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  But not the girl. He did not wish to involve the girl.

  To her he did not compose poetry but that prose, to his mind, beyond such, and more fitting to a newspaperman. These forays in prose began, in his imagination, as simple and therefore worthy declarations, but quickly devolved into her silent acquiescence, and his lifting her out of her clothes (the scene, in fantasy, being transported from the flower shop to his apartment on Wisconsin Street), and her introduction to the art of love.

  Mike had discussed his floral inspiration with JoJo Lamarr, reformed, or, as he liked to say, “momentarily unapprehended,” cat burglar and utility man.

  JoJo’s résumé included stints as a steerer for a bunco mob, a shoplifter, and a general purveyor of information. He had no particular affiliation, and when asked, described his ability as an independent contractor as “being the world’s friend.”

  He invariably dressed in a shirt and slacks of tight-tailored nailhead denim. This, to those in the know, an allusion to his time spent in Stateville prison, and to his status there of one who, if not a boss con, was suggesting an acquaintance.

  Over the denim he wore a knee-length coat of lightweight brown leather. The entire outfit, to those who could read, proclaimed: “This is where I’ve been, and this is where I’m going. For the moment, I am here: ‘What’s yours?’”

  Mike had come late to meet with JoJo and proffered the writer’s universal excuse of work; bolstered, in this instance, by the extraneous “I was at the florist’s.”

  JoJo discounted the dual excuse, known to all who tread close to the line as a dead giveaway.

  He filed the unexplored obfuscation away, and asked, “At work, what were you, running down the dodge?”

  “Which dodge of many?” Mike said.

  “Yeah, the funeral dodge,” JoJo said.

  “Why the funeral dodge?”

  “Because you said you were at the florist’s,” JoJo said.

  “‘The funeral dodge,’” Mike said. “Enlighten me.”

  “The guy dies,” JoJo said, as would a magician explaining to a neophyte the most basic of illusions. “He’s dead, what does everyone do?”

  “They go to the funeral,” Mike said.

  “You bet,” JoJo said. “While they are gone, who’s minding the store? At home?”

  “. . . Uh . . . ,” Mike said.

  “Precisely,” JoJo said. “Nobody knows.

  “Nobody knows. This is the beauty of death: that it leaves a hole in the accepted working of things. Everybody assumes somebody else is ‘taking care of it.’”

  “In this case?” Mike said.

  “‘It’?” JoJo said. “‘It’ is the house. Funeral director assumes somebody called a caterer. Caterer assumes somebody’s bringing the flowers. Dress some broad up, appropriate to the neighborhood, waltz her in there with a casserole, who’s going to question her? She? Cleans the place out. It’s a naturally occurring windfall.”

  “What about—” Mike said.

  “Yes, yes, yes, rich people, people in the know? They hire security. Sure. They’ve got a list. One, maybe you piece them off; or? Two, Aunt Mabel, comes in with a suitcase, out of town, just heard the news. Least she can do, she can’t take the joint off? Case the joint. Too much protection? Either sign off, ‘I’ll go to the hotel,’ come back later; or simply walk away. The least you have got, you’ve got some information. Sometime; things calm down. Family gets over it. Wife is off, fucking the gardener, kids are away at school. Maybe, weep weep weep, they go on vacation. Now: even though you walked away at first, the information you gained there is priceless.”

  “How?”

  “You saw the joint—huh? Mike? When you were Aunt Mabel, you said, to the butler, gardener, nanny, ‘What is your name . . . ?’

  “You come back, the boys come back in, possibly, ‘I’m Forstairs’s brother, I stopped by to give him a . . .’ You know Forstairs is the gardener, you’ve got to be okay. Might buy you a minute, never know.

  “Also, and more importantly, the Pinkertons, you come in during the funeral? What are they guarding? They back up against one wall? That’s where the safe is, prolly. Information is gold, and will save your ass much more often than a Third Model Smith and Wesson, which, finally, is just going to get you in the soup.”

  “You carry one,” Mike said.

  “Wrong,” JoJo said. “I’ve never in my life; yes, well, yes, when I was a kid. Before I went to college, yes. After that? I had a trade. I’d never carry a gun.

  “Why? You kill somebody, they’re more apt, somebody? Come looking for you; not only later on, but now, as it makes a noise. My trade, part of it, is, one: to plan, I don’t need the gun. Part of the plan is ‘IT GOES WRONG.’ It goes wrong, I am not without resources; I’ve thought out an exit; a plan of escape; excuses, which may either extricate me, buy me time to attempt the same, or explain myself to the cops in such a way they might, on the way to the slam, offer me a drink instead of beating the shit out of me for my presumption.

  “Guns, some guys? Use them to threaten people. All I know, the only thing they’re actually good for, shoot ’em.”

  “You can’t use them to threaten people?” Mike said.

  “Yeah, you can,” JoJo said. “Two choices: the mopes are either frightened or they’re not. They’re not, what good was the threat? They are, they might, unknownst, have a piece on them; now? They’re frightened? Maybe they’re fighting for their life, drag it out and shoot you. Yes yes yes,” he said. “But that’s my thinking.

  “Would I, on the way to the chair, shoot the turnkey? How the fuck do I know. Probably yes, or I might just chin up and take my medicine. Am I constitutionally incapable, shooting someone? I don’t know. I’m not a moron; the other hand, I have no wish to hurt anybody.

  “I like to help people,” he said. “Here’s one: because you never ‘went away.’ You never got an education. You had? First thing you learn there: What is trouble? We know what it is. It’s trouble. Where’s it to be found?”

  “The least likely place.”

  “And, Mike? Let this be a lesson: the more innocent a thing is, the more some guy”—he gestured to himself as an example—“is going to find some way, get over on you.

  “Popcorn. I was working in the carny selling popcorn—fill up the bottom of the bag, half inch of sand: popcorn. Nothing is on the up-and-up.”

  The true advance in Mike’s education had come from observation of the girl, over tea at the Budapest Café.

  The intimacy of the Budapest was a proclamation. Prior to that, Mike was allowed to enjoy her company only as the reporter following a lead.

  The fiction served them both, and after three visits to The Beautiful, it was, in the main, forgotten.

  Mike realized that there was information to be gained from attendance at funerals. He let the lead go at that, and spent his mornings in The Beautiful greenhouse questioning the girl, now and then, merely for form. The worth and meaning of the questions was understood by both as cooing. The girl appreciated his decent protection of a troubled chastity whose blushes, absent the neutral topic, would reveal itself past hope of recall.

  In their talks at the florist’s, Mike sat on the high stool and smoked cigarettes. Annie was dressed in a green work smock, which he thought the most graceful garment he had ever seen. She wore white cotton gloves, and pushed the hair back from her forehead with one. As she worked, the gloves dirtied. She searched the gloves, at first, for a clean spot, and as those became more rare, her forehead was streaked with dirt. Mike was entranced.

  He retailed her secrets to Parlow.

  “Did you know,” he said, “that flowers can be scalded back to life?”

  Parlow, as a reporter, could always be charmed by anything smacking of a dodge.

  “Yes,” Mike said. “You have to cut the stems longwise, on the diagonal, to allow them more access to the water. The water must be fresh and cold. You can then pour the hot water from the kettle on the new cuts; in they
go, back in the vase, and you’ll add a day or two to their effective life.”

  Parlow began to speak.

  “And,” Mike said, “you never use scissors to cut the stems.”

  “Why?” Parlow asked, thinking himself the most useful of friends.

  “As that compresses the stem,” Mike said. “And you are, then, allowing the plant less water. Here is my favorite. It’s florist’s wire.”

  “Florist’s wire,” Parlow said.

  “A super-thin gauge, inserted through the stem, up into the flower itself, correcting its drooping head. You take, for example, a rose. Past its prime . . .”

  Parlow nodded in sympathy. “New cut to the stem, boiling water, strip the dead petals—leave the fresh, insert the wire, the head of the rose comes up, and you can sell ’em again.”

  “Again?” Parlow said.

  “People buy flowers,” Mike said. He saw Parlow’s agreement and continued. “Where do they take them?”

  “To their girl,” Parlow said.

  “Yes . . .”

  “Or their mother.”

  “Yes, yes, and they take them to functions,” Mike said.

  “Yes, they do,” Parlow said.

  “They pay for the flowers, which are left at the functions. What happens to them at the function’s close?”

  “Someone takes them to hospitals for the poor,” Parlow said.

  “Henh,” Mike said. “The house staff, cleaning staff, bellboys sell them back to the flower shops.”

  “I had no idea,” Parlow said.

  “Well,” Mike said. “And you can paint flowers, you can dye ’em, you can, look here, you can, same old flower . . .” He moved his hands to indicate after we have done the things to it previously mentioned. “What draws us to it, for, certainly, it represents youth.”

  “Youth and sex,” Parlow said.

  “Not with one’s mother,” Mike said.

  Parlow said, “Consider Hamlet,” as Mike continued, “Youth. ‘Dewy freshness.’”

  “Oh, my,” Parlow said.

  “That glint,” Mike said, “which only comes in youth. ‘Though, over time, and with mutual support, of course, it may be replaced by a comradely understanding, which—’”

  “Yes, alright,” Parlow said.

  “—the old flower, by the way, I’m speaking of the rose,” Mike said, “and, if you place a penny in the tulips’ water, that will preserve them. The rose, especially, stands for young love.”

  “I never doubted it,” Parlow said.

  “The capillaries of its stem—”

  “I had assumed the stem itself was a capillary,” Parlow said.

  “It’s not,” Mike said. “As the stem ages, they collapse, they desiccate, less water reaches the bloom. The new rose, of course, in the display, is sprayed with water. What is more beautiful than that glistening—”

  “Alright,” Parlow said.

  “But the old rose, however it is culled, wired, and stripped, its petals just won’t cause the water to bead.”

  “It beads, no doubt,” Parlow said, “in the new rose, as it is replete, and can hold no more.”

  Mike looked accusingly at Parlow, who performed ignorance of his affront.

  “But the appearance of this freshness may be gaffed,” Mike said, “by spraying the rose with glycerin.”

  The tutorials at The Beautiful continued. They were, one morning, cut short as Annie was directed to accompany the driver to the cemetery.

  She got into the neat red van marked The Beautiful. Mike, as a matter of course, climbed after her into the van, which both silently agreed was but logical.

  The red van drove through the stone gates of Waldheim Cemetery. The driver parked the van alongside the large equipment shed. Mike followed Annie into the shed.

  They walked past the mowers and rollers. The groundskeepers were sitting at a table in the back. One of them hailed the driver, and led him to a double door. He opened the door. Beyond it were arrayed multiple floral tributes.

  The more ornate bore symbols or sentiments; many bore both. There were the shamrock, the thistle, hearts entwined, the cross, and the names of family or official positions of the dearly departed.

  The tributes were arranged into groups.

  The driver preceded the groundsmen to the group he recognized as his own. Money changed hands, and Mike helped him and Annie load the tributes onto the van.

  Mike and Annie rode in the back of the van. Each sat on a wheel well. The flowers, filling the van, came between them, and they peered through them and parted them as they spoke, every aspect of the rough ride a source of shared enjoyment.

  Mike helped the driver unload the tributes at The Beautiful’s back door.

  They had bought back both the flowers and the stands and the easels upon which they stood.

  On each of the easels was a small printed card: Walsh’s The Beautiful, 1225 North Clark Street. Mike saw that the back of each had the name and telephone number of the purchaser. And he saw some names which, when coupled to that of the honoree, suggested a connection sufficiently corrupt to be worthy of investigation.

  Mike pocketed the cards.

  He could try to excuse himself, as the months went by, with the idea that he was merely doing the job which he had been pretending to do; but he could never accept the excuse as, before he pocketed the cards, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure that he could not be seen. He hated himself for the thefts.

  Chapter 3

  Mike had been courting Annie for the better part of a year.

  Their courtship had begun with the exchanged glances and small talk whose true meaning was hidden at no depth at all. He was allowed, first on a night-by-night basis, then as a matter of course, to walk her to the trolley after work.

  Mike had gone, first, to the shop, on business; and, his business concluded, returned to gaze at and to court the girl, who, as he knew in the first instant, was and would always be the love of his life.

  And, so, throughout the summer and fall, he would walk her from work, most meetings taking place just around the corner from the shop and her family’s disapproving eyes. For he was not of their ilk, not a Catholic, and only, as they well knew, interested in the one thing, which, absent the sacrament of marriage, meant damnation and disgrace.

  She left when the shop closed for business; her father and brothers stayed on to tend the flowers, to make the day’s last deliveries, and to shut the shop down for the night.

  Annie was pursuing the secretarial course at the Armitage College of Business; and so was excused from the shop on school nights at five, where Mike, when not on a story, met her and walked her a slow six blocks down to the trolley stop.

  Once, her brother had driven past, in the red van of The Beautiful. He had not noticed them, but Annie had seen him; and Mike, as a reporter, attuned to slight fluctuations in behavior, was impressed beyond measure to note that she altered not a jot, disdaining both concealment and assertiveness. He exchanged a look with her and her look said their courting had progressed to the point at which she could trust him with her deepest secret, which was that she knew and was proud of his love.

  Rain, and, some months later, snow made it but prudent for them to wait for the car under shelter.

  The awning of the Budapest Café protected them, and the café itself was just beyond the awning. Both were pleased with the unexceptionable choice of refuge. There were coffee, tea, cakes, Bohemian pastries, and light ethnic food.

  The Budapest was a luncheon resort, sufficiently superior to a coffee shop or lunch counter to appeal to the genteel, the shabby-genteel, and those who enjoyed, or did not mind, their company.

  The tablecloths were pale yellow; the tea and coffee cups were placed on paper doilies. The clientele was exclusively middle-aged women. Annie and Mike were content that the atmosphere effectively protected and restrained, and, so, advanced their infatuation.

  Annie held, for him, the inviolable purity of the pregnant woman, the
young mother, the young bride. He’d seen it in France, at the Front, in women whose only defense was their defenselessness and a reliance upon the understood inviolability of their state.

  He’d thought it, likely, a function of a shared religiosity; for it needed no one to explain that those who touched the defenseless woman, virgin, mother, or bride, were damned to hell. The French and Belgians shared the Catholic adoration of the mother. The Germans did not.

  Parlow suggested this might have been the impetus for their rape of Belgium, whose first victims, the myth ran, were the Belgian nuns. He, though a noncombatant, assumed the atrocity stories were myth, as he assumed most stories which inflamed or ratified the passions were myth, as indeed were most stories presenting themselves as news.

  “If it were true tragedy,” he’d said, “we would avert the eyes. And we might kill or rage, but I believe we’d tell no one—and most certainly not for money.

  “As we do. All newspapermen loathe themselves.”

  Annie had asked Mike about the War. It seemed a safe topic: neither love, nor his work, and so he spoke of it simply, retelling or embellishing, though never inventing, the droll.

  He took great care in his tone to have it understood that he felt his job was to amuse and to divert her, always lightly, for the time they spent together was the only meaning either desired.

  As the weeks progressed, he saw that she took increasing care with her appearance. He was charmed, and thought that even the almost-deniable touch of rouge, and the merest touch of lipstick, could not diminish her shocking virginal beauty. Crouch and the City Room had noted his behavior, and had guessed its cause. But only Parlow knew the name. “There’s only one cure for it,” he had said, “but, unfortunately, no one knows what it is.”