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LOCATED OPPOSITE CITY Hall, the Harmon House Hotel was frequented by politicians, wheeler-dealers, local celebs, and expensive hookers. Posted just outside, Spiffy Smith blew into his clarinet. India ink slathered the creases of his sweaty neck. The faraway expression of his face radiated with one of those beautiful blue-black complexions of his tribal ancestors. Behind the sunglasses, his scarred eyes were sealed shut. Spiffy lost his eyesight at Guadalcanal, but it didn’t stop him from being one cool cat and a source of invaluable information that he sold for a price and sometimes a bottle of Scotch. If this were Paris, Spiffy could have been a popular jazz musician, fêted by the elite and living in style. But this was Chicago, and in Chicago, there were only a few ways a Negro—especially a disfigured Negro—could squeeze out a living.
Curled at his feet, his loyal German shepherd glanced up when I tossed spare change and several dollar bills into the velvet-lined clarinet case. Spiffy broke off at the end of a C-sharp and said, “What’re in a hurry for, Miss Iris?”
“How’d you know it was me?”
He sniffed my perfume like a hound dog. I laughed and swung through the revolving doors. The bluesy notes of his clarinet chased me into a brass-gilt, red-carpeted, and smoke-filled lobby. Hidden behind potted palms and sunken into leather chairs, hotel guests read the morning papers. Some faces I recognized as regulars and occasional stool pigeons. Others I knew only by name. Then there were the powerbrokers, members of a not-so-secret society who ruled the city with iron fists and plenty of dough in exchange for favors and blindfolded eyes. The City of Big Shoulders had been bought and sold several times over. It was a way of life. You either accepted it or left town. Many chose the latter. The corrupt and downtrodden chose the former. The rest made do.
I unwrapped a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and folded it into my mouth. The doorman approached and tapped the brim of his cap. “Miss Grenadine. Mr. Kane sends his compliments.”
I dropped the gum wrappings into an ashtray canister and two bits into the palm of the doorman’s outstretched hand. “Tell him I’ll stop by on my way out.”
He bowed and swept a hand of invitation toward the elevator bank.
The white-gloved operator held the door open for me. She closed the elevator cage with a clatter and engaged the power lever. Eyes glued to the floor indicator, I nervously tapped the toe of my high-heeled pump. The pointer swept from L to 22. The cage hummed, rattled, and eventually braked to a stop. The operator opened the doors and whispered, “Twenty-two-o-one.”
I strolled past doors, guests, luggage, maids, and service carts. Two businessmen tipped their hats as we passed each other. Wearing a towel around wet hair, a stunning young woman peeked into the hallway before stealing back inside. A giggling toddler dashed out of another room, his mom close on his heels. No one was aware of the drama already unfolding in room 2201.
At the far end of the corridor, the security guard nodded. He was expecting me. I showed him my press credentials. He pushed open the door. I stepped over the threshold. The door closed behind me. The latch clicked. The room hushed.
The décor of room 2201 centered on two muted colors: Naples yellow and Delft blue. The accoutrements were typical of high-class hotel rooms everywhere. Cheerful wallpaper. Cozy appointments. Heavy furniture. Tweed carpet. And paintings that depicted sunny landscapes, majestic hillsides, and seaside harbors. Two windows—one shut and the other cracked open—bracketed either side of an armoire. The view faced the river. In the east, the white clock tower of the Wrigley Building indicated half past eleven. Toward the west, the massive Merchandise Mart squatted at the edge of the river. The drone of car engines and distant voices filtered up from street level, along with the rhythmic clatter of an el train heading into the Loop, so named for the el track that encircled the heart of Chicago’s financial district. That musty smell of all hotel rooms everywhere, even one as posh as this one, permeated the four walls. Other odors were intermixed, including the distinctive stench of something foul.
I wasn’t alone.
A naked man—melting like ice cream on a birthday cake—lay sprawled on top of the queen-size bed. He was somewhere in his forties. Thinning hair and a milquetoast face stood out as his defining features. His head was propped at an uncomfortable angle against stacked pillows. His legs were thrust apart. An arm flopped over the side. His hairy chest, flat as a plywood board, didn’t move. Cloudy green eyes stared blindly at nothing at all. A third eye where the bridge of his nose used to be bore a bullet-sized hole of dried blood. Blood spattered his temples, smeared his forehead, and ran into his eye sockets. More coagulated blood spilled from an ear and around the back of his neck. A second bullet had drilled a crater through his Adam’s apple. Blood rivulets streaked from the opening and slathered his throat. His jaw hung open. His face was gray and slack. From the state of his genitals and the surprised if not terrified expression of his stiffened facial muscles, he had experienced his last throes of passion and glimpsed his final earthly delights within seconds of each other.
Since I recognized the dead man and knew his name and reputation, I immediately envisioned the boldface headlines in the evening papers. With any luck, one would have my byline underneath. Though he couldn’t speak and would never speak again, he left behind a deposition for others to transcribe. The bed served as his sarcophagus as well as his final epitaph. When people thought of him in the days and weeks to come, they would recall this final gruesome scene as it was splashed across the front page. Strangers would say that his life had been lived in banality but ended with infamy. No one would remember his accomplishments or defeats, least of all the nervous tic he had of scratching his nose when he was about to lie; the way his avaricious appetite for power engendered praise from allies and scorn from rivals; or the gorgeous blonde wife who turned a lifelong bachelor into a married man. From now on, whenever people spoke of him, they would titter behind shielding hands and remember him like this, a corpse abandoned in room 2201 of the Harmon House Hotel, lonely but not alone.
Death isn’t pretty and should never be glorified or dismissed. Most people live in a bubble and are unaware that tragedies like this happen every day. The first time I saw a murder victim—a man asphyxiated by a plastic bag—I was twelve years old. For months afterwards, I woke up in the middle of the night, screaming for my father. Daddy was always there to comfort me, but the nightmares didn’t go away for a very long time.
Making a slow circuit around the room, I inched closer to the bed until I was standing over the corpse. Ligature marks encircled the victim’s wrists. A fragrance of jasmine, rose, sandalwood, and vanilla emanated from the body. Though several blood trails led from the victim’s wounds, each one stopped just short of the bedspread and pillow shams. The corpse wore a wedding band of thin gold on the little finger of his left hand.
“Sad bastard,” I said to him.
“I’d have to agree with you,” a voice behind me said. My stomach lurched. The voice went on. “About the bastard part. Wouldn’t be too quick to judge about the sad part, though.”
