A House on Liberty Street

by Neil Turner

  “What’s political about it?” I ask.

  “There’s always friction between the courts and the cops, the city and the cops—seemingly everyone and the cops,” he says bitterly. “Cops never think they get enough respect or support from the court system. They never think the city throws enough cash their way.”

  “What’s that have to do with Papa?”

  “Things have been worse than usual lately with police corruption trials. The state’s attorney probably hopes prioritizing a cop-killer’s trial will salve some wounds.”

  “You think Papa’s a bone being tossed to the police union?”

  “And the rest of the law and order crowd,” he mutters in disgust.

  As if the deck isn’t already stacked high enough against us. “When will we go to trial?”

  “In a couple of months. Longer if I have anything to say about it.”

  I notice her while Williams is speaking—a woman standing just inside the courthouse doors twenty feet ahead of us. When certain we’ve made eye contact, she smiles and offers a little wave. I don’t recognize her but lamely lift a hand in reply as we approach. She betrays a trace of amusement at my predicament.

  Williams slows our pace. “Met with anyone yet to replace me?”

  “That’s not happening,” I reply while struggling to place the woman’s increasingly familiar face. She’s enjoying my confusion.

  “No?” Williams asks with a smile. The smile throws me until I realize he’s noticed my interplay with the woman and finds it entertaining.

  “No, and quit looking so smug,” I reply, turning a smile on him for probably the first time since we’ve met. “It’s not like you’re going to get a bunch of billable hours out of this.”

  “We public defenders work for a mite more than minimum wage,” he retorts with a chuckle. The smile fades when he asks, “Any luck with the house? You were looking for help with that, too, weren’t you?”

  “I’m seeing someone this afternoon.”

  “Which firm?”

  “Butterworth Cole.” The woman, by now a major distraction, has drifted a few feet closer. She’s keeping just out of earshot.

  “Butterworth Cole, huh?” Williams says with a whistle. “Watch your wallet, my friend.”

  My eyes return to the woman I finally recognize as Pat O’Toole. Once upon a time, Pat was my colleague on the St. Aloysius High School newspaper. She went on to become a real-life reporter with the Chicago Tribune. I haven’t seen her since our high school graduation.

  “You still wanna be involved in your father’s case?” Williams asks.

  My eyes snap back to him. “Of course.”

  “If you don’t mind doing some legwork for me, I can ask my boss to let me list you as a member of the defense team once you pass the Illinois bar. That will get you into the attorney-client rooms at the jail to visit your father. Beats the hell out of the civilian visitor pens.”

  The ice between us thaws a little more. “Make sure you mention that I work pro bono.”

  “Damn straight you will,” he retorts with a laugh as he turns to go. “I ain’t gonna be the only guy working on this case for peanuts. Talk to you in a day or two.”

  “Right. Thanks again.”

  “Say hi to Brittany for me,” he calls over his shoulder as Pat O’Toole moves closer.

  She stops a couple of feet in front of me, smiles, and holds out her hand. “It’s been a long, long time, Tony Valenti.”

  I take the proffered hand. Her grip is firm, the hand slender and cool in mine. She smells of soap and shampoo, much as she did twenty-five or so years ago. “A very long time, Pat.”

  “So, you do remember me,” she says with a soft chuckle. “I could tell you were struggling.”

  “Guilty. In my defense, it has been a long time.”

  Her eyes dance with humor. “You could always say it’s because I look so much better than I did as a gangly schoolgirl.”

  “Okay, let’s go with that.” I’m enjoying the developing banter.

  Her eyes settle on mine. “I’m sorry about everything you’re going through.”

  “Thanks.” She’s a reporter. Be careful, I caution myself as I start walking toward the doors.

  Pat falls in beside me. “I was so sorry when I heard about your mother and sister passing.”

  “Thanks again,” I say with a sideways glance at her. “How’s your family?”

  “Everyone’s doing well, thank you.”

  “I’m happy to hear it.” Not that I remember her family.

  Papa’s prosecutor, Alexander Dempsey, marches past us. His salt and pepper hair, heavy on the pepper, has only just begun to recede. He’s trim, of average height, and is clean-shaven. He struts the same way he talks—as if he’s got a stick up his ass. This morning had been my first look at the humorless man whom Williams warns me is a barracuda in the courtroom. Nothing he’s done over the past thirty minutes disabused me of that notion.

  “He scares me,” I tell Pat.

  “He should scare you. I wouldn’t want Alex Dempsey gunning for me.”

  That’s reassuring. I push through the courthouse doors into the dazzling sunshine of a crisp autumn afternoon. Pat follows. The pleasantly acrid tang of leaves being burned in a barrel floats on the breeze. Isn’t leaf burning illegal now? Stupid damned law if it is. We slide away from the doors to stake out a position on the sidewalk.

  “Who’s Brittany?” Pat asks.

  “My daughter.”

  “Really?” She cocks her head and tucks a stray strand of collar-length auburn hair behind an ear. “I’m trying to picture you in the doting father role.”

  “That’s not so hard to believe, is it?”

  Her soft, lilting laugh sets her eyes alight. I’d forgotten that laugh and the magical way her eyes—an arresting sea green—can change in a heartbeat from instruments of cool appraisal to glittering jewels of amused delight. “Relax, Tony. I’m here as an old friend. I may consider you a friend, right?”

  The apparent sincerity of the question disarms me. “Sure. Why not?”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m here in the dastardly guise of Pat O’Toole, inquisitive and heartless newspaper scribe.”

  “Okay.”

  “Glad we got that out of the way,” she says with a smile.

  “Not that we were all that close in high school.”

  “Not my fault,” she replies drolly.

  True enough. Bespectacled Pat had been a little too tall and angular to fit the pom-pom queen mold. She’d also been a little too smart. A “joke” amongst my crowd was to refer to Pat as Stick. This was a mean-spirited reference to her slender build. I was painfully aware of how deeply the cruel taunt cut her and battled back as best I could without causing too deep a rift with my friends. To my mind, Pat was more attractive than most of the cheerleader types I hung out with. Still, while our interaction on the school newspaper had been an acceptable breach of the battlements between cool kids and geeks, it wouldn’t have done for me to be seen hanging with her socially. I smile inwardly when I recall that my sister Amy surmised, correctly as it turns out, that the years would be kinder to Pat.

  “Sorry about that,” I mumble.

  “It never mattered to the rest of us as much as it did to you hot shots,” she says with a bemused shrug. “Pissed us off some, but we got over it soon enough.”

  “I wish we’d spent more time together,” I admit after an uneasy laugh. She was always easy to be around. Bright. Funny. Interesting. Seems that hasn’t changed.

  She studies me with an appraising eye before a smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “We reporters develop a bit of an ear for the blarney, you know.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Sure. I’m happy to report that my bullshit meter didn’t just go off, so I’ll admit I would’ve liked to spend more time with you, too.”

  I try to echo her drollness of a moment ago. “Really?”

  She laughs. “While your
crowd were pretty much an insufferable collection of jerks in high school, you were maybe a little more sufferable than most.”

  “I believe they call that ‘damning with faint praise.’”

  “Before we start squabbling about how wrong you were and how right I was, let’s get back to the safe topic of your daughter. Forgive me, but I can’t say I ever pictured you as the fatherly type.”

  “For fourteen years now.”

  “You any good at it?” she asks skeptically.

  Not lately, if ever, I think before replying, “I try.”

  Pat glances around. “Where is she this morning?”

  “Back in school. I figure she’s seen enough of the real world over the past few days.”

  Pat’s expression softens. “This must be hard on her.”

  “It is.”

  “And you.”

  I nod.

  She stretches her hands high in the air and arches her back. “I strained my back training this summer. Standing around tightens it up. Can we walk a bit?”

  “Sure,” I reply as she begins pacing north. I follow along. “Training for what?”

  “Just training,” she says with a shrug, then shoots me a sideways glance after we reach the north end of the building and reverse course. “Is there a Mrs. Valenti to help out?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  I really don’t want to get into this. “You reporters ask a lot of questions.”

  Pat stops and takes a step back from me. “Sorry. Curiosity’s an occupational hazard. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Apology accepted,” I say lightly to temper my ill-advised comment.

  She considers that for a moment, then takes a step closer. “Coffee?”

  I steal a peek at my watch and realize I’m cutting it close to make it to Butterworth Cole on time. “I’ve got an appointment.”

  She cocks an eyebrow. “He says, terminating the interrogation?”

  “No. He says he’s got an appointment when he realizes he’s due in an attorney’s office in thirty minutes. Why are you here this morning, Pat? Surely the Trib doesn’t make a practice of sending people to cover arraignments.”

  “I can’t help noticing when something interesting happens in the neighborhood,” she says as she resumes walking. “I recognized your father’s name. I was, to say the least, surprised.”

  “You know they’re trying to evict him?”

  She nods in reply and says, “Yet another odd thing about this story. I guess I came hoping for some answers.”

  “Odd barely scrapes the surface. The detective on this, Plummer—you know him?”

  “I know who he is. Seems to be a good cop.”

  I pause and look her in the eye. “Yeah? As in ‘a good guy for a cop’ or just a competent cop?”

  “Both.”

  “Good to know. Anyway, he asked if I thought this was related to the shopping center bullshit a couple of years ago and I said no. He didn’t seem to be convinced. Think there might be something to that?”

  She looks at me for a long moment while she processes the thought. “I wouldn’t put it past Brown and Zaluski.”

  “Peter Zaluski, the village manager?”

  “One and the same.”

  “His name keeps popping up. Who’s Brown?”

  “Cedar Heights Mayor,” she replies with evident distaste as we reverse course again at the south end of the courthouse. “Quite a pair, those two.”

  “How so?”

  “Too tight with developers. Rumors of kickbacks.”

  “Anything to it?”

  She nods slowly. “Yeah, I suspect there is. The whole Liberty Street/Independence Park redevelopment deal reeks to high heaven, Tony.”

  I steal another glance at my watch. Damn, just when this is getting interesting.

  “I know,” Pat says with an easy smile. “An honest-to-goodness two o’clock appointment.”

  “Sorry,” I say, and mean it.

  “No need to be. I’d like to talk more, though.”

  “About the case?”

  “Not necessarily. I’d like to catch up. Maybe I can help you with the other stuff, too.”

  “The house?”

  She nods. “Yeah, and also your father. Something’s not right with that.”

  No kidding.

  “The paper has resources you don’t, Tony. Besides, you look like a guy who desperately needs a friend.”

  I can’t help but smile. “Were you this perceptive in school?”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t been such a self-absorbed shit you wouldn’t have to ask,” she says with a laugh as we come to a stop in front of the courthouse doors.

  “Touché.”

  “Call me,” she says, handing me a business card before she turns and strolls away down California Avenue.

  Chapter Eight

  An elevator whisks me to the forty-ninth floor of a Wacker Street skyscraper twenty minutes later and deposits me in the hushed reception area of the Butterworth Cole law offices. The building and lavish lobby echo the corporate headquarters of Sphinx Financial on Peachtree Street in Atlanta. One of two receptionists behind a curving façade of highly polished mahogany pastes an efficient smile on her face. “May I help you, sir?”

  “Tony Valenti to see Mr. Cumming.”

  At the mention of a full partner of the firm, she dials the wattage up to a dazzling smile and reaches for the phone. “I’ll let Mr. Cumming’s office know you’re here.”

  I gaze around. The decorating is a combination of rich woodwork and exotic fabrics, accented with a few select pieces of minimalist artwork and understated furnishings. All very top drawer. All obscenely expensive and, of course, all made possible by squeezing every possible billable dollar out of their clients. I gulp. Suckers like me.

  “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Valenti, I’ll walk you back to Mr. Cumming’s office,” the receptionist coos as she sweeps around the desk.

  We pass through a labyrinth of offices and cubicles before we arrive outside an enormous office. A brass plaque affixed to a mahogany door announces Herbert C. Cumming, Jr., Partner. Expansive views of Millennium Park and Lake Michigan make for an impressive backdrop. The man inside is shrugging into a suit jacket.

  “Mr. Valenti! I’m Herbert Cumming,” he booms while giving me an overenthusiastic handshake after I’m shown in. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow Warrior,” he says while closing the door behind us.

  “Golden Eagle,” I correct him with a smile. Marquette University had retired the Warrior name and mascot around 1993 or 1994 in deference to American Indian sensibilities. Marquette teams now compete under the moniker Golden Eagles.

  “A shame,” he grumbles before leading me to a sitting area larger than the entirety of Papa’s living/dining room. We settle in a matched pair of brocade French Provincial wingback chairs that flank a gargantuan coffee table. The table is a foot-deep cross-section cut from a tree of enormous girth. It’s all a bit pretentious, not unlike my office at Sphinx.

  “It’s an honor to meet the shining star of our national championship volleyball team,” Cumming says with a shit-eating athletic supporter grin.

  “Long time ago,” I reply. However pleasant it may be to be remembered as a campus athletic hero, I’m impatient to depart memory lane. “Let’s move on to my problem.”

  He shifts gears smoothly, albeit with a hint of disappointment in his eyes. “You mentioned that you’re in the process of relocating back to Chicago.”

  Cultivating Herbert C. Cumming wouldn’t be a bad career move. He’s well connected in the world of Chicago law in addition to the Marquette network. “That’s right.”

  “Have you found a position?”

  “I’ve got a headhunter working on that.”

  “Have they forwarded your CV to us?”

  “Good question,” I reply.

  “What type of practice did you leave in… Atlanta, wasn’t it?”

  I nod. “
I was in the corporate law department at Sphinx Financial.”

  A cloud crosses Cumming’s face. “Corporate counsel, perhaps?”

  “I left when it became clear how deeply the rot had set in,” I reply with a hint of defensiveness.

  His face registers disappointment. “At the end then?”

  “Almost.”

  His hail-fellow, well-met deportment dissolves and I understand that no further mention will be made of my job search. He leans forward to open a drawer cut into the table and removes a yellow legal pad. Then he slips a gold pen from his monogrammed shirt pocket. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re hoping we can do for you?”

  I relay what I know about the house situation.

  “My goodness, I wonder what prompted an eviction action?” Cumming asks, then glances up at me with a half-smile. “Of course, that’s why you’ve come to us.”

  That, and to put myself the rest of the way into bankruptcy.

  He purses his lips. “So, the first order of business is to quash this eviction notice.”

  “Right. An injunction while it’s litigated.”

  “You also mentioned an eminent domain action?”

  I recount the episode, stressing that the matter is in the past.

  “That’s a dangerous assumption,” he says. “Municipalities have grown quite aggressive in pursuit of their eminent domain objectives.”

  Cumming’s disparaging tone stings. Yet another thing I didn’t know.

  He edges forward. “This promises to be a rather complex matter. Perhaps we should discuss billing arrangements?”