by Ray Celestin
He switched the lights on and the place suddenly seemed strange to him, as if he was seeing it for the first time, as if it was someone else’s room, and he thought again of his dream and at that moment he couldn’t quite figure out who he was, what he was doing there, what calamitous series of events had led to him being half naked and bloody, in a gilded hotel room floating over a dark city. He knew the meaning of the word ‘epiphany’ from childhood, from having to go to Sunday School classes at his mother’s insistence – a moment of realization, a sudden knowledge of self – and he wondered if the word had an opposite, if there was a word for a sudden loss of knowledge, the realization that you were bewildered and had lost your way, lost any sense of who the hell you were.
And as he was struggling to deal with the feeling, the phone recommenced its shrill ringing, and he reached over and picked it up.
‘Hello?’ he mumbled.
‘Dante, it’s Loretta. Oh, God. Where’ve you been? Did you hear?’
‘I was out of town. Hear what?’
‘Oh, God. It was in the paper. Jacob died.’
Dante’s heart froze at the mention of his brother’s name, and the pit of despair loomed larger.
‘Jacob?’ he repeated.
‘It was in the paper,’ said Loretta again. ‘A shooting at the Stockyards. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’
PART EIGHT
FINAL CHORUS
‘There has been for a long time in this city of Chicago a colony of unnaturalized persons, hostile to our institutions and laws, who have formed a supergovernment of their own, who levy tribute upon citizens and enforce collections by terrorizing, kidnapping and assassinations. Evidence multiplies daily that many public officials are in secret alliance with underworld assassins, gunmen, rum-runners, bootleggers, thugs, ballot-box stuffers and repeaters, that a ring of politicians and public officials are conducting a number of breweries and are selling beer under police protection.’
PETITION TO CONGRESS,
BETTER GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION IN
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY, 1926
Chicago Herald Tribune
THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEWSPAPER
GENERAL NEWS
FIGHT PILGRIMS ARRIVE BY AIR, LAND AND WATER
LOOP HOTELS FILLED TO CAPACITY
Details of fight news-stories from the Dempsey and Tunney training camps, etc. – in sporting section
BY KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN
(Chicago Tribune press service)
(Picture on back page)
Jack Dempsey, who lost the heavyweight championship of the world in a downpour of rain in Philadelphia last year, tries tomorrow night to take it back from Gene Tunney at Soldier Field, and it is safe to say the sporting event is the greatest Chicago, and America, has ever seen. The estimated audience for the bout is 150,000 with an estimated gate of $2,500,000, the largest in history. Trains, boats, planes and fleets of automobiles have been mobilized by sports fans to bring them to the fistic battle, with numerous groups from around the country chartering their own trains – up to one hundred extra – and existing locomotives to the city running at double and sometimes triple their length (tonight’s 20th Century Limited is set to leave New York with three times the usual carriages). And fight fans are not the only ones to be chartering their own transportation. The Tribune has chartered a speedboat so reporters and photographers can bypass the crowds via the lake and get you the latest news first.
Meanwhile men around the country have been congregating in cigar stores, bars, hotel lobbies, street corners and trains to discuss the fight, and police have reported seeing a sharp rise in street brawls as discussions over each fighter’s merits turn ugly. In the Loop, thousands of visitors are registering at the hotels, with one housing over 5,000 tonight. Taxi drivers have been complaining the pilgrims are slowing down traffic.
Among the people descending on Chicago for the fight are numerous dignitaries. Spotted so far in town at various hotels and restaurants by our reporters and informers have been: Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, Al Jolson, Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, Damon Runyon, Walter Chrysler, Ty Cobb, Somerset Maugham, nine senators, ten state governors, the Mayors of Minneapolis, St Paul, San Francisco, New Orleans, Memphis and Kansas City, Dukes and Earls from England, Princes from Africa, and even an Indian Maharaja.
While the influx continues, fight promoter Tex Rickard has revealed Chicago is awash with counterfeit tickets, with three federal secret service agents seizing over 1,000 bogus tickets from cigar stores and pool rooms in the Loop. He urged fans to buy legitimate tickets from the box office in the Palmer House Arcade, and from the ten extra ticket booths that have been opened on Michigan Boulevard between 10th and 11th Street today.
Counterfeits or not, if the gate receipt estimates are reached, Tunney is set to receive a million-dollar purse for the fight, the largest ever, with challenger Dempsey set to receive half that. The two pugilists left their respective camps in Fox Lake and Lincolns Fields yesterday afternoon for a press conference at the Illinois Athletic Club on Michigan Avenue, causing thousands to flock there and block traffic. Below is a brief round-up of the tidbits of information revealed in the press conference. For a fuller report, please turn to the sporting section:
1) Former marine Tunney has pledged to provide every disabled marine in Chicago tickets and free transportation to the fight.
2) Dempsey revealed more on his adoption by the Blackfoot Indian tribe at his training camp earlier this month. Dempsey, who claims to have Utah Cherokee blood, was christened ‘Thunder Chief’ by the twenty-seven braves and a chief who came all the way from their Glacier Park reservation for the ceremony.
3) When asked how they would spend the day of the fight, champ Tunney of Greenwich Village, N.Y., known for carrying with him at all times a copy of The Rubaiyat – a book of ancient Persian poetry – answered that he would be going for a five-mile run, then spending the afternoon reading rare manuscripts in the library of the Fred Lundin home with the British novelist Somerset Maugham. On the other hand, people’s favorite Jack Dempsey revealed that after doing a similar five miles’ roadwork, he would spend the afternoon playing cards with members of the press and well-wishers.
5) The Tribune has installed 100 special telephone trunk lines to answer calls from fight fans requesting updates on the night. An estimated 20,000 calls are expected, and we’re hoping to be able to keep up with demand.
50
Ida sat on the edge of the wicker chair in the safe-house bathroom and stared up at the mourning dress hooked to the shower rail. From where she was sitting it felt like the dress was floating above her, swaying in the breeze coming in from the window, black as a flock of crows, blacker still for the grid of white tiles glowing in the sunlight behind it.
She couldn’t face putting on the dress just yet, so she lit a cigarette instead, stared at her toes, at the frayed hem of her chemise, at the window above the bathtub, a rectangle of glowing sunlight, a hint of blue skies. Jacob’s funeral should have been on a rainy day, a grey day of cold and wind. Instead the weather looked good: hot, sunny, not a cloud in all the heavens. There was something sad about it, that the elements refused to grieve with her.
There being no family left the police had made the arrangements. Maybe that was why it had all been done so quickly. With the autopsy out of the way, the funeral had been arranged for that afternoon, just a few days after Jacob’s death. In the intervening time, Ida hadn’t left the safe house at all and the day and the hour had somehow crawled up on her.
That morning a girl from the Pinkertons’ personnel department had arrived with the dress and a hat to go with it. Ida could tell the dress wouldn’t fit her, but it was still a nice gesture. She looked at it again, floating above her, echoing death. She took a last drag on her cigarette, ran water from the faucet over it and tossed it into the garbage. Then she stood, pulled off her chemise, reached a hand up and took death off its hanger and slipped it on.
S
he found the zip at the back, pulled it up, and looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. How she’d aged in just a few days. Eyes baggy, face puffy. You’d think the face would get smaller once all those tears had left it.
She didn’t bother with makeup; the hat the girl from personnel had brought had a veil pinned to it. Ida sat on the edge of the chair and pulled on her stockings, slipped on her shoes. She took a moment, then stepped into the hallway.
In the two nights since Jacob had died she’d been taken with insomnia, had slept in total for maybe a couple of hours. The images and sounds of what had happened kept tumbling into her mind, making her sob, tumbling on into the vast blackness whence they came. She wondered if she could have saved him somehow. She made lists of all the things she could have done differently, cursing herself for every one of the thousand million steps that led to his death.
Most of all she cursed herself for her decision to close her eyes at the fatal moment. She had seen the gun being raised and she had closed her eyes. She heard the shots, and saw the aftermath, but the moment of death was a blank, a darkness. What if he had turned to her in that moment, looking for support, and her eyes were closed? Even though she knew it was impossible, it would still be a weight on her soul for the rest of her life. She had closed her eyes, and now she had to imagine the moment it happened, what it looked like, and maybe the imagining, the gap into which she was falling, was worse than the memory that would have formed if she’d allowed it to.
She remembered what Jacob had said that night after the bombing, about having the courage to not look away, and the fact she’d failed so miserably in his last moments made her anguish all the sharper.
On the few occasions she had fallen asleep, she’d woken up seconds later to wonder where she was, and then she’d remembered where and why and the fact of Jacob’s dying, and the remembering was like learning of his death all over again, and she’d had to deal with the shock of it all over again, had to start mourning all over again, not only for Jacob, but for the time, just a few seconds earlier, when she was still ignorant of everything that had occurred. Best not to sleep at all than go through a trauma every time she awoke.
In the living room there were two Pinks – one of the bodyguards sitting on the sofa, and the girl from personnel, staring out of the window, a hand to her chin. They turned to look at Ida as she entered, and the girl smiled at her, comforting, patronizing. Ida had noticed she had the clarity and focus that comes sometimes from sleep deprivation, but also the irritability. She forced herself to smile back at the girl, and the girl walked over to the table, picked up Ida’s hat and passed it to her. Ida put on the hat, pulled the pin from the veil, let it drop in front of her face, and the girl helped her put the pin back in. Ida thanked her and then there was movement in the hallway and Ida turned to see Michael stepping in from the corridor.
He looked rough, like he hadn’t slept in years, like he was weary and sick of it all, like he was on his way to lower realms. He looked how Ida felt. He came over to her and she saw that he’d shaved hastily, and had bags under his eyes to match her own, and his knuckles were scuffed and cut, his hands bruised. She guessed he’d been chasing down leads since she’d last seen him, his hands a clue as to the form the chase had taken. After a moment he took her arm and without saying a word they stepped out of the apartment.
Four Pinks were milling about on the street by the car that was waiting for them. They got in and the driver took them to the cemetery.
‘How’s the case going?’ she asked once they were on their way, not because she really cared, but because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘I’ve been working with Walker – we’ve managed to track down the boy from the attack. He’s at a hide-out in Pilsen. Walker’s keeping an eye on him.’
‘You haven’t talked to him?’
Michael shook his head. ‘We caught him this morning. I came here first. To see you.’
‘I’m not much to look at.’
She leaned her head against his shoulder and they stayed quiet for a while.
‘If you want to talk about it . . .’ said Michael, and his voice had a warm concern to it, a softness that she guessed he used when he spoke to his children.
‘No,’ said Ida. ‘What’s there to say? He was just there and I couldn’t save him. Just an arm’s length away. And I closed my eyes . . .’
And even as she said it she started crying, and Michael squeezed her tight.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said.
She nodded but said nothing, and they stayed like that for the rest of the journey. Slowly, as the city spun past, the tears stopped and she no longer had to dab at her eyes, and at some point she propped her head up, and realized they had arrived at the cemetery.
The afternoon sun was shining down on the flower beds and lawns and chapels, making it all look picture perfect, which made Ida want to sob once more – as did the fact that the place was crawling with police and Pinks.
While the people milled about waiting for the ceremony to begin, Ida watched Severyn shoot Jacob for the millionth time, and her heart jumped and she felt like she was going to swoon, and she thought, selfishly, of how this all must be aging her and she wished she could burn her memories to ashes. Then one of the workers at the chapel asked them all to come inside, and there was Jacob in his coffin at the front. Closed casket.
The priest made his way through the prayers for the dead, the Mass for the dead, the absolution – and then they were shuffling out again, into the cemetery, to the grave, to the void.
The coffin arrived and the priest said the Lord’s Prayer and another shorter prayer and a final petition for Jacob to rest in peace and they all lined up to throw soil on the coffin. As they waited, Ida noticed a man standing at a distance to the other mourners, near a family tomb, watching the ceremony. He wasn’t one of the Pinkerton men and he didn’t look like a cop. He had one arm in a sling, and he was wearing a hat and an odd pair of green sunglasses. A journalist maybe? She wondered how he’d gotten through the security cordon.
Despite the hat and the glasses obscuring his face, there was something vaguely familiar about him, and through the fuzz in her head she realized what it was: he reminded her of Jacob. She turned her attention back to the graveside and wondered with trepidation if this would be some new feature of her life, that she would forever be recognizing Jacob in people she encountered, the disparate fragments never adding up to a whole human being, leaving her with countless painful reminders, a jagged emptiness.
Soon enough they were all done at the graveside and there was more milling about and Michael told her there was to be a wake back at the 2nd District station. She told him that she wanted to stay at the graveside a bit more and he nodded and slowly the other mourners melted away, and it was just Ida standing there next to the grave, looking down at the simple bouquets.
She thought of the funerals in New Orleans, grand and beautiful and filled with music, and the gangster funerals in Chicago, pageants of flowers, and her feeling of emptiness increased. This was no send-off. And it made her angry and sad and hopeless all at the same time.
And then she heard a noise behind her and turned to see the man in the hat and the sunglasses approaching the grave, alone, a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in his hand. As he approached he nodded at her and through the fog in her head she again got the feeling that he was familiar. He put the flowers down on the grave, took off his hat and glasses, mumbled a prayer and crossed himself, then he turned around to leave and when he did so Ida caught sight of his face and saw the resemblance to Jacob – the dark hair, the green eyes, the delicate features – and it made the world slide off into a dewdrop, and she was falling, swooning, spinning, and everything went black.
51
Dante saw the girl swoon and reached out to grab her, but before he could, the place was alive with men running toward him, barreling out of the tree line, screaming, pulling service revolvers from holsters. He r
aised his hands, ignoring the pain in his arm, and tried to explain that she had fainted, but the men carried on coming, and soon he found himself in the center of a circle of police and Pinks pointing Colts at him.
They held him in their sights as a tall man with smallpox scars all across his face approached, looking like he was in charge of things. He gave Dante a quick look, then kneeled to see how the girl was doing. She was already coming to, looking woozy and flustered.
‘Anyone got any whiskey?’ he asked in a Southern accent, and one of the men in the circle pulled a hip-flask from his pocket and passed it to the tall man, who held it to the girl’s lips.
‘Who are you?’ asked the tall man. ‘How’d you get in here?’
‘I’m a mourner,’ said Dante. ‘He was my brother.’
The tall man turned to one of the cops in the gun-circle, who nodded, confirming Dante’s identity.
‘Frisk him,’ said the tall man, and another of the cops holstered his gun, patted Dante down and confirmed he didn’t have a weapon on him.
Then the girl sat up and raised a hand to her temples. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I guess I blacked out.’
On hearing it the tall man gestured to the others to lower their weapons, and as they did so, Dante lowered his hands.
The girl stood, shakily, leaning against the tall man, and when she was upright, she wiped some mud from the side of her dress with the flat of her palm.
‘You’re Jacob’s brother?’ she asked, and Dante nodded.
‘He told me about you,’ she said, in a wistful tone of voice, and Dante guessed she was troubled by his resemblance to Jacob.
‘I’m sorry to have shocked you,’ he said.
The girl shook her head. ‘He said you’d disappeared.’
