I was chewing that over when the blonde showgirl with the black eye came out, wearing a pink long-sleeve sweater and pink slacks and carrying two big pink suitcases with a gray garment bag over her arm. I had a hunch her railroad cap wasn’t in either suitcase.
She was stumbling; she’d been crying. George looked like he might want to help her, but didn’t.
She must not have had a car of her own, because she hauled the suitcases to the corner and sat on them, like she was waiting for a bus. A cab might come by, eventually — maybe she’d called one. I knew I should mind my own business.
Instead, I called out, “Hey!”
She looked up and squinted across the street at me.
“You need a lift?” I asked.
She swallowed and nodded.
So I got out and went over and helped with her bags, and loaded them — and her — into my Olds.
As I headed back to the Loop — it was on the tail end of rush hour on the Outer Drive — she looked over at me, timidly, using big brown eyes that were beautiful even if they were bloodshot. “You... you’re not one of
I figured she meant, was I a mob guy?
“No,” I said, and hoped to hell I was right.
At the time of its construction before the turn of the century, the sixteen-story Monadnock Building in the south Loop had been the world’s biggest office building, as well as the last — and largest — of the old-style masonry structures, with walls fifteen feet thick at the base. The dark brown brick monolith nonetheless had a modern, streamlined look — thanks to its flaring base, dramatic bay windows, and the outward swell at the top, in lieu of a cornice. A classy building, a classic building — and home of the A-1 Detective Agency.
The A-1 had begun back in December ’32 as a single office over a blind pig in an undistinguished building on nearby Van Buren, sharing a street with hockshops, taverns, and flophouses, with fellow tenants numbering abortionists, shylocks, and a palm reader or two. It was always an awful place, but my friend Barney Ross, the boxer, owned it, so that’s where I got my start.
By ’43 I’d expanded to a suite of two offices and had taken on two operatives (including Lou Sapperstein, who was now a partner) and a knockout secretary named Gladys, who was unfortunately all business; we eventually took over most of the fourth floor. After the war we were briefly in the Rookery, but the space was limited and the rent wasn’t.
So we now had the corner office on the seventh floor of the venerable Monadnock, with a view over Jackson Boulevard of the Federal Building. I had four full-time operatives and two part-time, who shared a big open bullpen of desks; Lou had a small office and I had a big one (Gladys had a reception cubbyhole). We were close to the courts and the banks, and yet still within spitting distance of the Sin Strip of State Street. It was everything a private eye in Chicago could want.
I even looked like one, in the military-style London Fog raincoat and my green Stetson fedora, as — on the cool, overcast September morning after my meeting with the Fischetti boys — I strolled in the Monadnock’s main entrance at 53 West Jackson. Plenty of natural light filtered through the store windows on either side of the corridor — the building was narrow and these were the back-end show-window entries of stores facing Dearborn and the glorified alley that was Federal. The Monadnock had open winding stairwells all the way up, beautiful things, but I took the elevator to seven.
I took a left as I got off on my floor and strode down to the frosted-glass-and-wood wall behind which was our reception nook — or was it a cranny? In bold black, the door said:
and in smaller lettering,
I went in and Gladys Fortunato looked up from her work. A busty brown-eyed brunette with a sulky mouth, primly professional in a white blouse and dark-framed glasses, Gladys was sitting behind her starkly modern plywood and aluminum desk with its phone, typewriter, and intercom.
“Good morning, Mr. Heller.”
“Morning.” I had my hat off; Gladys had long since taught me respect.
Behind her was another wood-and-frosted-glass wall. On the walls to either side hung framed vintage Century of Progress posters, under which resided boxy lime-color wall-snugged couches, a low-slung plywood and aluminum coffee table in front of each, well stocked with various
Gladys and I had never been an item, but after her husband (an operative of mine) had died at Guadalcanal, she and I had finally become friendly. Her smile was genuine as she handed me a pile of mail and magazines.
“Glad to see you drag in,” she said.
“I didn’t have any appointments. Nobody knows I’m back in town.”
“Somebody does. You have an appointment in half an hour with Captain Gilbert.”
“Hell! Why did you take that?”
