So what if he was a con man with a scholar’s puss and the build of a linebacker? He was paying $25 for the evening, better than double my usual rate, so he was okay by me. The job had come in over the phone — he’d called me from his home in Rye, New York, a few days before — and had been a referral from (as he had pompously put it) “our mutual friend, Colonel Lindbergh.”
Right now he was working the room himself, in the company of Field’s amiable president, James Simpson, who was introducing him to Mrs. Howard Linn, one of the local arbiters of fashion.
Stocky, round-faced Bob Casey from the Daily News, looking about as at ease in his tux as a dog in a sweater, came trundling over with a glass of champagne in hand. “You’re a little out of your league, aren’t you, Nate?”
“And when did you start covering the fashion beat?”
“When Lady Lindy picked up a needle and thread. Did she give the photogs a chance to snap her, downstairs?”
“Sure. She stopped and waved at the crowd. They probably got some swell shots.”
“Great. It’ll be nice gettin’ some pics of her without the lens louse in ’em.”
“Who?”
He jerked a thumb toward Putnam, who was smiling and laughing as he spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Hughston McBain; McBain was the store manager. “Ol’ G. P. He shoves himself into every interview, every photograph he can. For every ten words you get out of the Queen of the Air, you get a hundred from the Bag of Wind.”
“Well, he’s sure had the Field’s crowd jumping through hoops all afternoon.”
“Shame on them,” Casey snorted. “He’s a cheap flimflammer.”
Putnam looked anything but cheap in his rimless glasses and tails, hobnobbing with Chicago’s elite, who seemed enthralled by his wit and wisdom; or maybe they were just impressed, looking at the guy who slept with Amelia Earhart.
Casey wasn’t through with his critique: “He took over a great publishing house and cheapened it with those fabricated books of his.”
“Fabricated books?”
He sipped, almost slurped, his champagne. “Overnight opuses wove out of headlines. By Admiral Byrd and your pal Lindy, and this big-game explorer, and that deep-sea diver. Ol’ Putnam virtually cast your date, there, in her role.”
“What do you mean, ‘her role’?”
Casey shook his head, his grin a Chicago cocktail of contempt and admiration. “He sold so many copies of Lindbergh’s book, he had a regular casting call, lookin’ around to find a woman to fly the Atlantic, so he could publish a follow-up.”
The reporter nodded toward Amelia, who was patiently, smilingly, listening to an overweight, diamond-flung patron of fashion prattle on.
“The belle of the ball, there,” Casey continued, “she was just a social worker in Boston, a weekend flier, till a pal of Putnam’s noticed her resemblance to Lucky Lindy, and the fabricated-book king made a star out of her.”
“You sure you newshounds aren’t just irritated, Bob,” I asked innocently, “that Putnam’s found a way to reuse your stuff for something besides birdcage liner?”
Putnam had spotted me talking with Casey, and he smilingly excused himself from Simpson and a small group of high hats, and made his way toward me, as Casey slipped away.
Hard-edged words emerged from a thin smile in a face as pale as his wife’s was tan. “Hope you’re not giving away trade secrets to the press.”
“I don’t know any to give away, Mr. Putnam.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I told you, Nate — we’re on a first-name basis. Call me G. P. I’m not some damn snob.”
Nice way to tell me I was beneath him. And since when was “G. P.” a first name?
“Well,” I said, “you’ve scored at least one coup tonight.”
“I think we’ve scored more than one,” he said, pointlessly defensive. The mouth moved quickly, the eyes remained unblinkingly still. “I think we’ve done extremely well, and the night is still young.”
“I was referring to that sourpuss over there.”
He followed my nod and took in the grumpy visage of a stocky, white-templed character in dark-rimmed glasses and a tux that fit like a glove, if the hand in it were missing a finger or two from an industrial accident.
“Is he somebody?” Putnam asked, machine-gunning his words nervously. “I’ve never seen him before, he’s nobody to me.”
“That’s Robert M. Lee. That may sound like he’s a Confederate general, but he’s considerably more important. He’s the editor of the Trib’s Sunday section.”
Putnam’s thin upper lip pulled back over very small, white teeth, and his eyes widened with delight. Then the hand settled on my shoulder again and he whispered chummily in my ear: “How about that, Nate? We’re too big to ignore. Even by that fucking Colonel McCormick.”
Considering publisher McCormick’s legendary hatred for FDR, there had been considerable doubt that the Tribune would cover this event, what with Amelia’s well-known connections to the White House, particularly with the First Lady.
But now Putnam’s joy had faded; a frown clenched his high forehead. “This character won’t make us look bad, will he?”
“He looks grouchy,” I said, “and he is grouchy.” I’d known Lee a long time; he’d been in a bad mood ever since his legman Jake Lingle got plugged under his (Lee’s) city editorship. “But the photogravure section’s not exactly where the muckraking stuff gets run. You’re probably safe.”
Suddenly he shook my hand. “You’re doing a great job, Nate. You’re everything Ben said you were.”
He was still gripping my hand; he was trying too hard to show me his strength and his he-man temperament — sort of like using a word like “fucking” in a Marshall Field’s dress salon.
“Ben?” I asked. “Which Ben told you what about me?”
“Hecht,” Putnam said, and at first I thought he’d said “Heck,” which was better than “fucking.” “Aren’t you and Ben Hecht old friends?”
“...Yeah. Sort of...” Former newsman Hecht, who’d long since traded Chicago for Hollywood, had been part of the Bohemian coterie that used to hang around my father’s radical bookshop on the West Side, when I was a kid. “How do you know him, G. P.?”
“I published his first novels,” Putnam said, touching my chest lightly. “Now, when we wrap up here, I want you to accompany A. E. and me out for a late dinner... not as a bodyguard, but as a valued friend.”
And then he got back to gladhanding more important suckers than yours truly, leaving me to wonder who had really recommended me — Hecht or Lindbergh... and what made me such a big deal, anyway? Just what the hell had I accomplished here, tonight, that was so gosh darn fucking phenomenal?
Pretty soon affable Field’s president Simpson was introducing their honored guest.
“As the fashion center of mid-America,” he said, a glass of champagne in hand, Amelia standing shyly just behind him, G. P. looming behind her like a square-shouldered shadow, “we are proud to add to our distinguished list of designers... Hattie Carnegie, Adrian, Norman Norell, Oscar Kiam, and Pauline Trigère... Miss Amelia Earhart!”
More applause followed, and Amelia stepped forward, clearly embarrassed, gesturing for the applause to stop; after a while, it did.
Simpson said, “You know, Miss Earhart, you’ve set many impressive records, but tonight you’ve really pulled off a remarkable feat... This marks the first time spirits have been served on these premises.”