Pete’s was on Dearborn, just north of Randolph. Pretty redheaded Pearl, on Barney’s arm, tried to hide her surprise as we approached the place; the neon sign that hung above the awning had a few vowels burned out, so that it read P T ’S STE KS, and looking in the window all you could see was an ordinary white-tile, one-arm joint. But then we went inside, and back to the rear of the place and up the steps to the air-cooled dining room, where framed autographed celebrity photos (including one from Barney, signed to Bill and Marie Botham, the owners—I never did find out who Pete was) rode the walls of the long, narrow dining-car-like room.
As soon as Pearl started spotting celebrities (Eddie Cantor and George Jessel were at a table together and, at another, second time today, Rudy Vallee) she brightened. The place catered to the show biz crowd, press agents, song boosters, chorines, vaudevillians, with a good number of newspapermen tossed in in the bargain. Doc Dwyer of the
Our table conversation ran to small talk—Barney had taken Pearl to the fair today, including Sally Rand’s matinee, which Pearl found “shameless,” but sort of giggled when she said it—and I mostly just listened. But Barney was watching me close; he knew I was in a black mood. He also knew I’d called and invited him and Pearl out to try to shake that mood, and that I wasn’t being particularly successful.
The steaks arrived and helped distract me. Thick and tender and juicy, with melted butter and a side concoction of cottage fries, radishes, green onions, peas and sliced Bermuda onions that spilled onto the steak. I’d eaten nothing today except a bagel at the deli under my office, when I’d got back from Nitti’s; it’d been all I could make myself eat. But I was ravenous, now, and I attacked the rare steak like an enemy. Pearl, fortunately, didn’t notice my rotten table manners; she was too caught up in her own Pete’s Special. Barney, though, continued to eye me.
A minor sportswriter from the
“You’re a very special friend to Barney,” she said.
“He’s a special friend to me.”
“When you’re in Barney’s position, the friends you had before you got famous are the important ones, you know.”
“Are you going to marry him, Pearl?”
“If he asks me.”
“He will.”
She gave me a pretty smile, and I managed to give one back to her. A smile, that is. I doubt it was pretty.
I drove them back to the Morrison, and let them out, but Barney leaned in the window on the rider’s side before I pulled away.
“Are you going to be all right, Nate?”
“Sure.”
“You want I should drop up tonight, and we can talk?”
“No. It’s okay. You only got tonight and tomorrow night before Pearl goes home. Spend your time with
“You sure, Nate?”
“Sure I’m sure—now, go be with your girl!”
“Thanks for supper, Nate.”
I smiled and waved and pulled away.
Pete’s special steak, good as it was, was grinding in my stomach. I passed some gas and it smelled the way I felt.
There was a place in the alley behind the building where Barney let me park my Chevy. I’d been lucky—no vandals or thieves had had at it yet. During the winter, it was hell to start ’er up, on the really cold days; but on the really cold days I tried to work out of my office, anyway. A telephone’s a detective’s best tool, after all; and I was like anybody born and brought up in Chicago—I was more comfortable riding the Els and streetcars, and didn’t use the car much, really.
I stopped in Barney’s Cocktail Lounge for a beer, thinking about how you used to go into the place through the corner deli. The cocktail lounge had been a blind pig, a bar that seemed to be closed down and boarded up but was actually wide open, like Chicago. Somehow I missed sitting by the boarded-up windows. It had felt safe, secure, snug, somehow. I rarely took one of the window booths, these days. Tonight I sat along the wall.
After the beer, I had some rum. Just enough to settle my stomach. The warmth moved through my belly in a soothing wave. I felt better. I had a little more rum. Not too much. Sally was going to stop by this evening, after her show. She said she wanted to see how the other half lived, and I guessed it was time she found out, Murphy bed and all. But the least I could do was greet her soberly.
I sat there, sipping the rum, and felt so goddamn depressed I could cry. I got out of there before I did.
I walked up the stairs to my floor and down the hall and worked the key in the lock and stepped in and a fist sunk in my stomach and bounced off my spine. I fell on my knees and puked. Heard the door shut behind me.
“Did you get any on you?” a hushed voice said.
He meant me puking.
