She smiled at that. Then, looking out the window at the Loop gliding by, she said rather absently, “I’d never heard of him.”
“Never heard of Joltin’ Joe?”
She looked back and me and a tiny laugh bubbled in her throat. “It was a blind date. My girlfriend said he was a famous ballplayer who liked blondes. I didn’t even know what kind of ballplayer she meant, football or baseball or what. Didn’t want to look any dumber than I already did, but he was a real sweetheart on the date, and you should’ve seen people slapping him on the back, asking him for autographs. They were completely ignoring me.”
“And you liked that?”
“I respected it... Are you married, Nathan?”
“Not right now.”
Riccardo’s was a converted warehouse at 437 North Rush; it began in ’34 as a hole-in-the-wall gathering place for artists, writers, and theatrical types, but had been revamped and expanded a decade ago to accommodate the wider clientele its arty atmosphere and exotic reputation attracted.
The evening was pleasantly warm, with just the right hint of lake breeze, and the tables that spilled out from under the awning onto the sidewalk were packed with patrons enjoying dinner and drinks and a magnificent view of the parking lot. Heads swiveled and eyes widened as I guided Marilyn through the tables and into the restaurant, which somehow managed an intimate ambience despite expansive, open seating and bright lighting designed to show off the framed paintings that were everywhere.
“Looks more like an art gallery than a restaurant,” Marilyn said breathlessly, her gaze skimming above the heads of diners who were admiring the work of art walking among them.
“It’s both,” I said, moving her gently through the crowd. “This main dining room is an exhibit hall for young midwestern artists.”
“What a lovely notion! So the paintings are constantly changing?”
I nodded. “One-man shows lasting a month.”
This month’s genius seemed adept at filling canvases with dull gray backgrounds on which danced amoebalike blobs of garish purple, red, and green.
“Ah,” I said, “here’s Ric...”
In a black suit and tie, tall, slender, a youthful fifty with his gray crew cut and black eyebrows and mustache, looking like a Mephistophelean maitre d’, Ric Riccardo approached, eyes twinkling, hand outstretched.
“The Chicago Sherlock,” he said, as we shook hands. “And no introduction is required of this lovely lady...”
He gently took her fingertips in his and kissed the back of her hand and she smiled and raised her eyebrows, appreciation murmuring behind her kiss of a pursed smile.
“Marilyn, this is Ric Riccardo.”
She frowned. “You don’t look much like Desi Arnaz.”
Ric looked mildly wounded. I wasn’t sure whether she was kidding or not, but somehow with her it didn’t matter.
“This is the original,” I said, “and he’s Italian, not Cuban.”
Her bare shoulders lifted and sat themselves down, doing a fine job of it, too, I must say. “I just love the idea of your restaurant, Mr. Riccardo! You’re a true patron of the arts.”
Ric made a dismissive gesture. “I’m afraid I only did it to have a place to hang my own canvases.”
“You’re an artist, too?”
“I’ve never been able to decide whether I paint badly,” Ric sighed, “or whether people just can’t understand what I paint. But at least, here, I sell a canvas now and then.”
“Don’t let him kid you,” I told her, “his artwork’s even better than his veal scaloppine.”
Ric’s eyes narrowed. “Which brings us to a difficult subject — my friends, you’ve missed the buffet, and I’m afraid the party has moved from my private dining room into the bar.”
He led us down into the lower level, where I spotted Ben chatting with a pair of Trib talents, obsessive Sherlock Holmes buff Vincent Starrett and literary section editor Fanny Butcher. Here and there were the likes of bookseller Stuart Brent, Herald American columnist Bob Casey, various other well-known local scribes, John Gunther, Bill Leonard, Bob Cromie, among the bigger names. Mostly, as I had predicted, the crowd consisted of second-stringers and tail-end members from the Renaissance movement, who had gone back to the newspaper world that spawned them.
“Oooo,” Marilyn said, “look at that odd-shaped bar!”
“It’s a big artist’s palette,” I said.
“Oh, it is!” And her laughter chimed.
“Our murals back behind there,” Ric said proudly, as he led us to a corner table for two, plucking the “reserved” sign off, “are the work of our city’s most well-known artists — the Albrights, Aaron Bohrod, Vincent D’Agostino...”
“And Desi Arnaz, here,” I said.
And our host smiled, bowed, and — with us deposited at our cozy table — moved on. Like Ben Hecht, Ric was a pragmatic Renaissance survivor, an artist turned businessman. And like Ben, Ric liked to think he was still a bohemian at heart.
For all its premeditated hipness, however, Ric’s restaurant bore the square stigmata of Italian restaurants immemoriaclass="underline" instead of the cool tinklings of jazz piano, the air resounded with the strains of “O Sole Mio,” accompanied by violin, mandolin, and concertina, courtesy of strolling singers and musicians in ruffled sleeves and satin trousers.
Wandering in from the dining room and sidewalk café, where they provided a welcome backdrop for couples romantically dining, came a trio of these singers with a violinist in tow, warbling “Come Back to Sorrento.” This was a misguided sortie into enemy territory, as Ben and other self-styled intellectual and literary lights attending the reunion glanced at them irritably over cocktail glass rims and cigarettes-in-hand.
A slender ponytail brunette, her olive complexion a stark contrast next to her short-sleeved cream-color dress, planted herself in front of the musicians, hands pressed around a tall glass, swaying to their serenade. At first glance she seemed attractive, even strikingly so, and I pegged her for her midtwenties.
“She’s having fun,” Marilyn said, not at all judgmentally.
As the musicians moved through the bar, and closer to us, and the brunette danced sensuously along, I got a closer look at her. The dress was a frayed secondhand-store frock, and she had to be in her thirties. Her big brown eyes were cloudy and dark-circled, her wide mouth slack.
This girl wasn’t tipsy: she was a lush.
About this time, the musicians noticed Marilyn — or at least noticed a beautiful blonde — and made their way to our table. I was digging for a half dollar to tip them, and make them go away, when the slender bombed brunette inserted herself between us and the strolling musicians and hip-swayed to their music in a manner that would suit Minksy’s better than Riccardo’s.
Marilyn’s glance at me was more sad than disapproving.
The brunette clutched the arm of the nearest singer — a handsome if chubby kid in his twenties, the tenor — and her other hand began moving up and down the thigh of his satin pants.
“Gentlemen!” a male voice cried, above the syrupy strains. “Please cease.”
And an absurd figure who might have walked in off a burlesque stage appeared at the fringe of this little tableau, positioning himself alongside the violinist, a foul-smelling corncob pipe in one hand, a double-shot glass of straight whiskey in the other. The four musicians trailed off into stunned silence, and their eyes traveled from the drunken dame to the latest character in this farce, stooped, obviously inebriated, a frail sack of bones swimming in a dark, shabby, slept-in suit set off ever so nattily by a dark frayed food-stained tie and shoes that had long since exploded in wear.
His face was misshapen from years of drink, the blobby careless first draft of an indifferent sculptor, skull beneath the flesh asserting itself as his features threatened to fall off, his complexion a mottled albino, eyes dark rheumy haunted pools, nose a lumpy sweet potato, mouth a thin crumpled line. His hair, unkempt and shaggy as it was, his ears half-covered, sideburns bordering on mutton chop, was the garish reddish brown of a Mercurochrome dye job; it might have been a wig, had this pitiful creature been able to afford one.