by Jean Heller
My musings were interrupted when Charles left to catch his bus.
“Nice kid,” Mark said. “What’s his story?”
I told him.
In addition to Pilsen, my neighborhood also was known as the Heart of Italy. It was Chicago’s original Little Italy, though many of the old places had moved a few blocks north to Taylor Street and then been deposed by new places. The remaining old places where I lived carried on and did fine. There were five four-star Italian eateries within a three-block walk of my house, all but one dating back a long time.
We chose that night to eat at Il Vicinato, the newest of the five. The food was great, the bartender friendly and attentive (also generous with her pours), and it was quieter than its counterparts. I wanted quiet so I could lay out for Mark how events that unfolded since our walk in Dan Ryan Woods had turned into a surreal and absurdist play. He agreed that the cloak of secrecy thrown over the discovery of a children’s graveyard in the middle of an urban forest preserve made no sense.
“Of course, I work for the state,” he said. “Our procedures probably vary a little, but not a lot. If I’m working a fire—say the one up in Rockford—and we find bodies in the rubble, we say so. When and if they’re identified, the local authorities make family notifications then release the identities. The process is only delayed if we have trouble making the IDs or finding next of kin.”
“Did you find any bodies up there?” I asked.
He nodded and sipped his beer. “One. There’s no ID yet. Homeless guys used those buildings as shelters in bad weather. The fire’s point of origin was in the same area where we found the body. I’m leaning away from the arson theory. I think maybe the dead guy built a small fire to stay warm, either fell asleep or passed out, and the fire got away from him. By the time he woke up, he was trapped. If he woke up. He might have died in his sleep from smoke inhalation.”
I sipped a blended red wine from Tuscany, mostly Sangiovese, and sighed.
“A sigh of appreciation for the wine or a sigh of frustration?” Mark asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe a little of both. I can’t make any sense of this.”
Our dinners came—Chicago-cut pork chops for Mark and a rack of lamb for me. The aroma of roasted garlic was enough to make my eyes and my mouth water.
“There must be potential sources you haven’t tapped yet,” Mark said.
“There are a lot of children’s aid groups around,” I said. “Probably none with a handle on this. My best shot, I think, is with the head of the Child Protection Division of DCFS. She seemed genuinely concerned the first time we talked. But if someone slapped a gag order on the mayor and the police chief, they’ll slap her with one, too, at some point. That will be the end it.”
“Why don’t you call her first thing tomorrow and find out? Don’t presume defeat, or it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“On my calendar,” I said. “Just hope I’m not a day late and a dollar short.”
9
Instead of calling Winona Jackson the next morning, I checked in at my office then walked north from our building into The Loop. My destination was the James R. Thompson state office building, which squatted over an entire city block south of the Chicago River.
The sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun actually carried a little warmth where it squeezed between the buildings. The air was cold and crisp and still. A picture postcard day in the Second City.
The Thompson building, named for a four-term governor who served from 1977 to 1991, was possibly the ugliest building in a city known for its extraordinarily beautiful architecture. The ground floor was faced with alternating plates of red and white metal, and the floors above the lobby sloped inward as they went upward. In totality it looked like the top half of an ice cream cone fallen upside down on a sidewalk. I thought I’d heard some discussion of tearing it down, though not recently. There had to be better things to do with such a conspicuous city block.
Thompson undoubtedly deserved to have a building named for him, if for no other reason than he was one of the few modern Illinois governors who didn’t end his tenure in prison. But had I been “Big Jim,” I think I would have asked for recognition elsewhere.
I found my way to the DCFS offices and asked for Winona Jackson. The receptionist asked if I was expected. I said I wasn’t sure. That was true, more or less. Since Winona and I had talked once, I didn’t think she would be surprised to hear from me again.
“Your name?” the receptionist asked in a pleasant way.
“Deuce Mora.”
She glanced up. “Deuce?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me strangely for a moment, then caught herself and called back to Winona Jackson’s office.
“She’ll be up in a moment,” the woman said after a brief conversation.
Winona appeared a few minutes later, an attractive black woman, probably around fifty years old. She wore her graying hair close to her skull, and no apparent makeup. Her clothes were conservative, brown slacks and a heather sweater over a beige silk blouse. Her feet were encased in fleece-lined suede snow boots. Since the sidewalks were clear, the boots probably were more for warmth than repelling slush. Everything about Winona said she didn’t have patience for primping.
There were no pleasantries. We didn’t shake hands.
“Follow me,” she said.
We sat in her small office, which had a well-worn look but a nice view to the south of Chicago’s City Hall and to the southeast of the Richard J. Daley Center. She regarded me for a moment in studied silence. I took the time to look at her décor. She had two college certificates on one wall: a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Illinois/Chicago and a master’s degree in psychology from DePaul University. I was impressed. She noticed.
“Not too shabby for a girl who grew up in Pullman,” she said, referring to a historic neighborhood on the Far South Side. In the late 1880s George Pullman’s Palace Car Company had built a model industrial community for the construction of railroad cars. Pullman made an effort to give his workers everything they needed, including small but very attractive row houses close to their work sites.
As passenger trains and sleeper cars went the way of the stagecoach, the Pullman neighborhood fell into stagnation. The factory and commercial buildings were abandoned to the elements. Stores and businesses moved out. As with most communities in despair, a giant hole opened in its heart to admit waves of crime.
Winona apparently read my mind.
“I grew up in one of those Pullman row houses,” she said. “When I was in the seventh grade, I saw a couple of gangbangers drive by and shoot at my older brother. They hit my baby brother instead. I watched him bleed to death on the front grass while it took the city almost an hour to send the police and an ambulance. I made up my mind to find a way to leave, and I didn’t plan on ever goin’ back.”
She pointed to the diplomas. “Those were my ‘Get Outta Jail Free’ cards. I managed to move to Bucktown back when it was still a dicey area, but a house there was still affordable. I ain’t never been back to Pullman, not even to bury my grandmother. The place has been gentrifying in the last few years, but I still ain’t about to go back. You don’t watch a little boy you love bleeding his way to a death he did nothing to deserve and not have it change you forever.”
I liked Winona. She was an interesting mixture of well-spoken, educated scholar and street kid. Sometimes she spoke in full sentences with words of more than one syllable. At other times, when the topic got personal or emotional, she slipped back into the vernacular of the streets. I found it an attractive combination.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. “You should have called first.”
“I didn’t want to give you a chance to tell me not to come,” I said.
I thought she might have smiled a little. “I wouldn’t have told you not to come. But I might have told you I don’t know more than I did the other day.”
I nodded. I
wasn’t surprised.
“Okay, let me talk for a minute,” I said. “Then you can respond as you wish.”
I repeated the details of my walk with Mark and Murphy in Dan Ryan Woods.
“Yeah, all that was in your story,” she said.
I nodded and moved ahead.
“I can’t tell you in full detail what happened over the next couple of days,” I said, “but certain authorities were cooperating with my reporting—until they weren’t. Suddenly there was a blanket of denial over everything. Nobody would say anything. Not the police. Not the mayor’s office. Not the medical examiner. Not the state’s attorney’s office. That isn’t what I expect when they’ve been digging the bones of children out of a local park.”
“Children? Plural?”
“Yes.”
“How many you think they found?”
I was about to trample the spirit of my promise to Tony Donato.
“More than one,” I said. “Beyond that, I have given a source a promise of silence, and I have to keep my promise.”
“I thought reporters were about reportin’ stuff, not keepin’ secrets.”
I smiled. “We are. But we have to . . .” and here we finished the sentence together . . . “protect our sources,” we said in unison.
“Yeah, I heard that one before,” she said.
She sighed deeply and swiveled her chair to look out her window.
“The Daley Center over there,” she said, jutting her chin toward the very attractive modern structure that bore the name of the iron-fisted mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976, “it’s a lot prettier than this garish excuse for a building. It’s even got that Picasso sculpture out front. Tells you where the power is in this state. It’s with the mayor of Chicago, not the governor of Illinois. Seems like we got a lotta stuff ‘round here that’s all basackwards. And that maybe includes how we safeguard our children. Or don’t.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked.
“Not a thing, honey,” she said, swiveling back to her desk. “What you’re tellin’ me—and what you’re not tellin’ me—is breakin’ my heart. Somebody should be yellin’ bloody murder to get to the truth in this. But aside from the normal day-to-day chaos, it’s as quiet ‘round here as a church on Tuesday. Gimme your card. Lemme ask some discreet questions. I’ll call you if I learn anything.”
She stood up, a signal our meeting was over.
“But don’t hold your breath,” she added.
10
Winona called my cell phone at 4:35. She must have called from her personal cell phone because the incoming call didn’t carry a state government exchange. Was she concerned about generating a record in her office of a call to me?
“I don’t wanna meet at my office,” she said, confirming my suspicion. “Too many ears. Do you know the Wormhole coffee place on North Milwaukee?”
“I actually do, yes. I’ve been there a couple of times. I like it.”
“Meet me there at six. It should be mostly empty at that hour. If there are others around, nobody will know us or pay any attention to our conversation.”
“You seem worried,” I said.
“I been with DCFS for twenty-seven years, honey. It’s too late for me to find a new line-a work. So, yes, I’m bein’ careful. And I expect you to respect my need to be careful and not write somethin’ that’ll blow this gig for me.”
The Wormhole was bright, modern, and clean, with enough memorabilia from the 70s and 80s around to keep my eyes occupied during the ten minutes I waited for Winona to show up. They even bragged that the Delorian chassis hanging above the front window had once belonged to Marty McFly. I had no idea what the classic car from the movie Back to the Future had to do with coffee and tea, but who cared? It was a way cool car.
I ordered a genmaicha green tea and took a small table away from the barista. There were no other customers nearby. The table had the separation Winona Jackson wanted.
When she walked through the front door, she spotted me, nodded, and stopped to place her own order. It looked like black coffee.
She smiled at me. “There’s something to be said for keeping it simple.”
“So,” I said after she sat down and arranged her purse and briefcase on the empty chair beside her, “why the Deep Throat meeting?”
“If you’d be happier we could go find us an underground garage somewhere,” she said, “but given it’s January, I thought a cozy coffee shop would be more comfy.”
“Point taken,” I said. I sat back and went quiet to let her take the conversation where she wanted it to go.
She took a careful sip of her hot coffee and let it cool in her mouth before she swallowed. She did it again. She was thinking about what to say and how to say it.
“I could get in a lot of trouble for this,” she told me finally. I’d been hearing a lot of that lately, but I said nothing.
“Before I tell you anything, I gotta ask you to trust me and answer a question.” She sipped her coffee again. “I need for you to tell me how many bodies they’ve found at Ryan Woods, whether they’re all children, and about how old they were when they died.”
“That’s three questions,” I said.
She shrugged. “It is what it is. That’s my deal.”
So much for promises.
“At least five.”
She looked as if I’d slapped her.
“At least?”
“Last I heard a couple of days ago. The number might have gone up by now.”
“All kids?”
I nodded. “The only one I got an age estimate for was eight, give or take a year. No race. No gender. My informant closed me down before test results came in.”
“So Tony Donato’s your source,” Winona said with no trace of a smile. Her conclusion made me uncomfortable for obvious reasons.
“I’m not going to confirm or deny,” I said. “I’ve talked to cops, the state’s attorney, people in the ME’s office, and others. I will not tell you who said what. I can’t. I won’t give them up any more than I’d give you up.”
My loyalty to sources didn’t seem to impress her.
She said, “You already told me the cops and state’s attorney wouldn’t talk.”
I pushed my chair back.
“I think we’re done, Ms. Jackson,” I said. “I’m not going to play this game.”
“Stay where you are,” she said sharply. “I didn’t risk my job to come here just to have you shove off in a snit. But I ain’t gonna be the only one takin’ a risk, either. You keep my secrets, and I’ll keep yours.”
I didn’t move my chair back to the table, but I didn’t get up, either.
I saw her point. She was taking a risk. A big one. I needed to accept that.
She glared at me a moment. Pain creased the edges of her smoky brown eyes.
She leaned over sideways, never taking her gaze from mine, and hauled her briefcase onto the table. She snapped open the tabs and pulled out several file.
She leaned in closer. “Let me start by telling you there are a lot of people keeping secrets where this matter is concerned. I took the liberty of calling Tony Donato this afternoon. I was surprised he took my call, to tell the truth.”
“What did he say?”
“He wouldn’t talk about Ryan Woods. Shut me off before I could get a full question out of my mouth. But he asked if you’d been to see me. I told him you hadn’t been by yet, but I was expecting you. He advised me to talk to Aidan Coughlin before I said anything.”
I had never met Aidan Coughlin, but I knew he was the regional administrator of DCFS for Cook County, which would make him Winona’s boss.
“And? Did you?”
She nodded once. “Aidan was, um, emphatic in telling me not to let the case push onto my radar, and even more emphatic in telling me I was not to speak to you or anyone else about whatever I’d heard.”
I opened my hands, palms up. “Yet here you are.”
“I asked him who ordered the info
rmation blackout. He said he didn’t know where it originated, but it was relayed to him by the mayor.”
That was a surprise. “Relayed?” I said.
“The exact word he used, yes. ‘Relayed.’ Which I took to mean it wasn’t the mayor’s idea, that he was following orders from someone even higher up.”
“Surely not the governor,” I said. “They can barely be civil to each other, even in public. If the governor tried to give orders to the mayor, they’d be in the executive shredder before the ink was dry.”
Winona took a deep swallow of coffee and continued. “Which is why I decided to come see you now. Something’s being covered up very aggressively. It involves dead children. That’s unacceptable. It’s worse than unacceptable. It’s criminal. But I have no idea what it is or why it’s being done. Or who’s responsible. The longer stuff like this hangs around, the hotter it gets. There will probably come a time I won’t be able to risk talking to you at all. So we got any business to do, best we do it quick.”
We sat there, lost in our own thoughts, for maybe a minute. My eyes drifted to the file folders on the table.
“What’s the paperwork?” I asked.
She pushed one folder toward me. “In here’s a list, as comprehensive as we can make it, of children gone missing in Cook County over the last ten years and where they were living when they vanished. Some are runaways. Some are kidnappings. Parents and foster families reported some. Teachers and welfare workers reported some. And some were discovered by DCFS during routine case visits. These are just the cases we know about. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of children who vanished without anyone knowing or reporting that Maria and Steven and Kareem didn’t seem to be around any more. Obviously, those in that last category aren’t on the list.”
Looking at the folder made my skin crawl.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.
“Hang onto it. It will give you context if you ever put names with the bones. If that happens, call me, and I’ll try to give you information from the individual case files although I’d be breaking several laws doin’ that. But in for a penny, as my mama used to say. I already shattered at least one law givin’ you the list.”