by Scott Simon
“It's twelve-twenty something,” he observed, and brought down the scuba diver's gavel. “We will recess for lunch until two.”
Sgt. Gallaher leaned down toward Sunny as he sat in the small, win-dowless conference room behind the rostrum and delivered grave news.
“We have a lockdown,” she told him solemnly. “By order of Chief Martinez. All access into the building is blocked until the end of the session. The crowds outside are just too large,” she said. “He would have phoned except—”
“Yes, I've been busy,” said Sunny. “This means—”
“That's what I've been getting to, sir,” she said, letting a smile skip over her lips. “No food deliveries.”
“Fascism,” said Sunny. “Bloody fascism,” he repeated vehemently. “Who says it can't happen here?”
“Wherever the Lord closes a door She opens a window,” said Sgt. Gallaher. “The First District has snapped into action.”
Rula produced a white plastic sack with Fannie's green script crawling across the outside. It crinkled as she hefted it onto the conference table. She parted the top and a contrail of spice and smoke rose into the center of the room.
“Limited menu, of course, sir. I think we just got two lean brisket, two pastramis, and one turkey pastrami.”
“The vegetarian option,” said Sunny. “Anyone mind if I take that?” Eldad spread out a broadsheet from that morning's Tribune, and Rita shook out the sandwiches.
“No potato salad or cole slaw,” said Sgt. Gallaher over the commotion of Rula, Rita, Eldad, and Sunny passing, crinkling, unwrapping, checking, rewrapping, and passing sandwiches in white paper swaddling around the table. “Or sour dills or knishes. But the officers were able to put their hands on these.”
The sergeant shook a bag of potato chips in her slender fingers.
“Come hither,” said Sunny, and then felt embarrassment rise in his face.
“With crab seasoning, for some reason,” she added, and Sunny threw his pin-dot tie over his shoulder and tucked a napkin over his shirt.
“In my dwindling minutes of power,” he said sonorously, “I would like to give all officers involved keys to the city for this humanitarian mission.
Rula and Rita hatched back the rye hinges of their pastrami sandwiches, delicately picking the thin strings of red meat up from the wrapper and lowering them into their mouths.
“How did they bring them in?” asked Rula.
“The ledge of the men's room on the second floor, right outside the council chamber,” said Sgt. Gallaher. “A couple of patrolmen, a couple of reporters, and Alderman Mitrovic are leaning out, and hauling up bags of sandwiches on ropes.” She leaned back on the edge of a chair back and laughed.
“That must make a sight for the cameras,” said Sunny, as he worked over the turkey pastrami on whole wheat. The sergeant smiled.
“I'm sure it's exactly what they do in the House of Lords,” she said.
“The Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe always has the turkey pastrami,” said Sunny, and when Rita looked with palpable bafflement from Sgt. Gallaher to her father, he added, “Something my Mummyji said the other morning.”
“Evelyn Lee sure came through,” Eldad rushed in to observe. “That puts us at nine, one more than we'd estimated. Alderman Slavinskas found me and said, ‘Looks like I'm not the only one with surprises around here,’ and then he said, ‘Eldad, just remember, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.’”
“Newton's Third Law,” said Rula.
“My first,” said Sunny.
Sgt. Gallaher felt a twinge, reached into her jacket, and suddenly waggled a mobile phone at Sunny. He sat up as she held out the screen so that he could see the identity of the caller, then asked his daughters, Eldad, and the sergeant, “Give me a moment?” They left the curls of pastrami, crusts of bread, and smears of mustard among the crumbles on the table and moved into the hallway.
“And get the door, please,” asked Sunny as he pressed a button to answer the call.
“Some show over there,” said the U.S. Attorney. “Reminds me of the ones where they lock up a porn queen, an old child star, a nuclear scientist, and a piccolo player to see who survives.”
“Very similar, yes,” said Sunny.
“You never call. You never write,” said Brooks Whetstone. “No puffs of smoke.”
Sunny had gotten to his feet. A 1933 map of the city's wards, a photo of Lincoln Tower, and a framed program cover of the first Ferris wheel from the Columbian Exposition clacked like a chorus line of katydids against the walls as a couple of Pink Line trains pulled south away from the Washington Street platform.
Sunny sat on an edge of the conference table and ran his fingers absently over the smooth grain.
“I fingered the slip of paper you gave me,” Sunny said. “But I never smoothed it out to read the number. You know why? You're shrewd, Mr. Whetstone. You knew that the way to get me into your game was to make me feel guilty—and I do. Sometimes I wake up screaming and crying. I haven't spent enough time with my daughters. Now, they're just about gone. I've bought posh ties and worn them once. Now, I can't find them. Stupid, wasteful. I took it for granted that people I loved would always be around. Now, she's not. I wasted so much time—so much care, so many feelings—on silly, senseless, useless things. I was always going to make things right later on. Now I'm out of time. But I doubt that giving you seduction tips on a lot of old friends will help me,” he said. “I helped some people who needed jobs and made sure they did them well. I figured out ways to fix and do some things. I'll live with that.”
There was a long silence on the phone, which Sunny felt distinctly as a silence between two men. They could hear each other breathe; they could each hear the scratch of the other man's afternoon beard on the mouth of the receiver. When Brooks Whetstone finally replied, he seemed to let his voice out slowly.
“You've been through a lot, Alderman Roopini. For all you've given to politics, you have an embarrassingly small amount to show in return. End your career in the council, go on to something else, and you won't find anything nailed to your door from me. It's a gift, really. And as you can guess, I'm the kind of man who usually says, ‘Christmas? Bah humbug.’ Can we have an understanding?”
Sunny could hear the howl from a train as it turned into the Lake Street curve a few blocks away. He heard police whistles peal in the streets outside and, before he could answer—before he could even take a breath to answer—a soft rap of knuckles against the conference room door. Sgt. Gallaher called from the other side.
“The council will please come to order,” Sunny began. It was two twenty-two. Aldermen were uncommonly quiet in their seats; he plucked up the gavel, but then put it down. Lewis Karp discovered a speck of pastrami clinging to his glasses and rubbed it against his black knit tie. Christa Landgraf had brought a cup of tea up to her desk on the rostrum, the string of the bag looped through the handle, and she patted her throat as she cleared it and smiled at Sunny.
“Watered, fed, and ready,” she said.
“When we recessed, the council was conducting a roll call vote,” said Sunny. “Am I correct, Mr. Clerk, that we recessed after Alderman Lee cast her vote?”
“Correct sir,” said Lewie. “For Alderman Barrow.”
“That's not necessary,” Daryl Lloyd shot back from the first row.
“Thank you, Mr. Clerk. I think a great many others are keeping tally as we go along,” he said, and cast a smile out toward the cameras on stilts in the press section. “Would you resume the roll call?”
“Corcoran, Eighteen!” cried Lewie.
Kevin had his fingers tilted like a steeple under his chin.
“Sandoval,” he said.
“Volkov, Nineteen!”
Mit rubbed his thumbs in the corners of his smoky grey eyes.
“Barrr-ow,” he called.
“Wah-tah-nah-bay Twenty!” Lew announced, as if proclaiming a destination for an international flight, and Janet tosse
d back her curly head to reply before Lew had warbled the third syllable.
“Barrow!” she emphasized.
“Mitrovic, Twenty-one!”
“Agras,” Tommy said quietly.
“Sss-wah-rez, Twenty-two!”
Jesus, whose desk was in the smack center of the chamber, cupped his small sand shovel of a beard against the palm of his hand. His eyes narrowed and seemed to darken into searing brown blisters.
“Sss-” Lew Karp began again, but Jesus raised his head and cut him off with a single sideways nod.
“I'm ready to vote, Mr. President,” he said. “Alfredo Sandoval.”
Christa Landgraf slid her pad under Sunny's gaze. Linas slid his chair back, as if to make room for plaudits, but kept a blank face. Vera found Sunny with her eyes, and raised her chin slightly. Sunny tapped Christa Landgraf's pad with a pen and spoke slowly into the hushed chamber.
“I am informed that the chief of police will make an announcement in just a few moments. I am sure it is of interest to aldermen and to those watching. It has become a long afternoon, in any case, and it is the feeling of the chair that a recess would be welcome. Without objection,” he said, pausing only briefly, “it is so ordered,” and Sunny brought his hand down softly on the rostrum, as if tapping the head of a child.
At 4:04 p.m., Chief Martinez announced that Linda Marie Keely and Clifford Meadows had been arrested and charged with the murder of the mayor of Chicago.
Sgt. Gallaher and a phalanx of uniforms took Sunny into a service elevator and ascended to the twelfth floor, on the top of City Hall. The sergeant had to duck slightly as the doors opened into a gray and green jungle of overhead pipes and the crash and roar of boilers and elevator cables. They turned down a hallway Sunny had never seen. The sergeant threw her shoulder into an iron door that groaned open, like the top of a horror movie casket. Snow flurries surged in like fireflies. Sgt. Gallaher brushed them back with an arm, as the door opened onto the roof garden on top of City Hall.
Vera Barrow stood under a heat lamp of the kind that warmed waiting passengers at elevated train stops. She smiled, dropped a cigarette from the tips of her pink fingers into the snow, and stamped on it lightly with the toe of her high-heeled boots. Sunny heard the slightest hiss.
“I thought Matt did well,” she said.
Sunny nodded and took Vera's hand. He kissed her cheek. They sat on a painted green bench that had, to all appearances, probably also been appropriated from the stores of the transit authority.
(A previous mayor had ordered the roof garden installed, to absorb rainfall, reflect heat, and confirm the city's environmental policies. Sunny had only seen the roof garden when the late mayor had invited him up in warm weather to smoke cigars. He remembered that under the crust and tumble of the current snow, there were 150 or so species of wild onions, in salute to the city's Pottawatomie name, butterfly weeds, buffalo grasses, and blue aster. In spring and summer, field sparrows, juncos, and peregrine falcons came to call.
When the late mayor had first been shown around, he asked a young man from the city's Environment Department how much money the garden saved each year in energy costs. The young man proudly and promptly replied, “About four thousand dollars.”
The mayor grunted.
“And how much does it cost to maintain this little rain forest?” he asked. “You know, water, plant food, landscapers, horticulturalists, and whatever you call the highly paid professionals who clean up peregrine shit. Which I'm sure is recycled and made into exquisite jewelry for the City Hall gift shop.”
The young man opened his mouth before he realized that he was stumped.
The mayor grunted again and walked on, stopping to flick an ash onto the bright yellow inflorescence of a blue aster. The young man hurried to catch up with his stride.
“I think the point is less to save money,” he said, “than it is to show people how to save money.”
“By not saving money?” The mayor strolled on, shaking his head. “Interesting approach.”
“I know, sir, four thousand dollars doesn't sound like much against all the billions you deal with. But—”
“No sir,” the mayor replied, dismissing the young man's apologia with a cutlass slash of his cigar. “A man can buy himself a couple of aldermen for that.”)
Vera shook a monogrammed leather cigarette case from her sleeve and held the cigarette out between her fingers.
“I'm not going to make it, Sunny. Am I?”
Sunny took her hand and held it against his cheek to shake his head.
“When Jesus voted for Fred, we fell back,” he said softly. “We had him down for Arty. Just as a place to park. I figured that by the time it got to him, you'd be three votes up. He'd calculate that he could get the TEZ on Twenty-sixth, and that would help him next year, even over in Sanford, Collie, and Linas's wards. But we didn't count on Fred. Jesus must have made some calls, taken some soundings.…”
Sunny's voice faltered.
“We can get you to twenty-one. Twenty-two with my vote. But …”
Then Sunny's voice gave out.
“Next round?”
“You might get a couple back from Fred,” Sunny said softly. “But lose a couple to Daryl. Back to twenty-one. Do that twice and …”
Vera gently let go of Sunny's hand and put the cigarette to her lips. Flashes from her gold lighter made small sparks twinkle and disappear in her face.
“Folks start throwing over their shoes looking for lifeboats,” she said to finish his sentence. “The time has come for me to tell you something,” Vera continued. “Maybe I should have told you a year ago. I think I've got a few minutes to tell you now.”
The sky above them was blackening. Wisps of heat from nearby rooftops and building grates froze into small bluish clouds that floated against the lights glaring from frosted glass windows in the buildings looming above them. Sunny heard screeches and a rumble of wheels from the elevated platform along Wabash. Wordlessly, he reached over for her cigarette case, and Vera tapped it against her alligator watch-band until two filter tops poked out.
“I had a client named James Masterson,” Vera Barrow began.
MONDAY NIGHT
“As a kid, James got caught up in South Side Insane Popes,” Vera continued. She had taken a puff from her cigarette and passed it over to Sunny so that he might start up his own without fumbling for the lighter.
“He was in prison before he had to shave every day,” she said. “By the time I heard of him, he was at Menard, and coming up for parole— again. He was not innocent. He was the lookout for a team that beat down some El Rukn in an alley near a school. So they could deal. This girl with three kids looped with chains and diamonds and everything black and gold got in to see someone at the firm. Flash around a few— more than a few—hundreds, and the drawbridges on LaSalle street snap off salutes. The girl said that James was a changed man. If he didn't get out, he'd be crushed. I guessed her money convinced us. Nobody asked, ‘Did you win the lottery? Invest in Microsoft at just the right time?’”
She shook her head and expelled a cloud of smoke and frost.
“Our car service brought me down to Menard. ‘When I heard the call was for you, Ms. Barrow,’ the driver said, ‘I thought we'd be going to Bloomingdales.’ Two hours later, we were at the prison. The gates clanked. I had to clamp a tissue over my mouth and nose, daubed with Jean Patou. People piss and cum on every corner in that place, like it's the only way they have to chip away at it. But finally there was James in a conference room, beaming, like some kind of buff carnation. Shaved head like some wise walrus. Beautiful manners. ‘Please. Thank you. Pardon.’ He smelled—I'm not sure how he managed it in there— like tangerines.
“Sunny, I got to know James,” she said with a shiver. “Respect him. He'd cleaned up. He'd read. He was trying to make peace inside between the Almighty Vice Lords, the Gangster Disciples, and the Popes. He'd been jumped, thrashed, and cut plenty—gave a little of it back, too—until t
hose wild kids with electric eyes began to get what he was. The warden called him Mahatma. Third or fourth time I saw him, I noticed that he always had bandages around his wrist. I worried. Carefully, I asked how they got there. He said they covered his tattoos—the IP with the bloody sword piercing down. From then on, I started looking when they brought me through any common areas. Every fourth or fifth prisoner had bandages over their wrists. I thought, ‘That's James. That's his power.’ Sunny, what kind of man gets thrown into a hellhole and figures out a way to make it better? Have you known anyone in politics who'd done something that bold? That worthwhile?”
Sunny shook his head and shrugged his shoulders; the cold sharpened and leached into his bones.
“So I made a good argument,” said Vera. “The warden was eloquent. James got parole. Moved in with his sister and began to work in our mailroom. Eighteen months, sterling record. People would leave packages with him—Macy's, Tiffany, Bloomies, never a problem. People would leave their children with him for the afternoon. One of our partners offered to put him through school. But James was already forty.
“I agreed to help get him a job on the outside. A man that noble shouldn't have to spend his adult life fetching coffee and steering a cart.”
Vera shook her head as if just the right words might come out on top.
“But you know, Sunny, companies don't jump to hire someone like that. It's much easier to buy a table for a dinner for an ex-offender rehabilitation group. You get a tax deduction and rosemary garlic chicken.
“So I asked for his help,” said Vera. “The mayor's,” she added, unnecessarily. “There were maintenance openings in Chicago Park District field houses. James was good with his hands.”