by Scott Simon
“My nephew-in-law,” John Wu explained. “Sergeant Geraldo Cotto.”
“I'm honored, sir,” the young man said, and proffered a handshake that could open a Brazil nut.
“Honored,” said Sunny, wincing slightly, and raising a hand over his eyes. “John tells me you're posted at Arlington.”
“Yes sir. Third Army. The Old Guard,” and when Sunny inclined his head with curiosity, Sgt. Cotto explained. “The unit that conducts funerals, sir. Can be twenty, twenty-five a week.”
“Business sounds good,” said Sunny. “That's terrible. Are we losing that many soldiers?”
“World War Two is dying out,” Jerry Cotto explained. “Sometimes you help a frail old man into a folding chair, then realize, ‘That's his son.’ There's Philippine Army vets, and National Health Service doctors. More and more Korean vets. Vietnam ones just starting. And of course today,” said Sgt. Cotto more softly, “every flight you hear come in over the Potomac, you wonder what's in the hold.”
“It must get—depressing.”
Jerry Cotto nodded. “The young mother with a swelling belly holding the hand of a child—that's hard. That's when you say, ‘Why not me?’ But lots of times, it's inspiring. You hear the citations, and shake your head—what people do sometimes. You fold the flag and give it to them gently. They hold it against their chest like a baby. It's a privilege.”
Sunny turned his head as John Wu's niece came up and took Jerry Cotto's hand into both of hers. A song Sunny had heard a thousand times and couldn't identify as much as once chirruped like a trapped hamster through small tin speakers. Sunny looked after the couple as they stepped onto a small square of dance floor that had been unfolded like a game board. Karen Wu had to skip in her heels to put her slender schoolgirl fingers up to her husband's shoulders. Sunny turned to John Wu and said, “First time I ever liked this goddamn song.” As the song faded, John Wu clapped his hands and called the guests around.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he announced. “Put away the pot stickers for one damn minute.”
Sunny saw young men in black suits with spiked hair, men of his age in gray suits and dull shirts, young women in shiny flower petal fabrics, and older women in red shawls and unbuckled snow boots. John put his thumbs under the belt line of his pants and rocked back and forth slightly.
“A few months ago, my niece said, ‘Uncle John, I've met a fine young man. But he's not Chinese. In fact, he's Salvadoran. All he knows about China is chop suey. And I had to tell him that it's not Chinese.’”
There was laughter, and the ding of wine glasses against the rims of saucers. John doled out his words in half-sentence installments, salted by question marks.
“So I asked, ‘Does he have a job?’ She said yes. And I asked, ‘Does he love you?’ She got this gooey look and said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Well okay. Then he's my main man.’ Can I meet this young Jerry? He was home on leave. He'd already given her a ring.” Karen Wu, who had been standing behind John, reached around with an arm and fluttered her fingers in front of his tie. “Whooh. See? So I met him. I said, ‘Jerry you're in the army, right? You're going to move my niece around from one dusty camp to another, like a couple of tramps, right? You're always going to have to squeeze your family into a compact car, and if you ever get sent off to war—and if you're a soldier, that's where you want to be, right?—she'll jump every time she hears the phone.’ And Jerry said, ‘Sir—Mr. Wu—I love Karen and would never do anything to harm her. And I love this country and will do anything to protect her, too.’”
John Wu turned away, his face cracking.
“This is a good man,” he said heavily. “His parents, Marydell and Riccardo, got here like we did, didn't they? Like Paul and me, and a dozen strangers sleeping in a basement on Cermak. I keep hearing about all the opportunity in China. Good. It's about fucking time, isn't it? China only gave me a kick in the ass, and I had to fight for that. Maybe there is opportunity in China. But you have to shut your mouth, right? Here, sometimes you got to scream to be heard. But you get to scream, loud as you like. I think we have the best of both here— Chinese people and American freedom. This city gets cold. But it's great.”
John's face shone and he turned to Sunny. His hands fluttered just below his chest, and a jot of beer jumped up through the neck of his bottle.
“A man here—my friend,” said John Wu, “who has impressed us all over the last few days. The acting, interim, whatever, of Chicago, Sunny Roopini.”
Sunny put the last eighth of his beer down on the table behind his back. Applause broke out after his name, with more volume than what he was used to.
“Thank you for that nice reception,” he began. “Even though most of you don't live in the Forty-eighth Ward, I'm sure we can accommodate you next election day.”
He heard an encouraging chorus of chuckles and chortles play over the room.
“You know, I come from a place where many marriages are still”— and here Sunny trilled his rrr's with operatic flourish—“arrranged. They use the latest computer software now. Ask some of the folks in Bangalore that you talk to on the phone at night. There are Indian families in Chicago who do it today. I was back home a few years ago and said to my uncle Mohan, ‘Arranged marriages! How primitive! How barbaric!’ And Uncle Mohan said, ‘So, you count on meeting just the right person if you walk into a bar? That's primitive—like expecting to see a message from the gods when you look into the clouds.’ And then he asked, ‘So, over there in the sophisticated west: what's the divorce rate?’ I said, ‘Oh, I don't know, I guess a little more than half.’ And Uncle Mohan said, ‘Sundaran, if you had a car that only worked half the time, you'd stop driving, wouldn't you?’”
Groans, gasps, and laughter rolled around the room. Women shook their drink glasses at men, and men shrugged at one another as Sunny continued.
“Uncle Mohan, by the way, has been married for fifty-some years. Unhappily, but enduringly.
“What these children—what this man and woman—have,” he went on in a softer tone, “is a joy I see in discovering each other. The brave giddiness in suddenly realizing that two people who began on opposite sides of the world can come to this great, vast, churning place and find that in all of the important ways, they are from the same family tree,” and here Sunny gently touched his chest with his closed hand, resting it slightly to the left side. In the dim light and red surroundings, his fist looked like a heart, and his thumb stood upright, like an artery.
“Some of us have been lucky enough to know that,” said Sunny.
He opened his mouth for another word, but no sound followed. He looked over at John Wu, then felt breath come back into his lungs, and shook his head, as if he had just caught himself from tipping over.
“Your happiness makes us happy. Seeing you tonight makes us hopeful.”
And then Sunny raised his closed hand just under his chin and opened his fingers like the petals of a flower.
“Our city has just had a great shock,” he said. “But your love reminds us that the heart of this city still beats.”
The applause broke around Sunny, and then began to build until it no longer crackled, clap by clap, but was practically seamless as people stamped their feet and thumped their palms against the cushioned tabletops. John Wu dropped his head against Sunny's shoulder. Jerry Cotto took his right hand, and Karen circled an arm around his neck to draw his head down and kiss Sunny on his chin; she had a small, rosebud mouth, and the brush of her lips reminded him of Rula's kisses when she was six. Strangers rushed to Sunny's side, tucked themselves under an arm, and signaled for friends standing a few feet away to snap. White flashes flared and faded in his eyes, making the guests look like Halloween skeletons smacking their hands.
Sgt. McNulty moved in, graciously but decisively, peeling a man from Sunny's shoulder as he asked, “Who is your spiritual auditor?”
Sunny put his own hands on McNulty's shoulders as the sergeant led him down a flight of broad concrete stairs. Sunny had to
feel for each step with his toes. There was a small, quieter bar on the landing, and when he steered the sergeant into a clear space next to a window, he saw the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois holding down the corner spot.
“That was a very moving testament to marriage,” Brooks Whetstone told him. “Unfortunately, the women I know best are all serving time.”
Sunny nodded for Sgt. McNulty to stand by a few feet down and walked to where the U.S. Attorney had a brown bottle and a glass waiting for him above an empty stool.
“A few good prospects must come up for parole,” Sunny told him. “Pull the files and take your pick.”
“I couldn't hear everything,” Brooks Whetstone went on blandly. “But I could see everyone's eyes. You're a gifted politician, Mr. Roopini. I wonder why you've spent all this time in the minor leagues.” His unruly sandy curls flounced over the back of his tweed collar like shirt-tails hanging out of a closed suitcase.
“I wonder if you've heard of a group called Madje,” Brooks asked suddenly. “J as in jelly,” he emphasized.
Sunny shook his head.
“Mothers Against Discrimination and for Justice and Equity,” Brooks explained. “Their U.S. headquarters—a mail drop, really—is over on Madison. They give loans to poor women in Bangladesh to start handicraft businesses.”
“Can my great-aunts in Mumbai get in on the action?”
Brooks Whetstone tipped his glass against Sunny's, and took another swallow.
“We've been turning up their records for a year. Chicago, Amsterdam, Dacca. Complicated, cryptic. But it looks like most of the dollars, pounds, and euros they take in wind up as takas in the hands of terrorist cells.”
Brooks paused for Sunny to take a first sip before he went on. He heard his own swallow sound like a small ball going splat against a wall.
“The Carroll Family Trust is a major contributor.”
Sunny took a moment to tap a small pile of coasters. Brooks Whetstone smiled coldly, as if his pale lips rose and fell at the end of a string.
“One point four million dollars over the last three years.”
“You can't seriously think that Peter and Sharon meant to give money to terrorists.”
“You can't seriously think that what they meant makes a difference,” Brooks told him. He put a finger to his head. “Dumb,” he pronounced, and pulled a phantom trigger. “Especially if you're running for office. A grand jury should get the case in a few weeks,” he continued. “I look forward to giving them the chance to clear themselves.”
“‘Questioned in connection with …’” Sunny quoted from a future headline. “Put in the word terrorism. You play rough, Mr. Whetstone.”
“I don't play,” said Brooks Whetstone, with sudden hushed vehemence. “That's for dogs and children. I've got to stop people who would blow up Sears Tower for their god, and people—like your friends in City Hall—who would give away Lake Michigan for a few nickels. I don't play,” he repeated.
The U.S. Attorney turned up his glass and let the last inch of beer down his throat before setting it down, a skein of small white bubbles sliding slowly as a spider down the sides of the glass.
“I'd say a seat in Congress can be yours. You'd get my vote, if I ever voted …”
Brooks Whetstone let his words run out and turned his glass on its side to roll it slowly back and forth between them.
“Just help me understand how the mayor did business. How he kept the gears oiled and the machine running.”
“He ran the city well,” Sunny suggested. “He gave the people bread and circuses.”
“I'm glad the inmates are happy in the asylum,” said Brooks curtly. “But you know what the other option is here. A subpoena. Getting ‘questioned in connection with an investigation into City Hall corruption.’ A lot of old friends—not real friends, mind you, but the kind who fill a politicians’ holiday card list—might suddenly find your friendship inconvenient.”
Brooks almost brought his voice to a hush under the laughter, the clack of chopsticks, and the clatter of dance music.
“We've both seen it. A politician's friends hear he's being squeezed, and suddenly, he glows.” Brooks Whetstone made his fingers flutter under his chin, as if impersonating a starburst. “Radioactivity,” he said. “Polonium. Kryptonite. No one wants to swing next to you on the playground.”
Brooks Whetstone drew himself back about half a foot along the bar, then put his hand out toward Sunny's, along with a small, stiff white card.
“Let me know by the time you convene the council tomorrow. Just punch in this number. No need to say hello, leave a message, or press the pound sign. Just call. We'll know. We'll talk. We use a nice, woodsy place in southern Wisconsin for nice, long talks. Bring your daughters— skating, skiing, snowmobiling. I see all that stuff from the windows, at least. If I don't hear from you, we'll talk again. But that way, you really have to have a lawyer along. And then it's hard to have much fun.”
Brooks Whetstone turned from the bar with a last pat of his hand along the edge. Sunny let his card and the ten digits stare back at him for a moment before picking it up and tucking it into his pocket, next to Sgt. Gallaher's and catching his thumb on a damp, wrapped, forgotten pot sticker.
Sunny sat in his car, lowered his muffler, and joggled his hands before removing his gloves and trying to unbutton his coat with numb fingers.
“You get awful cold in just a few steps,” he told Sgt. McNulty.
“But that was quite a reception,” the sergeant replied. “You may have trouble slipping back into obscurity.” McNulty made no mention of his encounter with the U.S. Attorney.
“People were drinking,” said Sunny. “They wanted to laugh and cry. People still don't get that look around me.”
“Look?”
“Like they can't believe it's you,” Sunny explained. “Like they thought you were somebody they knew, then they realized you're somebody everybody knows. Like they'll tell people later. With me, there's just a little nodding—like running into the kid who sat behind you in third grade.”
“A couple of people wanted their picture taken with you,” the sergeant pointed out, and Sunny smiled as he leaned his head back against the seat and lowered his eyes.
“Into the kitchen drawer tonight,” he said. “Under matchsticks and takeout menus tomorrow.”
The blasting dry heat in the car made him yawn. They had turned onto east Lake Shore Drive, and Sunny could feel light from bright white street lamps and glare from the piling snow seep under his lids. He heard his phone again, but not until the second set of trills. It was Eldad Delaney Sunny marked the time in numerals on his screen: 10:06.
“There's something fairly sensational breaking,” he told Sunny. “It's Arty.”
A blog called Smoke-filled Room had run a story saying that Alderman Agras was engaged in “personal, intimate relationships” with two of the police guards on his security detail.
“Two at a time,” Eldad stressed, sounding unexpectedly impressed. “I thought Arty's idea of a twosome was taramosalata and tzatziki.”
(Arty had begged for a security detail, and the mayor had acceded. He hoped the gesture would flatter Arty during budget deliberations. It also enabled the mayor to astound Arty on Monday mornings, just before gaveling the council to order, when he would call from behind his hand, “And how was the Petrakas wedding over at Saint Athanasios?” even though the mayor complained that, “Keeping tabs on Arty is about as exciting as following a mud turtle.”)
The web site said that as Alderman Agras's Budget and Government Operations committee set the annual police budget, any such relationship would violate the city's statutes against fraternization. Alderman Agras would be nominated for mayor the next day; the people had a right to know. The police officers, sniffling and sorrowful, had confirmed the reported details. Alderman Agras had declined comment.
“Arty, Arty, Arty,” Sunny told Eldad. “Sofia has been having chemotherapy. One of his girl
s is a Moonie. His son got stopped with hashish in Japan. Arty, Arty, Arty,” he repeated, and whispered the bare facts to Sgt. McNulty.
“Oh, God. I know who's on that detail,” he said.
“Sgt. McNulty knows the women,” Sunny told Eldad, but the sergeant was already waving his hands.
“Their names are Dix and Terrell. And, sir, they're not.”
Sunny and Sgt. McNulty looked at each other across the backseat for a moment before Sgt. McNulty spoke.
“Mr. Roopini, there are things in anyone's medicine cabinet,” he said. “Things in the kitchen. A car and a blanket in the garage.”
He turned to lean down into the small window between the front and back seats.“I'll tell the uniforms in front of Alderman Agras's building on Burton to be ready for anything,” said Sergeant McNulty. “And I'll see if I can get an ambulance—quietly—parked down the block.”
Sunny did not often resort to the personal e-mail device that all aldermen had. Some seemed to grip it in their fists the way chain-smokers clenched packs of cigarettes. Sunny and Aidan Ruffino of the 38th had once been sent to a conference of legislators in Cuernevaca. Aidan had spent most of his time thumbing messages to his Irving Park car dealership with his left hand, and to his aldermanic office with his right.
“Hey, Aidan,” Sunny told him. “Leave at least one hand free for chilaquiles. We're in sunny fucking Mexico.”
Sunny preferred the phone. The mayor had caught him punching in a message once and pointed out, “Can't put that posh accent of yours in an email, Sunny.”
But he considered the implications of a late-night call to the Agras household. It would put Sunny in the same intrusive company as reporters and cranks. Arty—Sofia, for that matter—would not be able to unburden themselves in front of each other, and would merely hold him off with reassuring brio. So Sunny fished the small, black slab from his topcoat pocket and pecked out a short message:
