After getting myself lost several times in the building's labyrinth of halls, I managed to talk to both Madden and Victor Talbert's old supervisor, a tall, stern man named Graham Winkler. Madden had seemed a decent, sympathetic sort, somehow too lethargic for his surroundings. He told me he'd felt bad about Talbert's dismissal but that Talbert had taken it well and they'd remained friends, even to the point of having an after work drink together on Talbert's last day at High Grade.
Winkler substantiated what both Harper and Madden had told me. Victor Talbert had been highly thought of, considered an ideal company man. He was keenly intelligent, remarkably ambitious, and above all, a realist. I thought I detected a touch of resentment in Winkler over Talbert's dismissal, and I didn't blame him, if the man had been such a whiz. He'd have made any supervisor look good.
Talbert's past, as I uncovered it, wasn't exactly shaping him up to be the fugitive murder victim he'd become. Ambitious, hard working, a young man who inspired admiration and loyalty, he'd been the type a father would want his daughter to marry, the type Dale Carlon might have chosen for his own daughter Joan. Then had come the break in the pattern-the fear Horvell had described-and the blast of a rigged shotgun in a parked car in Florida. I needed to know the reason and was almost afraid to discover it.
The things a man will do for money… You think the temptation doesn't apply to you, that you're too solid and sensible to bend, until the time arrives and temptation becomes opportunity.
One thing I knew was that I didn't belong in a place like this, with its contrived pressures, strict written and unwritten rules that had to be obeyed if you wanted to survive, much less advance, in the pecking order. That advancement was the important thing, the thing that drove the Talberts of the world.
I found my way out of High Grade's headquarters, passing in the hall several dignified-looking types with gold hammer-and-wrench insignia pins on their lapels. As I walked toward my car, I could hear the snap of the flags and the dull metallic thumping of rope against the tall aluminum flagpole. I wondered idly if High Grade employees held a ceremony each morning as they raised the flags, and I wondered which flag they saluted.
Before starting the car I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the slip of paper that Horvell had given me with Belle Dee's address written on it. I laid the paper beside me on the front seat and unfolded a Chicago and surrounding area street map. Without much difficulty I located the street I wanted and used a ballpoint pen to circle it.
12
I drove from High Grade headquarters directly to Belle Dee's address.
She lived in one of a line of old four-story brick apartment buildings on Lampan Street, in a neighborhood in the gray area of urban decay. Several small businesses were hanging on in the block-a men's clothing store, a jeweler, a secondhand shop, and on the corner a little Italian restaurant with an unappetizing, mottled red sign that was supposed to represent a pizza. There were a few clusters of the young and denim-clad on the sidewalks and an old couple walking a big, fine German shepherd.
Belle Dee lived on the third floor, up steep and newly painted creaking stairs. The still-drying paint overpowered some of the normal apartment scents of cooking, and lingering disinfectant. I found the door with Belle Dee's number on it and knocked, experiencing my "nobody home" feeling.
No answer.
When I knocked again, louder, the door across the hall opened and a stocky man with a bushy head of hair and a large brown mustache looked out at me. Aside from the fact that he was barefoot, he was fully dressed in tan slacks and a silky shirt with swirling orange designs all over it.
"You looking for Belle Dee?" he asked, smiling.
I told him I was.
The smile got wider. He was justifiably proud of his teeth. "You're not a process server or anything, are you?"
"No, I was told to look her up by a mutual friend." I let him make what he wanted of that. He decided he wanted to believe me.
"She's probably working at the Poptop Club," he said, stroking his brown mustache, "about four blocks east on Delorel. Easy to find."
He was right about the Poptop Club's being easy to find. It dominated the block of seedy buildings with a tall sign that proclaimed it to be the home of "the biggest and the best."
There was no sign of either of those as I entered and looked around. I was in a long room, bar to the right, tables and chairs to the left and booths along one wall. At the end opposite the door was a raised stage with a purple-curtained backdrop and some speakers aimed out over the tables so that no one could escape the sound. There was another platform, about eight feet off the floor, behind the bar and supported from the raised ceiling by heavy silver-colored chains.
The Poptop must not have had much day trade. It was peopled only by a bearded, purple-shirted bartender and two customers morosely sipping beer in one of the booths. I walked to the bar and ordered a bourbon and water, which I needed.
"I was told I could find Belle Dee here," I said to the bartender when he set my drink on its coaster.
"You can, but it'll have to be after five."
"She wait tables here?"
"That and dances," the bartender said. "All the girls here double up."
"I checked her apartment. Any idea where I can find her now? It's important to her."
"She might be at the beach. Spends a lot of warm days there."
"Which part of the beach?"
"Why? You going to look for her?"
"Probably." I sipped my drink, which was on the weak side.
"Wish I was going with you," he said.
While I finished my drink, he described Belle Dee as a tall, blue-eyed blonde with dark eyebrows and long hair, and he gave me easily understood if overstated directions to her favorite strip of beach.
"You can't miss her," he said, as I got down off my bar stool to leave. "She's got… you know." He cupped both hands about six inches from his chest. "Outstanding!" he added.
I nodded knowingly.
It was a warm day and there were a lot of outstanding "you knows" at the beach. I stood for a while and watched but could not determine which belonged to Belle Dee.
I gave up trying to figure it out, bought myself a hamburger and Coke for lunch and sat watching a young boy trying vainly to bury his overweight father in the sand. The boy was about the age my own son would be. I pushed away the maudlin mood that threatened to envelope me, leaned back and watched wisps of white cloud over the sparkling lake water.
The breeze off the lake was a soothing massage, and the shouts and laughter of the bathers were pleasantly muted by vastness. I could understand why Belle Dee liked it here. I stayed longer than I should have.
It cost me a two-dollar cover charge when I returned to the Poptop Club that evening. The personality of the club seemed to have changed with the setting sun. Now it was crowded, the only light coming from candles on each table and flickering purple flashes of brilliance in time to the frenzied music bursting from the band on the rear stage. Dancers writhed about the small, crowded dance floor between tables and bar, and several fantastically built waitresses in skimpy but unimaginative costumes wove among the tables with trays of drinks. I took a table near the booths, and one of the waitresses appeared immediately to take my order.
When she returned with my bourbon and water I told her I wanted to talk to Belle Dee, repeating it several times so she could read my lips.
"You'll have to wait!" she shouted through the din. "… dances next!" She pointed toward the suspended platform behind the bar.