White Collar Girl

by Renée Rosen

  I looked around the city room and watched as these men—the very men who had sabotaged and resented me and had ridiculed me for being a sob sister—took up my cause. They were following my lead and helping me investigate the most important scoop of my career.

  My eyes filled with tears and I allowed one, just one, to leak down my face before I cleared it with the back of my hand.

  Epilogue

  • • •

  Chicago, November 22, 1963

  It was the first time my parents’ television set had been on for more than one hour at a time, and I knew my father was concerned about what all that extra viewing would do to the electric bill.

  The day the president was shot I’d been having lunch with M, Mrs. Angelo, Gabby and Eppie Lederer. It was something of a bridal shower for M, who was getting married that weekend. Turned out she met and fell in love with Gregory’s boss. We girls had knocked off early and decided to make this sort of a last hurrah for her at Riccardo’s. We were talking about the wedding and what we were all planning to wear. Gabby was worried that her shoes would make her taller than Benny, whom she’d been dating for the past year. Not that any of us were surprised—the two had been inching their way toward each other for ages.

  We were sitting at the bar, talking about Gabby’s shoes, when we heard the news. Benny had been back in the city room when it came over on the wire, and he raced over to tell us. We tossed our money on the bar and fled back to the city room.

  Ellsworth had a portable black-and-white TV set up on the horseshoe where I now sat, too. CBS was making a half-assed attempt to return to As the World Turns before Walter Cronkite broke back in with an update. Mr. Copeland adjusted the rabbit ears to clear the snow and static from Cronkite’s face as he reported on blood transfusions and an unconfirmed report that the president was dead.

  Dead? Dead!

  Randy accidentally knocked over his coffee, and M and Gabby and even Peter seemed more concerned about offering up napkins and shoving cigarettes and lighters out of the way than accepting the possibility that President Kennedy was dead. I couldn’t say I blamed them. It was just too much to fathom. The rest of us were hovering around the horseshoe, waiting until the confirmation came through. It had been an hour since we first learned that three shots had been fired.

  It took a lot to shock a city room filled with jaded reporters who had seen it all, but when they announced that Kennedy was dead, we were speechless. But just for a minute. Then all at once we jumped into action. We had news to report.

  I must have gone through a pack of Lucky Strikes that afternoon, contributing to the haze of blue smoke accumulating above our heads. It was several hours later when Ellsworth sent me home to get some rest, not that I wanted to leave.

  I started to protest, but he said, “Get the hell out of here, Walsh. I’ve got it covered for now. But I hope you didn’t have any plans this weekend, because I expect you back here at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. And pack a change or two of clothes—you won’t be leaving anytime soon. I’ll need a break by then, so you’ll have to be fresh. I’m depending on you to help me cover this. Now, go.”

  I packed up my attaché case, thinking how much had changed over the past three years. After I broke the horsemeat scandal—which resulted in public outrage and a fifty percent drop in beef sales, despite the fact that our coverage assured everyone that the food supply was now clean—my status at the paper completely changed. It proved to be one of the most important stories the Tribune had scooped in years. There were countless indictments that followed. Department heads down in Springfield who had managed to keep their jobs under the new governor were fired. And that was only the beginning. The work I’d done on my brother’s murder resulted in the authorities reopening the investigation. That past summer two men, junior executives from Willis Packing in Topeka, Kansas, were convicted of the murder of Eliot Walsh.

  Finally, my family had a sense of justice and relief, and closure. My mother planted flowers again and even picked up her pen. My father cut back on his drinking and started working on a new novel. My grandparents came to town and no one stormed out of the room.

  As for me, I was floundering. I’d spent more than a year on the story, but once all the investigating was done and meetings with detectives and lawyers were over, the case was closed. And none of it had brought Eliot back. I found myself left with a different kind of void to fill. So I threw myself even harder into my first love, my work. And the next scoop I discovered shocked even me. Because it had been sitting right under my nose for years. Turned out my neighbor across the hall, the one with the mysterious baby stroller, was actually running a black-market adoption ring. She was pulling in anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per child. I’d never actually seen her because she lived up north in a big house and just used the shoddy apartment across the hall from me as drop-off and pickup point.

  Anyway, by this time, my big investigative articles had captured a lot of national attention. I began to develop a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters in Chicago and was even honored with a few awards. After that Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland called me into the conference room and announced that they were promoting me to deputy city editor. I was the first female to hold that post and take my seat with the men at the horseshoe. Since then I’ve hired on two female reporters and am currently fighting with Ellsworth to bring on a third. Like Mrs. Angelo said to me that day on Lower Wacker, now I’ll do anything I can to help another woman.

  It was raining when I left the Tribune the day Kennedy was shot, but the temperature was unusually warm for the end of November. Last I heard it was a clement sixty-one. I had an umbrella with me but couldn’t bring myself to open it. I was just that numb.

  Out on the street, it was too quiet for a Friday night. The city had that eerie deserted feel, like on the eve of a holiday when businesses and stores close early. There were cars on the road, but no one honked. Everyone seemed to be moving carefully, solemnly, respectfully. The few people I did see walking looked as though they were in a trance, rain pelting their faces and overcoats. It was either that or they went out of their way to make eye contact, to hold you with a glance that seemed to say, It’ll be okay. We’ll all get through this.

  Suddenly the thought of getting on the el and going home to my empty apartment was too much. Instead, I turned up my collar, flagged down a cab, and gave the driver my parents’ address. The cabbie’s radio was tuned to WGN.

  “Do you believe this?” said the driver. “What’s this world coming to?”

  I hadn’t noticed the driver before. He was a burly man with matted-down hair, balding slightly in the back. When I shifted my gaze to the rearview mirror, I saw tears in this big man’s eyes.

  “I was in the Loop when it happened,” he said. “I had a passenger running late for a lunch meeting. He’s in the backseat telling me, ‘Go this way; take that street.’ I had the radio on. I was listening to County Fair when they broke in with the bulletin. I tell you, I had to pull over. I was shaking. I couldn’t drive. The guy in the back was still worried about getting to his damn lunch meeting. ‘Go! Go!’ he’s telling me. ‘Why’d you pull over?’ He didn’t get it. His lunch didn’t matter anymore. The world had just changed.”

  I looked into the rearview mirror, into his teary eyes. When he pulled up to my parents’ house, I handed him two dollars for a fifty-cent fare and he clasped my fingers and I in turn held on to his.

  Moments later I found my parents in the family room with the lights down low, their faces illuminated by the ghostlike flickers coming off the Westinghouse TV set. My mother had abandoned the ironing board in the corner and was perched on the edge of her chair. My father was in his recliner, his manuscript resting on the floor at his side. I could see my mother’s handwriting all over it. She was editing it for him as he went. About a month before he’d even let me read the first fifty pages. It was a mystery, and it was good. Really good. I’d been begging him to give me more ever since.
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  My mother got up and hugged me, cupping my face in her hands. She was fixing herself a fresh drink. “You need one?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Give me whatever you’re having.”

  My father could hardly look away from the TV set as I leaned down to kiss his forehead.

  “This is the biggest news story since Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be back in the city room right now.”

  I stayed and had a drink with them, feeling antsy as I sat on the sofa and watched the news unfold on TV. A static CBS News Bulletin art card filled the screen before Walter Cronkite reappeared with reactions pouring in from leaders throughout the world. I had such a feeling of being abandoned. I wondered if my parents felt it, too. It seemed like we were all children whose father had just been killed. Who would take care of us now? We had Vice President Johnson, who was sort of like a distant uncle you didn’t know very well. It didn’t feel very comforting.

  The evening wore on and we halfheartedly picked at dinner while seated in front of the TV set. Dan Rather, down in Dallas, was now reporting that they had a man in custody. A new layer to the story was unfolding. I closed my eyes and pictured everyone in the city room scrambling to find out what they could about this twenty-four-year-old Lee Oswald. I could hear the din of typewriters, the wire machines, the phones going and people racing up and down the aisles as the presses rumbled from down below.

  I couldn’t wait to get back there.

  Author’s Note

  • • •

  As with my previous novels, Dollface and What the Lady Wants, I’ve woven many real-life people and historical events into the fabric of White Collar Girl. But unlike my previous novels, which were set in the 1920s and the Gilded Age, White Collar Girl takes place more recently, in the 1950s, and because of that I was able to meet and interview many people who were alive and vividly remember the time and events included in this novel.

  White Collar Girl was the name of an actual column written by Ruth McKay, which ran in the Chicago Tribune during the 1940s and 1950s. And while the main characters, from the editors to the reporters, are all fictional, many of the events they covered in White Collar Girl are based on actual news stories and political scandals.

  The el car derailment in White Collar Girl was based loosely on a similar derailment in the Loop, which occurred in 1977. However, the CTA scandal and the people and circumstances surrounding it in White Collar Girl are completely fictional.

  Operation K in White Collar Girl was based on Operation Greylord, a major scandal that shook the Cook County judiciary system in the 1980s. The FBI conducted a three-and-a-half-year investigation in which one man, Terrence Hake, posed as a crooked lawyer on the take and went undercover to expose widespread corruption in the legal system. Operation Greylord resulted in countless arrests of police officers, lawyers and judges.

  Richard Morrison, better known as the Babbling Burglar, was a real robber who ultimately helped Chicago police crack down on what became known as the Summerdale Scandal. As portrayed in White Collar Girl, several police officers were working in conjunction with Morrison in an elaborate robbing spree.

  The air-raid sirens blasting after the White Sox won the 1959 pennant was a true event and one that many Chicagoans living today recall.

  While Chicago has a long and notorious history of voter fraud, none was more notable than the 1960 Kennedy versus Nixon election, which is depicted in White Collar Girl. Though it was never completely proven, accusations of voter fraud significantly tarnished Daley’s reputation.

  The horsemeat scandal in White Collar Girl is also based on an actual scandal that rocked Chicago and Illinois from 1951–1953, in which horsemeat was passed on to consumers as beef. It turned up everywhere, from grocery stores to fine restaurants. Governor Adlai Stevenson’s administration and the Mafia were involved in the scandal.

  Please note that the Peterson-Schuessler murders actually took place in October 1955 rather than June 1955, where I have it here.

  While I was conducting research for this book, my dear friend and former Chicago Tribune staff photographer Charles Osgood invited me to a Chicago Tribune reunion party. It was there that I met Marion Purcelli, who started at the Tribune in 1949 as a “copygirl.” Marion served as a huge inspiration for the characters Jordan Walsh and Mrs. Angelo. Many stories Marion covered found their way into the pages of White Collar Girl, including the story on the Dwight Correctional Facility for Women and her article, “So I’m a Girl and I Carry an Attaché Case.”

  The Tribune city room of today looks nothing like it did during the 1950s, but still I’m grateful to Rick Kogan for giving me a look inside the Tribune Tower. It was also through Rick that I met Old Town historian Shirley Baugher, who was extremely generous with her vast knowledge of one of Chicago’s most fascinating and charming neighborhoods.

  In addition to personal interviews, I read countless 1950s issues and articles from the Tribune and am very grateful to the Chicago Public Library for making these archives available. I also did a great deal of reading in order to educate myself not only on Chicago politics of the 1950s but also on the field of journalism. For those interested in learning more about either subject (which tend to go hand in hand), I highly recommend the following books:

  At Home in Our Old Town: Every House Has a Story by Shirley Baugher. Chicago: Old Town Triangle Association, 2005.

  Hidden History of Old Town by Shirley Baugher. Charlestown: History Press, 2011.

  Our Old Town: The History of a Neighborhood by Shirley Baugher. Chicago: Old Town Triangle Association, 2001.

  American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2000.

  The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream by Thomas Dyja. New York: Penguin Books, 2013.

  After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story by Michael Hainey. New York: Scribner, 2013.

  Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction 1880–1930 by Jean Marie Lutes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.

  Don’t Make No Waves . . . Don’t Back No Losers: An Insider’s Analysis of the Daley Machine by Milton L. Rakove. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

  Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.

  Women in American Journalism: A New History by Jan Whitt. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

  Courthouse Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960 by Edmund Frank Kallina. University of Florida Press, 1988.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. A major theme in White Collar Girl is women in the workplace and the challenges they faced in trying to break through the glass ceiling. How do you see the challenges facing career women in the 1950s as compared to those found in today’s workplace? In what ways have we advanced and in what ways do you feel we are still stuck? Are there advantages women have now that they didn’t have then?

  2. At various points in the book, Jordan is confronted with moral issues over what she is willing to do to get a story. In some cases she even bends the law. Do you think she’s justified in going to these lengths in order to expose the truth? Do you think her drive is based more on her feeling she’s a public watchdog, or do you think it’s her ego?

  3. How do you see the other women in the story? Do you see M as a tragic figure or as a woman coming into her own? What about Gabby? Do you think Mrs. Angelo is a mentor, and did you feel like she was helping Jordan advance or holding her back? In what ways do you feel each of these characters were typical of their time, and in what ways were they not?

  4. Jordan’s mother, CeeCee, was an unusual woman for her time. Do you think she was a good mother? How do you think CeeCee shaped the woman Jordan grew up to be?

  5. If you were of working age in the 1950s, would you see yourself more as a career-minded woman like Jordan or a traditionalist like M? What did you find most in
teresting about each woman? What did you find most frustrating about them?

  6. Marty Sinclair, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, is Jordan’s hero at the start of the novel, but as the story progresses he falls from grace. How do you think she handles the situation? What would you have done if you had been in her shoes?

  7. When Jordan falls in love with Jack Casey, a fellow journalist, he seems threatened by her professional accomplishments. Do you think that was the major reason they didn’t get married? What do you see as the other obstacles in their relationship? Were you glad that Jordan decided to walk away from him?

  8. Scott Trevor was the love of Jordan’s life. When she called in the story about the Operation K mole, it put an end to their budding romance. Do you think Scott’s reaction was understandable? Do you think Jordan made a mistake in putting the story before her loyalty to him?

  9. As we all know, sadly newspapers no longer play the role in our lives that they did even a decade or two ago, let alone one as important as they did in the 1950s, when they were everyone’s primary source of news. Do you think in general we are less informed about local, national and world events due to the decline of newspapers? Or do you think we are better informed due to the immediacy of things like Twitter and 24-7 cable news?

  10. Many of the scandals in White Collar Girl were based on actual events. Do you think we are more aware of political scandals today because in the digital age, social media and camera phones make it harder to conceal them? Or do you think we are less aware today because daily city newspapers play less of a role as a watchdog?

  Photo by Charles Osgood

  Renée Rosen is a freelance writer and the author of What the Lady Wants, Dollface, and Every Crooked Pot. She lives in Chicago, where she is at work on her next novel.

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