Page 53 of Fade Out
Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between them. They were both black with wide lapels.
Cyril assessed me. “Hmmmm, 42L, I think. I’ll be right back.” But first he pulled at the waist of my jeans for a second. I nearly slapped him. “Smaller in the waist.”
He scurried off.
To Gloria, I said, “Wouldn’t this have been easier if we just met your friends for a drink before the event?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s a charity. For cancer. We’re not upsetting the Buckmans until they’ve written their check. Besides, I’ve already had my daughter make a few calls. I told you they were friends… well, apparently Hilly has made new friends and has been dropping all her old ones. And to top it off, she’s in love.”
“With Possum,” I guessed.
“Apparently. Although I think it’s ridiculous. No woman could love a man named Possum.”
“Any woman who marries a grown man with a nickname is a fool,” the fashion director added.
“Adelaide!” Gloria said, “I might need to steal that.”
“Consider it yours.”
Cyril came back with a tux, a crisp white shirt and a box of studs. Then he led me to a changing room that was nearly as large as my apartment. He hung the tux on a hook and handed me a plastic bag with the Walton Richards logo on it.
“What’s this for?”
“Your clothes,” he said, trying to give his Chicago accent an upper class spin. “I’m told you’re going directly to the event.”
He walked out and I stared at the bag. People were giving me plastic bags to put my clothes in a lot lately. I started to change.
Did I really need to go to this thing?I was pretty sure the girl in the box was Hillary Buckman and that Mike “Possum” Mazur had killed her, possibly at Rita’s instruction. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like being “pretty sure” about anything was going to get me out of trouble.
I was also pretty sure Rita and Possum were hiding out at Marina City. But I couldn’t prove it and I wasn’t sure I could weasel my way into the building. And if I did… well, my guns had been taken in evidence. Rita still had hers. I didn’t relish the idea of being shot at again.
I had the tuxedo on. My T-shirt and jeans were crammed into the bag. The suit fit well. Cyril wasn’t bad at guessing my size. I went back out into the store so they could all stare at me.
Gloria and Adelaide were talking about whether Jane Byrne would be at the dinner. There were rumors about her challenging the new mayor in the primary, even though that was almost two years off. Cyril came over and began checking the tuxedo’s fit.
“It’s close enough,” I said. He ignored me and put a pin into the waistband. Then he went to get a cummerbund and bow tie. I subtly slipped the pin out and dropped it on the floor.
“I think the mayoriscoming… she’d have a lot of nerve—” Adelaide was saying.
I interrupted. “Gloria, we don’t have much time, could you tell me more about the Buckmans?”
“They’re a lovely couple. Mid-fifties, good people really. They had a tough time during the recession of eighty-two. Elliot made a number of bad investments. At first they thought 618 was a godsend. It didn’t turn out that way.”
“If they’re broke then what are they doing going to an expensive shindig like this?”
“You don’t have any idea how money is made, do you?”
In all honesty, I didn’t.
“It’s never hard to make money when you’re in the room with the right people,” Adelaide explained. “The challenge in life is getting into that room.”
“Oh, I need to steal that too,” Gloria said.
“That one you can’t have. We don’t want the riff-raff figuring out how things are done.”
Cyril came back with two sets of cummerbunds and ties. One set was brilliant red, the other a silvery gray. The women studied them closely.
“I don’t know, Gloria, don’t you think they should be black? He’s going to stand out like a peacock in either of these.”
