Cowley counted on his fingers, as if explaining to a child. “First of all, we’ll have time to converge on whichever theater it is, before we take him, and that includes the two men currently covering whichever theater proves to have been a false alarm. Second, your suspicions only hold true if they go to the second theater, the Biograph, because we’ve had ample opportunity to scout the Marbro.”
“What’s playing?”
That threw him. “What?”
“What pictures are playing?”
Cowley rolled his eyes. “I haven’t the foggiest.”
“You got a Sunday paper up here?”
He sighed heavily, called one of the college boys over. Told him to get me the movie listings from one of the Sunday papers. The college boy did, looking like a kid playing guns with that .38 slung heavily under his arm.
I spread the paper open on Cowley’s desk and pointed to the Marbro listing. “See what’s opening today? Little Miss Marker. Shirley Temple. Now look at the Biograph.” I pointed there. “Manhattan Melodrama. A gangster picture.”
Cowley tried to act like he didn’t get my point, but he did.
I told him anyway. “Whether it’s Dillinger or not, my guess is he’s going to the Biograph. The other’s a kid’s picture, and they’d have to go to the West Side, something like nine miles, to see it. Of course if he’s the kind of guy who’d rather sleep with Shirley Temple than Myrna Loy, my thinking here could be all wet.”
The sexual allusion to Miss Temple didn’t sit well with the good Mormon Cowley. He looked irritated. And he looked weary again. Particularly with me. “I don’t think you have business here, Mr. Heller. Why don’t you leave this to the government?”
“Good idea,” I said. “I’m in the mood for some relaxation, anyway.”
I stood up; put on my hat. Slung my suitcoat over my shoulder casually.
“Think I’ll take in a show,” I said, smiled, and let him do his Edgar Kennedy slow burn behind me.
18
The theater marquee was pulsing with little white bulbs in sockets, lined in rows and curlicues above and around the name on the front, Essaness, in cursive letters, and below, boldly in block letters:
On either side of the marquee, more rows of bulbs in sockets called attention to the featured attraction:
Below the marquee a dark blue banner with light blue letters hung; on the sides, under the featured attraction billing, it said iced fresh air; and in front it said:
The promise of cool air, as much as Clark Gable (and William Powell and Myrna Loy), accounted for the steady stream of people going in the theater. It was now 8:00 P.M. and the next show would start at 8:30. Couples, families and the occasional single man or woman approached the Biograph box office, a central glass booth, bought their tickets and went in to wait in the cool lobby and buy some popcorn and Coca-Cola.
Otherwise there wasn’t much activity on the street. The muggy night — overseen by an unreal, orange-tinted sky that seemed just as Hollywood as the Biograph marquee — was untouched by a lake breeze. Occasional traffic found its way down Lincoln Avenue, but no cool air. Not unless it slipped out of the doors opening and closing as people went in and out of the Biograph.
There were a few people around. Folks living in second-story apartments above shops along the street had their windows open and many were leaning out, wondering where the hell Chicago’s famous lake wind had gone to. The tavern next to the theater was open, Goetz’s Country Club, and a soda fountain down the block, and a few other places. None of the shops, outside of those selling orange juice or ice cream or the like, was open. Some younger people, in their teens and twenties, were out wandering, window-shopping, boys in shirt sleeves, girls in light summery dresses. Sometimes they were paired off, but more often a trio or quartet of girls giggled along, often followed by a similar number of swaggering boys. Even the heat couldn’t put a stop to mating rites. If anything it encouraged them.
Oh, and I was there. Having gone high-hat by cabbing it from the Drake to the Banker’s Building, I hoofed it from the latter to my office, where I got my Chevy and headed for the North Side, specifically Lincoln Avenue. I had thought about going up to my office for my automatic; but that seemed to be asking for trouble. There would be too many people at the Biograph tonight with guns without my adding to the arsenal.
I’d parked on the same side of the street as the Biograph, just to the right of the mouth of an alley. The marquee was glowing just down the street; between me and it was a grocery store, on the alley corner, and past that the tavern next to the theater. As I got out of my car, it occurred to me that just a few blocks down was the garage where the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre had taken place. Small world.
I fell behind a family, father and mother and a boy of about ten and a girl of about eight — on a summer, non-school night, and in heat like this, parents taking their kids out this late wasn’t unusual — and was just passing the Goetz Country Club tavern when I noticed an ostentatious-looking car, a gray-and-black Pierce Arrow, parked along the curb. I looked down through the open window.
Melvin Purvis was behind the wheel.
He was lighting a cigarette with a hand that was shaking; just a little, but shaking. He wore a jaunty straw hat and blue sports coat. He looked like he should have a debutante next to him. Instead he had in the rider’s seat one of those college-boy agents from the Banker’s Building, who was now looking at me with wide, somehow frightened eyes.
I held my palms up and out, chest-high, and smiled a little.
Looking past his college-boy companion and out at me, Purvis, cigarette lit now, frowned like a housewife whose cake just fell, and motioned at me. I went around on his side and leaned against the car and smiled in at him.
“Hello, Melvin,” I said.
“What the hell are you doing here, Heller?” He squeezed off each word, his Southern accent vanished. His speech pattern reminded me of Walter Winchell’s, at least at that moment it did.
“Just thought I should check in with you, since I was in the neighborhood,” I said cheerfully. “Just for the record, I’m not Dillinger.”
His mouth fell open a little and his eyes glowed like the tip of his cigarette, which dangled from his mouth forgotten.
“I just thought I should point that out,” I said. “I’m in no mood to get shot.”
“You’re interfering with a government job, Heller. Get lost.”
“It’s a free country, Melvin. I thought I might take in the show.”
He glanced over at his companion and his Southern drawl suddenly replaced the clipped Winchell tone. “Agent Brown,” he said, “why don’t you accompany Mr. Heller from the premises.”
I leaned in and stared right into Purvis’ startled face and smiled; I could smell Sen-Sen on his breath. “Send him on out. I never broke a government agent’s arm before.”
“Are you threatening—”
“Promising. Promising a scene bigger than any that ever played that movie house. Want to risk blowing your stakeout over that?”
He bit the words off: “Go to the movie then. Go to hell.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind standing out here and watching the parade of humanity go by. A detective can always learn something by studying people, you know.”