(1988) The Golden Room (9 page)

‘Put him on,’ said Chief O’Neill.

‘Here he is.’

Karen handed the telephone to Mayor Harrison, who was now seated behind his desk.

‘Chief,’ said the mayor, ‘there’s something troublesome I want to discuss with you.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Yesterday I assigned one of my aides, Gus Varney, to go out on an investigation. When he completed that investigation around ten o’clock, he telephoned my secretary and told her that he had good news for me. He told her he was on his way to City Hall to report to me. Oh yes, he had one stop to make following his phone call, and then he was proceeding to City Hall to report to me. Well, he never showed up. I waited three hours last night. No show. Then, from early this morning I expected Varney. He never appeared.’ Harrison paused. ‘Chief, I don’t like this.’

‘Was Mr Varney generally reliable?’

‘Totally so. The most punctual person on my staff.’

‘Well,’ said the chief, ‘he could have suffered an attack of amnesia. It happens, you know.’

‘Not often, Chief.’ At last Harrison spoke what was on his mind. ‘Chief, I suspect something worse.’ He hesitated. ‘Were there any suspicious or fatal incidents this morning?’

‘I haven’t heard of any from our other police districts. In

this district we had only one this morning. There was identification, but it wasn’t Varney. The corpse had a calling-card in his wallet. A man named Jack Simon, president of some beer company in St Louis.’

Harrison gasped. ‘Chief, I had that card printed for Varney as a cover.’

There was a brief silence. ‘Then it’s your Mr Varney we have in the morgue.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely. You’d better come over to the County Hospital for positive identification.’

Harrison shuddered. ‘I’ll be right over,’ he said.

They left the coroner in the morgue, and after closing the door, Mayor Harrison and Chief O’Neill stood in the hallway, their eyes meeting.

‘You’re certain?’ the chief asked once more.

Mayor Harrison’s face was ashen. ‘It’s Varney in there, all right. But he looks practically alive. No injuries. What was it the coroner told us? Suffocation?’

‘Yes, asphyxiation. I’m sorry about your loss, terribly sorry.’

‘How could that have happened?’

‘Many ways. Anything from someone holding a pillow over his face to someone gassing him.’

‘Incredible.’

‘Mayor,’ said the chief, ‘if you want us to be of help, you’d better give us more facts. You sent Varney on an investigation. He completed it successfully and was about to report to you when he was interrupted and murdered. You want to tell me what that’s all about?’

‘It would have to be strictly between us.’

‘You know you’re safe with me, Mayor,’ said the chief.

The mayor, lost in thought, took a few short steps down the corridor, then stopped and turned to face the chief of police.

‘All right,’ said Harrison, ‘I can’t let anyone get away with this. I’ll tell you the whole thing. You know I ran for reelection on a reform ticket. I said I wanted to close down all those whorehouses in the First Ward. My prime target was the Everleigh Club, because it’s the best known. But the Club’s been claiming it’s no longer a brothel. Only a restaurant.’

‘Fat chance,’ said the chief with a snort.

‘Exactly. Yet I had to have proof it was still a whorehouse before I could ask you to close them down.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ agreed the chief.

‘I did what I could. I decided to work from the inside for evidence. Varney volunteered to go into the Everleigh Club, posing as a beer company president from St Louis. He was to have supper there with one of the girls, then go to bed with her. Well, he called in to my secretary and announced he had succeeded. He was on his way with the evidence when … when he disappeared.’

The chief nodded. ‘Then we have a lead. We go to the Everleighs and put pressure on them. We tell them the truth and extract a confession.’

‘That they themselves murdered Varney or had someone else do so on their behalf?’

‘Why not?’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Harrison. ‘I’m a fairly astute student of human nature. True, I’ve never met the Everleighs, but I know a good deal about them. They’re two young and genteel Southern ladies. There has never been an instance of violence attached to their operation.’

‘Well, if you ever happened to learn that you were about to be shut down, be put out of business, you might feel a little violent. I still say that’s where we start.’

‘No, Chief,’ said Harrison firmly. ‘I don’t want to alert the Everleighs to what I tried. They may not know, and any action we’d take now would put them on their guard. I don’t want them on their guard. I still want to find some other

means of investigating them, and I don’t want them prepared for it.’

‘Then we won’t find out about Varney.’

‘Yes, we will. I think he was waylaid on that side trip. There must be other clues.’ Mayor Harrison put on his hat. ‘The problem is Varney had no family. He was new to the staff. He was a loner. There’s no one to notify, no one to inquire about. You’ll have to think of something to tell the boys in your department. But not a word about the Everleighs - not yet.’

‘If you insist.’

‘I have to insist. Thank you, Chief, and good day.’

Mayor Harrison had called the meeting in his office for three o’clock sharp.

Now, at three-fifteen, the mayor had finished telling his remaining staff members and Karen Grant about Gus Varney’s disappearance.

‘So there you have it all,’ he concluded.

‘You mean the Varney case is to be considered closed?’ said aide Jim Evans.

‘I’m afraid so,’ replied the mayor. ‘At least for a time. I repeat, we’re not going to accuse the Everleighs of anything. Not while there is a possibility of exposing them. And that is still what I intend to do. Get evidence against them. Apparently, Varney learned the truth. He said he had good news. That could only have meant he had found out the Everleigh Club remains what it always has been - a bordello. I mean to find the truth once more, prove it, and close them down for ever.’

‘But how?’ Evans wanted to know.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea yet. That’s why I called all of you together. To find out if any of you had any suggestions.’

‘You could send one of us into the Club, just the way you sent in Varney,’ said Evans.

The mayor slowly shook his head. ‘No, I can’t risk it. Even if one of you got in and verified the truth, you might not come back alive. Look what happened to Gus Varney. No, I can’t risk sending another man in.’

Karen Grant was raising a hand. ‘But, Mayor Harrison, you could send in a woman. You could send me to the Everleigh Club.’

Mayor Harrison was openly surprised. ‘You?’

‘Yes, me,’ repeated Karen, coming to her feet. ‘I could get into the Everleigh Club posing as a girl who’s down on her luck and needs a job. Maybe I’d get that job.’

‘As a prostitute?’ said the mayor, looking a trifle shocked. ‘Never. You… you’re far too refined.’

‘Am I?’ said Karen, fluffing her hair and adopting a sultry voice. Slowly she pirouetted between the staff and the mayor, clearly emphasizing her figure. ‘Think it over.’

The mayor had never thought much about Karen since hiring her a few months before the election. He had known her mother, Naomi, long before his own marriage - known her mother very well - and enjoyed her, a reckless, wild woman, a suffragette actually, who had advocated the cause of female independence. Naomi had married an artist and Karen had been their only child. The artist had died when Karen was quite young, and last year Naomi herself had died of tuberculosis. Karen, grown up, had studied stenographic skills, and when she had heard that Mayor Harrison needed a new secretary, she had applied, invoking the name of her mother. Harrison had meant to hire a male secretary, as most executives did, although young women were beginning to enjoy a new freedom and gain a foothold in the workplace.

Harrison had hired Karen, not only because he could not resist the memory of her mother but because Karen had seemed so self-assured and competent.

No, Harrison had not thought about her much after hiring her, and he certainly had not had the time to look at her carefully.

Now he did look at her carefully as she stood before him in the centre of his office. Examining her from head to toe, he was quite astonished at what he saw. Karen Grant was tall, perhaps five feet seven. Her silken brunette hair was long, her widely spaced grey-green eyes, overly delicate nostrils, generous rosy lower lip, attractive and pouting — somehow it all added up not to a look of refinement but to something wanton. With the clothes women wore, their shapes were none too revealed - although Karen’s blouse was somewhat diaphanous, hinting at full, young breasts. Her sewn-down pleated skirt clung to the contours of full hips and thighs, and draped closely around slender calves.

The mayor knitted his brow and pondered on what was before him.

An Everleigh girl. No doubt she could pass. But still -

‘All right, Karen,’ the mayor said, ‘I take it all back. I’m sure they’d find you qualified at the Everleigh Club. You could fit in as one of their more attractive girls and get a lot of information for me. But have you any idea of what you’d be letting yourself in for?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘You’d not be behaving as a secretary. You’d be performing as a prostitute.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ said Karen. ‘I’d have no problem with whatever happened. You only need one witness for proof. I think I can manage it. After I was assigned a customer, I’m sure I could get out of it with sufficient proof of what the Everleighs are up to. If I couldn’t, well, e’est la guerre. I’ll still feel pure when I come back to you with the evidence.’

‘Evidence,’ repeated the mayor, savouring the possibility. He sat up. ‘I don’t know. I might let you go ahead, if you think you can get a job there.’

‘I’d like to try.’

‘How would you get the job? Just walk in?’

‘I’m more clever than that, Mayor. There’s a Tribune reporter who I’ve become friendly with. He’s covering City Hall. Thomas Ostrow.’

‘Oh, yes. Good man.’

‘I’ve heard him speak of Aida and Minna Everleigh. He seems to know them well, and he has the run of the Club. I’ll ask him to help me.’

Mayor Harrison smiled. ‘Mr Ostrow might be startled at what you’re proposing.’

‘I’ll let him know that underneath I am that kind of girl. And that I want some of the big money, no matter what it costs. Let me try it, Mayor. What do you say?’

‘What can I say - except go to it and good luck!’

When Thomas Ostrow arrived at the Everleigh Club with Karen Grant, he left her comfortably seated in the foyer and went on alone to keep his appointment with Minna Everleigh.

Across from Minna, the political reporter from the Chicago Tribune said, ‘You want to know why I came to see you?’

‘You never have to have a reason, Tom.’

‘But I have one,’ said Ostrow. ‘She’s outside. Minna, I have a sensational girl for you.’

‘That’s like bringing coals to Newcastle. Still, I’m always interested in someone new. What about her?’

‘Her name’s Karen Grant. She worked briefly in a house in New Orleans. Then she decided to make a change, so she came to Chicago. She had a letter of introduction to me from an old newspaper friend down South.’

‘Has she been working in any house in Chicago?’ asked Minna.

‘No. She tried to go straight. Went to work as a clerk in a milliner’s shop here. You know what they pay.’

‘Starvation wages.’

‘So then she came to me. She decided to be one of the girls again. She doesn’t want to work just anywhere. She only wants to work in the Everleigh Club. She wanted to know if I knew the Everleigh sisters. I told her she’d come to the right person, and that I’d introduce her to you. But that’s not the point, Minna. As you know, I have an eye for the ladies. This Karen Grant is the best-looking young woman I’ve seen in years. I thought you might want to have a look at her.’

‘Of course I do,’ said Minna. ‘But I have no place for her right now. My limit is thirty girls. However, the other day,

one of the girls — Fanny, you remember her — went for a walk and didn’t come back. Now she may come back, and if she does I’m full up again. If she doesn’t, there may be an opening.’

‘Well, Minna, see for yourself.’

Minna stood up. ‘I will, in a few minutes. Tell you what, you take Karen to room seven upstairs. Fanny’s room. Have her wait for me. You can come back down and have yourself a drink.’

‘Thanks, Minna.’

‘I may be thanking you, Tom,’ Minna said.

Ostrow left Minna in her office, and went off to the foyer to find Karen Grant and take her upstairs to await Minna Everleigh.

Karen Grant was seated on the brass bed in the boudoir, her apprehension mounting. The door of the bedroom opened and a small, attractive, auburn-haired woman entered.

Immediately, Karen came to her feet somewhat nervously, as the woman approached her with hand extended.

‘I’m Minna Everleigh.’

Karen shook her hand. ‘I’m Karen Grant.’

Minna sized her up briefly. Karen was shapely in a street dress of grey cheviot with a white mohair blouse, a white vest with pearl buttons and a wide suede belt. ‘Not bad,’ Minna observed. ‘Despite all that padding you’re wearing, I think Tom Ostrow is right. You’re a well-put-together young lady. Do take a chair. Let’s talk a minute.’

‘Very well.’ Karen sat down in an easy chair, while Minna dropped into a chair across from her.

‘Now then,’ began Minna, ‘I rarely take on a girl if she is over twenty-three. My customers like young ones. I often think they are mistaken, but that’s what they like, so I cater to their wishes. How old are you, Karen?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Tom tells me you’ve had experience. Amateurs wouldn’t

do well here. Our customers are generally men of the world. They know a good romp when they meet one. That’s why they leave their wives and come here.’

The talk - the reality of what she might be getting into — was unsettling, but Karen tried hard to quell her nervousness. ‘I’m experienced enough, Miss Everleigh,’ Karen said. ‘I had a fair amount of activity in New Orleans. I … I don’t remember a man who was dissatisfied with me.’