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I’d pretty well established what was going on here; I’d already earned my client’s money—did it really matter whether Dan was her boyfriend, or just another john? Either way, she was fucking somebody who wasn’t her husband, and that’s all I’d been paid to find out. But for some reason, which I cloaked in giving my client his money’s worth, I couldn’t let go of this just yet.
    They sat at a table; I sat at the counter. We all had waffles and bacon. We all had coffee.
    Then we all went to the picture show. Viva Villa with Wallace Beery, which was playing at Balaban and Katz’s Uptown on Broadway. We didn’t sit together. And I didn’t get spotted. There were better than four thousand seats in the Uptown, all of them full; there wasn’t an air-cooled movie palace in town that wasn’t doing land-office business, and the cavernous, opulent Uptown, with its sculptures and murals and gold drapes, was no exception.
    I almost lost Polly and Dan, when the show was over; the fancy lobby was mobbed, and I had just squeezed out onto the street when I saw them pull away in a Checker cab. I caught the next cab and fell in behind them.
    Tonight, they went to his place, that fancy apartment house near the lake; maybe her room in the Malden Plaza was too cramped. Maybe she had a Murphy bed; speaking from experience, I can say that making whoopee in a Murphy bed’ll do till the real thing comes along—but Dan probably had six or seven rooms in his flat, one of which was no doubt a room with a bed in it that didn’t fall down out of a box or the wall.
    It was too ritzy a neighborhood to risk my sitting-on-the-stoop ruse, so I stayed in the cab and headed back to her place, the Malden Plaza. There I took my position on a stoop opposite and waited for Polly to come home. After two hours, I decided she probably wasn’t going to.
    So I walked over to the Wilson Arms and finally used that bed I’d paid for.
    The S & S opened at six-thirty, so I wandered across the street at seven. I’d made a decision—in my sleep apparently, because there it was in my brain when I crawled out of the sack: I was going to talk to Polly.
    I didn’t know what I was going to say—certainly not that I was a private detective checking up on her for her husband. Still, I felt the need to talk to her. To see if I could get her side of the story. Maybe even give her a break.
    Or not.
    I wasn’t sure. I just felt I somehow owed her this much. Possibly because I couldn’t remember paying her for that night over the bar on Halsted.
    I took a counter seat and a pretty brunette with a cap of curls and blue eyes came up to take my order. I asked for scrambled eggs and bacon and orange juice, and while I waited for them, I glanced around, looking for Polly. There were only two waitresses here today—the girl behind the counter, and a poor harried thing with blond hair and too many tables.
    When the brunette waitress delivered my juice, I said to her, “You’re shorthanded this morning.”
    “I’ll say,” the brunette smirked. “Our other girl called in sick today.”
    “Polly, you mean?”
    “Yeah. I don’t remember you eating here before—”
    “Sure. Bunch of times.”
    “If it’d been at the counter, I’d remember you.”
    She went away and I sipped the juice. Pretty soon she placed the eggs and bacon in front of me.
    “Toast doesn’t come with it,” she said, “but I can get you some.”
    “Please.”
    When she delivered a little plate of toast, I said, “I know you’re busy, but I wondered if I could ask you something.”
    She smirked again, but it was pleasant. “Make it quick.”
    “Does Polly have a steady boyfriend?”
    “Yeah. For the past few weeks she has.”
    “Funny,” I said. “I thought she was a married gal.”
    The waitress shrugged. “She was,” she said.
    “Was?”
    “Yeah. Excuse me, I got customers.”
    “Uh, sure. I’m sorry.”
    She came back a little later and asked me if I wanted coffee.
    I