Tom Daly was to me a “real” reporter; he always knew whom to call, where to go. More, Tom had a brother on the police detective force; thus Tom Daly belonged to that inner world I then thought of as “they”— the people who were really a part of the operation of things.
I spotted Daly in one of the phone booths that lined the wall. He had a leg sprawled through the partly open door, and kept tapping his toe as he worked on the difficult phone call. I heard a man’s voice, a thread of it escaping from Tom’s receiver, “No, no, a drowned boy—how could it be Paulie? We have just heard from . . . those people. We are sure our own boy is safe.”
Tom cut in. What had he heard? How had he heard?
“Please don’t put anything in the paper as yet. Please, you understand? Your editor gave us his word of honor—your chief, Mr. Reese. Please allow us this opportunity. In a few hours we hope it will be all over. We will give you the full story the moment our boy is returned to our hands.” The voice was not exactly pleading; it retained a reminder of authority. A rich man, a millionaire. A self-made man who could control himself and deal with a dreadful emergency. Tom promised cooperation.
“Thank you. I appreciate it in this terrible thing. But this other boy you speak of—I am sorry. A poor drowned boy. I am sorry for his parents too, but he cannot be our boy. Our boy is safe. We have a message. Besides, this boy you say has glasses. Paulie does not wear glasses.”
Still trying to keep the father on the line, Tom Daly protested that although the Globe would cooperate, we might be of real help if we were meanwhile trusted with the fullest details. Glancing up at me, he said into the phone, “Mr. Kessler, we are sending a reporter out to look at the poor kid that was drowned out there in South Chicago, and if we could have a picture of your son to go by . . . Yes, I know you said he doesn’t wear glasses, but there might always be a mistake.”
He listened, foot tapping, glancing up at me again. Tom had a round, pinkish face, the kind that is typed as good-natured Irish. Now he was evading telling where he got wind of the kidnaping—“of course we have our exclusive sources of information”—and he was trying to find out how the mother was taking it. Then with a final offer of our help, he hung up. Without emerging from the booth, Tom told me all that was known. Charles Kessler was a South Side millionaire. Last night his boy, Paulie, had not come home from school. They had searched for him. About ten o’clock someone had phoned the Kesslers to say that the boy was kidnaped and that there would be instructions in the morning. This morning a special-delivery letter had come demanding ten thousand dollars. The police were being kept out of it. Only the Detective Bureau had been notified, by the family lawyer, ex-Judge Wagner. Kessler seemed sure his boy was safe. “Still, you’d better take a look,” Tom said.
“How will I know if it’s he?” I asked.
Tom shrugged. I was to call him back, with a description.
So the story began, with a routine police-blotter report about a drowned boy in the Hegewisch swamp, and with an inside tip on a kidnaping. On the city editor’s desk the two items came together, belonging to the clichés of daily headlines—kidnaping, ransom, unidentified body.
And hurrying back to the I.C. I saw myself, a Red Grange of the press, open-running through Loop traffic. Would other reporters be there? Were some there already? I became tense with the dreadful fear of being scooped that permeated newspaper work, I think more then than now. Each time the train made a stop, I was almost pushing against the seat to get it going again.
We passed the university, came to the edge of the city where Chicago dissolved away into marshes and ponds, interspersed with oil tanks and steel mills.
The police station was in a section unknown to me, an area of small shops with side streets of frame houses inhabited by Polish mill workers. There was grit in the air; I could see a few licks of flame coming out of the smokestacks that rose off toward Gary—pinkish, daylight flame.
Inside the station, one glance reassured me there were no other reporters. I assumed the casual air of the knowing newsman. “Say, Sarge, I’m from the Globe. You got the kid they found drowned in Hegewisch?”
The policeman looked at me for a moment without answering.
“I’m looking for the kid—”
“Swaboda’s Undertaking Parlor,” he said, and gave me the address. It was nearby, an ordinary store with a large rubber plant in the window. Inside, there was the roll-top desk, the leather chair, the oleo of Christ on the wall. And not a soul.
My scoop anxiety had faded; no other paper had bothered to send a reporter this far out. Conversely, the feeling of being on the verge of something big was now strong in me.
I opened the rear door. A cement-floored room, smelling like a garage. Nobody. A zinc table, covered.
There was scarcely a bump under the cloth. A child has little bulk.
I approached, and, with a sense of being a brazen newspaperman, drew back the cloth. For the truth is that until that moment I had never looked at a dead human being.
A newspaperman had to take death casually. I noted, rather with pride, that no feeling arose in me. Was this because of my role of observer, I asked myself, or was it because life had so little value in the modern world? We had shootings in the streets; we rather boasted of Chicago as a symbol of violence. And I thought of the 1918 war, when I had been a kid, and every day the headlines of the dead; the numbers had had no meaning.
The face of the child had no expression, unless it was that curious little look of self-satisfaction that children have in sleep. It was a full, soft face; the brown hair was neatly cut, and the skin showed, I thought, a texture of expensive breeding. I drew the cover farther down to find out one thing immediately. A Jewish boy. Surely Paulie Kessler?
I experienced the irrational, almost shameful sense of triumph that comes to newsmen who discover disaster. I felt an impulse to sweep the body away with me, sequester my scoop.
“Say, you!”
I jumped. Another reporter?
There stood a paunchy man in a brown suit. Hastily I asked, “You the undertaker? I’m from the Globe. The door was open so I . . . The cops said you had the boy here.”
Mr. Swaboda advanced, frowning, but not antagonistic. He was sucking at a tooth.
“Any other reporters been here?” I asked. “Any calls from the newspapers?”
“Oh. You are from the newspapers.”
“Did anybody identify this boy? Do you know who he is?”
He shook his head. “Maybe you know? In the papers?”
“They sent me out to see,” I said. “All we got is a report of a drowned boy.”
Again Swaboda shook his head. A glint of clever knowingness came into his eyes. “He is not drowned.” He pointed to the boy’s scalp, moving closer. “Even the police officer don’t see this. I am the one to show them.” Brushing back a lock of hair, the undertaker disclosed two small cuts above the forehead, clotted over, like sores.
The scarehead flashed into my mind—ABDUCTED, MURDERED. MILLIONAIRE’S SON! And this time, surely, there was a sense of exultation in me.
“Can I use your phone? I’ve got to phone my paper.”
“Help yourself.” He followed me to the roll-top desk. “You know who is this boy’s family?”
He might give away my story. I should have gone outside to phone. While hesitating, I noticed a pair of glasses on the desk, tortoise-shell. I picked them up. “They said he was wearing glasses. Are these the ones?”
The undertaker took the glasses from me and smiled again. “These are not his glasses.” He carried them into