Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “But why? I’m not news.”

  “As you point out, this kind of gossip isn’t my usual fare and I am a bit reluctant to go forward unless…” He paused.

  “Unless? Unless what?”

  “It would be very useful to me to have a real insider. Someone privy to private conversations in Ed Kelly’s office. There’s always been rumors of bid rigging, outrageous overages, but Kelly himself has been able to dodge any indictment. I will bring that jumped-up Mick down!”

  “You want me to betray Ed?” Oh my God, he was trying to enlist me against Ed.

  “Betray is a strong word. Truth is what I want. Only the truth, Miss Kelly.”

  13

  “You’ve got to get something on him,” Maurine Watkins said to me. Two thousand miles away in Hollywood, her voice was clear, as if we were sitting together at Henrici’s. Except this call was costing me more than five lunches, but I couldn’t think of who else to turn to. I’d walked out of Wilcox’s house sick to my stomach.

  I’ll kill Toots and Henrietta, I thought, but, of course, I’d end up arrested and in Cook County Jail with my story on the front page, and Ed and Margaret dragged in to the “Killer Cousin” case.

  The sensible part of me said go right to Ed. But how could I tell him my, well, indiscretions were threatening his job and, worse, his wife’s sanity? Margaret would not be able to bear this kind of exposure. Maybe I could just find some harmless information in the office and pass it to Wilcox.

  Oh, for God’s sake, Nora, I told myself. You’re making up a plot for some movie with you playing Evelyn Nesbit’s role in I Want to Forget; and that’s when I called Maurine. After her play had been made into a successful movie starring Phyllis Haver, she’d moved to Hollywood. Maurine had written telling me Cecil B. DeMille, who had directed the movie, had offered to help her find work as a screenwriter. He’d said that pretty soon all the movies would be talkies, and they would need somebody who could come up with snappy dialogue. Here was a woman who’d attended four colleges ready to put words in the mouths of working-class girls who all seemed to start out as heroines but end up as victims. Mmm.

  I’d written back asking whether she was still going to make all her characters Irish when she had no earthly idea of what we were really like. Her answering letter said she gave the audience what they wanted and that ended our correspondence. But Maurine was a sharp cookie no question, and had had her own run-ins with Wilcox. Plus she’d sent me her phone number in the last letter. “My office at the Fox Studio,” she’d written. A bit of bragging there, but now she answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Hope I’m not interfering with your writing,” I said, and that got her going on the tussles she was having with this fellow named John Ford, who was going to direct the movie she was writing, called Up the River, about escaped convicts.

  “Ford’s a real Mick,” she said, “and is teamed up with this chowder-head actor named Spencer Tracy, and they’re not crazy about the other star, a guy named Humphrey Bogart, who’s a bit of a stiff. I tried to get the part for young Clark Gable, the actor who played Amos Hart in Chicago on Broadway. But Ford and he didn’t click and—”

  I stopped her.

  “Listen, Maurine, this is costing me a fortune and I’ve never heard of any of these people. I’m really in trouble—I need your advice.” So I told her about Wilcox and his threats. “And the worst part is that he thinks he’s doing God’s work—saving the white Anglo Saxon race.” I repeated as best I could Wilcox’s wacky scientific theories trying to get Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean straight.

  “Of course he’s right,” Maurine said, “but that doesn’t mean he can torture you.”

  “What do you mean right? Wilcox is a bigot, dressing up his prejudice in fancy phrases and maps and charts.”

  “You should read the book, Nora. We studied it at Radcliffe. The Nordic race is superior, but there’s also a place for you and the others. My play, Chicago, would never have been as popular if Roxie and Velma were Protestants.”

  “But they were, Maurine. I mean in real life they were two farm girls whose families came from that old colonial stock that makes up your so-called great race.”

  “Which is why I had to change their names. Audiences just wouldn’t believe that women from their backgrounds would become murderers.”

  “Maurine, would you ever listen to yourself? You’re making no sense at all.” Oh my God, did she secretly agree with all of Wilcox’s nonsense?

  “Nora,” she said, “I have a script meeting to go to. You want my help with Wilcox? Here’s what you should do.” And then she made her suggestion that I get something on him. “Fight fire with fire.”

  “But, Maurine, his whole life is that damn newspaper. You should see how he lives, or doesn’t live,” I said.

  “Does he eat? Have a roof over his head?” she asked.

  “Yes. So what?”

  “So he’s not supporting himself and paying rent on twenty-five cents a copy.”

  “He lives in a bungalow off Nelson. I think he owns it.”

  “Even more reason to find out how he affords the mortgage.”

  “Maybe it’s a family home that he inherited.”

  “Easiest thing in the world to find out. Go down to the county clerk’s office. Look up the deed. Check the tax rolls.”

  “Maurine, I don’t want anyone to know I’m interested in Wilcox.”

  “You think the girls in the office care? Ask for Alice. Bring her a strudel from Dinkel’s Bakery.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Start with the money. Remember people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and Wilcox has been launching boulders for a long time.”

  “Thanks, Maurine. Thanks. If there’s ever anything I can do for you.”

  “Well, maybe there is. They’ve got Claire Luce to be in this picture and…”

  Claire Luce? I certainly knew who she was. Came to Chicago in the cast of every big Broadway hit. A beautiful dancer. Very elegant.

  “She’s really not right for the character of Julie Field, who’s supposed to be a tough Irish moll in a woman’s prison who falls in love with a convict from the men’s prison, and—”

  “So make her a society lady or something.”

  “No. Not what the audience wants.”

  “Why are your characters always incarcerated, Maurine?”

  “Women behind bars sell.”

  “So maybe I should murder Wilcox,” I said, “and then Henrietta and Toots.…”

  Silence.

  “I’m joking, Maurine.”

  “Well if you do kill them I can sell the film rights for you.”

  * * *

  Tell them. Tell Ed and Margaret, the sensible part of myself kept repeating. Let Ed figure this out. But I can’t, I just can’t. Instead I called Wilcox from the payphone in the drugstore at the Drake Hotel, and now I was quoting Maurine-like dialogue.

  “I’m onto something big,” I said. “Give me a few more days.”

  I bought two strudels and went to the county clerk’s office in the basement of city hall.

  “Thanks,” Alice Murphy said to me as she took the wrapped packages. “All the girls like something sweet with our coffee. Now what is that you want?”

  Half an hour later Alice brought me Wilcox’s deed and the tax rolls from 4400 North St. Louis Avenue. In fifteen minutes I found out Wilcox owned his bungalow free and clear. Just bought it last year. Alice came in and looked over my shoulder.

  “Unusual that he has no mortgage. Must have paid cash. Want me to check out his bank account?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sure. My cousin works at the Harris Bank. When we get somebody who’s not paying their taxes I give her a call and she finds out whether they’re really broke, or just reluctant. Let’s look at Wilcox’s property taxes.”

  She turned a few pages in the file. “Well, this is interesting. He bought it at a tax sale, after the guy who built it fo
r his family got behind in his taxes. But look at this note. Wilcox wrote to us fingering Anderson, the original owner of the property, for non-payment. Not a nice person your Mr. Wilcox.”

  “Reverend Wilcox,” I said.

  “Reverend?” she said. “Wait a minute.” She was back in twenty minutes. “I looked him up in our tax exempt rolls. Wilcox lists his address as a house of worship, so he doesn’t have to pay taxes.”

  “It didn’t seem like a church to me,” I said.

  “Tax fraud is a crime,” Alice said. “Here.” She gave me her cousin’s name and number.

  “Laura’s partial to Dinkel’s cinnamon rolls.”

  * * *

  “He’s loaded,” Laura told me. “Has almost thirty thousand in a savings account. And deposits a thousand dollars in cash on the first of every month.”

  So, somebody was bankrolling Wilcox. But who? And would knowing that help me? I mean, it wasn’t against the law to get money and maybe he was operating some kind of a small church. But the whole thing was odd, no question.

  * * *

  I waited for Wilcox at the Buffalo Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Irving and Pulaski, only blocks from his house. I had been very mysterious on the telephone to him. Said I had information and the confirming paperwork. I was surprised when he suggested this place. Most ice cream parlors were fronts for speakeasies, but the Buffalo was the real thing. Wooden booths, a marble soda fountain, and, to underline its innocence, little angels decorated the walls.

  “Could I have a hot fudge sundae with peppermint ice cream please?” I asked the waiter. On our last outing I’d taken the Kelly kids to a place called Petersen’s and had the most delicious ice cream, full of chips of peppermint candy, covered with a dense chocolate sauce, and, well, I honestly felt I needed the courage this total indulgence would give me.

  “No,” the waiter said to me. “We have chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. Best in Chicago, all you need.” He looked as if he indulged a bit himself. His stomach was a prosperous mound under the white shirt, and his moustache had a few white specks in it. He carried a linen napkin over his arm.

  “This a Greek place. We Greeks invented ice cream. We know what’s good.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, “but…”

  “What is it with you? You a troublemaker?”

  “No. But what’s wrong with being a little bit creative?”

  “You are a troublemaker. John, John,” he called out, and another man, who must have been his brother because they had the same shape and facial hair, came over.

  “What’s the matter, George?” he said.

  “Peppermint. She asked me for peppermint. Only need stuff like that when the ice cream itself is no good.”

  “Look,” I said, “I didn’t mean to start anything, but, it’s just that, do you know Petersen’s in Oak Park? They…” and George took the napkin, hit his own arm, and then the table. I pulled back as he thwacked along with each word.

  “Oak Park. What do they know in Oak Park. Couldn’t last in Chicago. We’re the best in Chicago. Make the best. Three flavors. All made here. Great toppings, all from our kitchen,” and then he pointed to a row of silver mixers, “malted milk the best.”

  “Easy, George, easy,” the other brother, John, said to him. “Is her first time. She doesn’t know. We show her.”

  Well, within minutes a mélange, one of Madame Simone’s words, appeared before me. Three tulip-shaped glass bowls, one with a scoop of chocolate, the next with vanilla and the third with strawberry. A hard shell of caramel topped the chocolate ice cream, a large dollop of fudge covered the vanilla, and butterscotch sauce swirled over the strawberry. Peaks of whipped cream swirled over each sundae with cherries stuck on the summit.

  “I couldn’t possibly eat all this,” I started, and then stopped, because who was standing above the booth? Only Wilcox himself.

  “Disgusting,” he said right out loud. “Can’t you people control any of your appetites?”

  “But I didn’t…,” I tried again.

  “Ah sit down, take a load off,” George said to Wilcox, who did.

  “Your usual?” George asked him. He nodded, and George said to me, “Always orders the same thing. A chocolate malt, with extra syrup, extra malt, and”—he pursed his lips—“chocolate ice cream. Not a good idea. You need vanilla to balance the flavors.” He shrugged and walked away.

  Now I wasn’t about to dig into my sundaes with Wilcox staring at me. But then John, the brother, was back, saying to me, “Taste, taste.”

  I started with the caramel chocolate. “Yikes,” I said. “This is delicious.”

  He watched me as I moved to the hot fudge, spooning up some whipped cream with the vanilla and fudge mixture. Excellent. I smiled at John and forgot all about Wilcox as I moved on to the strawberry butterscotch sundae.

  “So you still going to talk about Oak Park and peppermint?” John asked me.

  “What? Where?” I said, thinking I’d make it up to Petersen’s next time.

  George brought a tall glass filled with the darkest malted milk I’d ever seen. Again, there was whipped cream on top and a cherry. He set it down in front of Wilcox and then put a frosted silver container from the mixer that held the rest of the malted milk on the table. Wilcox pushed a straw into the middle of the whipped cream and I watched him suck the malted milk up through the straw. A continuous stream. He breathed through his nose so he could keep swallowing, and a good half of the malted was gone before he looked up at me.

  “You’ll get a freeze headache,” I said, but Wilcox didn’t hear me. His eyes were half closed and he was off again, drawing the malt up. There was something too intimate about watching him drink. I looked away and took another mouthful of the caramel chocolate sundae.

  I was surprised to see George come back with another malted glass and silver container, which he placed down in front of Wilcox.

  I can’t just sit there and watch him suck this one up, I thought, I had to say something.

  “I didn’t realize that the ancient Greeks invented ice cream,” I said to Wilcox. “Pretty good for a Mediterranean people.”

  “The Nordic people interbred with them thousands of years ago,” Wilcox said. George heard this and laughed.

  “He tells us this crapola all the time. Crazy stuff about the Vikings coming to Greece. Greek is Greek. You have no democracy or poems or ice cream or nothing without us.”

  I expected Wilcox to answer, but he was halfway through his second malted.

  “Mr.—err—Reverend Wilcox,” I began. He vacuumed the last bit of liquid through the straw, his eyes closed and he didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Leave him alone for a minute,” George, the waiter, said. “Poor man—he has no wife, no children.” George took up the silver containers. “Doesn’t even try a sundae every once in a while.” George shook Wilcox’s shoulder. “Talk to this lady while I make you another.”

  Wilcox opened his eyes. The crusader was back. He took out a pad and pencil from his briefcase. “Alright. What do you have? It had better be good, Miss Kelly. I’ve also discovered that you were arrested by the British authorities for murder, and should have been hanged as a spy.”

  Now he’s overplayed his hand, I thought. Publicize my part in the fight against the Black and Tans, and my escape from the very British Army officer who executed the rebels of 1916, and I could run for mayor of Chicago. Publish away, but I did wonder how he found out these things.

  “Alright, alright, Wilcox, get ready to take notes because I’ve been doing a little research myself.” I took one last spoonful of the hot fudge sundae then spread my papers across the table. Though one stuck to a patch of goo on the wooden table.

  “Now,” I said, sitting up straight. “You purchased your house three years ago with eight thousand dollars in cash. Before that you were living in a rooming house paying six dollars a week, at the same time you started publishing Thunderin. It cost you two hundred and fifty dollars to pri
nt five thousand copies. And you put out four editions that year, which equals a thousand dollars.”

  “And I sold them, Miss Kelly. Sold all of them at twenty-five cents apiece.”

  “Except you didn’t, really. You gave them to the newsstand operators and let them sell them. Usually for only a few cents, which they kept. So you were losing money on Thunderin. Why the sudden change in fortune? No family inheritance, not even the take from your Sunday congregation, because you have no Sunday congregation, Reverend Wilcox, despite the fact that you list your house as a house of worship and pay no taxes on it.

  “So, what happened in 1927 to change your luck? Why, that was the year Big Bill Thompson ran for mayor against the very man he’d been afraid to take on in the last election. A man so good his nickname was Decent Dever. And here comes Thunderin, full of stories about corruption, but, strangely, all the perpetrators are Democrats. One of your first issues had a big picture of George Brennan, Democratic candidate for the US Senate, and the headline ‘Brennan, Beer and Bunk.’

  “And it’s Democrats you’ve continued to go after. Not a word in Thunderin about the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars Thompson took from Capone, and how his gunmen acted as poll watchers during the election. Even the Tribune wrote about the Thompson-Capone connection, but you didn’t. Why?”

  Wilcox leaned across the table toward me.

  “Mr. Thompson needed the money to get rid of those Irish thieves. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.”

  Dear God, I thought, this fellow believes that Thompson can use Capone for good, deluding himself the same way he addles his brain with triple chocolate malteds.

  “Come on, Wilcox, Thompson uses dirty money to pay you off to attack his enemies. He started an organization called the Protestant Legion. Isn’t that the group that sends you a check every month?” I said.

  “My patrons are upstanding members of the Protestant community who understand the threat you people represent. You’re enriching yourselves through politics, and using that money to finance your war on our values, our way of life, our very existence. Mr. Thompson explained how important the association is and why he must sometimes lure the gangsters into quiescence by seeming to look the other way, but, really, it’s because he wishes to ensnare them. My job is to keep the pressure on the mongrels who have infiltrated legitimate society through their positions as aldermen and committee members, as workers in city agencies.”