Windy City

by Scott Simon

  “I'm happy for you,” her questioner continued. “But why should any child of yours—okay, I'm going to say it—just because of race, get into Yale, Notre Dame, or even a job in the county clerk's office, over some equally smart Lithuanian or Irish kid from Back of the Yards whose mother might be a nurse's aide now?”

  The room stirred and then bristled. As the woman sat down, two diners next to her seemed to pull away, but one right behind her patted her on the back. Vera waited patiently before speaking softly.

  “You know, ma'am, I'm on the Harvard Board of Overseers. We talk about some of these very things there. I'm not sure I have an answer that will satisfy you. And if that boy or girl was your son or daughter, well, he or she is going to have a big advantage in life anyway, because I can tell they have a parent who loves and cares about them. It's shocking to me—it's tragic—how many kids all around us, not just from poor families, have to grow up without that kind of love.”

  Vera paused a beat before proceeding.

  “We're trying to make up, in just one or two generations, for crimes that took place a long time ago—”

  “My family didn't come here until nineteen forty-seven!” a man shouted out.

  “—a long time ago,” Vera repeated. “And that injustice has put the dead weight of discrimination and poverty around the feet of millions of Americans ever since.”

  “My father worked a garbage route for Streets and San. My grandfather lost three fingers at South Works,” the man's voice barked back.

  Vera stayed blank-faced and silent as chairs scraped the floor and voices grated against each other to be heard. Instead, she fixed a kind, mild face on the woman in stretchy gray pants and spoke in a low, level voice as the woman wound the white drawstrings of her slacks around her fingers.

  “Maybe in trying to make the world fairer now,” said Vera, “we will occasionally disappoint a few people who don't deserve it. But if we don't do whatever we can to fix our society now, we may never get the chance. If your son or daughter never gets into Harvard—if they get passed over for a city job—I hope that's the worst thing that ever happens to them. Love them and support them. Love and support this great city. Plenty of opportunities will be there.”

  Vera stepped back from the microphone. The sound of an iron grind of plows nosing down Pulaski jounced the frames of the long gray windows. A bus spattered fat splats of snow against their gray glaze. Sunny realized that Vera's disquisition had sparked an uncommon reaction to a political speech: silence. After a pause, they heard Mr. Vincas speak up again.

  “So why didn't you remarry?”

  Gurgles of laughter crackled through the crowd. Vera waited until people had swallowed their snorts and straightened their coffee cups. Then she announced, as if revealing the answer to a fifty-thousand-dollar quiz question, “Alderman Slavinskas was taken.”

  The room erupted in laughs, claps, and shouts. Rosie Slavinskas stood up behind Sunny and cast her voice out above the din of smarting hands and rasping throats.

  “Oh Vera dear,” she said. “We can work that out!”

  A half-hour later, as Sunny stood in the doorway, pumping Henry Kri-vas's right arm with thanks, he put his left hand out onto Linas Slavin-skas's soft sleeve as the alderman showed Sgt. Gallaher a suit of armor nestling a crossbow.

  “This guy worked security for Vytautas the Great,” he told her. “But it would be a shame to keep some people on security details covered up like tin cans, Sergeant Gallaher. Positively antediluvian.”

  Sunny let his clasp of Henry fall away and brought his mouth low over Linas's shoulder.

  “You were so eloquent this morning,” he said. “I'm sure you agree with Vera's moving words on minority hiring.”

  “The words?” asked Linas, drawing back slightly. “Oh, absolutely. Great words. I just might have arranged them a little differently.”

  Sunny put a thumb on Linas's elbow, and brought him close.

  “Any time you want to fill me in,” he said. “You have the number I keep here.”

  Sunny thumped the lapel over his heart. Linas inclined his pomaded blondish head until it nearly touched Sunny's forehead. Sunny could smell coppery flashes of the best sandalwood and bay scents from his cheek.

  “Let's just say that the tired old politics of the past cannot meet the challenges of the future,” said Linas. “We cannot pour new wine into old wineskins. Lordship, you'll figure it out before I can tell you,” he said.

  Then Linas leaned over, his broad smile brushing against the outer edge of Sunny's ear.

  “Viva la raza,” Linas told him.

  A rapid review of receipts from Quattro's at the 18th District didn't reveal new names; it would be too much to expect that the mystery woman who had asked Carlos Ponce to pop the top of the pizza box had paid by credit card. But they had pulled the surveillance tape of the automatic teller machine in the all-night drugstore nearby on Wabash— “God bless all night drugstores,” Lt. Delbert Tompkins exclaimed. “Heaps of rubbers and lights as bright as floodlights!”—and saw bleary photos of a couple of dark-haired women who seemed to fit the basic description that Carlos Ponce had stingily croaked and gasped from his bed at Weiss Memorial during the third quarter of the Bears-Cowboys game.

  During the first minutes of the fourth quarter, a mommy and daddy team named David and Nina knocked on the front door of a basement (name on the B1 bell: MEADOWS) in an endangered old railroad-style six-flat brick building on North Burling that was the address attached to the bank account of a Linda Marie Keely who had withdrawn $200 in twenties at 21:08 CST on the Thursday night the mayor died. When David and Nina called their names and flashed brass in front of the peephole, they heard quick footsteps dashing away, a back door groan, and then a screen door bang. David plucked up the radio on his left hip to tell the two uniforms in the alley in back of the building to spear Linda Marie Keely by the shoulders before she could take a second step.

  By the time David and Nina had scampered around to the German cars with broken aerials, parked between scuffed plastic garbage pails and puckered blue recycling bags, Linda Marie Keely was squirming, shivering, and swearing between the two uniforms, the longest strands of her brown hair spilling over trim soccer-player's shoulders and a green ribbed sweater.

  “We just want to talk,” said David, beaming geniality. “We need your help.”

  “Phone first, fuck-face,” she spat back.

  “You're not listed,” David told her. “We checked.”

  “To avoid creeps like you,” Linda Keely flung it back at him, causing Nina to chuckle over her remark all the way on the short ride over to the station on Larrabee.

  “Creeps like you,” she repeated every block or so.

  A heavy black vinyl notebook sat on the table of an interrogation room. There were just six plastic-sleeve pages inside, each holding four black and white photos. Among the twenty-four photos there were three of Carlos Ponce. The balance was of curly-haired blond men, black men, burly Irish and Croatian men, and elderly, bald Asian men. “Can't we find a mug of a fucking Eskimo somewhere?” Lt. Tompkins had asked. But no other shot of a Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Armenian, Indian, Lebanese, or Egyptian man, no one with the slightest tinge of a duskier complexion who could risk so much as a minute chance of bearing the slightest resemblance to Carlos Ponce.

  “This is how we used to do it in the old days,” said the lieutenant. “Before a bunch of lawyers had to hang over our shoulders, calling balls and strikes.”

  Katina Reed, the young lawyer from the state's attorney's office (who upheld her apple-cheeked aspect by actually being from Wadena, Minnesota, and fretting, “I don't knooow about that….”) had been anxious.

  “We have to read the woman her rights,” she insisted.

  “That's only if you're going to try to get testimonial evidence,” countered Lt. Tompkins, who, after twenty-six years of police work, had learned that lawyers could be held off, like demon spirits, by chanting a few of th
eir own phrases back at them.

  “She's just going to look at pictures. Might as well be reading People. If she says she doesn't recognize anyone, where's the testimony?”

  “I don't knooow about that, Del. That's a little too cute.”

  “Ah, c'mon, Kat. You're too cute,” the lieutenant joshed, and though Katina Reed had heard that particular blandishment several hundred times since she was in the fourth grade of the Deer Creek Middle School, she decided not to look too deeply into the blarney. She smiled and told Lt. Tompkins that if the purpose of the photo lineup was not to identify any of the men, but merely to see if Linda Marie Keely registered a reaction to Carlos Ponce—or pretended not to—his show could proceed.

  “It's unexplored legal territory,” Katina Reed told the officers, folding and wringing her hands. “I don't knooow.”

  “Okay, Kat,” said Lt. Tompkins jovially. “You be Lewis, I'll be Clark.”

  As Linda Marie Keely flipped over the pages back and forth, shaking her head strongly, quickly, and doubtlessly, Lt. Tompkins received a call from the chief of the team that had taken a warrant into apartment B-1. He said there were traces of nicotine distillate on the lip of the drain in the shower. There were traces around the rim of the kitchen sink.

  “Give us another fifteen minutes,” said the sergeant in charge, “we'll find it in their plumbing.”

  He said that a team had found a litter of smashed glass in a trash bag a block in back of the apartment, and though the shards were trickier to test, they seemed tinged with an umber color.

  “I'll bet it's not rum punch,” the sergeant added.

  The building's landlord, an elderly Serbian named Vinko, was found drinking crème de menthe while watching the Bears over in a tavern on north Cleveland. He said that the man from whom he received a rent check each month was a well-mannered young sandy-bearded gentleman named Meadows.

  All of this was reported to Chief Martinez, who took the call as he stood in line for the men's room during the fourth quarter at Soldier Field.

  (The police chief was recognized every minute or so. Fans shouted, “Hey, chief. Arrest our fucking lousy quarterback, why don't you?”)

  “I recognize that name,” Chief Martinez whispered in a strangled shout above the tumult behind him. “Meadows. Claudia McCarthy's barista. Toss that apartment. Every thread in the rug, every loop in their towels. Bring in Claudia. Cuff the barista before he can draw off another latte. It'll take me half an hour to get out of here, Del. Do it now.”

  Lt. Tompkins snapped the phone closed and walked heavily across the squad room. The Bears had just lost the ball at their own thirty-one. The defense stopped a Cowboy run into the right side of the line. Second and ten, but whistles blew before they could get off the snap. Cops groaned and slapped their desks. Announcers sounded amazed. Lt. Tompkins motioned for a sergeant to shut off the screen in the corner of the room, and as the din from the game died, Delbert Tompkins dropped into a chair that sat on the other side of the table from Linda Marie Keely.

  “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked her softly.

  “A lawyer?” she said. “Like you have a regular gyno or a dry cleaner?” She smiled in brown-eyed bemusement, as if he might want to share it, and twirled a strand of hair with a finger against her shoulder. “Gosh no.”

  “Get one,” Lt. Tompkins commanded grimly, and as he rose from the seat, two uniforms moved behind Linda Marie Keely. She sat up suddenly, as if a drizzle of cold water had just slithered down her spine. One policeman laid a large hand on her head, and another opened a set of hinged model-100 nickel handcuffs with a metallic clack! and grabbed both of her slight twig wrists in one prodigious, pinching grip that made Linda Keely wince and squirm deep into her seat.

  “If you cannot afford a lawyer,” Lt. Tompkins informed her, “one will be provided for you.” He nodded to the uniforms to proceed.

  SUNDAY NIGHT

  Sgt. McNulty stood alongside Sunny's black car, burps of tailpipe steam encircling his feet on the cold street and rising into wisps around his shoulders. The sergeant smiled and stood ready by the car door. Sgt. Gallaher turned to Sunny and blinked pearly snowflakes from her eyes. The patrol car that would take her and her crew back to the First District—Sunny was just beginning to learn the routine—was parked a few feet farther down.

  “Tomorrow morning, sir,” she said. “I'll escort you down to City Hall. During the session, I'll be nearby with half-a-dozen uniforms. But when they choose the new mayor, we'll move in to surround whoever that is.”

  Sunny could feel snow pile in his hair and melt slushily over his scalp. He felt a drip about to roll down, slightly left of the center of his forehead, and pushed it back with a knuckle.

  “I understand,” he said lightly. “One moment, I'm important enough to protect. Then, I'm an alderman again.”

  “I won't have a chance to say goodbye. And thank you.”

  Sgt. Gallaher stuck out her hand. Sunny took it carefully, squeezing only slightly, as he might nervously touch a small bird.

  “I thank you,” he replied automatically. “Serving the city is so vital….” He let his voice fall off as he heard himself blather. Sunny drew back his fingers from their clasp of hands, but let his thumb still rest lightly on the top of Sgt. Gallaher's hand.

  “I'm sad about the mayor of course,” she said. “But getting around the city—talking about things—getting to know your daughters. Frankly sir, it's been a blast.”

  They heard McNulty open the back door of Sunny's car. The officer at the wheel thrummed the engine, like an organ chorus, to keep it warm. Sgt. Gallaher leaned in closer to be heard.

  “Your daughters,” she began. “I've seen families—lose someone. Everybody tries to go through the motions. Eating, sleeping, working. But they have an open wound. They walk around dripping. Your daughters are aching. They're seething. They have to push back at something, but the world is a moving target. Except for you.”

  Sgt. Gallaher pushed a quartet of long fingers against Sunny's shoulder, then extracted her other hand from a pocket with a small white card.

  “If I can ever help. I serve and protect.”

  Sgt. Gallaher tucked her simmering face into the high collar of her long black coat. Sunny heard her clicking steps quicken as she took long strides over the ice and sleet of south Pulaski on her way to the patrol car.

  Sunny had just snapped on the small, hot, overhead light in the back of his car when Chief Martinez called from the 18th District.

  “When Linda Marie Keely was being taken away,” he announced, “she shouted in the squad room, ‘It's the corn people against the rice people! And you fools don't know it!’”

  “What possible—”

  “We're asking commodity traders, agronomists,” said the chief. “Who the hell knows? She said, ‘We're becoming walking stalks of corn, can't you see?’”

  “Is it some kind of racial stuff, Matt?” asked Sunny. “Are you a corn person, am I a rice person, and was the mayor—”

  “An extra-cheese and sausage person, I'd say,” said Chief Martinez. “I'll keep you informed.”

  Rula and Rita had called while he was on with Matt Martinez, and Sunny fumbled the phone open again just as soon as the tiny electric carillon pealed that he had a message.

  “We've kind of got caught up,” he heard Rula say. He made out something about dinner with Diego's family, a cousin from Brussels, the chance to hear about business school at or in Columbia (Sunny wasn't sure—her message gave no hint—if she meant the school or the country), and buses groaning and splattering gobs of snow. “Sorry to miss the reception, don't know Karen Wu, all anyone wants to hear is you anyway, Pappaji, see you at home.”

  “Sheldon loves you!” Rita called into the mouthpiece at the very end. Sunny held the phone to his ear for a few moments longer, until the electric wail began to grate against his ear.

  Jia's sprawled over the second floor of an old warehouse on south Wentworth. Dim canisters spiked
tines of lights down onto round tables wrapped with crinkly red cloths. As Sunny stepped into the restaurant, he saw people sign their names in sparkly gold ink on a red silk sheet stretched under a sign that said, “JERRY AND KAREN.”

  Mothers and grandmothers tucked drowsy babies over their shoulders. Little girls in flowery silk dresses held onto their fathers’ hands, clasping small white boxes topped with gold bows against their chests. Little boys in snow jackets stood up straight and squirmed in their tight white collars while their fathers tried to knot their dark blue ties. As Sunny's eyes adjusted to the streaky dimness, he saw red lantern lights with yellow tassels jiggle like jellyfish each time the elevator doors rolled back and wind whooshed in.

  Karen Wu was John's niece, the daughter of his brother, Paul, who had died six years earlier from the aneurysm John had always expected for himself. He saw Sunny and threw his arms over the acting mayor's shoulders, bringing his mouth next to Sunny's ear, as if murmuring the contents of some classified file.

  “I ordered Chinese beer for the hoi polloi,” John whispered above the din. “Brewed with formaldehyde. Let's get you something safe.”

  John waved, clapped his hands, and barked words that made the serving people in black uniforms step as if trying to run across a bed of glowing coals. A brown bottle of Corona, swaddled in a white napkin, was put in Sunny's hand. Sunny tucked it into his elbow as he shook hands with a line of Karen's bridesmaids in pale rose dresses: Carmen, Gabrielle, Lucy, Marilyn, and Rena.

  “My buddy,” John said with beery cheer. “The acting, interim, pooh-bah of Chicago.”

  But when the bridesmaids saw Sgt. McNulty they cocked their thumbs, leveled their index fingers, and hid smiles behind their hands. A short-haired young man in a navy suit, whose shoulders looked like hard-packed sandbags under the stretchy fabric, walked over in well-shined shoes and stuck out his hand.