Chicago Confidential

Her smile disappeared, and she nodded, like a school kid realizing she’d gotten a little too wild in the classroom. “Except for Paul... What do you charge? I don’t have a lot of money.”

“We’ll work something out,” I said.

And all I meant by that was I’d take into consideration that she was just a college kid, a sweet girl from Texas trying to get an education. Really. Honest. No kidding.

“I’m sure we will,” she said, her expression and tone mingled with lasciviousness in a unique way that somehow scared me a little. I felt like the Wolf discovering Little Red Riding Hood was packing heat.

I agreed to meet her in the assembly hall of the MAC at UCLA around seven; she was rehearsing Death of a Salesman, of all things.

“I’m afraid I play a sort of floozy,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were playing Willie Loman.”

“You know the play?”

“Saw Lee J. Cobb in it in the Chicago run, early this year. Good show — won’t make much of a musical.”

She blinked. “Are they making a musical out of it?”

“That was just a joke.”

Her smile looked like a wax kiss. “You’re quite a kidder, aren’t you, Mr. Heller?”

“I’m hilarious.”

Now she was studying me. “Are you depressed?”

“Depressed? No. Hell no.”

“Did... somebody die in your family?”

Just my marriage.

“No. But you’re a funny kid yourself, Miss Palmer.”

Now her smile shifted, dimpling one cheek. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? From that musical remark. Well, I have a high IQ, I’ll have you know... and I’m going to make something of myself. That’s why I’m enrolled in college... and that’s why you have to make sure Paul doesn’t spoil things.”

“I’ll see what I can do. You have a photo?”

“Now I do! I had scads taken, after that business at the Daily News—”

“No, I mean of Paul.”

“Oh! Yes. Of course.” She dug into her purse and handed me a photo of herself and Paul, dressed up for the prom, apparently; Vera was smiling at the camera — and why not, it loved her — and he was a dark-haired handsome kid with thick dark eyebrows, a weakish chin, and a glazed expression.

“Can I have the photo back when you’re done?”

“Sure,” I said, not getting why she wanted a keepsake of her and this harasser.

She beamed at me, stood, slung her purse strap over a shoulder, and reminded me where I was to meet her; we exchanged goodbyes and I watched her walk away. It was a hell of a thing, her walk, a twitchy affair that seemed to propel her as far to the sides as it did forward.

About two minutes later I was still contemplating that walk when my phone rang. It was my Chicago partner, Lou Sapperstein — bald, sixty, a lean hard op who looked like an accountant, thanks to the tortoise-shell glasses — and his Crosbyish baritone over the long-distance wire was edged with irritation.

“You gotta get your ass back here and do something about your pal,” Sapperstein said.

“My pal? I got lots of pals, Lou. You’re my pal.”

“Screw you. You know who I’m talkin’ about — Drury!”

I sighed. “What’s he up to now?”

“Well, for one thing, he hasn’t followed up on half a dozen assignments I’ve given him. And for another, he’s spending his time playing footsie with Robinson.”

George S. Robinson was Kefauver’s stalking horse, the Senate Crime Investigating Committee’s associate counsel, who’d been working in concert with the Chicago Crime Commission, a citizens’ watchdog group dating back to Prohibition.

“Christ,” I said. “He’s going to get me shot.”

“No, Nate — he’s going to get me shot... you’re on the lam in sunny Southern Cal, remember?”

“Yeah, and Bugsy Siegel didn’t get nailed out here in his goddamn living room, I suppose? Fuck — can’t you handle him, Lou?”

“He’s your friend.”

“He’s your friend, too!”

We all dated back to the Chicago P.D. pickpocket detail, in the early thirties, Sapperstein, Bill Drury, and me. After that, Lou and I and Bill’s partner Tim O’Conner played poker together, for years.

“Bill promised he’d lay off,” I said, “while he was on salary with us.”

“Drury is a lunatic on a crusade. Nice guy, great guy, but he’s supposed to be working for the A-1 and instead he’s out gathering evidence for that hick senator in the coonskin cap.”

Kefauver had worn a coonskin cap as a gimmick in his Tennessee campaign to win a Senate seat despite the best corrupt efforts of Boss Crump’s Dixiecrat machine.

“I’ll call Bill,” I said into the phone. “I’ll talk to him.”

“You need to fire him.”

“He’s my friend, Lou — one of my best friends.”

“Then come back and talk some sense into him.”

“I’m in the middle of a job out here.”

“Right — blonde or brunette?”

From the photo on my desk, Vera’s boyfriend Paul was looking up at me accusingly. “I won’t dignify that with a response.”

“Look, you can’t duck this Kefauver thing. You need to get back here, meet with those sons of bitches, tell them you don’t know anything, that they’re wasting their damn subpoenas, and—”

“And go to jail for contempt, and smear our agency’s good name.”

Lou blew me a long-distance raspberry. “Our agency’s ‘good’ name is built on your unsavory reputation, Nate. don’t kid a kidder.”