"All right."
"Six tomorrow evening, then."
It was almost sunset Wednesday when Doc drove out through the Shadow fire, and full dark when he reached the restaurant, a small place, dark and quiet. He gave his name, and was taken to an enclosed booth that might have been the only one in the place.
A few minutes later, there was a mechanical whirr. A motorized wheelchair appeared. Norma Jean was in it, working a control with her right hand. A tall man in a dark suit walked a step behind.
Doc stood up. Norma Jean smiled. The man in the suit looked hard at Doc.
Norma Jean said, "I'll see you later, Eddie," and the man vanished. "Oh, come on, sit down." She laughed. "/ sure am."
She was wearing a navy-blue jacket over a low-necked white blouse, a skirt just to her knees, ankle-strapped high heels with little silver buckles.
"Can I-" He reached for the push handles on the chair.
"Nope. Sit." She drove the chair up to the table, and he sat down. He saw that her left arm was in a sling inside the jacket, the hand pale and limp against her chest.
A waiter slid out of the dark. "Just some tea, please," Norma Jean said. "How about you, Doc?"
"Tea's fine."
"I miss coffee," she said, once the waiter had gone. She settled back in the chair. "I wondered what you'd look like. Anna-you know, on the switchboard-said you were red Irish. Are you really?" Her voice was flat, neither musical nor unpleasant; Doc supposed her wind must be short.
He touched his hair. "Really."
She laughed. "I meant Irish, not red."
"Somewhere way back, I think. Is your family Irish?"
"Polish and German. But that's away back too. Seven generations in the city, I think it's seven. We made it to the Gold Coast in the Twenties. My great-grandfather was in the Dion O'Banion gang."
"Yeah?" he said, and then wondered if it was the wrong topic.
But she grinned and said "The real thing. My granddad, his son, used to tell me stories about it. See, when he was little-Granddad, I mean-his dad wouldn't talk to him about the gang days. He'd only say 'I just drove a car, I never shot nobody,' and that it was all made up for the movies.
"But when the war started-you know, with the Japanese and the Germans?"
"Yeah."
"Well, Granddad was going to sign up, because, you know, everybody was. Then his dad said, 'We're gonna go on a trip first.' Granddad said, 'How long?' 'Two weeks oughta do it. Can't win the war in two weeks, can't lose it either.' So they got in the car-it was a big Cadillac, that's what Great-granddad always drove, they called him Cadillac Billy-and they went up to Wisconsin. Granddad thought it was a hunting trip, or maybe ice fishing.
"They got to this lodge in the woods. It belonged to a couple of guys from the mob days. There were pictures and newspaper clippings all over the walls, of everybody-Al Capone, Moran, O'Banion, Torrio. They said John Dillinger was trying to get back there, to hide, when the G-Men shot him.
"And they had this arsenal — Tommy guns and shotguns and pistols and grenades. And Granddad spent two weeks learning how to use them all. And to fight with a knife; he could scrap okay, any kid could in those days, but this was serious. His dad said, 'Two weeks ain't much, but it's better than you're gonna learn from the Army, 'cause most of them guys never had to do it for real. Unless they were like me.' He even made out a list of guys who'd been in the gangs, who Granddad could trust if he needed help. Granddad said he burned the list after the war, because too many of the men on it were heroes then. You want some more tea?"
"Sure," Doc said. When it came, Norma Jean said, "Could you dump two spoons of sugar into mine, and stir it up? This one-wing stuff is no good."
"Your arm's going to be okay, isn't it?"
"Oh, yeah! I didn't mean that-you know I wouldn't have it at all if it weren't for you. The) said it may always be a little weak. but I've got therapy three days a week, and Granddad-well, let me finish that story."
"Please."
"Well," she said, a little more softly, "Granddad says that, when they were up there in the woods, fighting and shooting, it was the first time he really felt like his dad loved him, you know? 'Cause he was teaching him what he knew to stay alive in the war. But then he joined the Marines, and he went off and fought, and after he'd fought for a while… he understood that his dad'd loved him all the time before-hadn't wanted his son to grow up with guns and knives and wars all the time."
Doc waited. She didn't say any more. He said, "Your Granddad must be quite a guy… I mean, is he still alive?"
"Oh, yeah," she said. "He saw me every day I was in the hospital, and he helps me with my PT. He says I ought to learn to shoot a bow and arrow-you know, an Amazon." She looked down at herself, where the chest wound was hidden. Then she grinned again. "When I got so I could sit up, he said he was making plans to bust me out of the hospital-you know, go over the wall at midnight, like in the movies. He made me promise that if he was ever in, I'd-" Her voice caught. "-crash him out. Funny thing to say, huh."
Doc flashed on the end of High Sierra, with Bogart shot down in the desert, and the girl trying to understand his last words, asking what it meant when a man crashes out.
That's a funny thing to ask, sister, the cop replied. // means he s free.
He had a sudden terrible certainty of what Norma Jean's grandfather had meant.
"You could meet him," Norma Jean was saying. "I think he'd like to meet you. I'm sure he would. He's never really been to Town, and keeps saying he should. He calls it Old Town-you know the song? 'There'll be a hot time in Old Town tonight'…?"
"In the old town."
"No. That was later, when people weren't singing about this city anymore. When the song was written, it was about Old Town here. Really."
"I didn't know. Sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry about. Even people who grew up here don't know that. Lucius Birdsong, the reporter, told me. Do you know Lucius?"
"Yes."
"Oh, of course you do-someone said he wrote about you. He's such a swell guy, but, you know, so odd-I mean, you wanna carry a torch, okay, but do it for someone who's at least on your side of the street.
"
Doc waited, but that seemed to be the end of that discussion. Then she said, quite from nowhere, "You living alone?"
He took her meaning at once, somewhat to his own surprise. "I'm seeing somebody. Pretty regular."
He saw lights fade within her. "I'm glad," she said, earnestly. "Do you ever see Chloe Yadis?"
"Sometimes at the club."
"I heard one of her girls ran away. Jolie-Marie, the little one. I mean, petite, you know."
Doc nodded stupidly.
"My mom would die," Norma Jean said, to no one in particular, and then painfully, "No, she'd die"
Then Doc understood. Norma Jean was stuck in the World now. and she wanted back-back with Mr. Patrise, or somebody close to him, like Doc. Even working for Chloe the madam would be a way back to the bright lights.