White Collar Girl (11 page)

•   •   •

I
t wasn't that I stopped looking for Eliot's killer, but after talking to Danny Finn that day, I had to acknowledge that I might never find the person responsible. Still, it was hard to let it go because I felt like I was turning my back on my brother. But I knew I had to accept that he was gone. I had to let it go, let
him
go. I didn't want to end up like my parents. It was time to start living for me.

That afternoon, during my lunch break, I went to look at an apartment in a six-story walk-up. There was a bulb burned out overhead. It was dark and musty smelling. As the landlord and I headed down the hallway where the light was better, I saw that he was wearing a sleeveless undershirt with ribbing that widened over his gut. A heavy chain attached to his belt held about a dozen keys, and it took him two tries before he got the right one.

“This for you and your husband?” he asked as he threw open the door.

I should have expected this question. I'd already seen three
other apartments, and each time the landlord had asked the same thing. “No. Just me.” I dared to look inside. It was a dump. Less than seven hundred square feet, and every inch smelled of cat piss and the carpet had the urine stains to prove it.

“Just you, huh?” He grunted and, without blinking, told me the place had been rented.

“Then why did you bother showing it to me?”

“Listen,” he said, “I'm not renting to you single girls, okay? Half the time you can't pay your rent, and I ain't got time to listen to your hard-luck stories.”

“But I have a job.” I never would have taken that apartment anyway, but now it was a matter of principle.

“I don't care if you have a job. You dames are nothing but trouble. You can't even change a lightbulb. I get calls every time the toilet won't flush 'cause you broads keep putting your damn pads in there and none of yous knows how to use a plunger. . . .”

I argued with him for a few more minutes before realizing it was futile. All the single girls I knew either lived at home or in crowded rooming houses for women. Except for M. She had her own apartment and it was nice. Far nicer than anything I could have afforded.

“How'd you do it?” I asked once while we were taking a coffee break.

“What do you mean?” M was waiting for the saccharin pellets to dissolve in her cup while leafing through a movie magazine.

“How did you get your landlord to rent your place to you? And how did you get the price down so you could afford it? All the landlords I've met with won't give me the time of day.”

“Well, actually,” she said, closing her magazine, “it's not in my name. My father rented it for me.”

Well, that explained it.

My head was still spinning after I'd left the apartment building and boarded the el car. The train was full, and I was standing until a woman in shorts got up and I took her spot. The wicker seat had left the backs of her thighs looking waffled.

When I got to my stop and stepped out of the train, I spotted a familiar face on the platform. Scott Trevor.
Well,
my oh my.
There was a nice symmetry about it, seeing as we'd met on the el some four years earlier.

Scott had been studying business law at Northwestern when I was a freshman at Medill. He lived in Evanston but had night classes at the downtown campus. I lived in the city but had classes up at Evanston, so we commuted into the city together in the evenings. If we had time, we'd grab a beer.

He was wearing a suit and tie now. A far cry from the law student I used to see leaning against the platform wall, striking a James Dean pose. I could still picture him with the heel of his shoe butted up against the brick and his thumbs tucked inside his blue jeans pockets. He used to notice me, too, saddle-shoed, Peter Pan collared and bobby socked, clutching my book bag. I don't remember who spoke to whom first or how we started sitting together on the el, but during his last year of law school, that's what we did.

Scott looked up and came rushing over as soon as he saw me, the two of us embracing on the platform like reunited lovers in a movie. But we were not lovers, only friends. There was a time when I'd desperately wanted him to ask me out, but he'd had a steady girlfriend. And if there's one thing I learned about Scott Trevor, it was that he was a stand-up guy. He never would have cheated on his girl. It was just one more thing you had to love about the guy.

We stood at the base of the stairwell and continued talking.
Once again I noticed that I had newsprint smeared down the side of my tunic dress. Scott noticed it, too.

“Ink,” I said, trying to rub the stains away. “It's an occupational hazard. I'm at the
Tribune
now.”

“The
Tribune
, huh? Well, good for you. Looks like your journalism classes paid off. How do you like being a reporter?”

I laughed. “I don't feel like much of a reporter. They've got me on the society pages, and once in a while when I'm
lucky
, they let me do something for the features department. Lots of weddings and fashion shows, cook-offs and home-decorating tips. The one time I actually had a real story, they gave my byline away.”

“Give it time,” Scott said. “You'll make your mark.”

I smiled. Eliot would have said something like that. I looked into his eyes, and my heart lifted in my chest. I felt light inside. God, it was good to see him
.

Scott glanced at his wristwatch. “Listen, I have to be in court at three, but I have time for a quick cup of coffee if you do.”

We went to Jimmy's just a few doors down, tucked under the el. Even inside you could hear the trains roaring overhead. We sat in a corner booth beneath the Coca-Cola clock that chimed a little “Refreshing” chorus on the quarter hour. I glanced at Scott, thinking he was still as handsome as I'd remembered, one of those chiseled types with a strong chin and a genuine smile. He wore his dark brown hair brushed back off his forehead in a high quiff. I noticed he didn't have a wedding band, but he wasted no time telling me about his girlfriend, Connie. I smiled extra wide, hoping to mask my disappointment.

“She's a secretary,” he said. “We work together in the state's attorney's office.”

“Oh, really.” I gave an approving nod. “You did it.”

“Yep. I'm an assistant state's attorney now.”

“You always said you wanted to do that. So, tell me, are you putting all the bad guys away?”

“Hardly.” He pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket and offered me one. “Not that I haven't tried.” He lit our cigarettes and dropped the match in an ashtray that said,
This was stolen from Jimmy's
. “Maybe I was a fool, thinking I could make a difference. I've been in and out of so many courts, prosecuting everyone from prostitutes to drunk drivers to murderers. I should have won. They were open-and-shut cases. I should have put the defendants away for years, but instead they ended up walking. After that happens enough times, you start thinking you're an incompetent lawyer.”

I propped my elbow on the table, my chin resting on my knuckles. “I can't imagine
you
being incompetent at anything.”

“I got so discouraged I thought about quitting.” He pinched the cigarette filter between his fingers before taking another drag.

“Really? You were going to quit?”

“Thought about it.” He nodded. “I felt like a failure—like I wasn't cut out for this kind of work. Eventually though I started to wise up. I realized that something fishy was going on.”

“Fishy?” My reporter's ears perked up.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I have reason to believe that the defense lawyers are paying off the judges. They're on the take. That's why their clients are getting off.”

“Wow—that's huge. Are you sure?”

He nodded.

I leaned forward, not wanting to miss anything. “What can you do to stop it?”

“Apparently nothing. I've moaned and bitched about it, and
all they do is move me to another court system, where the same damn thing happens. If there's one thing I hate, it's a corrupt lawyer, and I feel like this city is crawling with them.”

I couldn't help but smile. Everything inside me had come alive. Adrenaline pumped through me, and I was already composing the lede inside my head:
Several Cook County lawyers and judges come under scrutiny for allegedly taking bribes. . . .

I leaned forward even further and lowered my voice. “Would you be willing to go on the record with that?”

“Whoa, Jordan,” he said with a laugh. “I'm talking friend to friend here. That's all this is. I'm just venting.”

“I know, but you have a story that needs to be told.”

“Maybe. Maybe someday. But not now. Besides, I've got no real proof. It'd be my word against theirs.”

I stubbed out my cigarette. “Okay, but let's just say I wanted to do a piece on this—on the corruption inside the Cook County courts. Would you be willing to give me a quote?”

He shook his head more emphatically this time. “No way. You can't use my name.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Jordan?” He gave me a searching look.

I held up my hands. “I won't. I promise.” I thought for a moment, my mind still racing. “What about an anonymous quote?”

“You know damn well that no paper would run a story like this with nothing more than an anonymous quote.”

“I know. I know. It's just that I need a story. A
real
story.” I was getting desperate.

•   •   •

T
he desperation stayed with me. All I wanted was to get closer to the action. I had some free time the next morning, so I took myself down to City Hall, flashed my credentials and
entered a packed conference room where Mayor Daley was holding a press conference.

I was there strictly as an observer and hid out in the very last row, one of the only women in the room. The reporters from the radio stations were all clustered together with the fellows from the AP and UPI. Men from the other papers were scattered throughout the room. I recognized Walter in the second row and saw the pipe protruding from his mouth each time he turned profile.

Daley took to the podium and began talking about the city's plans to crack down on slumlords. “Our citizens can rest assured that their homes will be properly heated with working toilets and plumbing. . . . We won't stand up for their negligent standard complaints. . . .”

Everyone exchanged puzzled looks while Daley kept blathering. No one had any idea what he was talking about. But this was typical of a Daley speech. Walter was always coming back from press conferences laughing over some blunder the mayor delivered, his favorites being “Alcoholics Unanimous” and “We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement.”

For someone who supposedly hated members of the press, Daley certainly did spend a good deal of time with them. And for someone who was so challenged by the English language, he seemed to love to get up in front of a roomful of reporters who were there to capture his every flub.

A political writer from the
Daily News
stood up and challenged the mayor, asking what kind of scrutiny would be practiced in order to ensure compliance.

“Scrutiny?” Daley took offense. His face went bloodred, and I half expected to see steam rising from his ears. “What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. How much scrutiny do you want to have? You go scrutinize yourself!
I get scrootened every day, don't worry, from each and every one of you. . . .”

When the press conference ended several reporters approached Earl Bush, Daley's press secretary, for clarification on several of the mayor's statements. I was standing right there when I heard Bush say, “Don't print what he said. Print what he meant.”

•   •   •

T
he following Friday afternoon the guys in the city room were clowning around, ganging up on Peter. Someone hid his eyeshade and he had worked himself into a state trying to find it.

I was on deadline for a fashion feature on self-belted Bermuda shorts. And this was one of the more exciting assignments I'd been given lately. I had ten column inches for this piece, a lot of space to fill with seersucker versus linen, plaid versus solid.

I was trying to focus when Randy started singing
“See the USA / In your Chevrolet. . . .”
Meanwhile, Walter and Henry were passing around the new issue of
Playboy
and debating who had the better centerfold, Jayne Mansfield or Bettie Page.

“But did you see the jugs on Mansfield?” said Walter, banging his pipe against the ashtray. “I'd take a sultry blonde with a pair of jugs like that over a brunette any day.”

“Oh, I don't know.” Henry laughed and whistled through his teeth. “I wouldn't kick Bettie Page out of bed. She's got a sweet pair. . . .”

“Guys—” I looked up, exasperated. “Do you mind saving the locker-room talk for later?”

“What's the matter, Walsh?” said Walter as he fired up his pipe. “Are we offending your delicate sensibilities?”

“Oh, fuck off, you asshole.”

“Whoa!” Henry laughed. “She told you.”

The fellows were still giving me a hard time when Mrs. Angelo interrupted, calling me over to the features desk by waving a piece of copy above her head.

“Come here, kid. What's this piece all about?” She held up the copy for me to see. “The first human trials for a female contraceptive?”

“It's an article about Margaret Sanger and—”

“Yes, I can see that.” Mrs. Angelo pursed her lips. “Mr. Pearson said you submitted it to him earlier this morning.”

“I was—”

“Why would you take it upon yourself to write an article like that without discussing it with me first? Or Mr. Pearson, for that matter.”

“Because I knew you probably wouldn't have let me write it.”

“And you would have been correct.” She fisted up the copy in her hand and pitched it in the wastebasket. “From now on stick to the assignments you're given. Understood?”

“But this is important. We're on the verge of a major breakthrough for women.”

“Uh-huh . . .” She left her desk with me trailing behind her down the center aisle.

“And I bet most women don't even know that this is possible.”

She spun around. “I'm only going to say this to you once more—I appreciate what you're trying to do. I get it. I do. But you're paid to write about subjects that you're assigned to, and right now that's taffeta and calla lilies. Not contraception, kid.”

Henry, Walter and the others laughed while Mrs. Angelo reprimanded me.

“Hey, Walsh,” said Walter with a snort as I made my way back to my desk, “how's that calla lily exposé coming along?”

“Why don't you take your little
Playboy
into the men's room and do something useful with yourself.”

“Whoa!” Henry pounded his fist against the desk and laughed along with Benny, Randy and the rest of them. Even though I was disappointed that Mrs. Angelo killed my article, I joined in, knowing that the guys got a kick out of me. They weren't used to working with a woman who could take her share of razzing and dish it back.

I glanced up at the row of clocks over the horseshoe. It was half past four and I was beat. It had been a long week. I was putting the cover over my typewriter when M came up to my desk. Her butterfly-rimmed sunglasses were propped on her nose, and her Kelly bag, which must have cost a small fortune, was hanging off her forearm just above her charm bracelet. She looked very Marilyn-like.

“Come on,” she said. “I think you and I could use a cocktail.”

•   •   •

W
e headed over to Riccardo's, a bar near the
Tribune
, tucked away behind the Wrigley Building, down the stairs on Rush Street. Riccardo's was a legendary watering hole. From as far back as my father's day, it was where the newspapermen went for lunch and for drinks after work. A lot of advertising types went there, too, which made for an interesting dynamic because everyone knew that the copywriters made more money than the reporters but that the reporters were better writers and worked harder. So the ad guys stayed on one side of the bar and the reporters on the other.

I remember my father telling my brother and me stories about Riccardo's back in the days of Prohibition, when it was a speakeasy. He and Ben Hecht used to sit at the back table and
have their martinis and shoot the bull. When Eliot started working at the
Sun-Times
, he and his buddies went to Riccardo's, too. It was a journalistic rite of passage.

Now it was my turn to join the newspaper drinking tradition, only I was a woman and my male coworkers didn't see me as a real reporter. I'd been working alongside them for the past two months and they knew damn well that I was tougher than the typical sob sister. They knew I'd been around a city room all my life. But still, I was a girl, assigned to society news and therefore relegated to a table with the other female journalists while the guys sat at the bar, backs turned as if they hardly knew us.

M, Gabby and the others paid them no mind. They were engrossed in their own conversations, talking about plans for the weekend. We were sitting with Eppie Lederer and some other girls from the
Sun-Times.

Eppie wrote an advice column. Millions of women read her faithfully, but when it came to us, her friends, she rarely offered an opinion. You'd ask her about a specific concern—maybe you were having problems with your fellow or you were in a jam at work—and she'd look at you and say, “How the hell would I know what you should do?”

“Because you're Ann Landers!”

“Only on paper.”

Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland came inside and brushed past us on their way to the bar. M excused herself, and on her way to the ladies' room, she got detoured. I watched as she stood before the men at the bar, hip jutting out, laughing, basking in their attention.

No sooner had she returned to our table and placed a cigarette in her mouth than one of the ad guys swooped in from across the room and offered her a light. She thanked him with a long, luxurious exhale and a smile. He snapped his Zippo shut
and stood there, waiting for an invitation to join her, but she dismissed him with another cool exhale.

It was going on seven o'clock and Eppie, Gabby—who rarely stayed for more than one drink—and the other girls had already left. I was about to go myself when M asked me to stay for one more.

“Please? Just one.”

She seemed lonely, and I was surprised that a beautiful woman like her wouldn't have had a date on a Friday night. Certainly enough men at Riccardo's would have loved to take her out. I sat back down and ordered another vodka tonic.

“So what are you doing this weekend?” she asked.

“I have to go interview an anthropologist down at the University of Chicago for a story I'm working on.”

“You never stop. You really love this business, don't you?” M said, giving her drink a swirl.

“Don't you?”

“Nah, not like you. I've been at the
Tribune
for five years—that's four and half years longer than I expected. I started out as a copygirl, and that's only because Mrs. Angelo took pity on me. She was standing behind me one day at Logan's Luncheonette and I came up ten cents short on my check. She gave me a dime and a job. I had just moved here from Milwaukee after my father died. I was lost without him. I couldn't stay back home with my mother. She was insane. When I was little she used to chase me around the house with a broom, swatting me with it. My father was the only one who could keep her in line. He protected me from her, and once he was gone, I had to leave too. So I came to Chicago—didn't know anyone. I was flat broke when I met Mrs. Angelo. . . .”

M continued talking, but I was stuck on
after my father died
. Hadn't she told me that her father was the one who'd rented her apartment for her?

“. . . I never thought I'd become a journalist,” M was saying. “Never wanted to be one. I really thought I'd be married and raising a family by now.” She smiled with a certain sadness in her gaze.

I wanted to say something about her apartment but Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland stopped at our table.

“Good night, ladies,” said Mr. Ellsworth with a tip of his fedora.

“See you Monday morning,” said Mr. Copeland.

“My goodness,” I said as they walked away. “They actually acknowledged us. Do you believe it?”

“Aw, the two of them are okay.” M watched as they left, her eyes trained on the door long after they'd gone.

Before I could steer the conversation back to her apartment, M excused herself to talk to a table of cigar-smoking men from Leo Burnett and I found myself sitting alone. A few seats opened up at the bar, so I dared to join Walter, Henry, Benny, Peter and Randy, saddling up beside them. They gave me an amused nod, as if to say,
Isn't she cute,
and went back to their conversation.

At one point Walter turned to me and said, “You really want to be one of the boys—don't you, Walsh? How about doing a shot with us?”

The others leaned in, watching me, expecting me to refuse.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

Walter snickered as he packed tobacco into his pipe, tamping it down. “Johnny,” he called over to the bartender. “A round of Canadian Club over here.” Walter struck a matchstick and set his bowl flaming before extinguishing the blue tip with a shake of his wrist.

The bartender poured six shot glasses of whiskey and dealt them out like a hand of cards. The others laughed, thinking I'd pack up my handbag and head home. But this was my moment to prove that I was as tough as any of them. I picked up my shot, clanked my glass against theirs, and with my eyes locked onto
Walter's, I threw it back. The heat spread through my chest while the vapors rose up to my sinuses. I felt the burn of the whiskey behind my eyes. The others watched me, waiting, expecting me to cough, to wince, to grimace. Instead, I slammed my empty glass on the bar and said, “Johnny, set 'em up again.”

“Holy Christ,” said Henry.

There was a burst of laughter.

“
Ehhhx-
cellent,” said Peter.

“Now you're talking.” Randy scooted up closer to the bar.

“I'm serious,” I said, still looking at Walter. “Set 'em up.”

There was a round of howls as they clapped, and Henry signaled to the bartender for the bottle. We all held up our next shot, did a toast and knocked them back. The second shot went down easier. I had just set my glass down and barely gotten a cigarette lit before Benny called for a third round.

We took our time with that one. I got lost in clouds of cigarette smoke. The jukebox was stuck on
Mr. Sandman
, playing it over and over again. I had no idea who ordered the next round, but before I knew it, half the men at the bar had gathered around us, eager to see if the little lady could keep up. Apparently the gauntlet had been thrown.

I became vaguely aware of a man, about my age, standing behind me. He leaned over and touched my shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You don't have to do this,” he whispered.

“Oh, yes, I do.” I turned and looked into his eyes, blue-green and drooping slightly at the outer corners.

I was woozy and could tell that the shots were getting to the fellows, too. They eyed me, trying to see if I was weakening, getting ready to cave.

“Another round,” I said. “On me.”

Onlookers banged on the bar top, making their drinks jump while chanting, “Go, go, go. . . .” I could feel the whiskey churning in my stomach. I didn't think it was possible to down another shot, but I had to. If I couldn't keep up with them, they'd never let me live it down. So I drew a deep breath and took the next shot. When I turned the glass over, the others cheered, applauding.

I was prepared to have another go at it when Walter stood up, peeled off a few bills from his money clip and said, “It's getting late.”

“Aw, c'mon,” said Benny, swaying on his stool. “One more.”

Walter didn't take his eyes off me. I couldn't tell if he was impressed or insulted. “I've got dinner waiting at home.” He dropped his money onto the bar and left without so much as a good-bye.

Henry and Peter followed shortly after, and the crowd began to disperse. I stayed at the bar, trying to get my bearings, and the guy who'd been standing behind me earlier ended up on the stool next to me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of papers, one of which dropped to the floor. Amazingly, despite being drunk, I managed to bend down and retrieve it.

“Here you go.” I handed it back to him. It was covered in scribbles, front and back. “You dropped this.”

He thanked me, deliberately letting his fingertips brush against mine. He caught my eye and smiled, exposing two imperfect front teeth, both slightly turned inward. Maybe it was the whiskey shots, but I found him more attractive than he had been just moments before. He sorted through the napkins and scraps of paper, lining them up on the bar. When he drew a heavy sigh, I looked over again. There was something about him, the sort of thing that snuck up on you. He was not the kind of man you looked twice at, and yet I did. I did look twice, because he'd put his hand on my shoulder while I was doing shots and because he had sighed again. Louder this time.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He held up a scrap of paper. “I can't read my own damn handwriting. Is that an
f
or a
t
?”