True Crime by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online

said yes, and she poured me some, black.
    “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said.
    I found a smile for her. “That’s hard to believe. What did you mean, Polly was married?”
    “What do you think? She’s divorced. Has been for two or three months. Why don’t you stop back when we’re not so busy and we’ll get acquainted?”

 

     
A NNA

6
     
    The woman who ran the tavern on the corner of Willow and Halsted wasn’t around, but the apron behind the bar traded me his boss lady’s home address for a buck. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty—unless you have a buck.
    She lived about a mile north of the bar, at 2420 North Halsted, on the second floor of a big graystone three-flat. The ground-floor was unlocked; I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. She answered on the third knock, just barely cracking open the door, peering out at me with one large dark eye, startlingly dark against the white sliver of her face.
    “Who are you, and what do you want?” she said. She had a low, melodious voice, and a Garbo-like middle-European accent.
    “I’m Nate Heller,” I said, taking off my hat. “The detective. Remember?”
    The dark eye narrowed.
    “We met over in East Chicago, a couple times. And I was in your bar not so long ago. With Barney Ross?”
    The dark eye widened and what little I could see of her redrouged mouth seemed to smile.
    Then the door opened and Anna, a big dark-haired handsome woman in her early forties in a gray tailored suit with white frills at the neck, gestured for me to come in.
    I did, and she took my hat and placed it on a small table in the entryway.
    “Mr. Heller,” she said, smiling, but politely. Shrewdly? Cautiously. “What brings you here? And how did you locate me? I’ve only lived in this apartment a few weeks.”
    “I’m a former Chicago cop, Anna,” I said, pleasantly. “I know all about bribing people.”
    Her smile was reserved yet genuinely amused; she gestured again. “Come,” she said. “Sit.”
    She showed me into a big living room where a thick carpet and dark expensive furniture bespoke money. And why not? There was always dough to be had when you ran a bar—particularly when you had B-girls and rooms upstairs.
    “America’s treating you good, Anna,” I said, seated on a well-stuffed sofa, glancing around.
    “I’ve been good to it,” Anna said, seated primly in a chair nearby. It was warm in here, though not stifling; there was no electric fan, but the front windows were open. Anna seemed not to notice the heat. A little yellow bird in a standing cage was sitting silently nearby, taking the heat less well than Anna; too damn hot to chirp.
    For a Romanian immigrant—probably an illegal one—Anna was doing very well indeed. She had to be: she was operating in Paddy Bauler’s ward, the forty-third, where nothing came free.
    “You wouldn’t be fronting for somebody, would you, Anna?”
    Her smile faded, but she wasn’t exactly frowning. “That’s a little forward, Mr. Heller, for a guest who hasn’t announced his intentions.”
    She had that oddly formal, calculated manner of speaking of someone who’s learned English as a second language; I found it kind of charming—and somehow unsettling.
    “You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of my business what your business arrangements are. Say, do you own this building?”
    My impertinence got another genuine smile out of her; her teeth were very white. And, unlike Anna, not first generation.
    “I might,” she said. “It was my understanding you were no longer with the police—”
    “I’m not,” I shrugged. “But I’m still a cop. Just because you go private, that doesn’t take the cop out of you.”
    “It was also my understanding that you weren’t on friendly terms with the police.”
    I shrugged again. “We try to stay out of each other’s way. I still have friends on the pickpocket detail. But you can’t testify against cops and not make some other cops not like