Dark Blonde: A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery
By David H Fears
Copyright 2011 David H Fears
Smashwords Edition
Discover other titles by David H Fears at Smashwords.com:
Dark Quarry, Dark Poison
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Chapter 1
It was 1962, a year after I’d chased a Russian mob responsible for my father’s murder to Chicago and got a nasty scar from my ear to my chin that tingled every time danger dropped by. I stayed in the Windy City after breaking the mob case, partly because my Jersey license had been iced by a crooked judge (in Jersey that’s an oxymoron), partly from the notion that Molly Bennett might be the girl for me, as much as I doubted any skirt could adjust to my awkwardly obsessive personality. But then, private detectives usually don’t love their work as much as they’re driven by it.
I’d bought a smallish bungalow and ground out enough boring insurance fraud investigations to keep scotch and coffee in the place. Molly lobbied for and became my office whiz; she worked overtime seeing to it that I didn’t skip too many meals or spend all my nights alone. I was reaching a point where I knew I’d have to say the words to Molly or get out of her life and let her marry someone better looking and more stable. As the pressure grew to lay it on the line with Molly, a recurring dream about a mysterious platinum blonde brought tantalizing torment to my quiet hours. Who was she? Needless to say, Molly was not blonde.
Then the case fell on me that flushed my boredom blues and commitment chaos, and it came while I was having the dream in a most vivid Technicolor splash: the blonde in the next building fixed her emerald eyes and the chrome-plated revolver on me as she unhooked her bra, a pretty good trick and one that might only happen in a dream, where dames are triple-jointed and never get enough. Stupid Male Fantasy. I gaped across a gulf between two high-rise apartments, over a wobbly board spanning our two terraces. I crawled half way across, teetering with each nudge of wind. My scar tingled then burned like an icy snake crawling into my ear. The seductive voice faded into mush—I was waking up. Plus, a real voice came from a phone wedged between two pillows next to my head. I fumbled the receiver and drooled some complaint into it.
The clock said 5:15.
Be careful, son. This one could be trouble.
It was Dad’s voice in my head. Though he’d been murdered on his first case as a private investigator a couple of years ago, the “voice” was always so clear that I imagined it was audible, though I knew it was not. I’d heard it first on that last case, especially when death was near. At first I thought I was going nuts, but I learned that it was his way of keeping tabs on me and warning me whenever danger lurked. His voice had never failed me. I’d tried to ask his advice on things but he only spoke short warnings. Here he was, warning me about a phone call from an unknown female. Or maybe I was not awake.
The blonde in my dream was gone and the one on the phone wasn’t talking—that is, if she was blonde. I wanted her to be. I was about to hang up when a rusty breathy voice floated out like sunset clouds.
“Mister Angel, are you there? This is Julia Gateswood, Congressman Henry Gateswood’s wife. Can you hear me?”
5:15 a.m. Maybe that’s the proper time for Congressmen’s wives to call. “Soon to be Senator Gateswood?”
“The same. You’re Mike Angel, aren’t you?”
I was. Cold light above the drapes hinted morning, but my mind fought the reality. “You’ve interrupted a fascinating dream. Are you blonde?” I was still treading slumber.
“Please. I only have a minute. It’s vital that I meet you today somewhere and I can’t be seen going into a private investigator’s office.”
I rose to one elbow and brushed aside the dream blonde by pressing my fingers up and down the tingling scar. My stomach was queasy from the tightrope act, my mouth sour from the night before. Platinum Babe would be there another night just as she’d been there several before, each time the distance between the balconies grew shorter, the strip tease progressed further. But it was no mystery how it would end.
Julia Gateswood. It suddenly occurred to me who she was; her picture had been in some of the campaign photos—a willowy flaxen-haired arm gadget, although not the platinum variety. Made to order for an aspiring politician stepping up in class. Trophy but not trickless. A mature sort of beauty. Even without Julia, Henry Gateswood was a lock for the office; the other party was putting up some seedy councilman who’d been a plumber’s union leader—fewer bucks and less class. But a lock in Illinois politics doesn’t mean much, unless you know which way union bosses will deliver Cook County and how many dead people get to vote. My head got a lot clearer. “A lot of people feel that way about being seen going into my office, which is why I don’t spend money on it. I can’t blame them. I try not to take it personal. What do you have in mind?”
“Can you meet me in thirty minutes downtown in the lobby of the Palmer House? There’s a small coffee bar just off the main lobby.” She did a pretty good imitation of Marilyn Monroe. Maybe she was asthmatic. I never could tell the difference.
“No.”
“Why not?” She bit off the “t” and I could hear her warm breath washing over the receiver like a tropical tide. I liked that she was direct. It saves time.
“I don’t do divorce cases, which is the only reason I can think of why an ex-beauty queen would call me out of breath at this hour. Divorces make people too raw. Besides, I need thirty just to pry my other eye open.”
“This isn’t divorce, nothing like that. Are you in business or not? You’ve come highly recommended.”
“Sorry. I’m only 32 but feeling old—and grumpy. The sun disappeared weeks ago and that Hawk wind off Lake Michigan brings me down. Or maybe it’s the rye my liver’s marinating in. Then again, maybe I don’t like being poked at five and asked to run downtown when I’m not told what the score is.”
Dead air on the line; the tropical tide had subsided. I let the receiver sink back into the pillows and thought about hanging up. From what I’d read in the Chicago Tribune, the breathless Mrs.Gateswood had won Miss Midwest 1958, a few years before shrewd Henry had snatched the crown off her pretty blonde head and put her in charge of his burgeoning career—she’d over-burgeoned his ambition just the way she stuffed a bikini. The Tribune joked she’d be the real senator if Henry was elected next month. Only two years older than Henry’s daughter, the marriage had raised a few eyebrows in Henry’s country club set. He’d been a widower only a few months, which fueled the talk.
A faint sniffle sneaked out of the receiver, or so I imagined. Maybe it was left over from the platinum stripper. Or maybe it was me who’d sobbed. Wherever the sob came from I realized that asleep or awake this would be a blonde day.
“Please—I can’t discuss this matter on the telephone,” came her squeezed, less practiced voice. The breathless come-on was gone. I could tell this dame collected different voices for all occasions and plots.
“If it’s so sensitive you don’t want to be seen with me, why not make it out of town somewhere? About nine o’clock then,” I said struggling to find a kinder me in the cobwebs, my ebbing hard-on re-fueled from dreams of a rendezvous with the Julia I’d seen in the papers.
“I’m afraid the only time I can get loose without anyone knowing is later this afternoon. Henry’s got a policy conference and I’m not needed.”
“Okay. This afternoon’s jake. You’ll find I’m somewhat more receptive once I’ve had breakfast. By then I will have had lunch, too. I’ll be downright civil.”
“I’ll be at Alfie’s Corner at four. It’s up near Winnetka. I’ll have my assistant bring a retainer to your house before then. Five hundred enough?”
Five hundred. Exactly twice as much as I had left in the bank. From a babe. Was I still dreaming?“Four at Alfie’s. I know the place. And I can’t say what’s enough until I hear your problem, but for five up front it might be too big for me to reel in. You haven’t committed a crime have you Mrs. G?”
The click on the line told me she very well could be dirty or didn’t like being teased about the idea. Downright abrupt for a wakeup service. So we were even—she didn’t like teasing and I didn’t like being jolted away from a half-dressed blonde. I tried to sift out the dream again but every time I closed my eyes the balcony across the way was empty and the distance across was a mile and still that damned Hawk wind whipped off Lake Michigan. My hard-on had split like a lucky streak at craps. Fantasy time was over.
I struggled out of bed and propped myself up in the shower piecing together the night before. Rick, my self-appointed partner, flew out of Newark to attend the funeral of his 90-year-old mother. Molly, my secretary and official love interest, also left, for Oregon, where her brother had just become the father of twin girls. Drinks last night were a death and birth send off party, an all around yippee for mortality. On my own for a few days, I’d thrown caution out the window and clung to the bottle a couple of hours after the flights left. I remembered Sam the bartender calling me a cab, but nothing afterward until the platinum-haired seductress wooed me out on her wobble board six stories above Addison Avenue.
I was cuddling my third cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.
“I’m Miss Mathews, Mrs. Gateswood’s assistant,” she said in a fog whistle voice that didn’t match her small frame.
“Come in.”
A sweet little package, Miss Mathews, all fluff and efficiency. She wore a red belted raincoat, a cupcake hat with boots to match, a clear plastic folded umbrella and a pair of brown eyes so dark the pupils were lost there. They seemed larger than life behind a pair of efficient rimless glasses. Her brunette pixie-do swept the edges of her tiny face, giving her the expression of one of those life-sized Santa helper dolls that Marshall’s sticks in display windows at Christmastime. She smelled quite nice, something close to spicy vanilla. Her tiny purse was a shade off from her other red things, and she clutched a pair of black gloves against the purse like her life savings was inside.
As she walked to the nearest chair and sat down, her legs, almost too slim, but curvy and clean, as far as I could see. My eyes wanted to see further. I’ve always had optimistic eyes.
I lifted my coffee cup.“You take it black?” I said, noticing her fine-grained skin. Her brown eyes looked at me like I’d just called her a name. I turned my now bluish scar away from her and showed her my nice teeth. Some dames find the scar interesting, and want to hear all about how I earned it, the same sort of dames who like a fast ride on a Harley, or who get wet looking at bad boy pictures in the post office. But Miss Mathews wasn’t that type, though might act the part with the right encouragement.
“I never drink coffee,” she said. “I’m strictly a tea person—good tea—if you have any. One sugar.” She slid her raincoat off her shoulders, letting it fall behind her on the chair. She crossed her legs and rocked one foot out rapidly. Her eyes took a guarded tour of the room.
I peeked at her from the kitchenette and brewed some Earl Grey that Molly had left on her last stay-over. The place was starting to fill up with Molly’s things—a comb here, pair of slacks and a change of underwear there, even a toothbrush in the holder facing mine like the two were conversing intimately about the state of our respective molars. I draw the line at sharing a toothbrush.
Molly’s flimsies stashed about was our way of gradual commitment I’d told her, a safe way of letting things develop, getting used to the idea of emotional risk, mainly to placate my nerves, not hers. That way, I’d pointed out, when we looked back at how our involvement developed, we could laugh about such little things and the big leap made an inch at a time. For Molly’s part, she was fine with the setup and hadn’t wanted to move in before she’d known me a year or so anyway. Or so she said. It became Molly’s game to add little things on each visit, laugh at me behind those green Irish eyes.
I put the tea and sugar on a tray and slid it in front of Miss Mathew’s perfect knees. She dug a small manila envelope from her purse and shoved it at me. I touched her icicle white fingers when I took the envelope. Cold hands, warm lap, Rick always says.
“I’d like a receipt, if you don’t mind,” she said, “when you can stop staring at my legs.”
I rifled a pack of Luckies and waggled one in her direction. She took it like it was owed her and laid it between her pressed red lips, nearly the same color as her raincoat, hat and all the rest. All that red made me want to put my horns down and charge. I could almost hear the echo of Herb Alpert’s brass and a tequila-sodden mob shouting “Ole!”
“I only wanted to see if they were that skinny up north. I wouldn’t mind staring at other things if you’d rather,” I said, snapping a lighter for her. “Some women take such things as a compliment.” I walked back across the room and took a seat on the couch, opened the envelope and pulled out five pictures of Benjamin Franklin all done in green.
“Mister Angel, I’m not some women. I don’t like passes before noon.”
“That means we have three hours, Miss Mathews, how much tea can you drink?”
The rocking foot stopped short. She took one sip of tea, put the cup down almost hard enough to break it, threw me a sour smile, mashed out her cigarette, and reached back for her raincoat. She stood and folded the raincoat over one arm, revealing a tiny smart waist and a bunch of smart little curves lurking under her smart little business suit. “The receipt, if you don’t mind,” she said smartly.
She was a smart little woman. Too smart for me. I was feeling dumber by the second.
“And what sort of services do I make the receipt out for?”
A dumb look was all she fed me.
“What kind of trash does your employer wish to dispose of?”
“I’m sure I have no idea why she’d call a man like you. You’ll have to take that up with her.”
“You are her assistant, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but she didn’t see fit to inform me.”
“Then I take it this wad of lettuce is for something personal, something embarrassing.”
She sniffed and pointed her little nose higher. I wanted to give her a smart little slap.
I went to the secretary desk in the corner and wrote out a receipt, making a carbon for my records. On the bottom I wrote, “retainer for embarrassing personal services to be determined” and signed it.
Standing at the open door I fluttered the receipt just above her eyes, which now held a hint of fire or anger, or maybe sexual tension that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure if the tea or my leg-staring had sparked her imagination.
“What about expenses?” I said. “And do you have a first name?”
“Mrs. Gateswood will discuss that with you. Expenses, not my name, which is Dee. My employer feels an advance retainer will pay you for your time, should you not wish to handle her situation.” A pulse showed at the base of her neck and a tinge of color formed on her cheeks. My intuition said the lady was thinking about my practiced stare, and my suggestion we wait until noon, but then my intuition only batted .300, good only in baseball. Her repression wrestled with my confession. She seemed transfigured looking at my scar with an expression one might have for an exotic snake. I understood how Eve messed up in the Garden.
She took the receipt and turned her eyes up to mine. If she was leaving she wasn’t in a rush. We stood there waiting for the other to say something. Just when I was about to say goodbye, she took a quick step toward me, put one hand on my arm, took her cheaters off with the other hand and pushed her lips up into mine. She had to tiptoe on heels to get there, but I helped her make that last inch. Her cool mouth tasted like a kiss a small child gives you for a long awaited birthday gift. I added tongue to the kiss, again, like an exotic snake might. She pulled back with surprised eyes, feigned, or so it struck me. There was more than a quota of prick tease in Miss Mathews. My prick rarely minds being teased. The thought struck me she wasn’t blonde.
“You’re not quite as tall as my last lover,” she said, tilting her head and leering at me along her eyes. “He was six three.”
“Lincoln was also six three. I hope your last lover made out better.”
Without those spectacles her eyes were small, intense, deadly—cobra eyes to go with my scar. She pulled away, slid the cheaters back on and was gone. I stood and listened to the purr of her car’s engine receding down the street.
Miss Dee Mathews, all fluff and efficiency, even if she was ignorant as to the reason for her visit. A bit thin, but lovely legs, I’d give her that much. I was certain other qualities would emerge given some time between the sheets, though she’d be a third-round draft choice, at best.
Chapter 2
Alfie’s is nearly empty at four o’clock. By six the after work singles crowd throngs the place and by eight the dinner set arrives to slosh down double martinis and gnaw on T-bones that they can’t taste any better than the olives in the martinis.
I parked next to a couple of beat up Pontiacs in the otherwise empty lot, probably employee cars, and picked up a Sun-Times from a box at the door. While I waited for the good congressman’s wife I could pick up scuttlebutt on the up-coming election flap by checking Kup’s Chicago column. After my little interview with the ex-beauty queen, Kup might be worth a phone call.
Irv Kupcinet was the first person Molly introduced me to when I transplanted from Newark. He’d earned the title “Mister Chicago,” and had been writing a column on the town for over twenty years, back since the Sun-Times was the plain old Times. Whatever drama percolated in the City of Big Shoulders, Kup was in on it, from hoodlums to sports heroes, celebrities to financial wizards. Molly’s late Dad, Joe Bennett, had been fishing buddies with Kup, and although Kup was Jewish, he’d been Molly’s unofficial godfather. Molly adored him. Kup’s daughter and Molly used to do sandbox drills as kids and went to the same schools, Molly a year behind her. If there was any gossip on anyone, Kup was the man, and thoroughly honest. His column often dropped little scalding ingots into the shorts of local politicians. He had more than enough material to work with. Whatever was worth knowing about the Gateswood’s, Kup would be privy to, including a few things he couldn’t print.
The interior of Alfie’s was dark paneled with high-backed leather booths lining the outside walls. A half wall separated the main bar from the dining hall. A gothic fireplace with a gas log hissed white flames next to a tiny dance floor that might have held three couples tucked into one corner like an afterthought. The long bar looked like a survivor of the Civil War, trimmed with fluted half columns of the same dark wood, backed by a glittering beveled mirror with glass shelves ten feet high holding bottles of booze. A sliding ladder fronted the mirror.
One college boy with a bad case of acne polished glassware behind the bar. He didn’t look up as I stepped in. Two aproned anorexic women scurried around the tables in the dining room laying out accoutrements from a rolling cart. I took a booth near the far corner window where I could watch the entrance and the bar. A side door to the back lot was next to one end of the bar. Whichever door Julia came in, I’d be able to study her as she walked across the length of the room, something I was looking forward to.
Pimples stopped polishing and shuffled over. His tunic was already stained with some sort of wine, either that or they only did laundry once a week. He had a thin conceited face with narrow deep-set filmy gray eyes that swam spastically. Slouching, he waited for my order like he didn’t want to be there, and was too good to actually talk to a customer.
A deluxe cut glass decanter of Murphy’s Irish whiskey sat lonely on the top shelf. Murphy’s had been my late father’s favorite poison. I ordered a double shot with a Rheingold suds chaser. While the kid stretched to the top shelf, a woman came out of the restroom and took a seat at the end of the bar near the door. She had long straight hair, dark brown, and body that messed up my concentration. It was poured into a tailored business suit, expensive looking, even if the hemline was a bit shorter than she’d learned in business college.
She crossed her legs provocatively, finessed a matching bag up on the bar, and cooed a word up the backside of the kid hauling down the decanter. Then she opened her purse and took out a gold cigarette case and lit up, her head back and smoke drifting in a puddle over her. She didn’t glance back at me, but what profile I caught had high-cheekbones, a prominent nose, and full lips. The bartender drew my beer and poured two whiskeys. He gave the brunette a tall water with her shot and shuffled over with my drinks on a small tray. The way he slapped the glasses down and his dull expression told me he was filling in until the barmaids came on duty. It was all a bother to the kid.
I sat there sipping Murphy’s and reading Kup’s column about a councilman who’d been caught in a prostitute sting on Michigan Avenue. It was the second time in a month the poor sap had been flashbulbed with his pants down and with enough cash on him that Kup asked the obvious—was Fred dipping into a city petty cash fund that he’d been appointed to manage? Kup threw in a few other facts about the guy’s new Lincoln, his second home up north, and a painted mystery woman bathed in furs who’d been seen coming and going from his office over the past year. The people’s money: too easy, too slick, too available. But then taxes were too high, rising too fast—no wonder government jobs attracted such sleaze. Go get ‘em Kup.
I finished my Murphy’s and skimmed the front page: three homicides, a kidnapping and a story about a drug-crazed woman selling her baby to an undercover cop for twelve bucks. Inside the front section there were other items about the upcoming election, including one survey that gave Gateswood a commanding eight-point lead that had fallen from an even more commanding fourteen-point lead. Several of the articles quoted his main opposition, Councilman Jake Whipple, who’d been the Teamster’s fair-haired boy since Dave Beck had sponsored him after the war. It seemed every time Whipple opened his mouth in the opening days of the campaign he’d lost another point. Gateswood batted a thousand, sailing Whipple’s faux pas curves into the left field bleachers—left field because Councilman Henry painted himself a progressive reformer, aiming to clean up not only Cook County but Washington D.C. and later the universe. He was an army of George Washington, FDR and Patrick Henry rolled into one. But the union vote had recently swung to Whipple and the gap narrowed. Cook County politics would decide. The two would do battle in a much-hyped television debate, which meant Whipple was an idiot given his past misspeaks, or he knew secrets no one else in Illinois knew. Since Nixon flopped in those head-to-heads a couple of years ago, it seemed every political underdog wanted to debate on television. Gateswood was a shoo-in, unless he hired Dick Nixon’s makeup man.
The woman at the bar turned on her stool and looked my way. She had a great face but kept hiding parts of it to watch me around her handkerchief. She was too obviously discreet, probably a housewife bored with vacuuming. It was way too early for hookers.
I wasn’t going to get sidetracked with any barfly, no matter how good her legs. I forced myself not to look at her. It took more force by the minute.
It was 4:30 and still no Julia. My time was on her nickel so I figured I’d give it an hour and deduct time gas and drinks from the five hundred. All that noise in the pulps about detectives working for nothing, being crusaders for the innocent was baloney. It was 1962 after all, and things cost more. My bar tab was over five bucks already, and gas was pushing forty cents a gallon. If there was any way to do investigations without a car, I hadn’t heard of it. My ’46 Buick coupe would need tires before long. Even the price of bullets was going up.
A cute little blonde ponytail rushed in the side door and dipped under the bar. When she flitted out she was tying an apron around her waist. She sang a short greeting to the woman at the bar and bounced over to my table. Ponytail was about as tall as a fireplug, but with the curves of a good mountain road.
“Another?” she asked in a perky voice, her blue eyes like a summer sky full of hope. I wondered whether youth is so happy because it’s so ignorant, or whether it’s so ignorant because it’s so happy.
Cars pulled into the lot and several office type couples sauntered in the front entrance looking bushed from pushing paper around all day.
“Why not? I’m still young, although I must look old to a kid like yourself.” I gave her my order and she handed me some tired lines about being as young as you feel, maintaining the positive, accentuating the good things in life, everyday being an adventure. I wanted to stamp “cliché” on her forehead in red ink and swat her on her cute behind. Evidently she hadn’t read the Sun-Times. I wondered how her tips worked out with all that sunny hackneyed crap she handed out. Even so, cynics like me root for Pollyannas like her to stay that way, even as we know that life will a kick her in the crotch.
I downed the whiskey and felt pretty warm from it. Even the fake fireplace seemed to put off heat. A mug of suds is a good way to help that feeling along, take the edge off, hydrate while dehydrating. I peeked another look at the end of the bar. The woman was even better looking after the second shot. Funny how Murphy’s improves a woman’s appearance.
She was turned fully toward me, watching the customers snag booths along the other wall. Our eyes met and she smiled. I lifted my beer mug. She winked, lifted her Murphy’s and gave me a circle-okay with her thumb and forefinger. Even from across the room, I could see her fingers were long and slim with subdued apricot polish. When she smiled it seemed to bring her face alive. Distractions. Didn’t she realize I was on the job? I guessed not. Was she on the job? Another question that might cost a drink or two to discover. She didn’t look like a working girl, even though the place probably drew them like ants to an overripe peach as the night wore on. Whatever she was, it was high class, out of my league.
Julia was an hour late. I didn’t feel like driving back to my bungalow during rush hour, so I finally thought, why not. I’d buy the lady another and see if she wanted to test her incisors on Alfie’s beef in the dining area.
I carried my beer to the bar and set it down next to her. Before I had the chance to get the pickup line out, she said,
“It’s me, stupid. I’m in a disguise. It’s about time you figured that out.” She lifted one side of that long straight dark hair and showed some honey blonde streaked with ash and lighter gold underneath. My scar felt suddenly cold. I half expected Dad’s voice to emerge from my beer.
Chapter 3
“I didn’t feel like talking to you without observing you first. I felt like seeing what you’d do.”
“So you let me sit in an empty bar for an hour. You wanted to test me. Peachy.”
She shifted farther into the booth and glanced out the window, then fixed her calm eyes on me like she was sympathetic to a child’s disappointment. I took a long look. She wasn’t made up or plastic like most beauty queens I’d seen. And she didn’t ooze sex, exactly. What she had was the kind of fresh little girl mixed with Helen of Troy face that thickens a man’s tongue into useless shoe leather.
When she spoke it was impossible to avoid watching her mouth form words: “Of course. You see, you were highly recommended but it came with a proviso—you’re a bit of a womanizer. I loathe rumors and wanted to see for myself, especially after my assistant told me you’d kissed her. I felt if the rumors were true, you’d try for a pickup even though you expected a client. Or that you’d investigate me at least, when I ordered your Murphy’s. I suppose it was rather clumsy, but I need someone who can focus on the job at hand. You passed.”
I looked past her across the room, which wasn’t easy, then down at my drink, feeling stupid. She was just another blonde, wasn’t she?
“Skip it. The wasted hour’s on your nickel. Your Miss Cupcake Hat kissed me, not the other way around, not that I have to explain, and it wasn’t much of a kiss. I’ve had better from cocker spaniels. Why don’t you fill me in on your problem and let me be the judge if the afternoon’s wasted.”
My eyes fell into hers and waited anxiously for her lips to answer. I was a big slug of pig iron and she was the world’s most sultry magnet.
Julia’s face tightened. I studied it now, able to take it all in, like the second reading of a matchless poem. Her face was proof that God exists. Those pageant judges must’ve been as helpless as I was. Her eyes were wide set, clear as a newborn’s, and a pale shade of blue that bordered on slate gray. I suddenly wanted to find paint that shade and redo my whole house with it. Her eyes did funny things to me, languorous and fiery at once. Gold flecks in her irises seemed to dance in the reflected light. I was drawn to her eyes but her nose was too long, her mouth too wide. Yet her features all worked together somehow in a honey dark and flawless complexion. She reminded me of Sophia Loren. She wore little makeup besides orange-red lipstick. Hers was a clear face that didn’t seem to hold a lot of stories, yet behind her eyes things went on, plans being made. Brunette, blonde or bald, she was a babe.
She leaned back in the booth and watched me like a cat at a robin’s first flying lesson.
“It’s my sister,” she said in that same breathless voice I’d been awakened to. “She’s disappeared. She’s run off before, somewhat wild at times, but never this long. It’s been four days.” Julia aimed for businesslike matter of fact, but ulcers shone through. The barest hint of lines had formed under those enormous peepers since her runway walk days. A few more years of mud slinging and political in-fighting for her aging husband would deepen those lines. It seemed like a waste of a good female.
“Why not go to the police? They have an entire bureau that handles missing sisters.”
“You must see,” she said sharply, “how impolitic that would be. I’d like you to find her, keep it confidential.”
“You say your sister’s somewhat wild. That sort don’t somewhat want to be somewhat found.”
“Gail’s not like that. Even with our differences, she keeps in touch regularly. We suffered the loss of our mother when we were quite young, had a difficult upbringing and it naturally made me protective.”
“Naturally. Differences. Like she’s wild and you’re not.”
She took a deep breath and sipped her drink. It was the first time I’d ever been jealous of a glass. I wondered if her breasts were as enormous and shapely as they hinted under her blouse. Wondering that sort of thing about a new client should have told me to nix the case right then, but it only made me want to wonder about other things. I didn’t fight it. Blame the Murphy’s.
“What do you mean?”
“I gather your sister and you don’t always agree on her behavior. That’s the usual source of argument between siblings, the older telling the younger how to behave.”
“I’m two years older. It was always up to me to take care of her. Will you take the case?”
“I’m not sure yet. Go on. Tell me when you last saw her. Tell me more about her. Married, children, occupation, that sort of thing. Where does she like to hang out, what sort of things does she like to do? Does she have any enemies that you know of? Can you give me a list of her close friends and acquaintances?”
Julia had a detailed list all typed out for me, a complete dossier, answering most of my questions, complete with a recent photo of the two of them at some banquet, holding up champagne glasses for the camera, except there was no frivolity. Their respective body language said the pose was forced, that they might as well have been mortal enemies faking it for the camera. Twenty-six year old Gail Gorovoy was thin, sultry, with reddish brown hair worn pulled back from a face that suggested ancestry south of the border. I’d seen her picture somewhere, but couldn’t place her. She had intriguing dark eyes but otherwise there was no resemblance to Julia. She wasn’t even in Julia’s league.
The information read like a real estate listing. Gail and Julia’s maiden name was Gorovoy. Gail ran off with a Russian diplomat and had the marriage annulled after only two weeks and so took back her maiden name. There was no hint of Gail’s character, no subjective information.
“I want the name of the men your sister dated over the past year, and any before that involved in a messy breakup. Names and where I might get in touch with them.”
“I’ll have miss Mathews gather that for you if you promise not to paw her.”
I didn’t look up from the dossier. “Pawing’s one of my many bad habits I’m trying to curb,” I said. “However, in her case it should be easy. She’s not my type.”
Julia kept her eyes on me with one perfect eyebrow raised while I studied the information, then folded the paper and put it in my inside jacket pocket. I placed the photo in front of me, waiting for the memory to jog. “Your description’s pretty complete. There’s everything here but Gail’s favorite toothpaste, but not how she brushes. Like Miss Mathews, you’re very efficient. The two of you must play a mean game of gin rummy. I’m sure you’re both an asset to the congressman. I take it Gail’s somewhat reckless, a liability to political considerations?”
She smirked and tapped her glass. “Meaning?”
“Meaning nothing except that maybe she isn’t so efficient and before I take on the case I’d like to get a picture of what sort of girl Gail is, how much trouble she’s been in, what sort of enemies she might have been talented enough to create.” I leaned forward across the table and put a forefinger on the photograph. “Is she kind to small animals or does she spit on them? Does she sip her wine or does she throw back highballs? Does she go to church every Sunday or does she like to play the ponies and go around without panties? You get the idea.”
I thought the lovely Julia would choke on her ginger ale. She was used to phony smiles at boring dinners, too many teeth mouthing smooth political lies. Bare-knuckled honesty, stark blunt truth was something she clearly wasn’t used to. I was willing to help teach her, but she didn’t seem willing to learn right then. Color rose from the nape of her neck, while she decided whether to laugh or throw her drink on me. It was all I could do to keep my mind from undressing her.
“You’re insulting,” she managed to spit out. Her shoulders pulled back, her spine taut, which only served to show off her breasts. Lovely how each of those features helped the other.
“Relax. Insulting works in my trade, and I’m good at it. Insulting doesn’t work in yours, I suppose, unless you’re sneaky and want to convince a cobra to bite the guy you’re running against. I gather you’ve been in the habit of cleaning up messes for Gail. You left out her occupation. What’s Gail’s current dodge? More importantly, what’s her temperament? Does she stiffen and then take it as calmly as you’re doing, does she slap a guy when he stares at her breasts the way I am at yours, or does she invite him to take a closer look?”
A little heat passed through her eyes, which turned again to the window. She was practiced at avoiding things that got too close. If I’d been on her side of the table I might have discovered just how practiced. Just how close.
Her voice grew subdued: “When she works she’s an interior decorator, but she doesn’t often want for money. Maybe it’s the men she runs with. She was a hostess at a casino in Las Vegas for a month two years back. Since she’s been doing some part time work for Governor Kerner.”
“Do you only answer questions you like? If I’m going to take this case, you’re going to have to be open with me, give me straight answers when I ask a question. Tell me who Gail really is, you keep dancing around it.”
She shifted uneasily and looked toward the door. She was so stunning; still, something was slightly off about her, like her mind was clicking in and out, wandering off somewhere and then racing back to catch up. I can smell vulnerability and guilt three blocks away and the odor was unmistakable, but there was a healthy dose of confusion in her as well.
Her eyes flashed and her voice wavered slightly: “—She’s a slut—there—does that satisfy you? She uses men like Kleenex, okay?”
Julia took a long drink and composed herself. I enjoyed watching her compose herself, almost as much as I enjoyed decomposing her.
Her voice steadied but old-fashioned resentment leaked through. “She’s a bitch to me, her only sister, who’s only tried to look out for her, warn her about the scummy men that swarm around her. Throws everything I do for her back in my face. Laughs. The last time I bailed her out of a jam I told her it’d be the last time. Now this.” Her anger flared quickly and just as fast faded to despondency. It was theatrical misery, but that’s how misery often is.
I let her settle back. Gail Gorovoy played star witness in a grand jury probe about a year back involving a call girl ring the good Mayor Daley had used to tie up votes for JFK. There was some connection to corruption of cops in all that, a pretty tangled mess, right on top of the Summerdale scandal that brought O.W. Wilson in to clean house in the police force. Gail refused to testify until granted immunity, then when she got it she spilled the beans on a few crooked city hall boys along with her ex-lover. It made for sensational headlines and a lot of backtracking at City Hall.
“Take it easy,” I said. “I want to help, so I need to know everything you know about Gail, even what you might not think relevant, and especially what you might be embarrassed to tell anyone. Do you mean that grand jury mess the Mayor wriggled out of last year? Yeah, I read about that.”
Julia laced her long fingers around her water glass and tapped them impatiently. She gave me a single nod. “Just because you don’t like your sister,” she said, fingering the fake bangs out of her eyes, “doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to feel badly when someone railroads her.”
“You have proof someone railroaded her in that call girl setup?”
“Please, Mike, I don’t feel like getting into all that. The jury thought so, which is why they never indicted her, that and some pressure from Henry’s office. Strictly posturing to embarrass the Mayor, that grand jury. Diversion. There were plenty of irregularities in that last little election in Cook County if you haven’t heard. A lot of finger pointing helped to muddy the waters. Gail just got caught up in all that. She hung with the wrong sorts at the wrong time and place.”
“You lead a complicated life for a girl from Nebraska. Give me the bottom line, she wasn’t helping run a string of whores?”
She bristled at the word. “No. She wasn’t. Gail just likes to run with cheap dangerous men. Gets excited by it, I gather. Even as a girl she always rubbed up against the biggest bully on the school ground. Her way of defending herself. Christy French, the thug who ran that prostitute ring, I tried to warn her about him, that she’d get hauled in with him, tried to get her away from all of that, but he framed her for it and left town. I hear he crossed some bigshots and as they say in your trade, was fitted for some lead galoshes, some hot ones. It served him right. That enough dirt for you?”
Julia was still hyperventilating. If she’d squeezed her glass any tighter, she’d need a tourniquet. It was obvious last year’s trial still prickled and I felt sorry for anyone who truly crossed her because it didn’t look like grudges were something she ever put down. I didn’t need to press; the grand jury testimony was there to dig into if needed. My partner Rick had contacts in the Mayor’s office, if he ever got back from Jersey.
I massaged my face like I was fascinated by what she said, but I was more curious about what she didn’t say, even though she was the kind of woman who made you forget she was saying anything, as if talking was important when you could see any fantasy you wanted in those liquid peepers. I couldn’t imagine portly Henry with this dish, even with her much publicized ambition for political power. “I’ll need information of where and who she worked for in Vegas. What sort of work for Kerner and what’s her connection to him?”
“Decorating for their new vacation home up north on Lake Michigan. Listen—there are things I don’t feel like disclosing, private family things. Please stick to finding Gail.”
“I’ll try. If my nose gets too long just slap it for me. I only appear heartless. I ask a lot of questions to a lot of people not knowing how any of the answers might link up. Think of it as the curse of a private eye. You’re hiring an eye. Eyes look, they poke around, turn over rocks to look, ask too many personal questions and have a morbid fascination for dirt, some of which, strangely enough, can clean things up. Believe me, it’s not as glamorous as you see on television. Tedious, low pay and an occasional knot on the head. Every now and then someone like Miss Mathews brightens up my day. Even better, every now and then a nice leggy brunette turns out to be a blonde. Sometimes they don’t even ask about this scar.”