by Scott Simon
The senior garbage man, who was one of the most effective precinct captains in Sidney Wineman's 42nd Ward organization, overheard the sergeant utter Collins's name into his patrol car radio and said, “Goddamn.”
“You knew him?” asked the sergeant.
“Of course.” It gave the garbage man some satisfaction to see a policeman—who often complained, “We're paid like garbage men!”— interested in his next words.
“He was connected.”
The youngest man on the garbage crew put his hands up to his face.
“You don't mean—”
“Not connected. That's Godfather stuff. This guy was the mayor's main man,” he said with a note of swagger. But the sergeant turned to the crew with a triumphal smile.
“And I guess you boys have had your heads stuck in the rubbish. You mean you haven't heard what happened to the mayor? Every cop has.” He patted the black brick radio on his belt before adding, “You ought to get your heads out of the trash bins once in a while.”
Commander Green took Sunny's arm after the last question of their press conference—“Mr. Roopini, what do you think the mayor would say to the people of Chicago now that he's dead?”—and whispered the news about Collins Jenkins.
“Good Christ,” Sunny said to Walter Green. “Is there a note?”
“They're looking. Nothing in that high rent rat-hole where he lived. But these days, people send suicide text messages from their phones. We're checking.”
“He was alone?”
“In all ways,” said the commander. “We had a team outside, and a tap on his numbers. But …”
They had walked back to Sunny's small office, between the shoulders of three uniforms and Sgt. Gallaher. But Sunny kept his voice quiet as he leaned into Commander Green's left ear and asked softly, “Grief—or guilt?” The commander turned his large, dark hands down toward the floor—Sunny could finally read the lettering sculpted into his Coast Guard Academy ring—and held them steady for a moment at his belt.
“All we know for sure now, sir, is that he wasn't Peter Pan.”
Sunny turned around to his window, where the LaSalle Street buses scorched black rails across the last fine layer of snowflakes, and the sun spilled sparkles into the fresh drifts that had blown up against light poles and garbage baskets.
“Good God, I remember something now,” said Sunny. “He had a fat, patchy cat named Richard J.”
“Nobody there said anything about a cat,” said Walter Green.
“That big window swinging open … it's a small matter, with all that's going on. But it's something we can do something about.”
“I'll have someone at the crime scene take a look, sir. The citizens of Chicago have a stake in finding Richard J.”
“Crime scene?” asked Sunny. “Isn't that rather a strict Catholic interpretation?”
Commander Green, who had had an even longer night of it than had Sunny, seemed to check each of his fingers before replying wearily.
“As the scene of this suicide may or may not be related to the crime of the mayor's death, sir,” he said a little more sharply, “until we know what happened, the chief and I find you can get more things done if you call it a crime scene.”
Green excused himself with exacting correctness.
Sunny suddenly remembered to reach for his phone. When he heard his own voice answer, he waited for the tone and said, in a nervous rush, he was sure, “Darlings, I'm sorry. I won't be able to be there. Something else—something terrible—has happened. Eldad is calling Matina to get me some clothes for the memorial session. If you get this in time—would you like to come, too? Please let me know. I love you.”
Sunny had practiced politics long enough to hear voices in his head that would know how to knock his arguments back to him (“Don't tell me what I'm thinking, dammit! I don't even know myself!” Elana would sometimes reproach him after Sunny had said, “Now, I know what you're thinking….”). Now, he could hear his daughters saying, “No thanks, we're busy. With you, something else is always happening. We'll see you later.” Click. Ouch. Shit. Well, dammit, something was.
Sunny's best black suit with silver pinstripes had hung in a closet of the restaurant since Mr. Kim, the dry cleaner a block down on Broadway had brought it by personally one afternoon several weeks after Elana's funeral. Sunny was still at the point where he was discovering things— a card in the kitchen drawer with her handwriting, a bar of soap that she had once rubbed along her arms—that he couldn't bear to see and couldn't bring himself to shed.
When the young police officer presented himself to bring back some clothes for Sunny, the pinstripe was the first suit Matina saw, wrapped in cellophane and swinging against white kitchen smocks, nylon windbreakers, and broom handles. Sunny shook it out in a conference room that had been appropriated for his use on the second floor of City Hall. Matina had also sent a plain white shirt, undershorts, black socks, and a silver tie, but it wasn't until he stood in those socks and tried to knot the tie in the gray reflection of a window that Sunny flexed his toes and looked down at his feet.
“No shoes,” he announced to Sgt. Gallaher, who had entered the room with a new officer. They were just a few minutes from the start of the memorial session, and the Loop's many stores were not yet open. “Just the brown suede brogues I've had on all night.”
“You can get away with brown suede, sir. I've seen it in magazines.”
“Yes,” said Sunny, who was now standing on his toes, as if testing the temperature of the surf.“Snake-hipped male models in Milano tooling along the Via Mascarpone. Or whatever the mayor called it.” He smiled.
“They're not basketball shoes, sir,” Sgt. Gallaher suggested gently. “They're respectful.”
Sunny had slipped on his brogues and now rocked back on his heels as he looked down, watching silver pinstripes run into brown suede.
“Brown shoes with a black suit. I just look like such an alderman,” he said.
Sgt. Gallaher waited a moment before bringing the other young officer to her side.
“This is Sergeant Ed McNulty sir. He'll take charge of you now. I may—probably will—see you later. The chief has appointed me chief of your detail.”
McNulty had round shoulders, sandy hair, a crushing grip, and the smile of a forest animal in children's storybooks.
“I'm out of First District, sir. Seen you a couple of times at Alderman Corcoran's picnics.”
“Gallaher to McNulty?” asked Sunny. “All the hiring laws and diversity workshops, and this is what it comes to—Gallaher hands off to McNulty?”
“After all the laws and workshops, sir, Gallaher and McNulty are the diversity.” The sergeant stood back on his heels and waggled the toes of black shoes that had been shined to glaring.
“I'm a twelve. Any use?”
“I'm nine and a half,” said Sunny.
“Sorry, sir. You'd look like you're wearing Bozo's shoes, and I can't go barefoot on duty.”
Sgt. Gallaher had stepped back from the circle of conversation and began to steer them toward the door to the hall that led into the council chamber. They could hear a hubbub of voices, struggling to be soft, bubble from the floor of the council chamber, and saw hot lights making the city seal glimmer above the mayor's rostrum. Sunny sensed that the young officers were holding back, waiting for him to take the first steps out into the council chamber.
“Did you ever hear Alderman Rodriguez's theory about shoe size?” Sunny whispered to Sgt. McNulty. The sergeant shook his head.
“I'll send him around to tell you.”
Sunny stepped through the door, felt the hot lights blister his forehead, and walked to just in front of the mayor's mammoth burgundy chair on the podium. Someone had placed a single red rose across the seat.
Sunny saw schoolgirls in the balcony seats behind the glass, in blue and green plaid smocks, white tights, white boots and pink boots, and pastel snow jackets, with red Bulls' scarves looped around their necks. An enterprising te
acher must have heard the news at six and rapidly deployed a field trip. Christa Landgraf, a blond woman with white cat's-eyes glasses from the Corporation Counsel's office, who customarily sat at the right hand of the mayor, inclined her head toward the gallery and began to write out a note for Sunny on the top of her long yellow pad.
Sunny had presided over the council scores of times, while the mayor excused himself to gossip, agitate, or flagrantly nap in his office. He would send word down through Tina Butler, the sergeant at arms, “Wake me when the children are done squabbling, Sarge.” But Sunny had never called the city council to order. The mayor had always reserved for himself the special pleasure of bringing down the head of some glossy new mahogany gavel, fulsomely inscribed from a local Order of Hibernians, Knights of Pythias, or the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and declare, “This council will come to order.”
There was Arty Agras, looking weary but his hairpiece reinvigo-rated, slowly rolling back on the wheels of his chair in the first spot on the council floor, listening to Miles Sparrow of the 7th, with his Dizzy goatee, standing just over him to hurry through a hushed story; Daryl Lloyd of the 9th Ward, enrobed in mournful black and sorrowful violet, turned around and sitting on the edge of his smooth wooden desk to speak in whispers with Felix Kowalski of the 23rd, who occupied the dead center middle seat of the chamber in the unchanging black suit of his trade that was suddenly so apt for this morning.
Thirty-six aldermen were men, fourteen were women. The balance was scarcely equal, but the direction of history was clear. There had been just six women when Sunny was first elected.
Twenty-four, or almost half the council members, were not white. Sixteen were African American, and six were Hispanic, though Sunny had been admonished by Jaco Sefran not to assume any greater affinity between, say, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans than Frenchmen and Germans (or Jamaicans, Somalis, and African-Americans). Three and a half aldermen (the half being Carlo Viola of the 35th) were Mexican, two were Puerto Rican, and Jacobo was Cuban, a slight underrepresentation that was usually blamed—though not for much longer, thought Sunny—on meager voter turnout.
The count of Asians in the council was increasing. There was John Wu of the 15th, Evelyn Lee of the 17th, Janet Watanabe of the 20th, whose mother had been African-American, and Sunny. Evelyn Lee once suggested that they form an Asian Caucus. Sunny was tepid to the idea, but felt that he could not refuse to go along. He recommended that they call themselves the Pan-Asian People's Congress.
“It confers more authority,” he explained. “We'll represent a realm of billions, from the steppes of Kazakhstan to the shores of Micronesia.”
“Four of us?” asked Janet. She had already been a member of the council's Black Caucus, which had more or less disbanded when the mayor took office and summoned Daryl Lloyd up to the fifth floor and said, “I'm sitting on a couple of million votes here, Daryl. Do you still want to lecture me about what black people want?”
“We have to make it clear that Asians are an important minority,” said Evelyn.
John Wu raised a steely eyebrow on his solid vault face and just asked, “Minority?”
Three aldermen were Jews, which had only recently come to be considered white. Three were immigrants: Mitya Volkov of the 19th, who was from Murmansk, Jacobo Sefran of the 50th, who was from Santiago de Cuba, and Sunny.
Three aldermen had been indicted and awaited trial.
Against all expectation, reputation, and lore, just six aldermen could be called Irish, and three of those, Aidan Ruffino of the 38th, Cyril Murphy of the 40th, and Keira Malek of the 43rd, were from families that married Italians, Slovaks, or Poles. They emphasized this mixed lineage as needed. There were two Poles, two Italians, two Swedes, a Croat, a Slovak, a Greek, one Serb, one German, one Russian, and a Lebanese.
Two aldermen were forthrightly even boastfully gay. In recent years, gay political groups had mastered the nuts and bolts of politics more successfully than trade unions. Linas Slavinskas professed, “I used to tell young people who wanted to learn politics to join the Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers Union. Now I say, ‘Be gay.’”
In the whole Chicago City Council, there was just one authentic white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The Reverend Harry Walker III, whose grandfather had been a founder of the Dearborn Bank, lived in a handsome old gray-stone family home, one of the few three-story buildings left on Stratford. (Harry had to spurn all entreaties from developers. He had run against them for twenty years, even as he had begun to feel like an elf living in a toadstool beneath the sixty-story residences rising around him).
But Harry was a hell-raising man of God who flung chicken's blood on the windows of Army recruitment centers. He ran a colonic irrigation clinic in the basement of his church. He was the gay father of three children, born to three mothers (an organic foods activist, a homeopath, and a Wacker Drive investment analyst) who had specifically enlisted his semen to seed a new generation of activists. With his sandy-white prophet's beard curling in fury around his chin, Harry's appearance recalled John Brown, not Cotton Mather.
Harry and Jacobo Sefran were the two clergymen on the council, though, as Jaco said, “What we really need is a priest around here, to hear confessions and keep his mouth shut.”
(There had been a nun, Suzanne Suzinski, who represented the 30th before Wandy Rodriguez had been recruited to run against her.
Suzanne had irritated the mayor by always talking about “agape,” and increasing property taxes.)
Nine aldermen were attorneys; in politics, that was unavoidable. But five aldermen were teachers, from Evelyn Washington of the 2nd, who taught first grade at the Cyrus Colter School, to Keira Malek of the 43rd, a professor at Northwestern Law. Five were full-time aldermen, who claimed to get by on their aldermanic salary alone (which, at $101,000 a year, satisfied some, but only whet other appetites). Daryl Lloyd was a dentist, Collie Kerrigan was a pharmacist, Janet Watanabe was a veterinarian, and Sunny was a restaurateur. One alderman was a dry cleaner, another a meat packer, one a beer distributor. There was a rug cleaner, a car dealer, a professional pianist, and someone who ran a string of senior citizen's centers.
“If we could all open up for business here,” said Sunny, “there'd be no reason to leave City Hall for the rest of our lives.”
In fact, there was no reason to leave thereafter: Two aldermen, Kevin Corcoran and Felix Kowalski, were funeral directors. Kevin said, with utter sincerity, “In Chicago, deceased Americans play a vital role in civic affairs.”
Lewie Karp, in the clerk's chair just below Sunny's left elbow, called out: “Wojcik, Forty-five! Siegel, Forty-six! Katsoulis, Forty-seven!” Voices called back, more softly than usual. Lew reeled in his voice from the back row of the chamber because Sunny was out of his usual seat, and now standing in the rostrum.
“Roopini, Forty-eight.”
Sunny bowed slightly before saying, “Present.”
After Anders Berggren of the 49th and Jaco Sefran of the 50th had affirmed their presence, Lewie spoke with unusual formality.
“Fifty aldermen have answered present, sir.”
Sunny was empty-handed. Tina Butler had offered him use of a gavel that had been inscribed to the mayor—“Our Champion”—by the Friends of Battered Women and Their Children of Rogers Park shelter. But Sunny said that he would feel queasy about using it— “Like a novice picking up Tiger's driver”—so he simply rapped his folded hand on the desk just below the microphone and said in a measured voice, “The council will please come to order.”
The chamber quieted. Christa Landgraf tapped the end of a pen on the note she had written across the top of her pad.
“We welcome students from the St. Angela School on North Mas-sasoit and Sister Mary Finnegan, who are seated in the gallery,” Sunny began slowly. “They join us on a sad day. And yet a day that I suspect they will never forget—none of us will—as those who loved and admired the mayor in this chamber gather to pay him tribute
.”
(Sunny thought to himself, I should have gotten my daughters here, and then another thought rolled in just behind: And I should have had the Stockton, Stewart, Pierce, Audubon, Clinton, and McCutcheon schools send a few kids, too.)
Vera Barrow looked up at Sunny from the fifth seat in the first row and inclined her head just below his line of sight. Christa Landgraf caught his eye with her cat's-eyes and mouthed a phrase, but Sunny couldn't decipher it. He leaned forward just enough to finally see an identifiably broad back and shoulders in a stately charcoal suit and said, “We will now receive a benediction from the Reverend Jesse Jackson.”
(Vera Barrow had the number of the slim mobile phone that the reverend kept, turned to vibrate and tucked in the leg of his left sock, and had reached him just as he had landed on an all-night flight from Amsterdam. He was shocked, saddened, and instantly available.)
As the reverend's voice began to roll through the chamber, Sunny leaned back to Christa Landgraf, who pointed to the minutes of their last session. He straightened in place as he heard the reverend intone, “his last, full measure of devotion. Amen.”
The aldermen sat down, softly, the wheels on their chairs making small, chattering mice sounds. Sunny stayed on his feet.
“Thank you, Reverend Jackson. We are grateful. No matter where in the world your important work takes you, you take the time to still be this great city's pastor. Thank you.”
Sunny paused for a moment and looked over the chamber. The Reverend Jackson, ringed by four uniformed officers, was whisked away from the council floor.
“Do I hear a motion to suspend the reading of the minutes?”
“I so move.” It was Vera.
“Without objection?” A stroke of silence went by. “It is so ordered.”
Whether the residue of Hindu ceremonies or early British schooling, Sunny found the familiar civilities of parliamentary routine reassuring. Even sense-worn words seemed to assert order and a touch of majesty. He leaned into the small microphone and began in a low, subdued voice.