by Scott Simon
The two men shared a frosty laugh as Stuart Cohn and the toxicologist looked on, squirming slightly in their seats and exchanging puzzled looks, uncertain if they were expected to join in.
“Tested, yes,” said Chief Martinez. “Treated? I'll get back to you,” he called over his shoulder, his words springing back from the hard walls in the empty hallway.
Sunny decided to splash water on his face. There was a men's room about twenty steps away in the warren of aldermanic offices, and Sgt. Gallaher nodded for two uniforms to open the door for Sunny and stand by.
After he'd had a pee to clear his head, he ran the tap and sloshed cold water onto his face with both hands as he looked into the mirror. When he was forty, Sunny had been happy with his face. He had ink-black curls of hair with discreet licks of gray, above a smooth almond complexion, and bright eyes, black and brown like a horse's tail. Most Indians would mark him as being from the south—Tamil, Tulu, or Kannadigas. Others in America sometimes wondered if he might be Egyptian, Brazilian, or Portuguese; or when they heard “Roopini,” guessed, “Italian?”
At forty, Sunny's face had fit his name (Sunny had become his primary name at his father's instigation. A Tamil would not give his son a high-caste name, like Sunil. But he could urge his son, Sundaran, to go by the nickname Sunny, which conveyed the same implication). Sunny's face had shone with vitality, yet had a patina of silvery distinction.
But just eight years later, Sunny looked at his face and saw a distressed property. His eyes were rimmed with yellow, like the edges of an old map. They bubbled inexplicably, like leaky plumbing. His cheeks sagged like old lead paint dripping sadly down a wall. He noticed stray hairs growing from his ears and nose, like sprigs from cracks in a sidewalk. His hairline rolled up, like a cheap bathroom curtain, another millimeter every few months.
Sunny heard people around him assign each bulge and wrinkle to his tragedy. But he was sure that much of it was the passage of time, the pull of gravity, and the toll of politics.
The yellow tinge in his eyes could be bile from twenty years of slurping hot, sour coffee from unwashed urns in ward offices as he asked for votes or money. The jelly filling that upholstered his chin could be the bloat of twenty years of bagels, biscotti, and donuts put out at precinct meetings and police stations.
Sunny heard a rap of knuckles on the bathroom door and Sgt. Gal-laher's voice, calling softly.
“Chief on his way down, sir.”
Sunny scooped a last bowl of water into his hands and lowered his face into his palms. When he blinked water from his eyes, he noticed a uniform holding out a small stack of paper towels.
“You go to the academy for that?” he asked, and looked at the young man's nameplate. “Officer Harris?”
At first, the officer seemed taken aback, then grasped that Sunny was joking.
“Yes, sir. Firearms training and towel handling.”
Sunny pressed the scratchy paper against his forehead and looked into the mirror. It was remarkable, he thought: what a man could try to hide in his own face.
On his way downstairs to tell Sunny such details of the mayor's death and suppositions and implications that seemed responsible to advance, Chief Martinez decided that he had to stop to strip a few pieces of flesh from the limbs of the chief of the security detail.
Francis Joseph Conklin shuddered with dry tears as he sat uncertainly on the edge of a folding chair that grated against the floor as he rocked from side to side, his stocky blond hands squeezing the sleeves of his putty-colored suit. A mommy and daddy team, Alex and Meg, had hugged him manfully, consoled him sincerely, and taken him into a room in the mayor's office suite that held office copiers. They sat him down, wordlessly patted him down, and took his service revolver from the holster under his left shoulder and a six-inch blade from a slipcase on the back of his belt.
“Just a formality, Frankie,” Alex reassured him.
“I loved the son of a bitch.”
“We know. He knew,” Meg said soothingly. She was a tall, rangy woman who had won a couple of state archery titles, and officers looked the other way—or rather, looked her way—when she chose to wear sleeveless shirts on the job, baring the arms she used now to knead the security chief's clenched shoulders.
“He loved you,” she added. “He trusted you.”
“I fucked up,” said the security chief.
“You couldn't have known,” said Alex, and when a police tech stepped into the room crinkling some three-page report that she intended to copy, Alex waved her back. He stood so that Frank Conklin's right shoulder rested for reassurance against his hip. It was also a position from which Alex could smash the heel of his hand into Frankie's shoulder and grind Frankie down into the floor if he tried to leap up, run off, or grab for the gun he might assume Alex had holstered under his own left shoulder, but, according to plan, had actually removed. Between the security chief's coughs and sniffles, they could hear a low, dull drone from the copier.
Chief Martinez stepped into the small room. Alex stepped back and sat against a heavy white box of paper, but Meg kept her sturdy thumbs along the security chief's shoulder blades, rolling her fingers lightly.
“Did you tip him?” asked Chief Martinez. Frankie Conklin looked up in puzzlement.
“Did you tip him?” Chief Martinez repeated, and this time Frank softly mouthed, “Who?”
“The delivery man,” explained the chief. “Whoever came over from Quattro's. In a while, I'm going to have to tell the world just how it was that the mayor of Chicago was killed by a pizza delivered piping hot and fresh into his own fat fucking face. What does Dear Amy say about tipping home delivery assassins? Is ten percent too little? Is twenty percent extravagant? Oh wait—Quattro's. I'll bet they didn't send a bill at all! I hope you gave the kid at least a ten-spot for making the trip!”
“I loved the mayor,” the security chief was able to finally say through a clotted throat.
“I didn't!” Chief Martinez shouted for the first time, so loudly that Alex and Meg had to hold up their hands when a couple of blue uniforms sprang to the copy room door.
“So what?” he went on in a lower tone, his face boiling and purpling. “I don't think you grasp this, Frankie. These days, people expect to be protected from 747s smacking down skyscrapers, bombs on the Red Line, nerve gas on the Blue Line, anthrax under their postage stamps, and teenage girls putting bombs in their training bras. They expect us to stop a million tiny pins and needles from being snuck into crates of dates or toilet paper and then assembled, like a Christmas toy, into an atom bomb. And they throw a fit when the security lines get a little long! God knows—I wish I could say—how many things we've stopped. And what brings down the mayor? A shoulder-launched missile? A blinding laser? A crack shot by a crazed sharpshooter?”
Each example seemed to extract another inch from Frank Conklin's spine, until his head seemed to disappear below his shoulders.
“I would have taken a bullet for him,” he said hoarsely. Chief Martinez bent down so that he could look levelly into the security chief's face; when he spoke, he sounded as if his wrath had made him weary.
“I wish you had, Frankie,” he said. “He'd be alive. You'd be a hero. The department would be honored. Instead, your family is going to have to be smuggled out and resettled in someplace like …” The chief faltered while he rifled through his mind, as if trying to recall the name of a distant star. “Nebraska,” he said finally.
New tears bubbled in the security's chief's eyes; he batted them out furiously. The tears slid and seemed to trace red tracks into his cheeks.
“I wish I had a big fat cannonball hole in my chest,” he said.
Chief Martinez was tempted to tell him, “It could still be arranged.…” But the chief knew that he already risked charges from the police officers' union.
The security chief sat back on his folding chair. Meg stiffened her thumbs along his shoulders when she looked down and saw him reach under the left side of his gray ja
cket. But Frank Conklin just slipped his heavy gold badge from where it was pinned in his chest pocket to hand it over to the police chief. Chief Martinez slid it into the breast pocket of his dress blues.
“I'll keep it here, Frankie,” he told him, and rose to go down to the fourth floor of the hall.
Sunny's office window whitened as flakes of snow flattened and thickened against the glass, looking silver in the luster of the street lamp. An a cappella clop of new alligator shoes heralded an arrival from the hallway. Sgt. Gallaher took two long strides through the doorway holding each side of the frame and standing at full height.
“Palace guards already your lordship?”
“Please let Alderman Slavinskas in,” Sunny called out. He could see the top puff of his sandy pompadour just above Sgt. Gallaher's shoulder. “But watch him carefully.”
Linas stepped in as the sergeant stood back, theatrically smoothing creases from his cashmere sleeves. Sunny stayed seated while he offered introductions.
“Sgt. Maureen Gallaher, alderman.” Maureen Gallaher did not extend her hand—regulations dictated that she keep both hands free in security situations—but smiled down at Linas.
“Alderman.”
“I've seen you around the hall,” said Linas. “You're in good hands, Sunny.”
“Where's Vera?”
“Grieving,” said Alderman Slavinskas. “Working the phones. Circling the wagons. Rallying the troops.”
“Where are your troops and wagons?”
“Ready to roll,” Linas said almost casually, as if acknowledging a thread from his sleeve.“So—what do you hear? I've got a pallie in the Ogden Avenue district. She says it was some kind of poison. On the pizza.”
The aldermen looked over at Sgt. Gallaher, who lifted her eyebrows and chin slightly and inclined her head gently.
“I hadn't heard. Anyway, it's not for me to say.”
“Oh good Christ, the pizza,” said Sunny. “How many times—”
“But we never touched his,” Linas reminded him. “His were always special.” He turned to Sgt. Gallaher, fairly twinkling.
“Ever have a slice of the mayor's pizza, sergeant?” he asked.
“No sir, that was the body detail.” Linas let that phrase pass.
“You strike me as more pasta sciuè sciuè. You know that dish?” he asked. Sgt. Gallaher shook her head.
“A tender penne, ripe red plum tomatoes, a good golden olive oil,” Linas went on. “Just let a snowfall of fresh white moist mozzarella fall over the mound”—and here Linas tinkled his fingers, like a first-grade music teacher imitating flurries—“a gentle cover of basil leaves, then slivers of pecorino. Not heavy, not garlicky, just e-squi-sito. Downy and inviting as a fresh bed. You see the plate and say, ‘Come set bella.’ I'll bet you know that phrase. I know a place on south Oakley—”
“You must bring me there sometime,” Sunny cut in.
Chief Martinez had entered the room softly. Sunny stood reflex-ively at the glint of brass. Chief Martinez nodded to Sgt. Gallaher and told her to take up a post just outside the door.
The police chief quietly explained that the doctors at Rush had determined that a distillate of nicotine had been trickled over the mayor's pizza. Officers could certify the integrity of the pizza—even the chief had to fight down a smile at that phrase—from the moment it left the restaurant, so their operating assumption was that it had been doused with a lethal dose at Quattro's.
“License, health certificate, building inspection?” asked Sunny.
“Current. Impeccable.”
“Fines?”
“None. Never.”
“Wish I could say that,” Sunny told him, then asked, “You looking at everyone who worked there?” The police chief seemed to hold back.
“From head to toe,” he said finally.
“The Faride brothers, Nabieh and Tannous, own it.”
“For years.”
“Someone will point this out,” said Sunny. “They're from Syria.”
“A long time ago,” said Chief Martinez.
“A good, loyal American family,” agreed Sunny. “And every time I'm in the restaurant it seems as if a new, distant cousin is passing through and working there.”
“So what? They come to this country, work hard, and hire their relatives. My Uncle Julio's story, too,” said the police chief, and at this Linas Slavinskas took a step away from the doorframe, dug his hands into his pockets, and swayed lightly on his heels.
“My Uncle Steponas's story, too, Matt,” he said. “But I also had a great uncle Herkus, who blew up trains all over Klaipedos. If he were still around, you'd want to get your hands on him tonight.”
“Is every employee on their books?” Sunny asked, and when Chief Martinez seemed to wrestle with a response once more, Sunny added, “I run a restaurant myself, Matt. Not everyone who asks may be as understanding.”
“The brothers say they employ five people off the books. Part-time—if you call wiping floors fifty hours a week part-time. A couple Mexicans—or Salvadorans posing, if you ask me—a Polish kid, an Irish guy. Some guy who sleeps in a box on Clark Street. They were paid in cash. They only used their first names. I'm sure we'll never see them again.”
“Those five,” Sunny wondered. “Did any of them ever mumble to themselves? Hum the ‘Internationale’ or ‘Come All ye Black and Tans’? Wear a Timothy McVeigh T-shirt?”
“Everyone says they worked hard and said nothing.”
“I'm sure,” Sunny observed. “Though someone who figured they're illegal could threaten to turn them in—unless they performed a small favor. Like sprinkle extra seasoning on somebody's pizza.”
The police chief kept his arms locked onto his knees, sitting motionless for one long moment before replying.
“If we had started some kind of dragnet through the kitchens of this city, the courts, the mayor, businesses, banks, the press—you aldermen—would have been all over me.”
“Like they will be now,” said Linas Slavinskas, who chanced to place the palm of his hand softly just above the brass button that held down five enameled stars along the police chief's right shoulder. “This is Chicago, Matt. Nobody plays hopscotch.”
“The mayor of San Francisco was shot by a city councilman,” the chief sternly reminded them. Sunny chose to make his own tone almost chatty.
“Look, Matt,” he continued, “I think that a six o'clock appearance is a sound idea. For both of us. The formal announcement about—what's happened. There'll be some questions only you can handle.”
“Yes. Well, it's an ongoing investigation,” said the police chief. “I can't say anything except that.”
“I understand. Just flash some brass and reassure people that the Chicago Police Department will pursue the mayor's killers to the ends of the earth.”
“We can't go north of Howard Street,” the chief reminded him. “But I'll send Walter Green, my deputy.”
Sunny sat forward, bringing the back of his knuckles lightly in a companionable graze against the police chief's folded knee.
“I'd like to speak again at about five.”
“Of course, Mr. Roopini.”
Sunny and Linas looked at each other silently for a quarter of a minute as they listened to the police chief commend Sgt. Gallaher and stride back toward the fourth floor elevators, his wet shoes squeaking like small birds. When they heard the distant ding, Linas raised his eyebrows, but kept his voice low.
“Mattie didn't just fall off the chile truck. Walt Green is a smoothie. He's also black.”
Sunny looked up with a tight smile, and splayed his hands in front of him along the table. He did not invite Sgt. Gallaher back in.
“You want to show me your scorecard?” he asked softly. Linas sat back in his chair, turning up the soles of his shoes and lacing his smooth, well-kept hands across his stomach, enrobed by folds of black cashmere. Sunny could hear a slight, elegant sound, as the sweater under Linas' jacket slid against his coat, like the swis
h of velvet drapes.
“I make eighteen for me, first round.”
“Vera?
“One more. But one round only. Daryl Lloyd will go once for her, then he'll feel the call and jump in himself.”
Dr. Lloyd was the 9th Ward alderman, a dentist with offices and billboards strung across the city's far south side. From Morgan Park to Calumet Heights, Dr. Daryl Lloyd has the smile that's right—for you! Because Somalis, Sudanese, and Ethiopians had moved into his ward, Dr. Lloyd had taken to adorning himself in African robes. Grace Brown of the 6th, who had been a high school principal, recognized the designs as Ashanti, a Ghanaian tribe. She suggested to Daryl that whatever political magnetism he wished to establish by his wardrobe might be misplaced; it made as much sense—or as little—as someone wearing a Fraser of Lovat clan kilt to endear himself to Belgians. But her example clearly missed its mark. “An African robe is the cloak of royalty,” Daryl Lloyd told her. “It is not some kind of skirt.”
“Third round, Vera will be down to fifteen,” Linas continued. “Arty will hold on to eight.” Linas turned up his palms and hitched up his shoulders. “A jump ball could bounce anywhere.”
“Which devil gets Rod Abboud?” asked Sunny. He was the 26th Ward alderman, and a West Town labor attorney with a hard, unfunny laugh that punctuated finance committee meetings like a tree saw in a cemetery.
“Undecided and open for business,” replied Linas.
“I'm for her, you know,” said Sunny. “I owe them. Simple as that. The mayor and Vera brought me to the prom.”
“That's how I've got you scored,” said Linas. “You owe me nothing. That's how we can be pallies.”
“But since I'll be presiding, I won't vote. I've got to be neutral. Until she really needs it.”
“She really needs six.” Linas held up one full hand and one thumb, looking like some incongruously sly preschool teacher.
“Where have you got Cassie Katsoulis?” She was the 47th Ward alderman, a real estate broker who occupied the seat to Sunny's right at council meetings. The large red trawler of a bag she parked between them rattled with small internal seizures every few minutes from the vibrations of one or another of her mobile phones.