“His son, Jerome, said you and Roscoe spoke in the lobby last night. Not long before Roscoe’s death.”
“That’s true.”
“Why didn’t you mention it this morning?”
She looked at me, the cool blue of her eyes turning cooler. “And here I thought you sidling up and sitting down next to me was social. I was feeling downright girlish.”
“I thought this morning we decided we were friends. The time I tried to be more than a friend to you was sort of a disaster, as you’ll recall.”
“I’m just not interested in one-night stands. I never said it was impossible for me to do more than like you, Mal.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“At the moment, however, I don’t know if I even like you anymore. I begin to feel a little used.”
“That’s unfair. You went out of your way not to mention having seen Roscoe when we spoke this morning. Why?”
“That’s simply not the case, Mal. I just didn’t think to mention it.”
The intercom interrupted. “That parking lot to your left is the site of Dion O’Banion’s flower shop-where Al Capone’s minions shot the florist/gangster amid his own roses on November 10, 1924. Across the street is Holy Name Cathedral-take a close look and you may still be able to make out where machine-gun bullets kissed the side of the building; Al Capone’s men, again, and they weren’t trying to kiss the Pope’s ring by proxy-those kisses were thrown at Hymie Weiss, who caught ’em. October 11, 1926.”
Cynthia spoke, her mouth pursed with irony. “Our tour guide sounds as if your mentor Roscoe Kane wrote his patter.”
“It is colorful, at that. What about Roscoe, Cynthia? How did you know him?”
She looked at me sharply. “I didn’t, Mal. I recognized him in the lobby, from his bookjacket photos. And I spoke to him, introduced myself. And we chatted. That’s all.”
“What did you chat about?”
“Small talk. Nothing.”
“Jerome said your conversation heated up. You argued.”
She looked out the window again. “We didn’t argue.”
“Jerome misread the situation, then.”
“Yes.”
“What did you chat about, Cynthia?”
She looked at me again. “Really, Mal, I’m losing patience with you-not to mention any remaining semblance of affection I might have had. Why is my personal conversation with Roscoe Kane of any interest to you?”
“Because I think Roscoe may have been murdered.”
That startled her, but just momentarily. Then, of all things, she laughed-just a little. Cocktail-party laugh.
I said, “What the hell’s funny about that?”
“Just the idea of life imitating fiction. The notion of somebody walking around playing amateur detective, like a character in a silly novel.”
“Like the characters in your silly novels, you mean.”
“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the characters in your silly novels, dear. Now, why don’t you go back and sit by the little brunette one-night stand who’s been watching us? She looks lonely.”
“What did you and Roscoe Kane talk about?”
“I simply introduced myself to him, told him I’d enjoyed his books, and he bit my head off, the unpleasant little bastard.”
“Why’d he bite your head off?”
“I’d said something deprecatory about him, in passing, in my Hammett book. Mentioned him as ‘one of the lesser lights’ of the original Black Mask crowd. He took offense.”
That sounded like Roscoe.
“That was it, then?”
“That was it,” she said, terse as a telegram.
“Why didn’t you just tell me this in the first place?”
“What business was it of yours?”
She had a point.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been rude,” I told her. “I thought we were friends. I didn’t think you’d mind my…”
“Treating me like a suspect in a Perry Mason story? Why, I love it. It’s more fun than playing strip Clue. Now, go away. You disappoint me.”
I got up, stepped out into the aisle; Cynthia reached a hand out and touched my arm.
“Mal-forgive me. I know what Roscoe meant to you. I don’t mean to make light of that, or of your need to… ask some questions, in the wake of his death.”
“It’s okay, Cynthia. I can understand your attitude.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I’m having a rocky time of it with Tim-this weekend was supposed to be a getaway for us, a place, a time, for us to patch up our problems. But all we’ve done is bicker. And the mood I’m in just spilled over onto you a bit. Forgive me.”
“No forgiveness needed.”
“Maybe I’m just regretting shooing you away, at that Bouchercon, once upon a time.”
I smiled. “I know I still regret that.”
“You would. Now, shoo. Go sit with your little brunette in her sweatshirt.”
“She’s the editor of Noir, you know, not some teenager I picked up.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” she said. As usual, her malice was tempered with good humor. She could be bitchy, my Cynthia, but never a bitch.
Pretty soon I was sitting next to Kathy, and the bus was tooling along Lincoln Avenue. Our driver pointed out the site of John Dillinger’s death, the Biograph Theater-after all these years, still a study in ’30s art-deco black and white, though Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander was playing there, not Manhattan Melodrama. Then a few minutes later we were shown the site of the garage where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre had taken place, on the west side of Clark Street.
“Those two white pillars are all that remain of S-M-C Cartage Company,” he said. A modern housing center for the elderly, set back from the street, was where the garage once had been.
Before long, the bus rumbled over a massive drawbridge, its huge metal shoulders looming, and the driver said, “On our left is the La Salle-Wacker building, where mayor Anton Cermak’s personal police bodyguards, Miller and Lang, attempted the assassination of Frank Nitti in December 1932. The attempt failed, but within weeks, Mayor Cermak himself fell under an assassin’s gun.”
We drove down the concrete canyon of La Salle Street-the driver pointed out the looming city hall at the left, calling it, “The scene of many a Chicago crime”-and dead-ended at the gigantic art-deco Board of Trade Building. Whether or not it, too, was a crime site, the driver didn’t say.
“Well,” Kathy said, as the bus turned left, on its way back to the Congress, “I guess we’ve seen Chicago, all right.”
“Not quite.”
“Oh?”
“Not till you’ve had the deep-dish pizza.”
We smiled at each other, and held hands like kids in love; once Cynthia glanced back at us.
She seemed vaguely sad.
13
Gino’s on Rush Street was half a flight down off the sidewalk. Once inside, low-ceilinged interconnecting rooms went on forever, rooms whose walls were lined with graffiti and graffiti-carved wooden booths, and so full of people that the place managed to seem simultaneously claustrophobic and sprawling. And also bustling, this Friday night. The smell of tomato sauce in the air was so rich you could gain weight breathing, and it was intermingled with cigarette smoke so thick you could also get a side dish of emphysema. Gino’s was one of half a dozen places in Chicago that claimed to be the originator of Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza; I didn’t know if their claim was the legitimate one or not, but I did know that I hadn’t made a visit to Chicago in the last twenty years without stopping in to sample the evidence.
This was Kathy Wickman’s first time at Gino’s. In gray slacks and a pink Norma Kamali top with padded shoulders, she had a ’40s look appropriate to her position as editor of a magazine called Noir-and for the era when Gino’s had apparently last been redecorated. I guided her by the arm to the narrow main aisle, where I then had to ease her out in front of me, as side-by-side passage was out of the question. We had our work cut out for us, trailing a red-haired, harried, red-aproned middle-aged waitress who went barreling down the labyrinth, and Kathy glanced back with wide eyes and a frenzied smile that questioned my sanity in bringing her here.