The Governor's Wife

by Michael Harvey

  CHAPTER 14

  My lunch date was in Old Town, two miles and at least five decades removed from Karen Simone. Billy “Bones” McIntyre worked out of an office above Chicago’s Second City Theatre. I pushed in off Wells Street and groped my way up a dark, twisting staircase. As I climbed, I could hear the patter of garbage cans in the alley and the thump of traffic in the street below. The stairs dead-ended in a landing with a single door made of pitted wood and pebbled glass. The letters on the glass spelled out DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEEMAN, except one A and a couple of M’s were missing. I turned the doorknob and walked in. Bones was sitting on a stage at the far end of a dusty hall. He had a cigar in full boil and was blowing clouds of blue smoke toward a tin ceiling. Bones was on the phone but waved me over. As I got closer, I realized the receiver had a cord that connected to a large black base unit. Then I realized the base unit had a rotary dial. Bones finished up his call just as I arrived.

  “If you’ve got a subpoena, just leave it at the door.” Bones seemed to like his little joke and sucked hard on the cigar. I watched his cheeks pump like tiny gray bellows and wondered when was the last time anyone in the Chicago media had gotten a picture of this guy.

  “How you doing, Bones?”

  “Like you give a fuck. Sit down.”

  Bones still had the voice of a politician—rippling like a cold river over hard stones. His appearance, however, hadn’t fared nearly as well. In the twenty-five years he’d run Cook County, McIntyre had made a habit of wrapping himself in suits made of English wool, ties of Italian silk, and French cuffs all around. Today, he wore a threadbare pair of Dickies work pants, a blue sweatshirt with a hole under the arm, mismatched socks of green and gray, and a battered pair of Nike running shoes.

  “What’s with the phone?” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s got a rotary dial.”

  “So what? They tried to give me one of those push buttons. I told them to keep it.”

  Behind Bones was a large-than-life poster for the 1968 Democratic Convention. On the other side of the stage, Bobby Kennedy reached out of a convertible to tousle a small boy’s head. From the phone to the politics, everything in the place reeked of throwback. Nothing more so than Bones himself. The man had once been a king maker, a guy who could get out the vote or kill it, depending on which way the wind was blowing off Lake Michigan. Bones had taken his retirement when the Chicago Tribune discovered he kept two women on the county payroll for the exclusive purpose of providing Bones with sex. The women were twenty-five and twenty-three, respectively. Bones was sixty-eight at the time. And happily married for fifty years.

  “How’s the wife?” I said.

  “Faith? Never better, never better.” Bones took a pull on his cigar and sent another stream of smoke spiraling toward a fan beating overhead.

  “I’m here about Ray,” I said.

  Bones nodded. I could have said Daffy Duck, and Bones would have nodded like that was what he expected.

  “You’ve been to see Marie.” Bones didn’t ask. He knew. And when Bones knew something, he didn’t waste time with competing points of view.

  “I talked to her, yeah.”

  He licked some old-man crust off his lips and laid the cigar, still smoking, in a cut-glass ashtray. Fifteen years ago, Bones had gone to a doctor who told him he had all five major risks for heart disease, plus a couple more the doctor had never heard of. Bones told the doctor he’d rather die than give up his cigars. The doctor told him that was a distinct possibility. Bones left the office that day looking to strike a deal with himself. According to legend, he never ate another piece of red meat, stopped using butter, and refused to drink any whole-milk products. He started running five miles every morning and hadn’t missed a day in more than a decade. Gray sweats, Bears cap pulled low over his eyes, black socks instead of gloves wrapped over his hands, Bones became a lakefront fixture. And he always ran alone. That was Bones. Cigars and all.

  “Why do you care about Ray?” he said.

  “Someone hired me.”

  “Someone hired you. So you just jump in and start screwing with people’s lives?”

  “Your daughter seemed fine with it.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  “Where’s her husband?”

  “How would I know?” Bones flapped a hand around the empty hall. “You think I’m at the top of the food chain here?”

  “Why did Ray disappear?”

  “Thirty years in prison might do it for me. How about you?” Bones flashed the shark’s-teeth grin of a Chicago pol.

  “What do you know about a company called Beacon Limited?” I said.

  The grin disappeared, and something even more unpleasant replaced it. “I did some work for them.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Consultant. But that was a long time ago. They were just a small outfit back then.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, they’re not so small. Let me ask you something. You been going around town asking about Beacon?”

  “Every chance I get.”

  “You should smarten up.”

  “Do you know Albert Striker?”

  “Beacon’s attorney. Or at least he used to be.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Might be tough. Albert died three years ago.”

  “Someone must have replaced him?”

  Bones’s cigar had gone cold. He took his time relighting it. “You don’t understand Beacon, Kelly. It’s not a company as much as an idea.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Day-to-day business is handled through the subsidiaries. And they know nothing about the parent company.”

  “Someone must make the big decisions?”

  “Dig if you want. All you’ll find are more corporate layers. More dead ends.”

  “Was Ray involved with Beacon?”

  “You know the answer to that. They were heavy contributors to the campaign.”

  “How about your daughter?”

  Bones pulled the cigar from his mouth and let a little smoke leak out behind it. “Let’s go get lunch.”

  He led me back down the stairs and across North Avenue. Bones waved a hand at the Old Town Ale House as we passed by. “Still do most of my drinking in there, but we’re gonna eat at another place.”

  We stopped in front of a wooden building with a Hamm’s poster in the window. The place looked abandoned, but Bones pulled at the door and it opened. Inside a young woman with sharp features and small, dull eyes slouched behind the bar. She wore jeans and a Bears T-shirt she’d tied off to expose her pale stomach. The woman was talking to a drowsy-looking guy with three days’ worth of beard and an open Budweiser in front of him. The way she leaned over to talk told me they were sleeping together. But that was probably just me. Too many nights on a barstool at Sterch’s. The guy hopped up when he saw Bones and hurried over.

  “Mr. McIntyre.”

  “Bones. I told you, Bones.”

  “Bones. Great to see you. We were just opening.”

  I looked around. A couple of pitchers of stale beer were fermenting on the bar, and the floor was still sticky from last night. Most of the chairs were turned upside down on the tables, and the place smelled faintly of vomit.

  “I thought I told you I wanted these women wearing clothes,” Bones said.

  The guy with the growth scratched at it. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Tell her to cover up that goddamn belly. What’s your name again?”

  “Darryl. Darryl Jones.”

  “How old are you, Darryl?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Thirty-two. You like that stuff?”

  “What stuff, Mr. McIntyre?”

  “Forget it. Where can we sit?”

  Darryl showed us to a booth and wiped it down with a dirty sponge.

  “Couple of beers, Darryl.” Bones looked at me. “Old Style, okay?”

  I nodded. What the hell.
>
  “An Old Style and an O’Doul’s. And give us some soup. You like soup, Kelly?”

  “Sure.”

  “Couple of bowls of that chicken soup I had yesterday. And some bread.”

  Darryl scurried back behind the bar. The girl showed up a minute later with two longnecks. She had her eyes down and midriff covered.

  “Thanks, honey. This is for you.” Bones pushed a twenty into her hand, took a long gargle from the O’Doul’s, and thumped it down on the table.

  “You got an interest in this place?” I said.

  Bones hooded his eyes and winked. “Six months ago they were going to shut the place down. Guy asked me for some help. I paid off what he owed the county in taxes and took over the license.”

  “What do you know about bars?”

  “What did I know about politics? We’ll be fine.” Bones jerked a thumb behind him. “Just poured a new patio out back. Gonna be a beer garden for the summer. City’s bitching about the licenses.”

  “Let me guess, you’re gonna take care of that?”

  “I still got a little pull. Neighborhood pull, but what the hell. It’s what I know. It’s fun.”

  Darryl showed up with two bowls and a basket of bread. Bones was right. The soup was good—hunks of chicken, rich broth, and lots of rice.

  “My daughter,” Bones said and ripped off a crust of bread. His hands were thick and strong. In the barroom light they reminded me of my father, who beat his children sometimes because he liked the sound.

  “What about her?” I said.

  “We’re not close.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “We did the thing for the press when Ray was governor. Family pictures. Magazine articles. All that happy horseshit. The truth is we haven’t been close in years.”

  “Before Ray?”

  “The problems go back earlier than Ray, yes. But they got worse once she was married.” Bones used the crust to soak up some soup. It was hot and made the old man’s eyes water.

  “Did you and Ray get along?” I said.

  “I liked him. I wasn’t part of the inner circle, but we’d talk politics from time to time.”

  “Did you want to be part of the inner circle?”

  “In 2006, Ray Perry went from never having held public office to governor of Illinois. And did it without breaking a sweat. It was like an old baseball skipper looking down his bench and finding the next Mickey Mantle at the end of it. You bet your ass I wanted to be part of it.”

  “But you weren’t?”

  “On the political side, no. But Ray was always good to me. Too smart not to be. And we never talked about Marie. Smart there, too.”

  “You think your daughter helped him disappear?”

  Bones shook his head. “She wouldn’t put herself out like that.”

  “Did she love him?”

  “Marie isn’t capable of love. At least not how you and I understand it.”

  I put down my spoon and leaned in, resting my forearms on the table. “You got something else to tell me, Bones?”

  He gestured to my bowl. “The soup.”

  “It’s not that good.”

  Bones stopped eating and hunched forward so his head hung between his shoulders. “Things happened after my daughter got married. Things the public never saw.”

  “The corruption charges? The trial?”

  “This was personal.”

  An image of Karen Simone flashed before my eyes. “Another woman?”

  Bones waved the notion away. “Marie might not have cared about Ray, but he loved my daughter. Almost as much as he loved himself.”

  “So what was it?”

  “Once Marie got married, she went off the tracks. I mean she was always troubled, even as a kid, but this was different. Withdrawal, paranoia, deep bouts of depression. From what I understand, Ray had her on a heavy dose of meds and considered institutionalizing her.”

  “How about now?”

  “No idea. She seems stable. At least from a distance.”

  “When was the last time you spoke with her?”

  “A word hasn’t passed between us since Ray skipped. I called. Left messages. Nothing.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Did Marie hire you?”

  “Confidential, Bones.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I want you to let this whole thing go. Ray’s not coming back, and we all need to move on. Especially my daughter.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to move on?”

  “So you help her. Make up something. Tell her whatever she needs to hear. Just put Ray Perry to rest. That’s what I want. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “And why would I help you?”

  “It’s Chicago, Kelly. That’s what we do.” Bones ripped off another hunk of bread and dipped it in his soup. I got up to go, then stopped halfway.

  “What if I told you your daughter already agrees with you?”

  “In what way?”

  “She’s convinced Ray’s never coming back. Believes he might be dead.”

  The old man shoveled the bread into his mouth and creased his face into a skeleton smile. “Then I’d tell you she’s lying. When all else fails, she’s always been pretty good at that.”

  CHAPTER 15

  For the next week the case sat. Like a fisherman who’d cast his lines, I had to be patient, content to drift with the current and see if anyone bit. Every morning, I’d get up at 6:00 a.m. and go for a run. I’d usually start at the totem pole on the lake and work my way south, slipping past Belmont Avenue and Fullerton, along Oak Street Beach to Navy Pier. I’d watch the waves as I ran, gray walls of water rolling in from the east and spending themselves at the stone feet of the city. I’d think about the case, about the people and what went on behind their eyes. Back at my flat, I’d grab a quick shower, make some coffee, and be in my office by nine, poking through Ray Perry’s past, following up on all the alleged “sightings,” looking for a rabbit hole the former governor might have disappeared down. Twice during the week, I’d taken a detour from my routine. An unexpected detour but, somehow, maybe not. It was only a five-minute drive downtown and a short elevator ride up—to the Safe Haven Program at Prentice, and the kid I’d named Vince.

  I didn’t do anything spectacular on my visits. I’d show Vince the stuffed animal I’d brought—the first time a Chicago Bear, the second a Cub—and stick it up on a shelf next to his crib. Amanda Mason was always around. She claimed Vince knew who I was. I told her the kid smiled when anyone came up to the crib. She said yes, but he kicked his legs in the air when I showed up. And that was special. I thought Amanda was full of it, but I liked the idea anyway. So we sat by the crib and stared at the kid, smiling vacantly the way real parents do. Amanda would leave after a while, and I’d sit there alone and watch him. He’d watch me back. And kick his legs. And I felt special. Even if it was all make-believe.

  It was during my third visit that I saw Marie Perry. I’d been there for an hour or so and was getting ready to leave when I caught a glimpse of her. She was in the reception area, talking animatedly to Amanda. The conversation seemed one-sided, Marie gripping the nurse’s shoulder and bending forward until there seemed to be no space between the two. Suddenly, she lifted her head as if she’d caught a scent and turned, pinning me with a look through the thick glass. She walked into the nursery, Amanda trailing in her wake.

  “Michael Kelly.”

  “I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” Amanda said, the confusion of my earlier lie tangled up in her voice. “Mr. Kelly has been coming in to sit with one of our abandoned infants.”

  “Have you, Mr. Kelly?”

  “A friend of mine found a boy stashed in the trunk of a car. I come in to check on him.”

  “He’s been in three times in the last week,” Amanda said protectively.

  “Where’s the boy?” Marie said.

  I walked her over to Vince’s pod. Marie picked him up and cradled him. The kid’s eyes da
nced, and he reached out to touch her cheek. For just a moment, I thought I saw the former governor’s wife soften.

  “He’s beautiful.” She turned to me as if he were mine.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty great.”

  “Do you have children, Mr. Kelly?”

  “Just a dog.”

  “Would you like to hold him?”

  I shook my head. “I just sit and watch. Talk to him sometimes.”

  Marie kissed Vince on the nose and laid him back in the crib. “He’s beautiful.”

  She’d already said that, but I noticed that people tended to repeat themselves when they were around babies. I was no exception.

  “Are you here to volunteer, Ms. Perry?”

  “Not today. I just came in to talk to Amanda for a moment.” She held out her hand. “It was nice to see you again.”

  “You, too.”

  “I must say, you surprise me a little bit.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t expect to see you hanging around a nursery.”

  “We all have our secrets, Ms. Perry.”

  Her hand slipped out of mine, and the cool, thin mask dropped back over her face. “Good-bye, Mr. Kelly.”

  “Actually, I’m heading out myself.”

  We walked back to the reception area together. Marie had a few more things to discuss with Amanda, so I rode the elevator down alone. Five minutes later, I was sitting in my car with a perfect view of Prentice’s main entrance. Marie Perry came out and waited while one of the valets fetched her car. Then she got in and drove. I gave her a little room and followed. I wasn’t sure why, but figured I had nothing to lose.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Women’s Health Clinic on Chicago’s North Side is as nondescript as a building can be. Jammed in between a currency exchange and a taco stand, the clinic has an exterior made of flat yellow brick, with no windows and only a blue sign by the door indicating the services provided inside. Marie Perry pulled up in front of the clinic at just after 11:00 a.m. She ignored a small knot of protesters across the street and walked straight into the facility. I parked at a McDonald’s, got a coffee, and took a seat by a window that offered a good view of the action.