair, feet propped on the desk. He worked a tooth pick from one side of his mouth to the other.

“You’re seeing her tomorrow night, eh?”

“That’s it.”

“And she’s going to tell you who she thinks killed Willie Peters? Okay, you keep that date. Then get in touch with me and let me know how it goes.”

“You know the one I mean,” Halliday said to the bartender. “I’ve been in here with her a couple of times. A blonde.”

“Yeah, I know her,” the bartender said. “You sat down at the last two stools. Drank bourbon.”

“Yeah, that’s here. Well are you sure you haven’t seen her tonight?”

“I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in. Yeah, I know she wasn’t. Any message if she shows up.”

Halliday looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. He’d been waiting since seven. “Just tell her to wait,” he said.

He went outside and walked down the block quickly. Ginny lived just a few blocks away and he knew he had been foolish to wait so long at the bar. Maybe she was sick...

...Her landlady wasn’t very interested.

“She owes me four dollars,” she said. “She’d better come back.”

“When did she leave?” Halliday asked.

“Sometime this afternoon. Two guys came and got her. They were from the State whisky commission. They said she was drinking too much.”

The landlady was an elderly woman, with dirty gray hair and a breath that reeked of gin. She looked half drunk.

“Did she go willingly?” Halliday asked.

“Did she what? Oh, I get you. No, God no. She put up a fight. They gave her a shot or something to quiet her down. Then they put her in a big car and drove away.”

“Norrin? This is Halliday. Look, I’ve got something definite now.”

Norrin’s voice was interested. “Let’s have it.”

“Okay. I’m phoning from a place about a block from where this Ginny lived. Her landlady said a couple of guys picked her up today. They gave her a phony story about being from some alcoholic league.”

“Let’s have that again,” Norrin said.

Halliday gave him the whole story. “What do you think?” he said, when he finished.

“I think you’ve scared up something,” Norrin said. “Where are you now?”

Halliday told him and Norrin said, “Okay, hang on. I’ll get a squad and some and get you.”

...Norrin picked him up in a squad at ten fifteen. He was alone in the car. Halliday climbed in beside him and Norrin let out the clutch.

“I’ve got an idea,” Norrin said. “I think I got an idea about who this babe Ginny was talking about. Now this ain’t official. I mean I’m working on my own time. Do you want to take a run out to a joint on the South Side where we may be able to contact this guy.”

“Of course,” Halliday said.

They drove to sixty-six hundred south and twenty-four hundred west. The neighborhood had once been a residential section, but it had slipped gradually. For a few years it had maintained an aura of respectability as a genteel boarding-house district. Then the big homes had been bought by speculators who broke them down into two and three-room apartments. The neighborhood went down another notch when the railroad put a spur through the center of the community, and after that the disintegration was rapid. Gamblers took over big houses and hung neon signs in front in front advertising beer and dancing. Madames from the North Side, where a religious crusade was going on, came in with coteries of young girls.

Soon the area was one of the hot spots of Chicago; then vice moved further south and the neighborhood was left to transients and gangsters. With this element came disease, vermin and peddlers, until the once aristocratic section had decayed into an area of crumbling mansions, cheap beer joints and Salvation Army tent meetings.

Norrin stopped the car across the street from a dark home which was surrounded by rusted iron fencing. He turned off the ignition and glanced at Halliday.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They walked across the street, through crazily leaning iron gates and up the creaking steps to the front door. Norrin loosened the gun in his holster and pounded on the door with the flat of his hand.

There was a long wait; then footsteps and the door opened. A young man stood in the doorway. He was dark and slim and even in the dim light it was obvious that he was carefully dressed.

He was Sol Smith.

“Well?” he said.

Halliday glanced uncertainly at Norrin. Norrin took the gun from his shoulder holster and put it deliberately against Halliday’s ribs.

“Okay, Halliday. Inside,” Norrin said.

Halliday looked at him in confusion. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What kind of a deal is this?”

“Get inside,” Norrin said.

The gun dug into his back, shoving him ahead. Sol Smith stepped aside with a little smile as Halliday stumbled into the darkened vestibule.

The door slammed behind him. Norrin said, “Up those steps. Take it nice and easy.”

Sol Smith went ahead. Norrin followed him. They took him to a lighted room on the second floor. There was a big man in a chesterfield overcoat sitting on a chair in the corner. The room was cold.

On a bed against the wall the blonde was lying. There was a smear of blood on her cheek and she was breathing heavily. She was unconscious.

The big man said to Norrin, “This the guy?”

“He’s the guy.”

The big man scowled and got to his feet. He had large fleshy features, hard black eyes. He looked important. There was a glittering diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand, and a diamond stickpin in his tie. He looked at Halliday and shook his head.

“Damn,” he said.

He sat down again and took out cigarettes. Norrin held a light for him, which was accepted without comment. He looked at his big hands and shook his head again.

“Damn it, why don’t I use my head?”

Halliday said to Norrin, “What’s this all about?”

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Norrin said. “Will you do me that little favor?”

The big man said, “It’s been screwed up since the start.”

Norrin said, “I did all right.”

Sol Smith grinned a little and said, “I did what I was told.”

“I don’t feel like any jokes,” the big man said. He scowled and dropped his cigarette on the floor. He looked at Halliday with a pained expression.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a bookkeeper.”

“A bookkeeper. That’s fine.” He made a gesture of resignation and looked at Norrin. “You hear that? He’s a bookkeeper. Probably makes fifty lousy bucks a week. A real big wheel.” He spat on the floor and looked gloomily at his hands.

“I’ll tell you something Mr. Bookkeeper. I’m a gambler. I got gamblers working for me. I make fifty thousand dollars a year. And you’re causing me trouble.” He seemed to be talking to himself and he continued to stare gloomily at his hands. “That’s hot, ain’t it?”

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

“Listen close, Mr. Bookkeeper. About a month ago I killed a guy named Willie Peters.” He nodded slowly. “That’s right. I killed him. You’d think a guy making fifty thousand a year could kill a punk without causing himself any trouble. I shot him about six o’clock at night in a loop bookie. He was stepping on our toes and he gave me a little lip. So I got mad and shot him. Wouldn’t you think a guy with my dough would have better sense? I got guys on the payroll to handle jobs like that. But I lose my head and shoot him.”

He lit another cigarette. “Right after I shoot him a babe walks in. A nice looking babe. You got good taste, Mr. Bookkeeper, ’cause this babe is your wife. She takes a look and falls over on the floor. So I tell Smith and Dineen to tell the cops she done it. I get a pawn-broker to make out he sold her the gun. It goes okay. The babe don’t know from nothin’ and the jury says she done it.”

He shrugged impatiently. “Then you find this dumb broad, Ginny, and she knows about me. And you start agitating. Start calling the cops. You’re going to raise hell. That’s how you, a fifty-dollar-a-week bookkeeper, get in my hair. Hell of a note, ain’t it?”

“You’re the guy who framed my wife,” Halliday said.

“That’s what I been telling you,” the big man said. “Ain’t you got ears?”

Norrin said, “So what do we do?”

“I think we get rid of the broad,” the big man said thoughtfully. “I don’t know about this guy. He’s pretty hot. The papers will be after him when his wife goes to the chair. They’ll want stories from him. Maybe if he ain’t around they’ll start agitating. Maybe we just better hold him for a while.”

He nodded to Sol Smith. “Go down and get Dineen. We better go to work.”

Smith went out of the room. The blonde was starting to come around. She rolled her head weakly, then began to moan.

The big man smiled and walked over to the side of the bed. “Ain’t this nice,” he said. “Little Ginny’s coming around. Little Ginny with the big mouth.”

He shook her shoulder gently. “Ginny? It’s me. Nicky. Say hello to Papa.”

The blonde opened her eyes and began cursing weakly.

“You ain’t strong enough to talk, little Ginny,” the big man grinned. “You better take another nap.”

He drew his hand back and slapped her viciously across the mouth. She groaned and turned her face away. He hit her again and she lay still.

The big man looked at Halliday. “See how nice she goes to sleep?”

Halliday said, “Do what you like to me, but stop hitting her.”

The big man grinned. “A real gentleman, ain’t he, Norrin?”

Halliday looked at Norrin and the bitterness in him was coming to the surface. “What kind of a man are you?” he said, almost wonderingly. “You’ll stand by and frame my wife for a murder this man committed. You stand here while he slaps a helpless woman around. Why? Does the money he pays you make up for the way you must feel about yourself?”

“Shut up,” Norrin said casually.

The big man sat down again and lit a cigarette.

“Where’s Smith?”

Norrin shrugged.

“Go get him. Don’t stand there and shrug your shoulders.”

“Okay.”

He walked out of the shoulders and they heard him going down the dark stairs. The house was quiet except for the thudding of his footsteps.

The big man frowned at Halliday.

“Mr. Bookkeeper, you certainly made a mess for me.”

“I’m thinking about my wife. You made a mess for her.”

“Better her than me, Mr. Bookkeeper.”

Halliday twisted his hands together. He felt he was caught in something it was useless to fight. The police, the syndicate, the big men with diamonds — all were all linked tightly together. They could send his wife to the chair, they could slap a helpless drunken blonde around and laugh about it, they could do what they wanted to him.

They heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The big man got to his feet and grinned. “You’re not going to worry me anymore, Mr. Bookkeeper.”

The door opened and Granville, the cautious, graying State’s attorney walked into the room. There were two men behind him, with guns in their hands.

“Okay, Nicky,” Granville said, in his dry, careful voice.

The big man’s mouth dropped open foolishly.

“What’s this?”

“Don’t waste my time,” Granville said. “We got Smith and Dineen downstairs. Morton, the pawnbroker, is down at Central singing so loud you can hear him in Rogers Park. We got the whole thing, Nicky. Let’s see you beat this one.”

The big man looked down at his hands and began to swear eloquently. Finally he glared at Granville and said, “Mr. State’s Attorney.” His voice was bitter. “And how much do you make a year, you crum?”

“Let’s go,” Granville said.

“I started working on it after you talked to me, Halliday,” Granville said. “Just curious at first. We checked on this girl Ginny and kept a tail on her. We found out about his trouble with Nicky. Tonight we picked up Martin and told him we were arresting Dineen and Sol Smith. Martin sang sweet and loud. The tail followed you and Norrin out here. We got in the house and got Dineen. When Smith came down we got him. Next was Norrin. They’re all talking a mile a minute right now.”

“Thank God,” Halliday said.

“Take a little credit yourself,” Granville said drily.

...They brought Ann out of her cell when he got to the Criminal Courts building. A matron took him to the waiting room.

“She’ll be right in,” she smiled. “She’s packing her things now.”

He lit a cigarette nervously. He couldn’t believe the nightmare was over. It would take him time to get used to the idea that Ann was going to live. He’d have to work at it. Ann has coppery hair. Ann can’t carry a tune. Ann is going to live.

The door opened then and he jumped to his feet. Ann came in and they walked toward each other, smiling.