“Well, I want you to sit in on that meeting, and hang around after.”
He was nodding again. “Done. Anything else?”
“Yeah. If you wind up one of my pallbearers, wear a real tie, for Chrissake.”
Lou grunted a laugh, got up, and ambled out-he was graceful for a big athletic guy, and you’d make him for his mid-fifties, not early seventies.
I called Helen at my place.
“Listen,” I said, “I apologize, but I don’t think we should move you in right now.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Her voice had a nice lightness to it. “We can just head over to the Lorraine this evening, and get my bags, whenever you’re done with business. We’re past checkout anyway.”
“No, Helen. You don’t follow. I think maybe somebody else might drop around to see me, unannounced … and this time not to deliver football tickets.”
I told her briefly that a client I’d done a job for recently had been murdered.
“I don’t have any intention of putting you at risk,” I said.
“Don’t be a pussy, Heller. We’ll make the move tonight. Then you can take me out for a nice meal. Who knows, you might get lucky again.”
And the click in my ear said that was the end of it.
If I was so tough, why could all these women push me around?
After the staff meeting-two hours that ran to reports on the status of current cases and potential new clients-I headed back to my office. I was barely behind my desk when Mildred rang through.
“Your five o’clock is here,” Mildred said quietly.
“It’s not even four-thirty.”
“I know. She says she’ll wait.”
“I’ll be right out.”
There was a bathroom off my office, and I went in, took a piss, washed my hands, brushed my teeth, tossed some cold water on my face, and looked at myself, wishing a younger face would look back at me. I toweled off and let out the kind of sigh only a man well past forty can muster.
Time to greet my murdered client’s wife.
She was a petite honey blonde, thirtyish, with a Janet Leigh hairdo, wearing a simple gray dress with a rounded collar and a pleated skirt. Subdued clothing, but not widow’s weeds-only her pumps were black. Her pretty, rather delicate features were highlighted by understated makeup. Her white-gloved hands were in her lap, holding a small dark-gray purse. She looked as composed as a prospective teacher waiting for her interview with the superintendent of schools.
As I stepped into the reception area, I said, “Jean, I’m so very sorry.…”
She rose, smiled, and said, “It’s very nice to see you, Nathan. It’s been too long.”
She extended a gloved hand, as if being introduced to me at a cotillion, and I went over and took it, gently. Only the barest crinkling of her chin gave anything away. Her cornflower-blue eyes were not red and did not look particularly moist.
I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her and comfort her and let her cry her heart out. But I didn’t know her that well. She and Tom and I probably had dinner out, in a vaguely business-related way, half a dozen times, and that was several years ago. I’d been to their house in Milwaukee once, when I’d promised Tom I would keep my PR business with him, despite the move, which I hadn’t.
She might have been battling back tears or in shock or even not that devastated-how could I know what the state of their marriage had been?
So I said nothing more, and she said nothing more, as I took her gently by an arm and led her through the bullpen. My agents did not look up-they were well-trained to ignore clients heading back for a meeting with the boss, particularly clients personally escorted by the boss.
Just outside my door, I said, “I’m going to ask my partner, Lou Sapperstein, to sit in on our meeting. I trust him, and you can, too. Is that all right?”
“Certainly.”
I walked her to the client’s chair, and Lou-who’d been tipped off either by Mildred or Gladys or both-slipped into the office, shut the door, and went directly to Jean Ellison.
He extended his hand to her and she gave him a gloved one. “Lou Sapperstein, Mrs. Ellison. I am so sorry for your loss. I knew Tom and he was a fine man.”
“Thank you.”
I sat and asked if she would like coffee or tea or perhaps water, as Lou stood poised to take our orders. She declined.
Then I said, “I understand you had to come down here for … official matters. But if this is difficult for you, I could come to you in Milwaukee, later in the week. It’s not a problem. If you’d like some time to sort things out.”
“No. I’m here. I’m … I believe I’m rather in a sort of stunned state, Nathan. I haven’t cried yet. I feel something more like … anger than grief. Something that feels like it’s, I guess, bubbling up down deep.” She laughed and it was awful. “Like a volcano, I guess.”
I forced a small smile. “You have a son and daughter, I know. I apologize for not remembering their names.…”
“Mike is in junior high, Susie’s in the sixth grade. My parents live in Milwaukee-that’s one of the reasons Tom and I moved there, Dad had some very good connections with the Miller people.… Anyway, I’m afraid I did something very cowardly.”
A woman alone who had driven the hour plus from Milwaukee to Chicago, within hours or maybe minutes of hearing of her husband’s death, did not strike me as cowardly. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t know what to say.
Nor did Lou, who had positioned himself in a chair just in back of and to the right of her.
She explained without prompting: “I left it to Mom and Dad to tell the kids. That’s terrible of me, I know. But I left it to them. They seem … more stable, more reliable, than me right now. I couldn’t think of how I could tell the kids. Just couldn’t. What would I say? Mike! Dad can’t make it to your football game Friday night. Susie! You won’t see Dad at the school musical.”
Another short, awful laugh.
I said, “How can we help?”
She leaned toward me, just a little. “Before we speak, I must ask you, uh-your friend, Mr. Sapperstein?” She glanced back at him and smiled politely. Then her dry-eyed gaze fixed itself on me: “Is he aware of why my husband contacted you on Friday?”
That gave me a chill. A goddamn chill.
She knew.
Her husband had confided in her about his worries, the situation he’d got himself into trying to get into that unmemorable Bears game.
I had not seen this one coming. I figured she might be here to ask me to look into Tom’s death, because I was their former client, their sort of friend who was a private investigator … maybe at most Tom might have mentioned to her he was going to see me Friday, but this?
“Jean,” I said, sitting forward, “how much do you know?”
“I know about the football ticket and the envelope of money and the burlesque house and hiring you to go along, to protect him. I think I know all of it.”
The emphasis on protect had been the only sign that she perhaps blamed me a little. I’d been hired as Tom’s bodyguard Friday, and two nights later he was dead.
Trying not to sound at all defensive, I said, “I didn’t see Tom after the 606 Club. Everything appeared to go well-he passed along the envelope and left.”
I didn’t tell her the guy on the receiving end of the money drop was Jack Ruby, a little mobster I’d known for years. And I didn’t say I’d been invited to that Bears game, too, by Jimmy Hoffa himself.
“I blame myself,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Blame myself.” She settled back and sighed. The only sign of inner turmoil was the way she held onto that purse. Maybe she had a gun in it and was going to shoot me for letting Tom die. Maybe I wouldn’t blame her.
But she went on: “We don’t hide things, Tom and I. Even in business, he always runs things past me. We are close. We are still … sweethearts. Soppy as that sounds. He is a very loving husband, and a wonderful, attentive father. He does have to travel sometimes, but … he is the best husband a woman could ever dream of having, and the best father our kids could ever hope to have.”