True Detective (22 page)

"Understandable. But you had reason to believe he'd come here?"

"Yes. He wanted to work for the World's Greatest Newspaper."

"The Trib?."

"Yes. Short of that. I think any Chicago paper would do."

"And you think, what? He came to Chicago and applied for jobs at the various papers?"

"I think so, yes. I called all the papers and asked if they had a James Beame working for them and they just laughed at me."

"They thought you were pulling their leg."

"Why?"

"James Beame. Jim Beam. You know."

"No."

"It's a whiskey."

"Oh. I didn't make that connection."

"Well, they probably did. He hasn't contacted your family? Your father, your mother, since he left in the summer of 31?"

"No. Mother's dead, by the way. When she gave birth to us."

I didn't know what to say to that; it was a little late in the game to express condolences. Finally I said. "I take it this is your personal effort to locate your brother… your father isn't involved."

"That's right."

"Is there anything else pertinent you can tell me?"

She thought. "He came by hopping a freight. At least that's what he told me he planned to do."

"I see. It's not a lot to go on."

"But you will
try
, won't you?"

"Sure. But I can't guarantee you anything. I can check with the papers, and maybe ask around some Hoovervilles."

"Why those?"

"A naive kid. down on his luck, he might fall in with hobos or down-and-outers." If he lived through it.

"Or he might have gone on by freight to someplace else. Do you want to know what my guess is?"

"Certainly."

"He came here and tried to land a job and got nowhere. He was too embarrassed to go back home, so he hit the road. My guess is, he's traveling the rails, seeing the country. And one of these days, God willing, he'll get back in touch with the family, and he'll be a grown-up."

"What are you saying, Mr. Heller?"

"Nate. I'm saying, save your money. I'll take the case if you insist but I think things would work out just as well if you let them work out on their own."

Without hesitation, she said, "Please take the case."

I shrugged. Smiled. "Consider it taken."

"Splendid!" she said. Her smile lit up the room.

"My rates are ten bucks a day. I'll put at least three days into this, so…"

She was already digging into her purse. "Here's a hundred dollars."

"That's too much."

"Please take it. It's a… what is it?"

"Retainer. I can't."

"Please."

"I'd rather not."

"Please."

"Well. Okay."

"Splendid!"

"Listen, do you have an address? A place where I can reach you?"

"I have a studio on East Chestnut. We have a phone." She gave me the number; I wrote it down.

"That's in Tower Town, isn't it?" I said,

"Yes. And you aren't surprised, are you?" That last was delivered impishly.

"No," I admitted. Tower Town was Chicago's version of Greenwich Village, home of the city's self-styled bohemians. "Say. how did you happen to pick me to come to?"

She looked at me with more innocence than I knew still existed in the world; or anyway, Chicago. "You were first in the phone book," she said. Then she stood. "I have to run. I've two parts on a sudser this afternoon."

"Where?"

"Merchandise Mart."

That was where the NBC studios were; CBS was at the Wrigley Building.

"Let me get your coat," I said, and got up from behind the desk.

I put it on her; the smell
was
incense. That was about as close as Tower Town got to perfume.

She gazed at me with the brownest eyes I ever saw and said, "I think you're going to find my brother for me."

"No promises," I said, and opened the door for her.

I'd give it the old college try, Palmer or otherwise.

I went to the window and looked at her out on the street, straining to see her through the fire escape between us, seeing little more than the top of her head, that beret, as she caught a streetcar.

"I think I'm in love." I said to nobody.

Sundays. I missed Janey.

I missed her other times, too; every night, for instance. Days hadn't been a problem: my new business was keeping me occupied, so far. and I didn't really have time to mope. I worked long days, so nights I was tired, and then there was always Barney's speak waiting for me when I dragged home; not that I got drunk every night, but I drank enough to go to sleep without much effort. Rum, mostly.

But Sunday, goddamn Sunday.

That was our day, Janey's and mine. Good weather, we'd go to a park or a beach or a ball game- summers we played tennis and pee wee golf; we'd go to a matinee in winter, maybe ice-skate at some lagoon, or just spend a day in her flat, and she'd cook for me, and we'd listen to Bing Crosby records, and play Mah-Jongg, and make love two or three times. Now and then Eliot and his wife, Betty, would have us over for Sunday dinner, like family, and we'd play some bridge. Eliot and Betty usually won, but it made for a nice afternoon. A preview of the sweet, quiet life Janey and I'd have after we got married and had a house of our own, maybe even in as respectable a neighborhood as Eliot and Betty's.

But I wasn't living in a dream cottage, I was living in an office, and that had its advantages, but spending Sunday alone in it wasn't one of them. I'd sit and look at the phone and think about calling Janey. I would manage, for minutes at a time, to convince myself there was a percentage in doing that. A full five minutes might go by before I admitted to myself that what was between us was dead.

And today was Sunday.

But I had another woman on my mind, this Sunday: a client. Purely business. I was able to convince myself of that for minutes at a time, too.

I hadn't had a chance, yet. to do much about tracking down Mary Ann Beanie's brother. I had started on the case the afternoon of the day she came to my office. I followed the most obvious course of action, which was to check with all the papers in town, where he'd probably gone looking for work, just another naive teenage kid from the sticks who expected the big town to spread its legs for him, never considering that the town might be on the rag. It had only taken me that one afternoon and part of the next morning. I showed his picture to the information desks and cashiers in their first-floor cages at the
Trib, News, Herald-Examiner;
I checked with the City News Bureau, too. Nobody remembered him, and why should they? A lot of people were looking for work these days; nobody had been hired in janitorial for a year and a half, let alone editorial. Nobody kept job application forms, because would-be applicants didn't get that far: any reporters that did get hired were pros who would go right to the city editor and ask if he had anything for 'em. Jimmy Beame's plan to be a big-city reporter was a pipe dream: I knew that going in. But I was a detective, and any competent detective knows that most of the legwork he does will account to nothing, so I checked anyway, knowing what I'd find: nothing.

Most of the next week I spent investigating insurance claims for Retail Credit in Jackson Park. Business was so good, I spent seventy-five dollars of Capone's money on a '29 Chevy that was the first car I ever owned: a dark blue coupe with a rumble seat. It made me feel like a rich man, but the people I called on reminded me I wasn't. Not that they were well-to-do- they lived in typical Chicago two-, three-, and six-flat buildings but anybody with steady work and a nice place to live who could afford insurance seemed well-to-do these days. I called on a few merchants, and a lawyer; and a professor at the University of Chicago campus, whose claim was the only one that smelled phony to me: a family heirloom, his grandmother's diamond ring, which now was his wife's, was missing, having been "lost on an outing"; but the description of the ring was specific enough that I thought I might be able to turn it up at one of the North Clark Street pawnshops, and planned to advise Retail Credit as much.

The tree-lined boulevard that I followed out of the university campus was the site of the midway of the last world's fair, the Columbian Exposition. The only overt reminder of that fair- which had begun with much fanfare about the success of the modern age and had ended with the city in the throes of a depression- was the Fine Arts Palace, which had later become the Field Museum, and now was turning into something called the Museum of Science and Industry. Restoration was under way as I drove by, scaffolding still up, as workers worked at getting the joint ready to house exhibits for the next world's fair, opening in May.

I remembered my father talking about the '93 fair: he hadn't liked it; he found it offensive, union man that he was. Within the White City of the fair- its arcanely classical buildings out of sync with Chicago's reputation as the birthplace of modern architecture- fairgoers had lined up for rides on the first Ferris wheel, and men gawked at Little Egypt, while outside, in the Gray City, jobless men had wandered looking for parks to sleep in that weren't littered with Greek and Roman buildings.

Each day as I drove back to the Loop along Leif Eriksen Drive at twilight, angular-shaped structures would rise like a mirage along the lakefront; overtly modern buildings and towers not quite finished, some of them with their skeletons still showing, poked at the sky-, testing it. The winter had been kind, thus far, and snow and cold had not got in the way of the continuing construction of this futuristic city upon land that had, in part, been dredged from the lake.

The new fair was coming: the Century of Progress General Dawes insisted on celebrating, even if it wasn't really a hundred years yet; who was counting?

On the site of the fair, less than a year ago, was a Hooverville. The jobless, the homeless had been made to give way for the Century of Progress. Well, what the hell, maybe the prosperity the fair would bring the city would give the jobless a job or two. And losing the lakefront sure didn't cost Chicago her Hoovervilles.

And the Hoovervilles were my next stop, where Jimmy Beame was concerned. As good a way as any to avoid spending Sunday in my office. And the Hoovervilles wouldn't be closed for the Sabbath, either.

I started with Grant Park, which didn't qualify as a Hooverville, but was an outdoor hotel for the down-and-out just the same; nobody dared put up any shacks there, of course, since the cops would put a quick end to that. But otherwise, as long as things didn't get out of hand, the cops looked the other way- they about had to, since they'd long since stopped picking up vagrants: there wasn't room in the jails to accommodate
thai
big a crowd.

I walked up there, past the Adams and Congress hotels, and soon was showing Jimmy Beame's smiling well-fed face to gaunt, unshaven men in suits that had once cost more than mine but now were held together with safety pins and string. The men in Grant Park- Lincoln Park was the same- were those who had not succumbed to moving into a Hooverville; they had not accepted their rung on the depression ladder, and were usually not panhandling, yet, were still trying to eke out existences doing odd jobs, like shoveling snow, which is where one old codger I talked to told me he'd got the extra topcoat he had folded up to use as a pillow on the bench he had staked out for himself, this bitter cold Sunday morning.

And there was snow to shovel, now: it had finally hit Chicago; no blizzard, but the few inches we'd got mid week were clinging to the ground, thanks to the consistently cold weather. The old guy with two topcoats was in the minority?; most of the men didn't have even one. and this tall, tough, skinny old bird might be man enough yet to wake up tomorrow morning and still own two.

"I ain't seen this boy," he said, looking at Jimmy Beanie's smiling face. "The gal he's with's a pretty little thing. Like to've met her when I was in my prime."

"That's his sister."

"Looks it." the old guy said.

"Have you eaten today?"

"I ate yesterday."

I started to dig in my pocket; he put a hand on my arm.

"Listen," he said "You plan on showing that picture around? Asking these has-beens and never-wases if they seen this kid?"

I said that I was.

"Then don't give anybody a red cent. Word gets around you're giving out dough, you'll get more information than you can use and none of it'll be worth a slug."

I knew that. But this poor old bastard was in his damn seventies, and out in the cold like this…

He must've known that was going through my mind, though, because he smiled and shook his head.

"Just 'cause I'm the oldest kid on the block, don't make me the neediest or the worse off. If I had some information for you, I'd take your dough. But I don't, so I won't. These other boys won't take that attitude, though. See, I been in this game since before hard times. I been riding the rails twenty years, ever since a woman I lived with for fifteen years throwed me out for reasons that are none of your business. But these other boys… they don't know how to handle this life. It's new to 'em. So don't give any money away. You can't have enough to handle the business you'd do."

I shook his hand, and forced the buck in mine into his. He gave me an almost angry look, but I said, "You worked for that. Your advice was worth it."

He smiled and nodded, and stretched out on his bench for a snooze, the folded topcoat under his head.

Around the base of the statue of Alexander Hamilton, the founder of the Treasury of the United States, sat several more down-and-outers, and I could see they were the sort of man the old hobo had referred to: guys in their twenties, thirties, forties- men who'd had jobs, who'd played by the rules, who'd believed that for the man willing to work there was always work- sitting at the base of Hamilton's statue with faces that still had pride in them. But there was confusion, too, and anger, and as the months passed and these men moved into a shack in one of the Hoovervilles that dotted the outlying parts of town, those faces would rum blank, frozen, and by something more than just the cold.