“Or?”
“Did I say ‘or’? I don’t remember saying ‘or.’ Just friendly advice from your favorite publisher: leave it alone.”
“I’d like to talk to your angels.”
“Stay away from them, for your own good. They’re nice guys, but they’re not as nice as me. And come to think of it, stay away from me. Quit smart-mouthing me. And stay away from Kathy Wickman, too, while you’re at it.”
“Or?”
He nodded, a yellow smile peeking out of the brush of his goatee. “Yeah.
Or
.”
“Tell me something, Gorman. Your little company’s been doing pretty good; you’ve won an Edgar, you’re making good dough, you’re getting some of your titles into the major bookstore chains. This unpublished Hammett novel you discovered, tell me. Why aren’t you publishing it yourself? Why’d you lay it off on a major publisher, when you could’ve made the big score yourself?”
His face, with the exception of the goatee and the reddish nose, went white.
And he got up and waddled out without another word, leaving his two beers behind.
I stepped out into the chilly afternoon, zipping my light jacket. Rain spit in my face. It was a lousy afternoon to go sightseeing. Nevertheless, I got on the old bus—a former Greyhound with the words “Crime Tour” in the destination slot over the front windows—and joined a couple dozen other hearty souls, among them (halfway back) Kathy Wickman, who smiled with surprise when she saw me, patting the seat next to her. I sat down.
“Thought you said you weren’t going to take this particular ride,” Kathy said, with yet another wry smile.
“Maybe I couldn’t wait till supper to see you again.”
“I’m flattered. But why so intense?”
“Huh?”
“You have a furrow in your brow deep enough to hide a dime in.”
“Hey—that’s a Roscoe Kane line.”
She nodded. “I know. I bought myself a copy of
The Dame Dealt Death
in the dealers’ room, from a woman dealer, appropriately enough. Read the first couple of chapters when I was relaxing before coming down to catch this bus.”
“And?”
“Kind of liked what I read. Fun, in a dated way.”
“Chandler seems dated, too, you know.”
“I wouldn’t agree, but I do admit seeing more merit in Kane than I would ever have guessed. I’ll have fun reading it.”
“Glad to see you have an open mind.”
Up at the front of the bus, Cynthia Crystal was getting on. She nodded and smiled at the tall, lanky, Zappa-bearded driver/guide. She still wore the gray slacks outfit; despite a long day of dealing with fans and such, she looked bandbox fresh. Tim Culver was not with her.
“I
do
have an open mind,” Kathy said, “but not so open that I don’t find it less than flattering when your attention shifts to some other female.”
“Well, Cynthia’s an old friend.”
“Your brow’s furrowed again.”
“Kathy, Cynthia’s why I’m here. I need to talk to her. I called her room and was told she was going to take the Crime Tour.”
Told in rather clipped words by Tim Culver, actually.
“Mal,” Kathy said, wry as ever, “I’m hurt, naturally—but I’ll be over it by supper.”
I smiled again, nodded and got up, walked up the aisle and sat next to Cynthia.
“Why, Mal,” she said, her short pale-blonde hair swinging as she turned her head. “How nice. I was hoping we might have a few moments alone this weekend.”
The bus began moving.
I laughed, just a little. “On a bus with twenty or thirty other people, you mean?”
“Without Tim around, I mean.”
“How long have you two been, uh—”
“An item? A year and a half. Living together? Six months.”
“I envy him.”
“It may not last.” She said this coolly, with seeming lack of interest. She might have been talking about the weather, or the latest fad in women’s shoes.
But behind Cynthia Crystal’s brittle façade was a woman as sensitive as she was intelligent. In her light blue eyes, her hurt was showing.
“What’s the problem with you and Tim? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Jealousy. Pure and simple. Even if he doesn’t know it.”
“Jealousy? My stopping by at your table this morning didn’t set this off, did it? Didn’t you explain to Tim that we never amounted to anything?”
“Speak for yourself, darling,” she said, twisting my meaning for the fun of it. “I’ve amounted to something. That’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “It’s not jealousy of the green-eyed variety, not unless that green is money-shade. Tim’s jealous of my success—particularly my monetary success. My last novel—as well as the Hammett biography—sold more copies than all the sales of all his books combined.”
Over the slightly static-ridden intercom, the tour guide was speaking. “Welcome to the Hagenauer Chicago Crime Tour, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, many of Chicago’s most famous—and infamous—buildings have made way for urban renewal and/or blight. The Hotel Metropole, where Al Capone held court, and Big Jim Colosimo’s Four Deuces, a nightclub where you might see George M. Cohan or Enrico Caruso sitting at the next table, are today a vacant lot and a parking lot, respectively. The ‘toughest red-light district west of the Barbary Coast,’ the notorious Levee is, alas, just a memory—there’s a
housing project where the most elaborate sporting house of ’em all, the Everleigh Club, once stood. Rather than visit these pale shadows, we’ll head to the near North Side, and along the way I’ll be pointing out some of the Chicago criminal landmarks that are still standing.”
We were on State Street now, going north, moving slow behind a CTA bus. Cynthia was looking out her window at the sidewalks jammed with people, and the big department stores, whose windows were already looking Christmas-y.
We sat silently for a while. Then, without looking at me, she said reflectively, “I don’t mean to make Tim sound petty or venal. He’s neither. It’s just”—and now she looked at me—“he’s had this situation with his brother, Curt, where Curt got all the breaks, at least where financial success is concerned.”
“But Tim’s gotten the glory.”
She shrugged. “He’s had some critical success. But his following is basically cult. And, as Tim is known to say, ‘The definition of a cult is seven readers short of a writer’s being able to make a living.’ ”
We rode in silence; the next person to speak was our driver/tour guide, over his squawky intercom: “This is the site of Terrible Tommy’s bust-out.”
He was referring to a six-story building of rough-hewn stone up ahead; the side of the building we were looking at was latticed with fire escapes.
“Used as an administration building today,” he said, slowing down (the bus, not his speech), “the structure on our right, its stone cut from quarried rock, was then the Criminal Courts Building from which Terrible Tommy—a murderer sentenced to hang by the neck till dead—escaped, running across the adjacent prison yard where that modern firehouse, there, now stands. The authorities
have been required, by the original court order, to hold the gallows constructed for Terrible Tommy’s departure until the lad is apprehended. It’s still stored in the basement of that very building.”
We were looking out the window back at it, now.
The driver continued: “Since Terrible Tommy escaped in 1921, and Tommy would be in his nineties today, the gallows is unlikely to be used.”
Pretty soon we were back on State Street, heading toward our next bloody landmark.
“I didn’t know you went in for this kind of thing,” I told her.
She tossed off the facial equivalent of an elegant little shrug. “I’m a true crime buff of sorts, like any mystery writer. Chicago is the Disneyland of crime, after all; gotta see the sights.”
“I also didn’t know you knew Roscoe Kane.”
She was looking out the window; her face tensed, barely, but she didn’t look back at me. “I didn’t, really.”
“His son, Jerome, said you and Roscoe spoke in the lobby last night. Not long before Roscoe’s death.”
“That’s true.”
“Why didn’t you mention it this morning?”
She looked at me, the cool blue of her eyes turning cooler. “And here I thought you sidling up and sitting down next to me was social. I was feeling downright girlish.”
“I thought this morning we decided we were friends. The time I tried to be more than a friend to you was sort of a disaster, as you’ll recall.”
“I’m just not interested in one-night stands. I never said it was
impossible
for me to do more than like you, Mal.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“At the moment, however, I don’t know if I even like you anymore. I begin to feel a little used.”
“That’s unfair. You went out of your way not to mention having seen Roscoe when we spoke this morning. Why?”
“That’s simply not the case, Mal. I just didn’t think to mention it.”
The intercom interrupted. “That parking lot to your left is the site of Dion O’Banion’s flower shop—where Al Capone’s minions shot the florist/gangster amid his own roses on November 10, 1924. Across the street is Holy Name Cathedral—take a close look and you may still be able to make out where machine-gun bullets kissed the side of the building; Al Capone’s men, again, and they weren’t trying to kiss the Pope’s ring by proxy—those kisses were thrown at Hymie Weiss, who caught ’em. October 11, 1926.”
Cynthia spoke, her mouth pursed with irony. “Our tour guide sounds as if your mentor Roscoe Kane wrote his patter.”
“It is colorful, at that. What about Roscoe, Cynthia? How did you know him?”
She looked at me sharply. “I
didn’t
, Mal. I recognized him in the lobby, from his bookjacket photos. And I spoke to him, introduced myself. And we chatted. That’s all.”
“What did you chat about?”
“Small talk. Nothing.”
“Jerome said your conversation heated up. You argued.”
She looked out the window again. “We didn’t argue.”
“Jerome misread the situation, then.”
“Yes.”
“What did you chat about, Cynthia?”
She looked at me again. “Really, Mal, I’m losing patience with you—not to mention any remaining semblance of affection I might have had. Why is my personal conversation with Roscoe Kane of any interest to you?”
“Because I think Roscoe may have been murdered.”
That startled her, but just momentarily. Then, of all things, she laughed—just a little. Cocktail-party laugh.
I said, “What the hell’s funny about that?”
“Just the idea of life imitating fiction. The notion of somebody walking around playing amateur detective, like a character in a silly novel.”
“Like the characters in your silly novels, you mean.”
“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of the characters in
your
silly novels, dear. Now, why don’t you go back and sit by the little brunette one-night stand who’s been watching us? She looks lonely.”
“What did you and Roscoe Kane talk about?”
“I simply introduced myself to him, told him I’d enjoyed his books, and he bit my head off, the unpleasant little bastard.”
“Why’d he bite your head off?”
“I’d said something deprecatory about him, in passing, in my Hammett book. Mentioned him as ‘one of the lesser lights’ of the original
Black Mask
crowd. He took offense.”
That sounded like Roscoe.
“That was it, then?”
“That was it,” she said, terse as a telegram.
“Why didn’t you just tell me this in the first place?”
“What business was it of yours?”
She had a point.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been rude,” I told her. “I thought we were friends. I didn’t think you’d mind my...”
“Treating me like a suspect in a Perry Mason story? Why, I love it. It’s more fun than playing strip
Clue
. Now, go away. You disappoint me.”
I got up, stepped out into the aisle; Cynthia reached a hand out and touched my arm.
“Mal—forgive me. I know what Roscoe meant to you. I don’t mean to make light of that, or of your need to... ask some questions, in the wake of his death.”
“It’s okay, Cynthia. I can understand your attitude.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I’m having a rocky time of it with Tim—this weekend was supposed to be a getaway for us, a place, a time, for us to patch up our problems. But all we’ve done is bicker. And the mood I’m in just spilled over onto you a bit. Forgive me.”
“No forgiveness needed.”
“Maybe I’m just regretting shooing you away, at that Bouchercon, once upon a time.”
I smiled. “I know
I
still regret that.”
“You would. Now, shoo. Go sit with your little brunette in her sweatshirt.”
“She’s the editor of
Noir
, you know, not some teenager I picked up.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” she said. As usual, her malice was tempered with good humor. She could be bitchy, my Cynthia, but never a bitch.
Pretty soon I was sitting next to Kathy, and the bus was tooling along Lincoln Avenue. Our driver pointed out the site of John Dillinger’s death, the Biograph Theater—after all these years, still a study in ’30s art-deco black and white, though Bergman’s
Fanny and Alexander
was playing there, not
Manhattan Melodrama
. Then a few minutes later we were shown the site of the garage where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre had taken place, on the west side of Clark Street.
“Those two white pillars are all that remain of S-M-C Cartage Company,” he said. A modern housing center for the elderly, set back from the street, was where the garage once had been.
Before long, the bus rumbled over a massive drawbridge, its huge metal shoulders looming, and the driver said, “On our left is the La Salle-Wacker building, where mayor Anton Cermak’s personal police bodyguards, Miller and Lang, attempted the assassination of Frank Nitti in December 1932. The attempt failed, but within weeks, Mayor Cermak himself fell under an assassin’s gun.”
We drove down the concrete canyon of La Salle Street—the driver pointed out the looming city hall at the left, calling it, “The scene of many a Chicago crime”—and dead-ended at the gigantic art-deco Board of Trade Building. Whether or not it, too, was a crime site, the driver didn’t say.