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STEEL-RIVETED POSTS supported a grid of elevated train tracks that dominated the length of Wells Street. We parked underneath, exited our respective vehicles, and met up. Starr reached in for a kiss. I let him take what he wanted but didn’t give anything in return. Overhead, train wheels squealed in strident disharmony. He felt the coolness and studied me with a dubious eye. Chagrinned, he motioned ahead and steered me to a corner diner where we ordered takeout, Dutch treat.
“The next time you invite me to dinner, Starr, I’ll think twice.”
Gripping carryout bags, we strolled past an office building, its interior lighting sulfuric. A lone doorman patrolled the lobby. On the sidewalk, pedestrians trudged past, most hurrying in the direction of Union Station. Traffic crawled in the same direction, buses yawing and automobiles braking in alternating cadence. An emergency siren pulsated and eventually vanished into the distance.
Downtown had the look of desertion. Dusk lay in wait. The awkwardness between us had dissipated. I asked, “What’re we doing here?”
He motioned across the street, where a flight of stairs stretched up to an el station.
“I take it this is the scene of the rumored sting.”
Starr rocked back on his heels. “You’re not the sole purveyor of titillating tidbits, Grenadine.” He bustled toward the crosswalk and glanced back. “Coming?”
“I assume you’re not interested in Byrnes’s dying confession, his last words, his swan song, his unction in extremis.”
“Unless Byrnes attended morning mass, I don’t think he had time to consult a priest.”
“Not a priest, Starr. His conscience. Life insurance for the sanctimonious.” I picked lint off my jacket.
When the light changed, he hooked sturdy fingers around my arm and ushered me across the street, hustling to beat the traffic. “Give, Grenadine.”
We hopped onto the curb. “Did you get a chance to check your horoscope Tuesday morning?”
Starr scrutinized me from the depths of his odious eyes. “I only read the sports section.”
“Byrnes didn’t read his, either. Otherwise he would have taken a road trip to Kalamazoo.”
He stared at me as if I were a hothouse tomato: plump, juicy, tasty, and good to eat. He licked his lips. He wanted a taste. He’d have to wait.
“Instead of reading his horoscope,” I said, “he was browsing through stacks of City Council minutes, motions, resolutions, budget appropriations, and shady acquisitions.”
He blinked at the final two words.
“Just testing to see if you were listening.”
“What did he find out?”
“Nothing less than a bombshell.”
We climbed elbow to elbow, taking the stairs like an afternoon stroll in the park while I wove a story of greed and corruption gleaned from the accounts of Digby Tate, Nick Testa, the clerk at the Recorder of Deeds, Sam Grado, past newspaper accounts, and other snippets picked up from sources and snitches. The pieces of how the city and the mob worked hand-in-hand to make the O’Hare deal come together fit like a jigsaw puzzle. Starr had already figured out most of it but was unaware of some of the key players. Labor unions, investors, the governor, certain state assemblymen, bankers, the previous mayor, the current mayor, and handpicked civil servants all working in concert to pull off the biggest heist ever, where every interested party lined their pockets, but taxpayers were left holding the bag.
“It’s a bomb ready to explode. Everybody from the top down has a stake in keeping it under wraps. If Byrnes’s dossier ever goes public, powerbrokers can look forward to exchanging silk suits for prison-issued stripes.”
“Byrnes’s dossier?” he asked innocently, as if the whole town hadn’t been buzzing about it.
“The dossier Kirk infiltrated the Big Dive for. The dossier Arezzo wouldn’t mind committing murder for. The dossier the killer probably killed for. The dossier Pennyroyal wants to exchange a captaincy for. The dossier an unknown party, most probably the mayor, paid Richard C. Starr, Esquire, a retainer for.”
The briefest smile touched his lips before skirting once more behind the P.I. mask of impenetrability. His eyes calmly glanced upstairs and just as calmly glanced downstairs. With composure, he relieved me of my carryout and set both bags on the landing.
“Oh. Oh, no,” I said just before he gathered me up like his imaginary hothouse tomato, squeezed me for ripeness, took a juicy taste, and descended for a satisfying bite. Poetry seeped into my bones in non-rhyming verse. Heat filled my cheeks. It wasn’t like that tepid kiss downstairs. This one was for real.
“If there is a secret dossier,” he said before applying another kiss, “and I’m not saying there is ...” The world went away. I became putty in his hands. He could do with me as he wished. Right here. Right now. Even if it meant being arrested for public indecency. He tugged his lips away. “... it won’t implicate this mayor.”
“Where politics are concerned, there’s always more than enough dirt to go around.” Despite strongly held beliefs that a woman must exert self-control when faced with sexual perversity in the big city, I wriggled my fingers along his lapels and folded my arms around the nape of his neck. We smooched until our moans interlaced like a song. Coming up for air, I said, “In that file cabinet of yours, I didn’t see a folder under the letter B.”
“For Bogart? Or Byrnes?” He smothered my lips with his. An el train passed overhead. The staircase swayed and vibrated. Our bodies jiggled in harmony. He whimpered. I sighed. Pinwheels and sparklers ignited. His fedora flipped end over end down the staircase.
“Take your pick,” I said, breathless.
He ran his tongue along my throat and buried his face between my breasts, taking advantage of my weak knees and dire position. I was dizzy with passion. He was lost in lust. But he still had the presence of mind to say, “You’ll never find a file folder for either man.”
A car horn honked. We awoke to the city spinning around us. “Guess I’ll just have to break into your apartment.”
“I’ll give you the key, but you won’t find anything there, either.”
I tried to tame my hair after his hands had hopelessly snarled it. “You’re very careful, aren’t you?” Twilight settled around us, hiding the worst of our transgressions.
“Only if I want to stay alive.” He let go and whipped me into an upright position. After all those torrid kisses, I had to grip the handhold to steady myself. He skipped downstairs, retrieved his fedora, zipped back, and swept up the takeout bags with the grace of Fred Astaire tripping the light fantastic.
We ascended to the intermediate platform, where two sets of stairs split off toward opposite sides of the train tracks. He removed his suit jacket, draped it across the lower steps of one of the staircases, twirled me around, and set me upon the makeshift bench. Sinking beside me, he unpacked the bags.
“Are we dining al fresco this evening?”
Wordlessly he handed me a stack of paper napkins.
“If I’d known we were going to eat by candlelight, would’ve changed into basic black.” I shucked off my shoes and nestled against the stair railing. Overhead, a northbound train crawled along. The entire structure strained under its weight. While the wheels squealed at high pitch, we divvied up the food. From the opposite direction, a southbound train pulled into the platform. Brakes ground to a halt and doors flapped open. Footsteps pounded the boards. Seconds later, passengers descended our stairway and squeezed past.
“Dickheads!” one of them barked.
“Only one of us, lady.”
She flung a disdainful glare back at Starr and stumbled across the landing.
We ate in silence. Night descended like a woolen blanket. The sun was setting in a splash of crimson and purple.
“Kirk’s on the lam,” I said to Starr. “No one’s seen since the gondola wars, not his wife, his bookie, or the hatcheck girl at the Chez Paree.”
“If you were a marked man,” Starr said, “you’d be incommunicado, too.”
“Then what’s the point of staking out the el? He’s not about to walk into a trap just for the hell of it.”
“Three reasons. He’s corrupt, he’s greedy, and he doesn’t want to take the fall for something he didn’t do.”
“If he didn’t kill Byrnes, who did?” I munched a French fry. He took a wolf-sized bite of his hamburger. “Don’t hold back on me now, Starr.”
He reached for one of my fries. “If I knew, sure as hell wouldn’t be here.”
“Where would you be?”
“Gee. Can’t imagine.” From the droll look on his face, he was thinking about last night. I was, too.
“I hear you have a thing going with Kirk’s secretary.”
Starr stopped chewing mid-chomp. “Who told you that?”
“She tipped you off, didn’t she?”
“And not Moore’s secretary?”
“Shirley Wickham wouldn’t tell a fireman where to connect his hose if her house was burning down.”
Night descended. The city lit up. The glow from hundreds of office windows flickered like candle flames.
High-heel shoes click-click-clicked up the lower staircase. A picture hat appeared before the form and figure of Monica Seagraves arrived like a goddess rising from the sea. “Whaddaya know. Iris Grenadine and Richard Starr.” She sniffed out the burgers and helped herself. “Why don’t we wait together and see what develops, shall we.”
“Pennyroyal tipped her off,” I said to Starr over her head.
“Did not,” she said.
“Because she’s in bed with him, and I don’t mean figuratively.”
She snidely rocked her head back and forth while moving her mouth in mimicry.
“Find your kitty cat?” I asked.
She shook her head in the negative. “And I’m really broken up about it, too.”
We became alert to an off-key crooner hammering up the stairway. Clad in a crumpled suit, polka dot tie, and food-stained shirt, Tom Stacy announced his arrival in a hullabaloo of flamboyance.
“What is this ... Union Station?”
“And a hardy hello to you too, Grenadine.” When his eyes swiveled over to Monica Seagraves, they clicked on like light bulbs. “See you found the place.”
“The idea of a stakeout, Stacy,” I said, “is to blend in with the background.”
“Wow, never heard that before.” He sniffed out the fast food bags and helped himself to the last remaining burger.
Starr leaned back, braced his elbows on an upper step, and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Be my guest.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Stacy climbed between us and took a seat above ours. His smile was all teeth and lips but no eyes. Only habitual liars wore perpetual grins and vague upturned eyes. “Anybody show up yet?”
“If they had,” Starr said, “wouldn’t have found us waiting around for you.”
“Richard Starr, right?” He leaned forward and shook hands. “Heard the mayor hired you to cover his ass.”
As looks went, Tom Stacy was a traffic stopper, but his personality needed shellacking. He was known as a man of few words and fewer niceties. He lived in high digs, partied in low places, and stayed up until the wee hours, usually with a blonde babe in tow. No one knew how he got his leads.
Two sets of heavy feet tramped upstairs from street level. Twin fedoras rose like umbrellas from the lower staircase. The brims were attached to two wise guys: the first swarthy and striking and the second pale as an albino. They wore double-breasted suits, shiny gabardine shirts, silk handkerchiefs, and Italian wingtip shoes. I didn’t have to search hard to make out handguns wedged underneath their suit coats. They squeezed past us and climbed purposefully, their heels pounding the stairs in sync.
Starr looked at me. I looked back at him. And together we bolted upstairs.
