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“Well, you were at the scene when he was killed. Lots of people saw you. Come on out of that bathroom, Polly.”

She did. She looked forlorn. But pretty.

“I can’t go home. They’ll be waiting.”

“Face the music, or better, go see the feds. They’ll probably shield you.”

She looked up and her eyes did a little dance, like maybe she was remembering something Anna Sage told her along the same lines.

Then she got angry with me, or mock-angry. There was some coquettishness in it.

“Why did you tell him all that?” she wanted to know.

“He’s a cop and he asked me.”

“Oh, you’re such a shit.”

“I thought you had special memories of our night together?”

That made her smile; I still liked her smile.

“I need a place to stay,” she said. “No one would think of looking for me here…”

I was tempted. I admit I was tempted.

But I said, “Try the YWCA,” and pushed her out the door. Hoping Stege was long gone by now.

Before I shut the door she stuck her tongue out at me, and said, “Fuck you.” A strange combination of childishness and adultness. Or is that adultery?

Then I went back to the desk and sat. Looked at the federal wanted poster for Dillinger spread out there, where Stege had left it. His irony was a little heavy-handed, too. Looked at my watch. It was after one.

I called her anyway.

“Helen,” I said into the phone. “Did I wake you? Is that offer for me coming over tonight still open?”

“Yes,” Sally said.

22

The next afternoon, around three, I was sitting in my shirt sleeves having a bagel and a glass of cold milk in the deli-restaurant below my office. Milk was almost never my drink of choice, but coffee was out of the question—the day was steaming hot, so who the hell needed coffee?

I hadn’t been upstairs yet, having just got back from Sally’s. She’d been good to me last night—we didn’t talk at all; in fact, we didn’t do anything except sleep together—just sleep. And it was exactly what I needed.

What I didn’t need this afternoon was a reporter, but suddenly that’s exactly what I had: Hal Davis, of the Daily News, a little guy with a big head—by which I don’t mean he was conceited: he had a big head, literally, a size too big for his smallish frame. He stood grinning in front of me in shirt sleeves and bow tie and gray hat. He was one of those guys who would always seem to be about twenty-two years old. He was easily forty.

“I been looking for you,” he said.

“Sit down, Davis, you’re making me nervous.”

He sat. “You’re a hard man to find.”

“You seem to’ve found me.”

“Pretty wild carryings-on at the morgue last night.”

“I saw the papers.”

He told me about it anyway. “I don’t know how the word got out so fast, but there they were, before the body was even cold, swarming like flies. Couple thousand sweaty souls crow-din’ around the morgue like they were waiting for Sally Rand to go on.”

He meant nothing personal by that; Sally and I hadn’t made the gossip columns yet.

“And that son of a bitch Parker scooped us all,” he said, shaking his head with admiration.

He meant Dr. Charles D. Parker, one of numerous assistants to the coroner’s pathologist, J. J. Kearns. Parker, however, also happened to be a stringer for the Trib, covering hospitals and the morgue for ’em. Somehow Parker had got tipped to the shooting early enough on to be able to beat the body to the morgue, where he wheeled a receiving cart up to the door and waited for John Dillinger to arrive.

Soon the meat wagon delivered Dillinger—and exclusive Trib coverage of the morgue end of the story—to Parker.

“Got to hand it to that bastard,” Davis conceded. “Hell of a piece of work.”

I took a bite of bagel.

Davis cleared his throat. “I hear you were at the Biograph last night.”

“So were a lot of people.”

“Garage mechanics sitting on their stoop and old ladies hanging out their windows ’cause of the heat. Not trained observers like you, Heller. Your version of the shooting could be a corker.”

“Gee whiz, aw shucks. I’m real flattered, Davis. Now can I finish my bagel?”

T

HE BODY AT THE MORGUE

“Hell, I’ll buy you another! How ’bout giving me your eyewitness account. For old times’ sake.”

“What old times are those? When you dredged up the Lingle case in your coverage of my part in the Nitti hit? Get fucked, Davis.”

He smiled. “A newsman knows he’s doing a good job when people resent him. You can’t hurt my feelings, Heller, don’t even bother trying.”

“You’re short.”

He stopped smiling. “You get fucked, Heller.”

I gulped my milk. “Every rag in town this morning, including yours, had a dozen eyewitness accounts of the Biograph shooting. This is old news. Why bother?”

Davis waved that off. “Dillinger dying’s gonna be front-page fodder for days, maybe weeks. Besides, the bozos we got eyewitness stories from came in after the show started; you were there for the whole picture, and the featured attractions to boot.”

“What’s in it for me?”

He shrugged facially, “How ’bout a double sawbuck.”

“I don’t think so, Davis.”

“What do you want?”

My curiosity got the better of me. “Were you at the inquest?”