Our receptionist was a dark-haired looker in her late twenties called Mildred, a name that had always struck me as a bad parental joke. Mildred had a nice smile, was not stupid, but wanted to be Jackie Kennedy so bad I just couldn’t take her seriously. Today she wore a pale-pink dress with a cowl collar. She’d have worn a pillbox hat if I let her get away with it.
“Mr. Heller,” she said, giving me a bright-eyed welcome.
“Mildred,” I said, nodding.
A fairly typical conversation between Mildred and me.
The bullpen was mostly full, only a few agents out in the field-we always had a Monday staff meeting, and unless a case dictated otherwise, everybody was here. My fourteen agents were a wide range of ages and sexes, and we had a Negro and a Chinese guy, too.
Every A-1 detective had a police or military police background. Those not working a case were in business clothes, with those taking a break from fieldwork in street clothes. Their modern metal desks were widely spaced, because I didn’t care for cubicles. Most of the agents did not need privacy with clients because either Lou or I took the first meetings. A wall of windows provided a view onto Jackson Street showcasing the Federal Building, and another wall was strictly metal four-drawer files.
The office was run by Gladys Sapperstein, Lou’s wife. Gladys had been a gorgeous young woman when I hired her in the early ‘40s, who had interviewed warm but proved a cold fish, dashing any Hollywood fantasies I might have harbored about a private eye and his sexy secretary. I’d been made to suffer for my error by way of decades of Gladys’s business acumen and efficiency.
Several years into my employ, Gladys had married one of our operatives, a kid named Fortunato, and when he died in the war, she thawed out some. Not that she and I were ever an item, not by a long shot; and I thought she would never remarry, but then about ten years ago, she and my partner Lou announced that they’d gotten married by a judge over the lunch hour.
I suspected a longtime office affair, but said nothing, since I didn’t give a damn, other than my ego being bruised by the beautiful Gladys never having been tempted by my masculine charms. Lou was a strapping guy, sure, but a dozen years older than me-he’d been my boss on the Pickpocket Detail in the early thirties-and he was bald and bulbous-nosed and bespectacled, and what the hell was wrong with me? Well, I knew. Gladys saw me for the randy, unreliable fucker I was, and Lou for the right guy that he was.
She had her own office now-between Lou’s and mine-and remained attractive, a busty, pleasingly plump brunette in her late fifties wearing jeweled cat’s-eye glasses.
I was about to step into my office when she emerged from hers, looking primly pretty in an orange and green cotton print dress.
She crooked her little finger. That was only slightly less intimidating than a cop turning his siren on.
“Good afternoon, Gladys,” I said, going to her. She rarely came to me.
“Nice to see you made it in.”
“I’m the boss, Gladys. I show up when I feel like it.”
“Oh. Well, that’s interesting. Lou is supposed to be semi-retired, and he’s here more often than you are.”
She never referred to Lou as “my husband” in the office. You would never guess they were married. In fact, she nagged me a hell of a lot more than she ever did Lou.
“Well, this is a surprisingly warm greeting for a Monday, I admit,” I said to her through a strained smile. “Was there something?”
“Don’t slip out after the staff meeting. You have a five-o’clock appointment.”
“That’s a little late for an appointment.”
“Well, she might get here earlier. But she’s driving down from Milwaukee, and has to stop at the morgue on her way, to make some arrangements.”
Gladys paused to cast me a condescending look.
“Oh shit,” I said. “You’re talking about Jean Ellison. My God, she just found out this morning her husband is dead, and she’s driving down here? That’s terrible. You should have talked her out of it.”
She just stared at me. She might have been a stone statue at Easter Island, albeit better-looking. I might have been a bug crawling across the wall.
“Mrs. Ellison,” Gladys said finally, “said that she felt sure you would see her.”
“She’s right, of course. You know who she is?”
“Yes. Her husband did some publicity for us, a few years ago. Very nice man. I take it he’s recently deceased?”
“Murdered. That’s where I was this morning-over at the Pick-Congress, having a look at the crime scene. Killed in his hotel room, money stolen.”
Something flared in her eyes. “Surely that’s a police matter.”
Gladys, ever since being promoted from receptionist to office manager, took a stern, proprietary interest in how I allocated my time.
I put a hand on her shoulder and she winced, just a little. “I want to promise you, Gladys, that if someone ever murders you in the night, I will not stray from my duty. I will continue to serve the clients of the A-1 and allow the honest, hardworking police of Chicago, Illinois, to bring in your killer.”
That made her laugh.
When I got to her like that, she would say, “Oh, you,” and slap my chest.
You now understand my relationship with Gladys Sapperstein in all its complex glory.
She was almost in her office when I said, “Lou here?”
“Yes. You want him?”
“Please.”
In my private office, I hung up my raincoat and hat in the closet. My inner sanctum was a spacious preserve immune to the changes of the outer world-even the outer office area. The central feature was the old scarred desk that dated back to my one room over the Dill Pickle in Barney Ross’s building on Van Buren. But there were also padded leather client chairs, a comfortable couch, wooden filing cabinets, and walls arrayed with framed, often signed photos of celebrities, sometimes celebrity clients, sometimes with me in the shots.
There was Helen, in full Sally Rand persona, standing coyly behind a fan, next to a shot of Marilyn Monroe in a white bathing suit, both signed to me with love. Funny to think Helen was still here, and Marilyn was gone.
“Nate?” Lou said. He was leaning in-I’d left the door open for him. No black rims for his glasses, strictly wire-frame. “You wanted me?”
“Yeah. Shut us in and sit yourself down. We have almost half an hour before the staff meeting. I need to fill you in.”
He settled his big, muscular frame into the chair opposite me as I got into my swivel number. He had on a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up to the elbow, navy-blue suspenders, and a matching clip-on tie. His fashion sense left something to be desired, but he was a hell of a detective. And partner.
“You heard that Tom Ellison was murdered,” I said.
“Yeah. Shame. Last night?”
“Apparently. I did a job for him Friday-it’s off the A-1 books, okay?”
He nodded.
I had no secrets from Lou. Or anyway few secrets. He even knew at least the vague outlines of Operation Mongoose. So he listened patiently as I filled him in about the 606 Club money drop, my talk with Jimmy Hoffa in a Wrigley Field men’s room, and the gist of what Dick Cain and I had discussed at the Pick-Congress this morning.
“The question is,” Lou said, “are you a loose end now? Or was this something else? Tom getting himself killed may have no connection to that errand he ran.”
“It’s possible. Also possible that he got himself killed because he didn’t just run the damn errand, like he was told-instead getting in touch with a private eye pal of his to back him up.”
Lou nodded. “So what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know if Gladys mentioned it to you, but-”
“Mrs. Ellison has an appointment at five. Yes, I know.”