Windy City

by Scott Simon

  But the U.S. Attorney, with a comic gift that surprised Sunny, held a phantom smoke in the crooked fingers of his right hand, and pretended to puff, puff, puff. Sunny had to laugh.

  “I believe they gave me a box of cigars,” he said finally. “Cohibas, marked authentico Cubano, to anticipate your next question. The Lanceros, seven and a half inches. Should I have made a citizen's arrest?”

  “A box of Cohibas must cost. Certainly above the fifty dollar limitation for gifts to a public official.”

  “I suppose,” said Sunny. “If they were authentico. The streets are awash with counterfeits. A scandal. The U.S. Attorney's office should look into that. But alas, it would be hard to locate the evidence in this case. It's all ashes by now.”

  Sunny smiled and crooked his own fingers as if to clasp a Lancero and cupped his mouth to blow a smoke ring across the table. Brooks Whetstone's face stayed impassive, but he quietly raised a hand and waggled it twice, to wave away imaginary vapors.

  “Justice is served,” the U.S. Attorney announced, and waved his hand a few more times. Both men laughed. Five young men on the video screens approached one another with chains and bats, but Brooks Whetstone looked across the table to find Sunny's face again.

  “Look, this is not an official inquiry. It's just to let a couple of public officials do their jobs. You tell me now that you carried Mohammed Atta's bags to the plane, or helped Charles Manson write Helter Skelter on the wall, and it doesn't matter. Free pass. Gift certificate. I'm just trying to learn.”

  “My daughters don't think I have much to teach them,” said Sunny. “I don't know what interests you.” The back of his neck felt his muscles becoming dense and mulish around his shoulders. “Isn't it about time for you to tell me something?”

  “I have. A lot of people would like the kind of peek at their credit report I've given you.”

  “Something I don't know,” said Sunny with real heat. “Something to convince me that I need to be here, playing badminton with you, rather than doing the million and one things I have to do to mislead the public as acting interim mayor. Or trying to manage a pathetic five-minute conversation with my daughters.”

  “How did the Yello Corporation happen to make their headquarters here?” Brooks asked suddenly. Sunny took a short, loud draw from his waxed cup, gurgled his displeasure, and twitched his brown suede brogues below the table as he prepared to stand up.

  “We have five hundred major corporate headquarters. Why are any of them here? Location, location, location. The city sparkles. It runs like a Rolex.”

  “A gold Rolex for some,” said Brooks, and Sunny decided not to overlook the interjection.

  “Yes,” he said evenly. “And like mere stainless steel for many others. And cheap crap that breaks down for others. But this city works. The streets are clean, crime is down, the schools are getting good, the culture is terrific. The food is fantastic. No earthquakes, no hurricanes, and city workers aren't always on strike, like in Mumbai or Paris.” He smiled as automatically as a red light on a vending machine. “The elected officials are accessible and caring. Hell, Mr. Whetstone, you live here. Why would anyone put their headquarters anywhere else?”

  Yello was an Internet company that had been founded, as casually as a lemonade stand in the legend, by the Nygaard brothers, Ben and Barry, in their upstairs bedroom in Marquette, Michigan. They had made millions, taken their company public, and become billionaires.

  Yello was founded on the idea that people in separate dots of light scattered over the universe could work in effortlessly close connection through Yello technology. The brothers believed that nothing would signify their success so dramatically as a soaring world headquarters to bring their far-flung work force together under the same solar-powered roof. Eighteen-hour days would be fueled by coffee, candy bars, and herbal diet pills, while workers could avail themselves of on-site day-care centers, day spas, alcohol, drug, and domestic relations counselors, dentists, eye doctors, basketball courts, ballet studios, chess lounges, chiropractors, yoga studios, and cafeterias serving organic produce grown within a two-hour drive.

  Yello's lawyers and lobbyists had deployed around the country to solicit bids. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, San Antonio, Newark, and St. Petersburg all made offers. (Newark's proposition was generous, but the brothers said that they did not make billions to build their headquarters in New Jersey; they hoped only that New York would match it).

  “I asked for a speech,” Brooks Whetstone told Sunny. “Yours was good. But a man in my business—yours too, for that matter—looks for mutually fulfilling relationships. Were any promises made? Them to you, you to them?”

  “Are you six years old?” Sunny asked. “Of course. It was courtship,” he said. “Preening, fanning feathers, drones dancing for the queen. They promised to bring billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the south Loop. We promised not to take too much of it away in taxes for the first ten years. So did every other city. Everything else was candy and flowers.”

  Sunny had not been along for the candy and flowers. Magnates didn't spend time with aldermen, and the mayor liked it to be known that in the city's rich democracy, Yello would need to account for only one public official's opinion. The mayor and a commission of civic notables took the Nygaard brothers and twenty of their executives to the Chicago Symphony, the Joffrey Ballet, the Steppenwolf Theater, Topolobampo, and the Lyric Opera. The brothers got their pictures snapped with famous stars and celebrity chefs and were mercilessly lampooned on the stage of Second City by the brightest stars of tomorrow. They sat, laughing gamely, at the small black tables in the first row. Bill Murray joined them for a drink. There were tickets to Oprah's show, and dinner with Jerry Springer (the Nygaards told him that they loved his show, and more: “It's a touchstone for popular culture.”) The city sent Yello executives gallon buckets of Chicago mix (caramel and cheese) popcorn, and five-pound boxes of Dove chocolates and Frango mints. They got stuffed bears embroidered with the names of their children, and crystal models of their proposed headquarters, laser-etched with the city's motto: I Will.

  When the Nygaards arrived back in leafy Marquette, there was a stout brown box waiting. It held two red Chicago Bulls jerseys with the white numerals 23, and BEN and BARRY embossed on the back. The gift card was signed in small, elegant script: “Looking forward to being teammates. Michael Jordan.”

  Sunny recalled the mayor describing the box and its contents, checking the time, rubbing his hands, and waiting for the brothers to call.

  “Match that, New fucking York,” he said.

  “I'm interested in a pattern,” Brooks Whetstone continued. “Not a one-night stand, but an ongoing enterprise. A lot of Yello executives have made contributions to the mayor.”

  “And to the symphony, the opera, and Northwestern's cancer unit,” said Sunny. “And Provident Hospital, fifty local theaters, and the reconstruction of the Pilgrim Baptist Church. Rich people shed dollars. That's why we want them here.”

  “A number of them have also shed a few dimes to you.”

  “So have a lot of cab drivers and fry cooks. Government would be so much easier if we could just get rid of all this campaign nonsense, wouldn't it? Just have the academic committee at Stanford choose. But as you say, it's the law right now. What can you do? Until we come to our senses, the votes of folks here in Humboldt Park and Pilsen count just as much as the ones in Marin County.”

  Brooks Whetstone took a long draw from his cup, rattled such ice as remained, and took another, scrunching his face as if peering through a screen. When he spoke, Sunny was impressed by his flat voice; indeed, he even seemed to keep a chord of friendliness.

  “I know someone like me will always seem insubstantial to you, alderman,” he began. “If you're interested, my father ran an ad firm. But he didn't own it. He was a county supervisor, not a pasha. I was a lifeguard in Santa Rosa and a cab driver in San Jose. Three passengers robbed me at gunpoint. I worked all through law school
. I live on a government paycheck. I buy a dozen white button-down shirts once a year, on sale from a catalog, and I never, but never, let anyone pick up the check. Please don't try to play class games with me. I've worked as hard as anyone you ever gave a city job to, I'm sure.”

  Then, without so much as unfolding his fingers from his cup, Brooks delivered the dart he had tucked away until he was quite certain that Sunny knew nothing of it.

  “At the time of his death, the mayor of Chicago had turned state's evidence,” he announced. When Sunny simply held his gaze, he went on.

  “Do you understand what I am saying, Mr. Roopini? The mayor was furnishing evidence to us that would have been—that still will be—used to prosecute city officers for corruption, bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud.”

  “I don't believe it,” Sunny said finally. It was all he could manage without clearing his throat, or risking a quaver. He felt as if a plug had been pulled on his right heel; he could feel blood draining to his toes. He stamped his right foot three times, but regretted it as soon as he heard the sole of his shoe slap the black industrial carpet. It sounded like a spoiled child pouting, “No, no, no.”

  “Then don't,” said Brooks.

  “Whether or not he had anything to give you,” Sunny finally managed, “and I don't think he did, it would have been against every fiber in his soul.”

  “The mayor I knew,” Brooks Whetstone said softly, “would spend every drop of his blood to stay mayor. I've prosecuted mobsters, gang-bangers, and drug addicts who have sold their baby's shoes to get a fix. Believe me, Mr. Roopini, they're all better friends than politicians.”

  Sunny needed to go to the bathroom—to stretch his legs, wash his hands, and splash his face with cold water, as much to expel the two cups of tea, diet soda, and ice water that now seethed in his stomach like solvent. But he sensed that would be mistaken for fleeing the scene. Instead he pressed his knees together and leaned forward slightly, so that his jaw was above Brooks's elbow.

  “Did you go to him, or did he—I find this inconceivable—come to you?”

  Brooks shrugged, to signal that he might choose to act amused by the answer.

  “Who says ‘I love you’ first? We turned over a few things. We found traces of his fingerprints, okay? We met. We made our case. We did business.”

  “Whatever he told you—whatever you think he told you—doesn't seem to have resulted in much.”

  Brooks Whetstone turned both palms up from the table, as if to show that a coin had disappeared.

  “Well I don't have anything to hide,” Sunny said forcefully, and at this, Brooks Whetstone actually pushed back on his chair and laughed.

  “Well I sure as hell do,” said the U.S. Attorney. “Everybody does. This is why I've lifted the flap on our tent, Mr. Roopini. Did Collins Jenkins know what the mayor was doing, realize that he had been left in the cold, and set something in motion? Or once someone else had taken care of the mayor, did Collins suddenly realize that he had been left alone and couldn't face it?”

  “Or …” Sunny suggested.

  “Or,” Brooks Whetstone agreed. “Something to put in with all the other plots, nonsense, and peril that you have to worry about these days. Well, you have work, I'm sure,” he announced, finally standing up from the table. A platinum blond was winding a snake around her neck on the overhead screens, while men reached out for her and fell back as she dispatched them with a lethal flick of bullet-sharp fingertips. Chains climbed her legs. Sgt. McNulty could see that both men were on their feet and moved toward them as he buttoned his jacket once more around the line of his holster. Brooks held Sunny's handshake for a moment and brought him in close.

  “I've heard the local creed, alderman,” he said softly under the din of snakes hissing, lights sizzling, and pins clinking. “A little cheerful corruption nourishes the soul. It keeps people interested. No one minds if you pick up a few crumbs that fall off the cake as long as they get their slice. But I can't see it that way. I've seen too much. One day, a bolt in a tunnel gives way because somebody cut the concrete with water to skim a little for himself; a slab falls and smashes a family. The brother-in-law of somebody that you hired for a job at the rec center turns out to wave his genitals at children. The cracks in the levees you let go from year to year, because it's more rewarding to spend the money on contracts and jobs, start leaking. One day they get smacked by a storm, and a couple hundred thousand people have to swim for their lives. I have as little use for piety as you do, Mr. Roopini. I'm just being practical.”

  He reached down for the check for two diet drinks.

  “My treat,” he said, and as Sunny mechanically reached into his pocket to leave a twenty for the girl with gushing electric pigtails, he put a hand on Brooks Whetstone's elbow.

  “Did Collins Jenkins know?” he asked.

  “Not from us.”

  “You weren't working with him, too?”

  “No.”

  “Did the mayor give you Collins?”

  Brooks Whetstone wavered.

  “No comment.”

  “I'm not the Tribune,” Sunny reminded him. “Impossible as it seems, I'm an elected official with responsibilities.”

  Brooks held back a moment longer. “Nothing we recognized as such,” he said finally. “A thing like that—there's no yes or no.”

  “And you've informed the police chief?” Sunny asked.

  “Yes,” Brooks affirmed, and then the corners of his mouth rose slightly. “In his fluent Arabic.” And then as Sgt. McNulty leaned into one of the glass doors that led onto Western Avenue, the blare of music was matched by the gassy blather of rush-hour buses grinding past.

  “What happened to you—to your family,” Brooks said. “I'm sorry.”

  Sunny nodded. His head was beginning to feel so leaden, his chin brushed against the knot of his tie. He could see his feet, those embarrassing brown brogues at the bottom of his pinstriped legs, plodding like otters over the pavement.

  “The two men—” Brooks began.

  “Stateville.”

  “Yes. I remember. One of them was out on parole. A gun charge.”

  “Yes,” said Sunny. “But your office was probably busy trying to find my cigar ash.”

  Sunny knew that it was the kind of blow a man lands in retreat, more for self-respect than result. The gray sky had begun to deepen while they were inside, and minute glints of snow pranced like gnats in the silver streetlight floating across Western Avenue.

  “You're free and clear, Mr. Roopini.” Their two black government sedans were parked at the curb, engines running, window wipers squeaking and slapping, wisps of smoke puffing from the tailpipes. “I'm not about to try to make a case over lunch money from a few grade schoolers. As far as I know—and I know—you're as virtuous as politicians get here. But you would know—if there's cigar smoke, there's fire.”

  A younger man in a darker tweed opened the back door of Brooks's car just enough for the bell to ding and the inside light to snap on. Brooks had no gloves and had shoved his hands halfway into his coat pockets, which splayed his elbows awkwardly to his side, as if he were about to flap his arms.

  “If you ever want to talk, alderman, I'm a good audience,” he told Sunny. “And I know how to show my appreciation.”

  Eldad Delaney was inside Sunny's car, where the heater was on high and Eldad had shucked his overcoat and sat in rolled-up sleeves, sipping from a dark green beer bottle.

  “This is why people run for mayor,” he said to Sunny. “Not just borrow the office for a couple of days, like us. A warm car on a dark night, cute cops to go, and cold beer. Your men insisted,” he quickly informed Sgt. McNulty. “I believe there's more in the trunk, when duty ends.”

  The sergeant had scrunched himself in a fold-down seat across from Sunny and knocked twice on the thick dark glass screen that divided the driver from passenger sides. Sunny felt the car begin to move.

  “No siren,” McNulty called through a starburst of small holes,
and turned back to Eldad. “You never know when a security shift ends, so we prepare for the worst,” he explained.

  Eldad held out a beige folder to Sunny.

  “Granville North Side Neighbors,” he said. “B1–2 versus B1–3. Smackdown of the century tonight.” They were bills proposed to regulate the height of residential buildings along north Broadway.

  “Oh, shit,” said Sunny. “I forgot. Can't I be a little late? Under the circumstances.”

  “Under the circumstances, especially not,” said Eldad. “They'd think you've gone Hollywood,” and when Sunny was visibly baffled and frowned, Eldad explained, “Your one day under the bright lights.”

  “I was hoping to stop home,” said Sunny. “Can I at least call my daughters?'

  “Of course,' said Eldad, and as he lifted a worn red folder from under his arm, Sunny groaned. It contained the names and phone numbers of about two hundred people. A hundred of them, more or less, had contributed at least a thousand dollars to at least one of Sunny's last three campaigns. The rest were the names of people those donors had suggested would be receptive to cultivation.

  Every day, Monday through Saturday, Eldad selected five people for Sunny to call. Sunny was a skilled conversationalist. He could keep the call skimming between inconsequential confidences and the noncommittal solicitation of advice. Sunny would tell them about what was coming before the council (“Now 965-46—what we're calling the Renter's Bill of Rights—should make the conversion of those units on North Malden easier….”), and pause for their reaction; sit still for their advice, remarking only, “Yes, I see …”

  Sunny was careful to pass along—it was the lollipop following the flu shot—at least one sharp, farcical, and essentially superficial anecdote from city council life that Sunny's donors could share at dinner parties, client lunches, or foursomes (Arty Agras stories were abundant; and citations from the mayor were practically legal tender).