He got in after her, and the cab pulled away, east on Wilson.
A second later I flagged the next eastbound cab and climbed in back and leaned forward and pointed.
“Follow that car,” I said.
4
The red taillights of the Yellow cab up ahead of my Checker were soon headed south, down Broadway; when we cut over on Diversey, toward the lake, it was obvious we were headed for the Loop. The guy in the gold-rim glasses and mustache must’ve wanted to impress pretty Polly, because they could’ve almost fallen onto the El, as close to the Wilson Avenue Station as her café was. And here he was cabbing it downtown. Throwing his — and my — money around.
That fifty-buck retainer was looking smaller and smaller.
When they got out in front of the Morrison Hotel on Madison, just a few blocks from my office — which I’d vacated to be closer to Polly, remember — I really began to resent the way the guy was spending my money. The Morrison had a traveler’s lounge where I freshened up each day, thanks to an arrangement the landlord of my building had made for me. Being led here was like following your wife and her boyfriend to your own house. Somehow I was beginning to feel as much a sucker as my poor traveling-salesman client.
Well, Polly and her pal probably weren’t here for the mattress — there were a few thousand less conspicuous places in the city for a one-nighter than a hotel in the heart of the Loop — so they had to be here for the nightlife.
Which irked me, because the Uptown area — which they’d fled by cab — was, at night, the North Side’s Great White Way. A hodgepodge of nightclubs and restaurants, to be sure, with its share of sleazy joints, but also ritzy ones and everything between. Why come to the Loop? Except to impress a dame and blow your money. And mine.
My cab went on by as the mustached man, his arm gently around the beaming Polly’s shoulder, went in the main entrance. I paid the cabbie around the corner — a buck for the ride and a dime tip — got out, made a note of the expense in my little notebook, and went around to the Clark Street entrance.
The Morrison lobby was plush, lots of gray marble and dark wood and stuffed furniture and bronze lamps and a ceiling that went up to heaven, which by Chicago standards is a couple of stories. At the fancy marble-and-bronze check-in there was no sign of Polly and her boyfriend. I had a good idea where they were.
A marble staircase led down to the Terrace Garden, a big shiny art-deco dine-and-dance spot the before-and-after theater crowd had made popular. We were in the “during” mode at the moment, where theater was concerned; but the place was still doing nice business. Great to see so many people had money to spread around in times like these — too bad I wasn’t one of them.
Polly and friend were seated at one of the round tables in the circular, terraced dining area that surrounded the sunken dance floor, where even now Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played their bouncy, mellow brand of hokum while couples in evening attire — white coats for the men, low-cut formals for the ladies — mingled with real people, a certain number of world’s fair tourists among them, who met the dress code (ties for men, no slacks for women) but would never make the society page. Part of the reason business here was so brisk was the pleasant, even icy feel of the air conditioning. A man could get used to not drowning in his own sweat, given half a chance.
The food here was first-rate, but not cheap; I talked it over with my stomach and decided to take a table, despite being uncomfortable about calling attention to myself by dining alone — this was a couples crowd, almost exclusively, and I should probably just go stand at the bar. But what the hell. I ordered the boiled brisket of beef with horseradish sauce, made a mental notation of the expense (not wanting to take out my little notebook), and sipped some rum while I waited for my meal, watching Polly and her friend holding hands across their table, on the other side of the room from me, seated on the terrace level just above the dance floor, just as I was.
Polly was animated and constantly smiling; it was a nice smile, but it tried a little too hard. He seemed taken with her, but was more reserved: she seemed to be doing most of the talking. They had cocktails — gin fizzes, it looked like — and took in a dance before their main course arrived. They danced right by me, at one point, and that’s when I recognized Polly.
She, however, didn’t recognize me; or didn’t seem to, when I just barely glanced at them, between bites of brisket, over the little white fence that separated us, as they floated by.
Still, there was no mistaking her.
“Nate, you bum,” a familiar tenor voice said. “You’re supposed to be working!”
I touched a napkin to my mouth and smiled up at my friend Barney Ross, who was wearing a tux he looked uncomfortable in and had a good-looking redheaded girl on his arm, which made a more comfortable fit.
“I am working,” I said softly. “Why don’t you and your lovely friend fill these two empty chairs before you blow my cover?”
Barney’s bulldog-cute face made an embarrassed smirk and the puppy-dog brown eyes rolled, and he pulled a chair out for his lady and sat down between us and shrugged and said, “So tonight I’m a shlemiel. I’ll pick up the check.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I got a client who’ll pick it up.”
His grin turned lopsided. “Gee, that’s white of you, Nate. I think I’ll have lobster.”
“I’m not that white, chum. I don’t pick up checks for rich guys, even when I’m getting expenses.”
The redhead smiled at hearing Barney called “rich,” but it embarrassed him.
“Rich, smich,” he said. “A few years, I’ll be out of work and borrowing from you.”
“Keep playing the ponies and you may be right.”
Barney’s only vice was gambling; that, and being a soft touch for his old West Side pals. We’d grown up together on Maxwell Street, when I’d been his family’s Shabbes goy (my father was a Jew, but nonpracticing; my late mother’s Catholicism never caught on with me, either). By the time I was a teenager, I was living in Douglas Park, but I’d come back Sundays to Maxwell Street where Barney and I worked together — Barney as a “puller,” a barker in front of the store who often physically yanked prospective buyers off the street and inside; and me taking over from there, with the sales pitch. A couple of roughnecks, but Barney was rougher, a scrappy little street fighter who’d had to fend for himself and his family since he was a kid of thirteen. That was when thieves shot Barney’s father in the Rasofsky’s hole-in-the-wall dairy, and killed him.
By the way, in case you didn’t recognize the name, Barney Ross grew up to be another kind of fighter, namely the lightweight champion of the world. And just this past May he’d taken the legendary Jimmy McLarnin in NYC for the welterweight crown, as well.
“This is Pearl,” he said, gesturing to the attractive redhead. “The gal I been telling you about.”
I reached a hand across the table and took hers, shook it; her hand was smooth and warm and she had a nice smile. Her eyes were big and blue, and her nose was a little big. It looked good on her, though. She had a low-cut blue velvet formal on; her bosom was milky white and there was plenty of it.
“So you’re Barney’s private detective friend,” she said.
I put a finger to my lips in a shush gesture. “Let’s make that our little secret, for the time being.”
Barney put an arm around her shoulder and said, sotto voce, “Like he said before, he’s working. He’s tailing somebody or something. Mum’s the word.”
She crinkled her chin in an embarrassed, attractively earthy little smile. “Sorry.”