Oddly enough, we get more credit then we deserve. The tendency these days when some new scandal blows up is for cops to say to one another, “that’s Annamaria and her sniffers again.” We just smile quietly.
It’s hard to find that we exist. My business card merely asserts that I’m a member of the Chicago Police Department and gives a phone number at department headquarters and my e-mail address. We never meet at Fourteenth and Michigan. Our actual headquarters is in the basement of the Dragon Lady’s home in the Balmoral District north of Wrigley Field (a place for yuppy scum to gather, not for Sox fans from Thomas More). It’s a big, high-tech room filled with computers. We have access to every important database in the world, to some of which entrance is quite illegal. The Dragon Lady herself designed it, so of course it’s practically perfect. We don’t drive police cars and park a couple of blocks away from her house and enter the basement through an alley door.
She even has spare rooms for us in the attic of the big old place where we can sleep when we’ve been working all night. The rooms are strictly segregated by gender because Annamaria is a very strict Catholic. Like me. Well usually.
So how come I work for this somewhat ethereal, not to say ectoplasmic group, presided over by a woman right out of Terry and the Pirates?
I wasn’t a very promising rookie cop, which didn’t surprise me. My problem, my first partner told me, was that I thought too much, then rushed into a situation too late. She warned me that I wouldn’t be a good cop unless I learned to make instinctive decisions. I agreed with her that I had the problem.
Then in one particular investigation, I had an insight into a con that was going down and charged into the situation. The watch commander told me that I was an idiot, that the woman I tackled was not dangerous, and I would be charged with abusing a woman. Then it turned out that I was dead right about the perp and that she was very dangerous. If I had not jumped her, several cops, not excluding myself, would have died. The watch commander never apologized, nor did the cops in my family who called me as soon as it went down to tell me that I was a damn fool.
Then Captain Huong had invited me to meet her for tea and a discussion about the possibility of a transfer to her Unit She gave me an address which I knew was not a precinct station and suggested I enter through the alley and the back door. I looked her up in the directory and she was listed as a captain at Fourteenth and Michigan.
So we had tea in her parlor, under a painting of Mary Help of Christians. She wore jeans and a Berkeley sweatshirt and was sweet and friendly and punctilious about the making of tea. Yet I knew even then that I was dealing with the Dragon Lady.
We discussed religion, politics, my family background, and police work in the city—with much nodding of heads and quirky little giggles. She asked a couple of casual questions about my incident. Then two of her adorable kids drifted in from school and we chatted with them. They seemed to think I was a nice man, or at least a funny one. That may have helped. However, the Dragon Lady was inscrutable.
As I was leaving—by the back door—she said casually, “I’ll put in for a transfer to our Unit and a promotion to detective sergeant.”
“What does our Unit do?” I asked, not being quick enough to say I’d think about it.
“We sniff,”she said with a characteristic giggle.
So I became one of the sniffers.
Hence it was easy to trace down my “dirty little Sicilian bitch,”as I had called her in the schoolyard, half-afraid that I might find her. I did not find encouragement in the discovery that her father owned a very successful pasta company and was not connected with the Outfit, that she had attended Trinity High School, Harvard University, University of Chicago Law School (law review) and was an Assistant States’ Attorney for the County of Cook.
I felt inferior. Loyola and John Marshall were not in the same league. Neither was River Forest. At least my barbed tongue had not ruined her life. No need to apologize.
Right?
I heard the retreat facilitator’s voice say, “Wrong!”
Well, there was no hurry, was there?
Then one day I was hanging around the Criminal Court Building at Twenty-sixth and California sniffing about a link between a Mexican religious order house and a drug gang. A gorgeous young woman strode by me and turned into a courtroom. She was wearing a severely tailored black suit and looked like a young Sophia Loren with whom I had fallen in love on Turner Classic Movies.
“Who’s that?” I asked the State’s Attorney (male) with whom I’d been chatting innocently—as if anything we sniffers did was innocent.
“Cami Datillo,” he said reverently. “Don’t even think about it!”
“Why not?”
“You try to hit on her, it would be like you were run over by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.”
How do you apologize to someone like that?
I did notice her classically lovely, if immobile, face and deep, threatening brown eyes, and long, sleek black hair. For a moment she stopped in midflight to talk to another lawyer whose skin color suggested that he might be Sicilian too. She transformed herself into an Italian—dancing eyes, sweeping gestures, and quick laughs.
I could fall in love with her.
That was out of the question. I had to apologize, only not right then.
Then one pleasant mid-August morning, the Dragon Lady woke me up.
“Would you mind, Declan, if I asked you to drive out to Austin? There’s been a triple murder in St. Lucy’s Church. That’s on Lake Street, just east of Austin Boulevard. You take the Congress to Austin and turn north. After you go under the L tracks you turn right on Lake and go to Mayfield 5900 West. Lt. Dawn Collins is in charge of the investigation. She will be expecting you.”
“I’m on my way.”
A giggle.
“Eat your breakfast first and be sure you drink the green tea I gave you.”
I knew that she would ask, so I ate my breakfast and drank the awful green tea.
I presented my card to Lieutenant Collins, who glanced at it and put it in large bag she was carrying.
“Cami,” she said to the woman in beige summer suit who was standing next to her, “this is one of Captain Huong’s sniffers.”
Cami considered me for a moment, nodded, and turned away with obvious disinterest. My heart pounded and my stomach churned.
“I live in River Forest,” Camilla said to Lieutenant Collins, “And I didn’t even know that this poor, dilapidated old church was here. What a shame to have a crime in it!”
“Old it is surely is,” said a funny little man who had appeared with us, seemingly out of nowhere, “and arguably poor, but hardly dilapidated. Consider the tuck pointing outside the newly painted window frames. Also the excellent altar, statues, stations of the cross, and stained-glass window. Also ponder the freshly polished pews, floor, and candlesticks. Taken together they suggest careful and tasteful attention.”
He was short and pudgy with Coke bottle eyeglasses and deep blue eyes blinking behind the glasses. He wore black jeans, a black tee shirt, and a very old Chicago Beats windbreaker. If he had not spoken, we would not have known he was there.
“Hi, Father Ryan! I’m Dawn Collins. Superintendent Casey said you would be coming out. This is State’s Attorney Camilla Datillo. And this is … a police officer.”
“Bishop Ryan, I think!” Camilla said with a broad smile.
So she had excellent teeth. The orthodontics had done their work.
“O’Donnell, Bishop,” I said, offering my hand.
“Call me Blackie!”
Notes
1 forthcoming
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GOLDEN YEARS
Copyright © 2004 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterprises, Ltd. Teaser copyright © 2005 by Andrew M. Greeley Enterpises, Ltd
All rights reserved, including the right to rep
roduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
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eISBN 9781429912327
First eBook Edition : April 2011
First edition: November 2004
First mass market edition: November 2005
Golden Years Page 30
