by Scott Simon
Young men and women from the Moody Bible Institute choir, swishing the folds of their burgundy robes, began to sing with soft intensity:
Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
The burgundy robes stepped down silently from the stage. Black and gold robes from the Pilgrim Baptist Church choir began to climb on. Heels clipped, throats cleared, and wooden planks creaked in the stillness. Sunny turned to take in those assembled behind him. He could make out the governors of Illinois and Indiana, the U.S. senators from Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, the president of the county board, a collection of congresspeople, and a medley of state senators and representatives.
A senator from California, a silver-haired woman in a charcoal suit who was running for president, scrambled to locate a seat; a couple of aides stood by with their hands opening and closing uselessly for folding chairs. She had been brought along by one of her major contributors, the chairman of the Chicago Bulls, who whispered gruffly and unsuccessfully to guards in blue suits. A former governor of Rhode Island, who had once been the Democratic nominee for president, had found a seat just behind a pink stone pillar. The high, dark pompadour that had become so famed for several months had now silvered and flattened. Gravity was beginning to tow his well-born granite jaw south, making the governor look more than a little equine (Sunny remembered that the mayor had disdained him as both humorless and unserious. When he saw clips of the governor campaigning, waving from a platform like a marionette who had just suffered an electric jolt, the mayor often turned to those around him and announced, “Glue truck is a comin',”). The governor now sat nobly alone behind the pillar, looking deeply moved.
Sunny glimpsed the president's secretary of Health and Human Services; the comptroller of New York; the mayor of Los Angeles, looking bleary and teary after an all-night flight; the mayor of Boston, looking ruddy and distracted; and the fire commissioner of Miami in his dress blacks, who had once been a deputy chief in Chicago. The mayor had passed him over for the chief's job after learning that the deputy was an accomplished amateur jazz violinist.
“I can see the photo now,” he told Sunny grimly. “‘Chief Fiddles while High-rise Burns’. I'm not doing that.”
A man with a dark face and blistering brown eyes, rimmed red with drowsiness, caught Sunny's gaze and offered a half-bow with his head. They had met once. He was the deputy mayor of London. His name was Mansukhani. Sunny put his arm around his daughters and they all nodded back.
“Sindhi,” Sunny explained to his daughters, and once the Deputy Mayor had turned away, Sunny raised his index finger slightly above his nose.
“Haughty,” he whispered.
Rita's eyes fastened onto the mayor's urn, and she began to cry, leaning forward to grasp her knees. Sunny ran his hands over her back and shoulders and kissed her lightly between the shoulder blades.
“He was so nice to us.…”
Rita held her sister's hand, her own eyes stinging. The boys and girls in black and gold robes had begun to sing:
Helpless I am, and full of guilt
But yet for me Thy blood was spilt
And Thou canst make me what Thou wilt
And take me as I am.
Six pallbearers took up positions around the mayor's bronze urn. There were lieutenants in dress blues from the Chicago Police and Fire Departments, another dressed in the pressed working blues of the emergency medical services, another—Santiago Rivera, a 48th Ward constituent; Sunny made sure of that—in the green service uniform of the Chicago Park District, and a nurse in working whites whose arm patch bore the name of the hospital named for the mayor. The sixth pallbearer wore the gray-striped coveralls of the city's official maintenance crews. Sunny glimpsed Chief Martinez winking before he could make out the name on his breast pocket: Sam Stanky.
A seventh man in a stretchy gray suit and slumping shoulders nodded and murmured, and at his direction the pallbearers assumed seats. When the man turned around, Sunny recognized Frank Conklin and looked to catch the police chief's eye once again. He was glad to see that the mayor was not totally surrounded by strangers.
An elderly, bespectacled man with a half-moon of gray hair stepped behind a lectern embellished with the city's emblem and began to tell sweet stories about the mayor in a quiet, musical voice. He recalled that when the two of them were boys, they feigned tummy aches to be sent home from school and snuck into Comiskey Park to watch the White Sox take batting practice. Minnie Minoso threw them a ball as he trotted in from the field (Sunny remembered that in the mayor's rendition, Huck and Tom also filched cans of Hamm's beer from pallets in the loading docks). The man had recently retired as principal of the Ludwig van Beethoven grade school.
“Every time I ever had a youngster brought before me for ditching class,” he said, “I'd tell him that story. I'd say, ‘Now you can turn things around and become a mayor. A teacher, a lawyer, a policeman, or a principal. Or you can spend the rest of your life waiting for people to throw little bitty favors at you.’” When he finished, the principal stepped from behind the lectern and ran his fingers lightly over the top of his old friend's urn.
The Reverend Jackson stood up slowly, and took stately steps toward the lectern, with the slow pace of a processional. Masses of hands went up, snapping photos with cameras and phones. The reverend paused for several moments, as if to offer his unimpeded profile, before reaching into a vest pocket and extracting the elegant gold frames of his reading glasses.
“Take me as I am,” he began softly. “Thou canst make me what Thou wilt. And take me as I am.…”
By the time the Reverend Jackson finished, most of the mayor's adversaries had succumbed to tears, and his supporters were beyond consolation. He came down from the lectern with the quick, clever step of an old quarterback and worked his way through the outstretched hands from the first row; the reverend had to catch a flight for Athens or risk missing his connection to Amman.
He put each of Sunny's daughters under an arm and kissed the top of their heads.
“Be sweet, baby,” he told them. “Be strong.”
He took both of Vera's hands in his own and planted an austere kiss on her cheek, as gently as he might on the forehead of a sleeping child.
“Moving on up,” he told her, and withdrew one hand to squeeze Sunny's shoulder.
“Mr. Acting Interim,” he hailed, while extracting his other hand to grasp Arty Agras at his elbow. “Hey, buddy,” he told him.
Linas Slavinskas made a point of putting forth his own right hand. When the Reverend Jackson took it, Linas enfolded his left hand around their handshake like a clasp.
“That was very moving, reverend,” he said. “I hope you'll do the same for me some day.” The reverend emitted a tight smile.
“I'll look forward to that,” he told Linas. “Real soon.”
The Reverend Jackson had worked his way three seats down and was kissing the top of Wanda Jackson's hand in a fleeting farewell, aides dashing and guards converging, when he looked back at Linas and called, “I'll fly back from Khartoum if I have to.”
Sgt. Gallaher and two uniforms moved to surround Sunny and his daughters as soon as the last clergy onstage had uttered his final amen. Borne along in their quick procession, Sunny reached out to snag Chief Martinez at the elbow. The uniforms hung back to stand just in front of Sunny, while Sgt. Gallaher stayed a few strides ahead with Rita and Rula.
“You talked with our friend from California?”
“I listened,” the chief answered, staring ahead with a discernibly unimpressed expression.
“Any bearing on your investigation?”
“I suppose it narrows the list of suspects to eight million.”
As Chief Martinez turned back to his own circle, Sunny saw Arty Agras's short, slumping silhouette from behind and put a hand softly on his shoulder.
> “A dignified and moving affair that refracted the city that loved him, don't you think?” Arty asked. “The kids in blue sweaters who requited the Sandburg poem? From our Sabin Charter School on Hirsch.”
“Outstanding,” Sunny assured him. It seemed to Sunny that at least half a dozen batches of youngsters in school sweaters had recited Sandburg poems at the service. He got all the “hunched and humbled shoulders,” the haunted and huddled multitudes riding the Halsted streetcar rather confused. “Inspirational,” he added.
Sunny kept a friendly hand on Arty's shoulder and leaned down close to his left ear.
“Arty, they brought me the bill to approve the new contract with Earth First. I didn't sign it.”
Arty drew back, the rusting curls of his toupee sticking to the slick-ness on his forehead in the heat of the crowd and lights.
“Sunny—that's paramount to a veto.”
“I took a closer look, Arty,” he explained. “Not just who was for it, who's not, and who's holding the laundry bag. The numbers, Arty. The contract with Earth First pays three hundred and forty dollars a ton to collect recycling. It costs about a hundred and fifty dollars a ton to collect trash. That's more than twice as much per ton. And we've got seven thousand tons a day. That gets to …”
Sunny had to pause to recall the figure that Claudia McCarthy had worked out for him on the small calculator in her purse.
“… million dollars of difference a year, Arty.”
“Progress has a price, Sunny. We can't say no to the future.”
“Encourage your friends to bring down the price of the future.”
Arty reached a hand over to Sunny and tightened his thumb against his forearm; his voice tightened in his throat, as if he were struggling to speak underwater.
“Sunny, you voted for that contract.”
“As an alderman.”
Sunny let one of his own hands slide up to Arty's shoulder and squeezed it lightly. A passerby might see Arty's face flushing, Sunny's hand clasping his shoulder, and conclude the old friends were commiserating.
“Recycling is a religious conviction in my ward. I could hardly vote against it. I believe in it,” said Sunny. “But for a couple of days, I've got to worry about making laws, not just campaign promises. That made me pause. You can't make a trashy deal smell like roses just because you stamp ‘All Natural. Organic. One Hundred Percent Recycled!’ on the can.”
“Landfills are a cancer, Sunny,” Arty said urgently. “They contaminate our precious groundwater. They agitate global warming. We don't want to wake up one morning and see buzzards circling Millennium Park.”
“They're recyclers too, Arty,” Sunny suggested with premeditated lightness. “I'll bet they'd work for less than the buzzards at Earth First.”
“Sunny—”
“Urbs in Horto, Arty.” Sunny began to turn and caught Sgt. Galla-her's eyes to proceed. It was the city's motto: City in a Garden.
Arty took a step back and turned his chin down. When he spoke, his voice seemed to stall between a whisper and a moan. Sunny had to turn back and lower his head to hear, until it seemed to him that he was standing over Arty the way he used to stand over his daughters as they explained why certain teachers didn't understand them.
“Sunny, please. These are important people. Very important, Sunny. These people are urgently concerned about global warming and arctic preserves. These are people who say we can't let anything— anyone, Sunny—stand in the way of protecting our environment.”
When Sunny spoke, he shook his head indulgently. “Remind those grown men with third-grade nicknames that it's hard for me to sign a bill with broken knuckles. I'm just walking the city away from a bad offer, Arty. There's a firm in St. Paul that does the job for a hundred and eight-five dollars a ton.”
“St. Paul!” Arty gasped. “That's only half a city.”
“And a firm in Toronto who can meet that.”
“Sunny, we can't subcontract our recycling security to foreign interests.”
Sunny began to take several deliberate steps away from Arty, nodding slightly to Sgt. Gallaher in a forward direction.
“I can see going to two hundred dollars a ton. As you say, Arty, we're not half a city. Your friends can take credit for being good citizens. If I don't sign the bill, they'll have to try to override it with the next mayor. Even if that's you, Arty—especially if it's you—there'll be a lot of questions. A lot of looking into Earth First.”
The folding chairs snapped up behind Arty, like yawning alligators.
“Sunny, it was moved! It was voted! It passed!”
“And now it needs the mayor's signature,” Sunny stepped toward the staircase. “Even one just filling in.”
“Sunny! It was tied with a ribbon! It's the will of the people! Sunny!” Arty implored as Sunny flicked his right hand to motion Sgt. Gallaher to take the first step down the staircase. “Sunny! You can't be a leader unless you go along with the majority!”
They were out on Randolph Street, walking toward the beetle-black car Sgt. Mayer had kept running and burping steam, before Eldad De-laney turned to Sunny and asked, “What did I hear Alderman Agras say?”
Rita and Rula had had enough of mourning and memorial and decided to run along to the State Street stores, which would reopen after the memorial service. He peeled five twenties into their hands, then a couple more, and finally a credit card.
“I don't need anything. You don't need anything. Get whatever. Just don't say you were looking for me.”
“You can always use a dozen handkerchiefs.”
“All of the stores that you go in have mannequins with rings in their noses.”
City Hall was just five blocks away, and Sunny's instinct was to walk. But Sgt. Gallaher said that the mourners would be teeming in the streets, and persuaded him to ride. Eldad sat alongside him in the back, the sergeant just across from them. The throng of cars was so thick that Sunny doubted they moved more than a foot a minute. Every now and then, a red face under a ski cap, flaring steam from his mouth and nostrils, would press against a tinted passenger window and demand, “Who the fuck is that?”
Eldad announced, “The alderman and I need to talk, sergeant.”
“I need to be right here,” she said. “But I don't hear a thing.”
“Nothing mysterious,” he hastened to explain. “But politics can sound harsh.”
“I'm a cop,” she reminded Eldad, and then, when his eyes hardened, she flicked her fingers against her head.
“Went swimming this morning,” she assured him. “Water in my ears.”
Eldad told Sunny that all phones, pagers, and message systems had been turned off during the memorial service, so the forty-some aldermen sitting behind them had scrawled messages on scraps of paper and tossed them, sometimes rows away.
“It looked like the worst sixth-grade class you ever saw,” he said.
“A heartening display of aldermanic literacy,” said Sunny, who found himself looking for Sgt. Gallaher's eye. “I would have guessed that we could only throw twigs and stones.”
Eldad explained that the nineteen votes they had predicted for Vera seemed correct. She might be able to pick up six more in the second round from among aldermen who would cast their first ballots for Arty Agras; and even a couple inclined to vote for Linas. But such hope soared on the idea that Vera would begin to look inevitable. Aldermen voting for someone else would conclude that there was no reward in losing, and distinct disadvantages in opposing Vera. Some spoils might even be earned from being one of the last votes to make Vera Barrow mayor.
But she needed to win early, or votes would begin to fall away like loose shingles. This was exactly the circumstance hoped for by Daryl Lloyd. He could not win enough council votes to become mayor. Yet if he could win enough to thwart Vera, he had a chance to position himself as the preeminent African-American candidate to run against Linas next year.
Linas, for that matter, preferred running against Daryl to Vera. He and A
lderman Lloyd shared the conviction that the other made him look more plausible.
“So now Daryl is making noises like he won't wait,” Eldad told Sunny. “He might just jump.”
“On a platform of pulling a gun on the council?” asked Sunny. “That could be popular.”
Eldad said that Dorothy Fisher of the 3rd had let it be known that Daryl had assured her of his support for a zoning change.
“She wants to permit construction of a thirteen-unit condominium building on south Drexel,” he explained.
“Housing is good,” said Sunny. “Everyone from the Holy Father to Dr. Kevorkian is in favor of housing. But sales, not rental, on that block? Does Dorothy have any other interest?”
“I'll check. Miles Sparrow wants to create a TEZ to turn a vacant lot at Seventy-ninth and Halsted into parking for a new block of doctor's offices.”
TEZs were a city program devised by the mayor called Tax Enhancement Zones. It permitted the city to declare a parcel of land as being off the property tax rolls, to induce someone to buy, develop it, and create jobs in neighborhoods that might otherwise be forsaken. But the mayor and council had creatively reinterpreted the program. There were now posh hotels, day spas, and co-ops on several TEZ zones, too. Sunny sat up at the utterance of the initials.
“He says you won't have doctors down there unless you give them parking,” Eldad explained.
“Their Cadillacs too good for a public lot?”
“It's for patients. Public lots get full. They cost. You don't want a patient to have to choose between parking and filling a prescription.”
Sunny rubbed his index finger in small, slow circles over his chin.
“Donald Trump isn't coming to Seventy-ninth and Drexel,” Eldad pointed out. “Vacant lots are the devil's playgrounds. Parade grounds for prostitutes.”
“And garages become shopping malls for hard drugs. What did Vera tell him?”