I went back to my annotations of the working script for our problematic show. It had started out as fun, now it had become a heavy burden, even without the eejits in the Dirksen building.
I heard the hounds barking, their we’re-going-out-now bark. Danuta was making lunch and watching the rug rats and Ellie was picking up the older kids to bring them back for lunch. No cold lunch in the school for Ms. McGrail’s kids.
The phone again.
“Nuala Anne.”
“I wonder if I could speak to Dermot?”
She sounded teary.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Coyne. This is Mary Fran Donlan. We have more problems, I’m afraid.”
“Och, isn’t Dermot Michael out hunting the bad guys. He mailed something to you this morning. . . . I’ll try to reach him on his cell phone.”
“I’m afraid that my dad had Tony Cuneen, my brother-in-law, fired from his law firm, just as he was about to be named a partner. It’s not fair. Tony is a good lawyer. Okay, he made a fool of himself about our trust funds. . . .”
“And on television.”
“We were all upset. . . . We should have known better.”
“What did they say to him?”
“They told him that the managing partners didn’t think he would be comfortable in the firm. . . . They didn’t throw him out on the spot. His contract doesn’t expire till February first, but he can’t appear in court for them again. So he’s free to look for another job. . . . But who would want him?”
“You’re after being sure your dad is behind this, are you now?”
“Who else might it be?”
“I don’t know your father very well, dear, but wouldn’t I be thinkin’ that he’s not the kind of man who takes revenge that way?”
“I know, but Evie is certain. . . .”
“She’s always certain, isn’t she now?”
“She says that woman drove Dad to fire Tony.”
“Might she not have a fixation on that woman?”
Dead silence.
“You’re right, Mrs. Coyne. I think I’ve made a fool of myself again.”
“Mrs. Coyne is me mother-in-law and a grand woman altogether. I’m Nuala.”
“I’m sorry, Nuala.”
“Wouldn’t it seem to an outsider that your poor brother-in-law disgraced the firm by his remarks on the telly and that his firm really had no choice? And that maybe your sister is the one to blame? Would you want to hire a lawyer, no matter how gifted, who behaved so foolishly?”
Silence.
“I never thought of it that way, but you’re right of course.”
Poor beaten little girl child. Her sister was a bitch.
“Me Dermot hasn’t checked in yet, but won’t I try to get him on the cell phone and tell him what’s happening. I don’t know what we can do about it. Probably nothing at all, at all. But we’ll try.”
“I’m sorry I’ve made a fool of myself, er, Nuala. I should have thought for a minute and realized Dad would never do anything like that.”
“He seems a very decent man to me. . . . Decent is Irish for good and honest and kind.”
“He is, oh, yes, he is.”
“Well, maybe you and your sisters should try acting that way toward him.”
“Maybe we should.”
“I’ll call me Dermot.”
I tried again. No answer. He was obviously very busy. I thought about it. What the hell. If people treat me like a friggin’ parish priest, maybe I should act like one. I pulled out my phone book and punched in Jack Donlan’s phone number.
“Mr. Donlan’s office.”
I put on my professional face and the voice to go with it.
“This is Ms. McGrail calling. May I speak to Mr. Donlan.”
“Certainly, Nuala Anne. Just a moment please.”
Good enough for my professionalism! I switched my face.
“Wouldn’t you be Elfrida now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well doesn’t me husband say that you make better Irish tea than I do?”
He’d never said that, but sometimes a compliment doesn’t hurt.
“You know what Irish men are with their blarney!”
“’Tis true!”
“Good morning, Nuala, it’s good to talk to my wife’s confessor!”
Speaking of blarney!
“Ah, no! I don’t have the power of absolution, only the power of listening, so wouldn’t I more properly be called a spiritual director?”
“Whatever, you were a big help to her yesterday and I’m grateful.”
“Won’t I be after adding a charge to me fee?”
“I’m a very fortunate man, just how fortunate I keep learning.”
I sighed my Connemara sigh.
“Well, I have a bit of a problem for you this morning. . . . Your son-in-law has been fired by his law firm. . . .”
It was his turn to sigh.
“I was afraid they’d go after him, poor kid. He’s a good lawyer, top of the list for partnership until my daughter dragged him into court to protect their trust funds. . . .”
Danuta appeared at the door of my office with the frown she uses to indicate the food is getting cold. I raised the finger that said I’d be right there.
“And isn’t she blaming you instead of herself?”
He was silent for a moment.
“And her sisters agree?”
“Not Mary Fran.”
At least not after I had a quiet word with her.
“Thank God for that!”
“And yourself having no markers at all, at all at the firm?”
“You’re a desperate woman, Nuala Anne McGrail!”
“And yourself picking up the Irish idiom quickly enough.”
“As a matter of fact, I have several markers over there. They probably dumped him as a favor to me. So it won’t hurt them to take him back, another year as an associate and a promise to never appear in a case with his wife. . . . Doubtless he’ll be happy to keep it.”
“Won’t he have to rein in that one?”
“I’ve never been able to do that.”
Then I thought to myself, the marriage will fall apart. Hasn’t me poor Dermot saved our marriage a couple of times by shouting at me? . . . I shiver at the thought of losing him, poor dear man.
“After this escape, he may have learned a lesson.”
“I’ll call him now and ask what they said when they terminated him. Then I’ll call them to pick up my markers. . . . I owe you a lot of favors, Nuala.”
“In a whole lifetime you won’t be able to pick them all up. . . . Now don’t I have to eat my lunch before me housekeeper fires me.”
I sighed again, with satisfaction for a good deed. That poor little bitch was asking for lifetime heartbreak.
Danuta appeared again with a plate of salad.
“Everyone watch TV,” she complained.
In the kitchen all the kids, Ellie included, were watching Mary Alice Quinn on Channel 3.
“Yesterday’s dog in the manger has become today’s bird in the jail. This morning Judge Ebenezer Brown ordered Federal marshals from his courtroom to arrest Archibald Adolf Abercrombie and bring him to the courtroom to face charges of contempt of court.”
(Pictures of three marshals trying to muscle Triple A into the Dirksen Federal building.)
“Judge Brown, a Republican appointed to the Federal bench by the first President Bush, asked Mr. Abercrombie if he had made a statement contemptuous of the court yesterday.”
(Picture of Abercrombie coming out of the building yesterday.)
“Judge Brown is typical of the subhuman hacks that suck graft out of the city for the Daley Administration.”
Mary Alice again.
“Under advice of his attorneys, the so-called dog in the manger refused to answer. Then Judge Brown solemnly sentenced him to a week in the Federal lockup. Mr. Abercrombie announced that he would appeal and that he was sure the appellate court would assert his right to freedom of speech ab
out an incompetent and retarded judge. Judge Brown extended the sentence to three weeks in the lockup.”
Pictures of Triple A emerging in shackles, still struggling with the marshals.
“We asked Tom Hurley, one of the lawyers representing NBS which wants to produce the Nuala Anne Christmas special what impact he thought the imprisonment of a celebrity Hollywood mogul would have on the case.”
(Tom Hurley relaxed and confident with a leprechaun’s twinkle in his eyes.)
“Out in Hollywood the bosses of Kosmic Entertainment might begin to wonder whether the entertainment Mr. Abercrombie is providing for us in Chicago is worth the cost.”
“Didn’t an appellate court judge deliver a setback to your case this morning, counselor?”
“A temporary setback, Mary Alice. Judge Richard Rowbottom lifted the injunction we had won from Judge Brown and set a date for a hearing on our motion for January third. We intend to appeal that decision this afternoon. Obviously January third is after Christmas.”
“If Mr. Abercrombie is the dog in the manger, what would that make Judge Rowbottom?”
“Well, if Judge Rowbottom is successful in his ruling—and we confidently expect a reversal—then some people, certainly not including me, might think that he wants to be the Grinch who stole Christmas.”
“Mr. Hurley is well known in the Chicago area as the husband of celebrity trial lawyer Cynthia Hurley.”
Then there was a commercial about a weight-loss diet. My children and my niece were exchanging high fives and I had to join in. Slapstick entertainment for Chicago.
Dermot
“LOU GARNER,” Mike Casey told me, “is both sleazy and slippery. Jack Donlan should find himself another tennis partner. He has his fingers in lots of minor little development deals and light clout with some aldermen with whom he drinks a couple of times a week. He always has a deal in the works and usually makes some money when the big players buy him out to get rid of him. He pretends to be one of the big players, but he never will be.”
“Not enough money.”
“Money is not the problem in that world. Not enough smarts. He skates pretty close to the edge. The Feds have him on their radar scopes but he’s too small-fry for them to bother about unless they want a slam-dunk conviction to raise their conviction rates. They’ll get him eventually of course.”
“Is Jackie Donlan involved?”
“No way! Much too smart. I told him that he shouldn’t pay any attention to his gossip about Maria Sabattini. Garner is a bottom prowler on LaSalle Street, always trying to soak up gossip that he can use for one of his capers. I wasn’t surprised that we were able to clear her.”
“Chaste matron?” I said ironically.
“Absolutely.”
I called Elfrida to make sure her boss, somewhat reluctant for me to corner his high school and college friend, had set up the appointment.
“I don’t like that Lou Garner,” she said, exercising a woman’s right to criticize her employer’s friends. “He’s no good at all. Shy, shifty, too suave. Be careful of him, Mr. Coyne.”
“Woman, who’s this Mr. Coyne?”
She giggled. “Dermot!”
“That’s better.”
I was to meet Mr. Garner at his office in Andersonville, a North Side neighborhood whose name reveals its Swedish past and high quality of its Swedish bakeries. His office was on Clark Street, just off Foster Avenue, near St. Gregory’s Church. He would be happy to talk to me as we toured some of his North Side properties. He would reserve a parking place for me behind his storefront office and we would drive around in his “jalopy.”
I’m West Side Irish—indeed River Forest Irish which is the worst kind—and I know very little about the North Side. While I am in constant verbal combat with the South Side Irish (who tend to be unenlightened White Sox fans), I usually deny that there are North Side Irish, only Germans and Swedes whose closeness to the Polish Corridor along Milwaukee Avenue is their only claim to Catholic virtue. It is not a stance that is likely to please anyone. I do believe, however, that the Italian influence on the West Side has civilized us West Siders and that those of us who do live in enclaves on the North Side are not positively affected by the dour Germans and the silent Swedes. My bedmate is baffled by all of this urban village talk and points out that she and our children are all North Side Irish. I deny this and insist that she is Connemara Irish and our children are Lincoln Park Irish. She throws up her hands in dismay and proclaims that I’m an eejit. Which in these matters is true until you’ve been around Chicago for a couple of generations.
I parked my ancient Benz behind the storefront with a huge “Garner” sign hanging out over the sidewalk, like it was a funeral parlor. Next to my car, looking very imperial, was a silver BMW X-5. Classy and a little boring, I told myself.
Lou Garner met me at the door. He was not what I expected, not an overweight gum-chewing, heavily scented man with razor cut white hair. Rather he looked like someone who might belong in the Racket Club with John Patrick Donlan—a little taller perhaps, sharp but handsome features, conservative and expensive dark blue, but not quite navy, suit, gleaming white shirt and a tie with stripes which suggested an obscure English regiment. His pale blue eyes did, however, look a little shifty. And his radiant geniality suggested that I would not want to buy either a secondhand car or house from him. He spoke in staccato outbursts, like an AK-47. Me bedmate would have instantly tagged him as “a bit of a gombeen man.” His office was indeed part of an old Jewish funeral parlor, spiffed up with modern Danish furniture.
“The old Mercedes yours?” he asked easing the BMW out of its parking place as it purred softly, a jungle cat eager for the chase. “Great little car, should be a classic in a couple of years, probably appreciating even now.”
“My wife owns a Lincoln Navigator. She figures it will be useful, if the English should come down from Toronto and try to repeat the Fort Dearborn massacre. We’ll all need tanks then.”
He didn’t say anything in reply.
“I figure,” I went on, “that they’ll try to land at Loyola Beach, like the opening shots in that flick Flatliners.”
My loony words had stopped him cold.
“I also figure that the Jesuits will yield land till Broadway and then hold the line till the Cub fans pile out of Wrigley Park with their axes and pikes.”
“The Broadway-Clark corridor,” he began his spiel, “is critical for the redevelopment and expansion of the North Side. You have to view it as a funnel coming out of the loop and the Magnificent Mile and channeling all the excitement and vibrancy of Downtown right through to Howard Street and beyond into Evanston and Northwestern University. It will become the exclusive place to live and work and play and absorb art and culture. It has two critical assets—Lake Shore Drive and the elevated lines. . . .”He babbled on and on, doubtless trying to weary me and turn me away from the subject at hand. People do that, blond kid in a blazer, clearly not very bright. You overwhelm him with talk and you have no problems.
“Lake Shore Drive,” I said, “is no good unless the mayor is able to extend it beyond Hollywood up to Howard Street and Calvary Cemetery, maybe even up to the Bahai Temple. Sheridan Road is a joke, always has been. So is Evanston. Prohibition started up there. Women’s Christian Temperance Union. You sell all the old homes in Evanston to upwardly mobile Blacks, great market! And they’re welcome to it. What you have to do is lure the Winnetka and Lake Forest folk to come down the Drive to the Loop and Michigan Avenue and Grant Park. Then they’ll see all the high-rises, the old ones and the new ones you’ll probably build and want to live in them when they have empty houses on their hands. Or even Balmoral or Lincoln Park, they’re one step or two away from slums. Look at them in the winter when the leaves are off the trees. Your corridor is good for what it is, shops, offices, car dealers, that kind of thing. All high class of course. But face it, Lake View is finished. How long have you known Maria Angelica Sabattini?”
“For a l
ong time, twenty years maybe,” he stumbled. “Not well, but she’s a hard one to miss at real estate meetings and conferences. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, though I suppose it depends on your tastes. Nice tits, if that’s what you’re interested in. . . . So you were surprised when your buddy Jack Donlan invested in her company.”
He had pulled off Sheridan Road and parked where the road turns left to circle around the Loyola campus. We were looking at the Lake, grey and somber on an early December afternoon. I shivered, though I wasn’t cold.
“Well, she didn’t seem quite his type, I don’t mean physically.” He stumbled again. “They’re obviously a striking couple, right out of an issue of GQ, people can’t take their eyes off them. I mean corporately. Tell you the truth, the idea of people designing their homes on the Net and then a national office supervising the construction and decoration sounds like another dot-com bubble sort of thing, know what I mean? . . . It seems to be working out fine so far. Old Joe McMahon has done a pretty good job scouting out firms for Jackie. And to give Jackie full credit, he has an instinct for a good deal.”
“But you warned him about her?”
“You hear things about her, know what I mean? You hear things about women who are successful, huh? Especially if they got looks. So there’s always talk along LaSalle Street. I understood that he hadn’t met her and he wouldn’t until Joe McMahon and the lawyers worked out a deal. But, hell, there are pictures of her everywhere and Jack is lonely. His marriage was a mess, know what I mean, kooky family and she’d become a fall-down drunk. I always regretted not warning him about her family. He was head over heels and I didn’t want to make him angry, so I kept my mouth shut. Big mistake.”
“So you figured you’d not make the same mistake this time?”
“Something like that, know what I mean? He’s lonely, they’re together a lot on business, she’s gorgeous, she’s a widow looking for a guy, he’s a great catch. I was right on that, wasn’t I?”
“It would appear so.”
“I warned him. He wasn’t offended. He did an investigation and she came up clean, as clean as any woman her age can, know what I mean? So first thing I know we’re getting a wedding invitation. I’m surprised and I keep my fingers crossed. Then I hear his kids are against it and I get uneasy. . . . Marriage is a tough slog, know what I mean?”
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