by Scott Simon
Rita leaned over to hold her fingers over Sunny's arm and whisper.
“Didn't the Slavinskases have that Danish girl who helped with the kids?”
“Larissa,” he remembered. Colossal blue eyes, corn-yellow hair, and slender limbs in close-fitting jeans and sweaters.
“But Rosie was always at home,” said Sunny. “I think Larissa was more help to the alderman.”
“When we need help, we ask grandma,” Linas continued. “We ask a neighbor. The older ones raise the younger ones. Sometimes, we need a day-care center. Thank God they have them in churches like this. As Pastor Alfred knows, over the years I've given a few small contributions—nothing grand, just enough to help out.”
The pastor, legs crossed and smiling, waved and called out from his carved chair below a large embroidered gold cross.
“You have, my friend, you have.”
Linas rested his hands on the podium and leaned back toward the choir.
“You know, Pastor, I was paying attention to the words,” he said. “The singing is beautiful. But the words make it so, because they're the words of God.”
Shouts of, “That's true, Mr. Slavinskas,” sprouted around Sunny and his daughters.
“‘He sought me, and bought me, with his redeeming blood,’” Linas quoted. He narrowed his eyes in recollection; an expression Sunny had seen only when Linas had recalled the taste of some exceptional wine.
“Well your people and mine know what it's like to get blood on our hands. In the stockyards and hospital rooms. In the army. This week, there were people in my neighborhood—including our family—who shed tears right along with you. I thank you for letting me and my lovely wife”—Rosie rose a few inches from her seat, and raised a slender blond hand, waving trim pink nails—“join you for worship this morning. May our grief help us realize how many hopes and dreams we share for this city.”
Linas ducked his head humbly as he stepped from the podium. He gently held the heel of his hand against the corner of an eye to blot a tear. The brims of huge yellow, pink, lavender, white, and cornflower blue hats swayed like petals in the rows of seats.
It wasn't until Linas had taken a couple of slow, grave steps down the winding stairs leading down to the floor that Sunny could catch his eye with one of his own and, in blinking back tears, flash an unmistakable wink across several rows of heads bent in prayer and reverence. The phone in Sunny's pocket jiggled over his heart. He nodded to Sgt. Gallaher, who led him through the aisle, and out into a small, dim alcove stacked with dog-eared children's Bible storybooks in which it did not seem impious to speak of politics.
“Shameless. Shameful. Shameless,” she said.
“Lots of applause, Vera,” Sunny told her. “But when it's over, just a bunch of red hands to show for it. Something else is going on.”
After hearing only silence from the other end, Sunny went a sentence ahead.
“He's not running tomorrow.”
When Vera replied, Sunny noticed just a trace of wobbliness.
“Surely that's what all of this has been about,” she said.
“He must have counted and figured that he'd come up short,” said Sunny. A shiny-headed deacon on patrol for straggling children heard Sunny's rushed, strangled voice and peered into the alcove; some soul must be hurting. Sgt. Gallaher waved the man away. “This way, Linas bows out in a blaze of glory,” said Sunny. “And starts next year's campaign.”
“That's diabolical,” Vera said after a pause. “He told you he had to run because if I got in he'd have no chance next year. Or for ten years.”
“I feel stupid, Vera.” Sunny scolded himself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“Not your mistake,” Vera said crisply. “Every politician has to keep books for herself.”
“He got us to start playing our hand, Vera. Put down our cards with Rod, Evelyn, Miles, Luis, Ivan. He knew all along that he couldn't beat you on the floor. But …” Sunny let his voice trail off, so that Vera could complete his thought.
“But he figures now that I'll come up short, too.”
Sunny admired the way in which Vera did not resort to we when it came to bad fortune. He heard the organ rumbling and voices wailing before she spoke again. Let Him in your heart today, Throwing every window open, O receive Him while you may. By the time she spoke, Vera's sentences hissed down quickly, like short, hot fuses.
“I thought Linas was going to lead the crowd in ‘Kumbaya.’ I wonder how long Walter Green has been in his pants. Who do you figure he figures? Arty?”
“No,” Sunny quickly replied.
“Daryl?”
“Nooo.”
“Rod?”
Sunny paused to run this new name through his mind; it swiftly returned, unmarked.
“I doubt it. The only chit he earns from that would be Rod's. Which is as valuable as old francs. No, it's something—someone—we're missing. Someone Linas can trust to get out of the way—or not be too hard to move out of the way—next year. In the meantime,” said Sunny, “I have an idea.…”
Wooden doors sprang open. Organ blasts pealed. Voices roared. Joshua prayed for to stop the sun. The sun did stop till the battle was won. Hallelujah! Snowshoes squished over soft red carpet. Sunny looked for the two, bare dark heads of his daughters in the surge of violet, coral, and daffodil brims flapping out of the service and past his alcove.
It was the worst—by far the worst—time of the year.
Cold whistled in through battened windows, locked doors, and buttoned coats. Fountains froze. Sidewalks cracked. The lake turned gray. The holiday lights of December were packed away. The sun didn't show itself until most people were already on their way to work, and vanished before they began the trek back home. Whole days—whole weeks—went by, cloaked in slate, smoke, and silver.
Skyscrapers whipped up the wind, so that to turn some corners felt like walking into a wall with your face. Your skin was stung red; your mouth was pushed back against your teeth; tears blew back into your eyes. Sometimes, you could see people who had turned into the wind shove vainly with their arms, as if striking back at a mugger.
Snow offered spots of relief. The city was good at getting it off the major roads, so that the snow could sprinkle a kind of softness and light over the streets and sidewalks—until it was scorched brown by car exhaust, stomped gray by a million heels, and melted by sunlight until the downy shawl of snow became a fraying, graying fringe. Ice wrapped around branches and limbs, giving trees the silver gleam of candelabras, but they rattled like old bones with each blast.
In the early days of January, people knew the siege ahead and were determined to see it through. By February, they were grimly resigned; those who could afford it went to Florida or Puerto Rico for at least a few days’ relief from the heavy coat weighing on their necks and the everyday trudge of heavy soggy shoes. By March, everyone had had an explosion of exasperation: They'd dropped a coin or key and just couldn't bear to take off a glove to retrieve it; they'd stepped into a cold bathroom on a bleak morning, shivered and swore, “Shit. Enough. I'm tired. Stop.”
The city put on exhibits and festivals as diversions. Thoroughfares bristled with whimsical sculptures and thickets of lights. Many buildings strung gaily colored bulbs in trees and hedges; empty office floors glowed like casinos.
Gray was the color of the season, but not gloom. Many people went about their days and nights professing to be oblivious, or anyhow impervious, to the sting of the wind and wetness. A few brave or craven souls still ran along the beach. Bundled schoolchildren scampered, tumbled, and played ball in playgrounds and parks where the earth underfoot was as unrelenting as stone. Taverns bubbled late. People stamped their boots and clapped their arms to keep warm along the El train platforms, but still joked, gossiped, and made plans.
There were places on the planet that were colder and windier. But Copenhagen, Irkutsk, and those Himalayan towns that clung, like flowers, to the side of a grand gorge, did not have nearly so many millions of
people heading off to work and school, restaurants, shops, churches, and movies, walking the dog, hauling groceries, or otherwise carrying on the semblance of warm and orderly lives.
Sometimes, the gray of the sky turned pearly. Sometimes, the gray lake rippled with slow-moving streaks of pale blue, slashes of deep blue, and ripples of foamy white light. Sometimes, spikes of light poked through clouds, like spectacular scythes. Sunny had been told, and came to believe it himself, that the ferocious weather seemed to breed a kind of pride: a loony but appealing conviction that people who could live and laugh at such temperatures possessed a special crazy toughness. They didn't break a sweat about small things. They savored a hot meal, hearty friends, a bracing drink, and belly laughs, with the abandon of people who thought they had earned the right.
After Sgt. Gallaher had brought Sunny and his daughters through the worshippers, guided them into their car, and tapped the thick security glass to signal the driver to pull out, Sunny noticed a message symbol winking on his phone and lifted it to his ear.
“Sunny? Arty,” he heard. “A blessed Sabbath. You've got your two hundred dollars a ton. I'd like to bring it up first item tomorrow. Love to your girls.”
“Alderman Agras sends his regards,” he told them.
The officer pulled their black car over on Wabash, under the thunderclap of an El train trundling overhead, to let out Rula and Rita, who said they wanted to go to the Cultural Center.
“There's an exhibit of gilded silver cups and dishes decorated from the Sassanian Dynasty,” Rula explained.
“Muriel? Virginie? Diego? Funny names for silver cups,” said Sunny, and his daughters pushed down hard on Sunny's shoulders, laughing.
“Just remember,” he told them. “The wedding reception at Jia's tonight.”
When Sunny had settled back into his seat, Sgt. Gallaher turned to him with a slow smile.
“Back at church,” she said. “That man wasn't the Alderman Slavin-skas that I know.”
“It's among the ones I know,” Sunny laughed. “All politicians say, ‘We must not be bound by the nostrums of the past.’ Linas isn't bound by nostrums he uttered five minutes ago. Shameless. But a professional has to admire his flexibility. Like a python.”
Sunny clasped his hands together like a charmer playing a flute, then fluttered his fingers, like a snake rippling out of a basket. The gray of the day glazed over the gray tint of the windows.
“I should be outraged. But I enjoy the show. Most of us stop thinking. We take positions. Which saves us from thinking. Your supporters don't mind. They just hold you up against a list to see that what you say about gun control falls in line with what you say about abortion. What you say about capital punishment falls in line with what you say about gay marriage. Sometimes I think, my God, what possible link? But people see them, like the face of the Virgin Mary on a peanut butter cookie.”
The sergeant parted her long black coat over a folded knee as the tires of the car thrummed with an iron whine over the Clark Street bridge.
“Gun control?” she began. “I say fine. Melt all the guns down into a big ball and shoot it toward Mars. Only cops and soldiers should have guns. Anyone says they need a gun to go hunting—use a bow and arrow. Or bare hands. Make sporting odds for an innocent deer. Abortion? I don't like it. I'm not sure I want to get rid of it, but I don't like it. There are lots better ways to stop from getting pregnant. Gay marriage? Why not? Everybody should get to live their own life. You don't like gay marriage—don't have one. Capital punishment? Anyone who takes a life ought to pay for it with theirs. Sorry, but I'm not sorry for them. Babies and deer are innocent. Killers aren't.”
Sunny heard the tires bite into snowflakes, sand, gravel, and grains of blue road salt.
“You would drive the consultants wild,” Sunny told Sgt. Gallaher, and he could see her jaw flush slightly as the heat in the car rose and she rolled a window down a quarter inch.
“Well that's how it all makes sense to me,” she said.
Ingo's on west Irving Park had faded old paneled walls festooned with framed plates, soccer photos, Bavarian flags, and pictures of schnitzels, wursts, and bier. A yellowing old sign said, “Sauerkraut: German Natural Gas.” The U.S. Attorney had taken a stool at the bar and held a blunt knife against the throat of a smoky brown thuringer.
“No last minute appeal?” Sunny called out from behind. Brooks Whetstone turned his head with a grim smile as the casing crackled and snapped.
“Denied,” said the U.S. Attorney. “No mercy.” The knife's edge clinked against the heavy ironstone plate. He placed a dollop of tawny brown mustard, flecked with speckles of horseradish, on top of the severed slice of sausage.
“I need some water with this,” he said.
“That just spreads the fire around,” Sunny told him. “Beer douses it.”
Sunny nodded to the bartender—he was one of Adam Wojcik's best precinct captains—and he began to draw a soft brown liquid slowly into a heavy glass, until a thick white head, almost of the kind you'd see on a chocolate sundae, began to rise.
“Do I eat the topping with a spoon?” Brooks Whetstone asked.
“Slurp through the suds,” Sunny advised him. “Have a napkin nearby. Or all the foam—you'll look rabid.”
Sunny sipped from his own mug and could feel a spray of bubbles break near his nose. The dark beer had a tart, smooth taste, like unsweetened caramel.
“I am. Thank you for meeting with me,” Brooks Whetstone said as he held a napkin in his palm over his chin. “And for suggesting this place. I don't get to see as much of the city as I'd like.”
He slipped a slender brown envelope onto the bar and unwound the red thread from the top flap.
“I could use your interpretation skills, alderman. And as I've told you before, I know how to show my gratitude. The mayor—frankly, it surprised us, in this day and age—wrote lots of letters. By hand.”
“A human touch in a depersonalized age,” Sunny said after a pause.
“Why were some written by hand and some typed?”
“Don't you do the same?” asked Sunny. “Dictated letters, or something drafted by aides for official business. Handwritten notes for condolences, weddings, the birth of a child.”
“So, the mayor would dictate something like this,” the U.S. Attorney said as he slipped a letter from the envelope. It looked like a stiff ivory-brown sheet of the mayor's official stationery; Sunny could see the backside of the city emblem at the top. Brooks Whetstone read out half-sentences.
“‘Dear Mr. Whetstone, congratulations on your appointment, blah-blah, I extend my warm personal welcome to Chicago and trust that you will come to cherish our city, blah-blah.’”
The froth on Sunny's beer subsided, and he took two long swallows while Brooks read.
“I don't know how to break it to you, Mr. Whetstone,” he said. “But I doubt the mayor ever saw that. It's a form with your name inserted. I don't know how it is over at the federal building. We get just a little too busy to personalize a routine letter like that at City Hall.”
Brooks Whetstone smiled slightly and licked a small streak of spicy mustard from the top of his knife. Sunny held himself back from saying, I tell my daughters not to do that.
“All these personal notes,” he continued, tapping the envelope with the cleaned edge of his knife. “Why not phone calls? Email? Saves time and postage.”
“A personal letter is personal.”
“More private, too, isn't it? One hand to another. Nobody reading or listening in. That's how terror cells communicate, isn't it? A man writes a note in a cave, passes it on, and six months and sixteen thousand miles later, a skyscraper goes down.”
“Am I supposed to dignify that?” asked Sunny. “Not that you feds are any better at finding terrorists.”
But Brooks Whetstone already fingered a new ivory brown sheet from the thicket in front of him.
“Here's one to Commissioner Rivera of Streets and San. Who was, I might add,
pleased to provide it. ‘It is my pleasure,’ blah-blah, ‘to heartily recommend Justin Keenan, blah-blah, for a position with you. I have known Justin,’ blah-blah-blah, ‘for many years. Sincerely, etc.’”
“If a man knows the mayor, he's supposed to ask his second-grade teacher to write a letter?”
“As a matter of fact, he wasn't hired,” Brooks Whetstone announced, a small light kindling his eyes. The U.S. attorney pulled another note from his brown envelope with a wizard's snap and began to read.
“‘Dear Commissioner Rivera: It is my pleasure,’ blah-blah, ‘to heartily recommend Eric Rector, blah-blah, for a position in the Department of Streets and Sanitation. I have known Eric,’ blah-blah-blah, ‘for many years. ‘Sincerely etc., the Honorable. Blah-blah, Mayor.’”
Brooks Whetstone turned the letters around to face Sunny. Even in the bar's dim light, he could recognize parallel features: tall, looping first letters, trailing off into infinitesimal obscurity, each letter framing three lines of matching length. Each ‘Sincerely,’ looking similarly so.
“Almost word for word,” Brooks explained as Sunny tried to exhibit interest and brought his nose closer. “What makes Commissioner Rivera hire one man and not the other?”
Sunny made a point of hesitating as he looked from line to line.
“Could it be—wild guess here,” he said, “that he just made an honest personnel decision? Read the letters, but considered qualifications and experience?”
“To shovel shit for Streets and San?”
“Pushing a mower or a plow that's practically as powerful as a tank? You and I should know how to do something as useful.”
Brooks admitted no reaction on his bland, blond face and withdrew another sheaf of paper, tapping the bottom edge against the bar.
“Some people were pleased to let us have a look at this one,” he said, and read again quickly. “‘Dear Barry’—this is to Barry Nygaard of Yello—‘Blah-blah, Peter Mansfield, very exciting, Ninth Congressional District, I ask you to support him. Legal scholar, blah-blah.’ Both Nygaard brothers gave the legal limit to the Mansfield campaign fund.”