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“Um . . . it’s Miss Dorsey, but call me Emma, everyone does, and it’s about my boyfriend . . . my fiancé, I mean. I’m still getting used to that.” She plucked off her gloves and put them in her purse, then tucked it next to her. No engagement ring, so the change must have been recent.
“Congratulations. Who’s the lucky man?”
“Joe Graedon.” She briefly pulled in her lower lip, her breath giving a hitch as she waited for a response.
“Don’t think I’ve met him.”
“Um . . . yes, you have. He works for Gordy. At the Nightcrawler.”
“Lots of guys do.”
“You might know him as Foxtrot Joe?”
“Ah.” I tried not to give a reaction, but she was watching and saw what she expected.
“He loves me,” she said, as though that explained everything.
Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world, though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to the general misery. I’m usually in favor of love, the good kind, the kind that’s between me and my girl, but Bobbi and I were a match. I couldn’t see Emma and Foxtrot Joe passing each other on the street, much less walking hand in hand in the same direction. She was plump and cheery, he was hard edges, as personable and tough as a brick wall, but crazier matches have happened.
He worked collections with Gino Desanctis, who answered directly to Northside Gordy, who ran the Nightcrawler Club and a large chunk of territory in Chicago. Gordy was a good friend of mine, one of the few who knew about the vampire stuff.
Relations sorted, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“Joe did something stupid. He did it for me, for us. He’s crazy about me, and it’s not really his fault, but if I make it right, maybe Gordy won’t . . . do anything.”
A well-considered euphemism, that. It covered all manner of mayhem from a severe bawling out to sinking a bullet into the head of an offender as a cautionary lesson to impart wisdom and prudence upon potential offenders.
Gordy was capable of ordering up all kinds of havoc when required, though I never stuck around to watch if I could help it. He also owed me a few favors. Emma might have heard and hoped I could work a miracle for her.
“What did Joe do?”
He’d dropped from sight with money that was not his. When a collector goes missing—along with cash—guys like Gordy tend to get homicidally annoyed. While the gangs had no problem skimming a share off the various businesses of the city, they took a dim and grim view when one of their own skimmed some for himself. Joe’s continued employment, not to mention his ability to keep breathing, was in peril.
Collectors worked in pairs so they could keep an eye o
n each other and not get ideas, but Joe had earned a reputation for reliability, so his boss, Desanctis, let him loose on his own once in a while.
“Then,” said Miss Dorsey, “Joe started talking about us getting married and how we didn’t have enough money, but I thought we did. I don’t need a fancy ring. A plain gold band was good enough for my mother and it’s good enough for me, but Joe said he wanted only the best.”
It didn’t sound right. She was sincere, but none of this tender consideration for a prospective bride went with what I knew about Foxtrot. He had gotten the name from the way he’d roughhoused a slow-to-pay gambler twice his size. The larger man took a swing; Joe took a swing. The gambler staggered back several strangely graceful steps before slamming into a slot machine, which fell on him when he hit the floor. It knocked him out for a week, and when he woke up he didn’t remember the debt. He still had to pay it—and for the machine. Joe hung around the hospital and made sure. After that, Joe had only to smile at deadbeats and ask if they wanted to dance.
“It’s not like he took the money that was going to his boss,” she went on. “He had people put a dollar or more on top of that, and it added up. He wasn’t stealing, this was more like getting a tip.”
Foxtrot raised a total of eight hundred bucks, which gave me an idea of just how profitable and wide-ranging an operation it was. He’d collected almost a year’s pay in less than a week. I was in the wrong business, what with trying to be honest.
“A tip.” My tone was completely neutral.
“He did it for me. He’s crazy about me. I told him not to, but he just couldn’t help himself.”
If he was getting tips on top of regular collections, no one would say a word. A few bucks going to Foxtrot was cheaper than a hospital stay.
“Look, if Gordy doesn’t know about these tips, then—”
“He does know. Someone complained last night to him, now Gino Desanctis has people looking for Joe. That’s why I asked you to lock the door. They’ve been watching my place, I guess to see if he came by. I sneaked out with my landlady’s family. They were going to evening Mass, and I just stayed in the middle of them and got on the El. I was going to the Nightcrawler, but I got so shaky and scared. Then I remembered Bobbi talking about how you sometimes helped people, so I took a chance that you might be open tonight. But the place was dark, and then I saw the lights in the upstairs and—”
“What do you need me for?” I could guess, but she’d worked herself up to it, and it wouldn’t be polite to take it from her.
“I was hoping you could go with me to see Gordy. I—I don’t think I could get the story out with Gordy watching me.”
