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night with their loud parties). But this was the least classy building on Malden. Then, who was I to talk, a guy who slept in his office.
    Half an hour dragged by. There were lights on in some of the windows, but most were dark; all were open. It wasn’t good weather to keep the windows shut. It wasn’t good weather period. I felt like I was wearing the heat; like it was something I had on. Something heavy.
    Heavy like the guilt that had settled over me for having fucked pretty Polly one drunken night in a room over the bar on the corner of Willow and Halsted. And feeling guilty was stupid, as well as pointless: How was I supposed to know the little prostie would quit the business, and marry some poor putz who thought she was just a waitress or something? A pathetic chump who would then, thanks to God’s sick sense of humor, hire me to ascertain his bride’s virtue? A hardworking salt-of-the-earth salesman who wondered why his wife seemed to know things in bed that he hadn’t taught her….
    I wondered if Polly really had quit hustling. Maybe dapper Dan wasn’t a boyfriend—maybe he was a john. Maybe, like her waitress job, this was something she was up to while her hubby was on the road, something designed to fight her boredom and keep her wearing nice clothes and build a nest egg to help move ’em both into a nicer apartment.
    And if she was hustling, should I tell the husband?
    Of course I should. I wasn’t paid to decide whether or not the information I turned up was good for my client’s health; if my client paid for me finding out certain information, he deserved to get it. And brother was he going to get it.
    Maybe this was innocent; maybe they were in there having tea and milk. Polly wasn’t necessarily over there boffing that guy in the glasses. Right. He probably took ’em off first.
    What the hell. I already had enough to tell my client what he didn’t want to know. I could get up off this stoop and walk over to the Wilson Avenue El and go back to the office and get a good night’s sleep, and to hell with traveling salesmen and traveling salesmen’s wives and guys that boffed traveling salesmen’s wives.
    At that point, after having been in there an hour, the dapper Dan came out of the building and walked up to Wilson Avenue and hailed a cab.
    I hailed one, too.
    Followed him to a nice three-story apartment building, a big brick place that probably had flats running to six and eight rooms. It was on Pine Grove Avenue, near the lake, near Lincoln Park. Dapper Dan had dough—more dough than a traveling salesman, that was for sure.
    He went in, and my cabbie drove on.
    I had him drop me at the El station. I’d planned to stay overnight at the room I’d rented, at the Wilson Arms, but now I couldn’t see any point in it. I did figure to give my client some more of my time, tomorrow, but I also figured to follow Polly around in my car, to hell with this cab noise.
    So I didn’t return to Uptown till near seven the next night. I spent the day in Evanston investigating an insurance claim; why sit in that little hotel room, looking out the window at Polly’s sandwich shop? It wasn’t going anywhere. And neither would she, till after work.
    My ’29 Chevy coupe with me in it was parked down the street when she came out of the S & S just after seven, wearing a light blue dress and a darker blue hat that fit snug to her head, and waited for her boyfriend to show up. That’s the way it seemed, at least: her behavior today was no different than yesterday.
    Neither was dapper Dan’s.
    With one exception: while he arrived in a cab again, he shooed it on, and they walked arm in arm, east on Wilson. He looked jaunty, with a straw boater and a white shirt with dark pinstripes and a blue tie and pale yellow slacks.
    I got out of the car and shadowed them.
    They walked under the El and across to a waffle shop on Sheridan. It was a small place, but at this point I figured I could risk them making me. After all,