Actually, it hadn't occurred to me; and I felt kind of ashamed of myself that as one of his best friends. I had been right in there giving Eliot an at least partially bad rap all along, where his supposed publicity hunaer was concerned.
"Where will you go?"
"Where they send me. I'd imagine I'll be here through the summer. They may have some use for me during the fair."
"You'll be missed. I'll even miss you."
"I'm not gone yet. Anyway. I wanted to tell you about it. Kind of; you know. Get it off my chest."
"I'll be leaving town, myself. For just a week or two."
Oh?
"Yeah. I'll be down in Florida, early next month."
"Isn't that when Cermak'll be down there?"
Ever the detective.
"Is it?" I said, with what I hoped came off as genuine ignorance/innocence.
"Think it is," Eliot said noncommittally, rising, picking up the check, putting down a dime for the tip. I added a nickel. He looked at me. "You are in love."
"I fall in love easy when I haven't been laid in two weeks," I said.
He smiled at that, and didn't have a tired look in his eyes anymore. We walked out on the street together, and I walked over to Dearborn with him and down to the Federal Building, where he left me, and I went on to Van Buren and 'round the corner to my office. It was windy, which was hardly a surprise in January in Chicago, but the wind had real teeth now, and I buried my hands in my topcoat pockets and walked with my head looking at the pavement, because the wind made my eyes burn when I walked into it.
My head was still down as I opened the door and came off the street and into the stairwell, and I raised my head only when I heard footsteps coming down above me.
In the stairwell, half a flight up. a woman was coming down. A woman in her early twenties with a face like Claudette Colbert's, only not as wide. She was rather tall, perhaps five eight or nine, and wore a long black coat with a black fur collar, nothing fancy, yet not quite austere. She had dark black hair, short, a cap of curls that lay close to her head, and another cap cocked over that: a beret. She carried a little black purse in one hand. As we passed on the stairs, I smiled at her and she returned it. She smelled good, but it wasn't a perfumy, flowery scent; it was a fragrance I couldn't place: incense? Whatever the case, I was in love for the second time in an hour.
Then when we'd passed, she called out to me, in a melodious, trained voice that seemed affected, somehow, in a way I couldn't quite define, like the fragrance.
She said, "Do you have an office in this building, or are you just calling on someone?"
I turned to her, leaned on the banister, which wasn't the safest thing in the world to do, but I was trying for a Ronald Colman air.
"I have an office," I said. With understated pride.
"Oh, splendid," she smiled. "Then perhaps you'd know what Mr. Heller's hours are."
"I'm Mr. Heller," I said, losing my air, but managing not to sputter. "Anyway, I'm Heller."
"Oh, splendid! Just who I've come to see."
And she came up the stairs and I allowed her to pass, her body brushing mine, the fragrance still a mystery, and once in the corridor, led her to my office. She went in, I took her coat and hung it on the tree, and she stood poised, purse in two hands like a fig leaf in front of her.
She was stunning, in an oddball way: she was deathly pale, partially from face powder, but her lips were dark red, a red with black in it; she wore black, completely black- a one-piece slinky dress that wanted to be satin but was cotton, with a slit up to her knee, black heels, sheer black hose with a mesh pattern. The effect, with the beret, was vaguely apache dancer, but also vaguely naive. Play-acting was part of this, somehow.
I hung my own topcoat up, gestured to the chair in front of my desk, which I got behind; she sat with her back straight, her head back a bit. She reached a hand out to me across the desk, which I had to stand to take; I wasn't sure if I was supposed to kiss it or shake it, so I just kind of took it, taking the tips of four fingers in my hand and squeezing gently, acknowledging the hand's existence, then sitting down.
"My name is Mary Ann Beame," she said. "That's Beame with an E. A silent one. I don't have a stage name."
"You don't?"
"That's my real name. I don't believe in stage names. I'm an actress."
"Really?"
"I've done some little theater, here and there."
Very little theater. I thought.
"I see," I said.
She sat up even straighter, wide-eyed. "Oh! Don't worry. I'm not destitute. Just because I'm an actress."
"I didn't assume you were."
"I have an income. I work in radio."
"No kidding?"
"Yes. It makes a tidy living for me, till I can go on to something better. Do you listen to the radio?"
"When I get the chance. I been meaning to pick one up for the office."
She looked around, as if trying to see where to put this radio, once I bought it. She noticed the Murphy bed and pointed toward it; the gesture was theatrical, but somehow I didn't think this was coming from snobbishness. "Isn't that a Murphy bed?" she asked.
"It might be," I said.
She shrugged to herself, not bothering to understand either the Murphy bed or my remark, and looked across the desk at me. smiled and said. "Just Plain Bill."
"Pardon?"
"That's the sudser I'm on. 'Just Plain Bill' I do several voices, one of them a lead. I do that regularly, and pick up a lot of other shows. Have you heard 'Mr. First-Nighter'? That's where I've done my best work, I think."
"I'm more an 'Amos 'n' Andy' man, myself."
"They do all their own voices," she said, rather sadly, as it wasn't a market for her wares.
"I'm glad a serious actress like yourself has no compunctions about working in radio. A lot of actresses might feel above it."
"A number of splendid actors and actresses are working in Chicago radio, Mr. Heller. Francis X. Bushman. Irene Rich. Frank Dane."
"Eddie Cantor," I offered.
"Not in Chicago." she corrected.
"Well, then. We've established you're gainfully employed Now, why is it you wanted to employ me?"
Her face took on a serious cast; the pretension dropped, and concern came through. She dug in her little black purse and came up with a dog-eared snapshot.
"Here's a photo of Jimmy."
She handed it across the desk to me; it was a photo of her and a boy who looked a bit like her. though he was pudgy. It was several years old; possibly when they were still in their late teens.
"We were twins," she said. "Still are. I suppose."
"Not identical twins. I hope," I said, venturing a small smile.
"No," she said distantly, not getting it.
I started to hand the picture back, and she shook her head no.
"Keep that," she said. "I want you to find him."
"How long has he been missing?"
"Well, he isn't missing exactly… it's nothing you could go to the police about. I mean, it isn't a missing persons case or anything like that."
"What is it, then, Miss Beame?"
"Call me Mary Ann. Please."
"All right, Mary Ann. Why is your brother not exactly missing?"
"We come from Davenport. Iowa? On the Mississippi. One of the Tri-Cities. Heard of that? Rock Island? Moline?"
I'd heard of all three: Davenport was where Bix Beiderbecke came from- the jazz cornet player who, till bad bootleg gin killed him in '31. made Paul Whiteman worth listening to; Rock Island I knew from its railroad; and Barney had fought in Moline. But the term "Tri-Cities" was new to me. I didn't bother saying so. because she was off and away.
"My father was a chiropractor. That makes it sound like he's dead, and he isn't. He's alive and well. But Daddy was a chiropractor. Davenport is the home of that, you know… the Palmers, they invented chiropractic. And my father was very thick with them. Very friendly, one of their first students. But he had an accident in an automobile, and his hands were badly burned. He had to stop practicing. He taught at the Palmer College for a while, and ended up as the manager of WOC Radio."