by Scott Simon
“Keith, can we make you more comfortable somewhere?”
“I'm fine, Sunny,” he said. “Sarge lets me lie down on a cot. You know what you can do? Send down a couple of hot chicks.”
“Sorry, Keith, the building's locked down. We can't even get hot soup.”
Keith pulled back slightly on the stick that steered his chair until it locked with an electric belch.
“How's she doing?” he asked more softly. Sunny leaned down to answer (which he usually refrained from doing with Keith—it made it seem as if he was stooping to speak to a child).
“You know Vera,” he told him. “Class. Pluck. Stiff upper lip.”
“She'll get a better go at it next year.”
Sunny kept his same, still expression, and answered only, “We can hope.”
Keith's red-rimmed eyes sizzled in his dark brown face.
“You got another plan?”
“Just to think of something else.”
“Too late to think, Sunny,” Keith told him, and began to push his chair forward over the sloping carpet. “You know politics. You have to do all your thinking before the votes are counted. Afterward, all you can do is live with your mistakes. Thanks for our annual conversation, Sunny,” Keith called back sharply over the whizz of his small motor. “You don't have to worry about me again until next year.”
Sunny had Arty Agras, Vera Barrow, Daryl Lloyd, Linas Slavinskas, and Alfredo Sandoval shown into the conference room. They left a chair at the head of the table for Sunny, and it was an unusual sensation to see heads swivel as he entered with Sgt. McNulty and two uniforms, and to realize that the meeting began as he sat down. Stuart Cohn and Christa Landgraf followed.
Linas had a white-lidded cup of coffee before him. Sunny asked, “Are you going to drink all of that?” Linas popped the top to spill some into a drinking glass for Sunny and pushed it across the table.
“Clearly, we seem stuck,” Sunny began. “We are blessed with several outstanding candidates. But unless my calculations are wrong, none of you have enough votes to be elected mayor on this ballot. Or the next.”
All heads seemed to swivel before fastening on Vera Barrow. Her delicate smile stayed sturdily unflustered; her sienna hair sprang back over her ears, unmussed. Her voice, when she finally broke the room's silence, was clear and strong.
“Yes, Mr. President,” she said. “That's certainly true for me.”
Arty Agras grumbled agreement. Daryl Lloyd shifted in his seat, but said nothing. Fred Sandoval nodded once, down and up.
“I think the time has come to explore a few other names. We have a real election coming up in a little over a year. But the city needs leadership until then, too. The people in this room represent such an invigorating range of ideas.” Linas Slavinskas appreciated Sunny's phrase, and fought down a smile. “If you can agree on a candidate to occupy the office for the next year, his or her name can be proposed before this ballot ends. He or she might be approved by acclamation. The city will have united leadership at a challenging time. And be grateful to you all, I'm sure.”
The aldermen sat back in their office chairs.
“Grace Brown,” Sunny suggested without elaboration, and pushed back from the table, as if he had just overturned a water pitcher. Linas pressed both hands against his chin, and Vera pushed the tip of a gold pen over her front teeth. Arty Agras flicked a dot on his tie, before Daryl Lloyd offered the first reaction.
“She's a stalking horse for Vera.”
“I'd suggest a stalking horse for you, Daryl,” said Sunny. “If you could win even one other person's vote.”
The aldermen erupted in snickers and ooohs. Arty Agras finally reached across the table for Daryl's unbandaged hand.
“Grace, I love Grace, but he makes a good point,” said Arty. “She'd be extremely suggestible to suggestion.”
“At least Grace doesn't sit on my lap,” snapped Vera, looking at Linas and Fred Sandoval, side by side. “Singing ‘Bye-bye Blackbird’ when I pull the string.”
Sunny folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “Grace is smart and honest,” he declared, but knew that he was beginning to scold; aldermen turned away with showy indifference.
“Alright,” he announced. “Astrid Lindstrom.”
The aldermen turned to look at Daryl Lloyd. He let the fingers poking from his sling drum a line over his forearm.
“I love Astrid,” he said. “But …”
“But?” Sunny asked sharply.
“I love Astrid,” Daryl repeated with audibly escalated sincerity. “Love her, love her, love her. More than once, she's picked me off the floor. Ways you don't even know,” he said, and had to break his gaze away from the table. “But we've got millions of people in this city who would consider that a setback. The council would let a couple of assassins—young white assassins, you see their pictures all over TV now—take away something that we worked for.”
“Is that how you feel?” Sunny asked, staying stern.
“Of course not. I love Astrid. But others …”
“Yes. It's always the others, isn't it?” Sunny shook his head with dramatic despair. “Twelve years on the council, and that's the worst you have on Astrid?”
“Don't tell me color doesn't count, Sunny,” said Daryl Lloyd. “In this city? It comes in with the wind. You can't brag all the time on all this diversity and not expect people to keep score.”
“Well I'd support her,” Vera declared, crossing her legs with a silken rustle and raising herself notably above Daryl. “Smart, tough, good.”
“So would I,” said Linas, but Fred Sandoval was already moving a large hand over to Linas's shoulder.
“You don't have votes to give away, Linas,” he reminded him.
“She just voted for you,” Sunny pointed out.
“I love Astrid, too, Sunny,” Fred implored Sunny. His brown eyes looked like swollen acorns under his heavy black glasses. “And I don't go for any of that other stuff. But we've gone too far down a different road to turn back. People expect the kind of change they can see now. Something different.”
Sunny rose and began to walk around his seat. When he had settled his hands on the back of his chair, Linas Slavinskas actually raised his hand for recognition.
“No offense to my friend here,” he said, nodding toward Arty Agras. “But we've got a guy sleeping with two guy police guards who's considered middle of the road, and a mother of seven kids is too controversial. Only in America.”
The aldermen had all pushed back from the table to throw back their heads with guffaws when Sunny pulled up his chair and threw them another name.
“Steven Price,” he proposed.
Steve Price was the founder of Muriél Aeronautics. He was a self-made man, round-shouldered and steely-jawed even into his sixties, who had earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam and millions in his helicopter business. His name was often bruited between elections as a candidate that either party wanted to recruit for governor. He had grown up in a fatherless household in Detroit's Sojourner Truth housing projects and excelled at West Point. Every few years, Steve piloted one of his own copters to some new airspeed record. Every February, his calendar brimmed with school assemblies during African-American history month. Every May, six engineering students from poor families graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology because (as they had no idea) Steve Price had paid their tuition.
But Steven Price had never run for governor. He was too fond of gun control for Republicans and disdained teachers’ unions too much for Democrats. Once, as he contemplated running as an independent, the Tribune ran a feature on Steve Price's daredevil high-altitude balloon expeditions. An accompanying photo showed Steve in his silvery flight pajamas, next to the lissome young co-pilot to whom he was not married. The caption said, “Cabin temperatures can sink to 40 degrees,” and the mayor, along with hundreds of thousands of other readers, murmered aloud, “Betcha Steve stays warm.”
Steve Price forswore politics thereaf
ter. He figured out that each party had flattered him only to pick freely of his fathomless pockets and deduced that spending thirty million dollars of his own money to win a $200,000 a year job was a preposterous business model.
The aldermen quieted at his name. Vera looked across the table to Linas Slavinskas.
“Brooks Whetstone had something.”
“The usual,” said Linas. “Gifts to people purchasing for the Pentagon, the RAF, and Israel. A few low-down indictments, nothing tied to Steve.”
“I'll bet they were wined and dined pretty fancy to buy helicopters,” said Arty Agras, swabbing a hand against his chin.
“If he's mayor, our police can't buy his helicopters,” said Fred Sandoval, and Sunny turned tartly toward the alderman.
“When did you read an ethics regulation, Fred? If we have to, we'll buy them from North Korea,” he added.
“Poland,” said Linas Slavinskas.
“Of course Steve Price is a Republican,” said Daryl Lloyd, with the same studied nonchalance Sunny's daughters displayed to tell him that a famous film star was absolutely, positively (everyone knew it; how had Sunny never heard of it?) gay.
“Who knows? He gave a lot of money to the mayor,” Vera pointed out. “It's the only way you get a seat in the game.”
“Then he's perfect,” Linas concluded. “Smart. Unindicted. And if he fucks up, he's a Republican.”
“Sunny, he doesn't want it,” Arty Agras said suddenly. Sunny paused before he replied.
“I've had a word with him, Arty. Mr. Price says he understands these are special circumstances. He would be willing to serve until the election next year. After that, he intends to run the foundation that bears his name. Near his place in West Palm Beach.”
But Arty Agras shook his head so widely that his shoulders twisted and his tie slipped out.
“He doesn't want it, Sunny,” he persisted. “Steve Price might like putting hiring and firing. Or going to mayor's conferences, though a guy like that has probably already been to Sun Valley and San Juan. He'd probably like showing the queen of England around Wrigley Field. But he doesn't want it, Sunny. Anyone who's mayor, even for just a year, has to be able to spend Thursday night at the South Austin Community Council listening to every goddamn gripe about slow bus service on Roosevelt Road and hearing the parking regulations on Cicero compared to the Nuremberg Laws. He can come back here to the Hall and make fun of the blue-haired lady who got up in the middle of something important to say that the purple martin swallow should be the civic bird. But he also has to love it a little, am I right? The city deserves that. At least that.”
The pause that followed was so long, Sunny began to count to himself. Aldermen looked across the table, looked down, looked back. By the time he reached six, Sunny said, “Artemus, you brim with wisdom today.”
The aldermen began to stand, brush their hands over wrinkles, shake out their legs, and stretch their backs.
“I might have another thought,” Sunny said before they could begin to step away from their chairs. The overhead lights buzzed and made the aldermen blink their eyes as they turned.
Arty, who was ordinarily fastidious to the point of fussy had tiny green glops of exhaustion in the corners of his eyes that he tried to catch with an index finger. Vera's richly painted eyebrows had begun to flake, faintly. Daryl Lloyd's forehead shone. Linas Slavinskas had bitten three of the nails on his left hand, and Linas usually wore clear polish. Sunny sat down, smiled, and lifted his phone in his hand.
“I've also been speaking to Taber John Palmer,” he began.
Dr. Palmer was the recently retired chancellor of the University of Illinois campus in Chicago (and with distinction, though several reports had raised questions about spending he had authorized to recruit promising athletes in west Africa). His name summoned an image of an elderly, sunny-faced man with a soft crown of silver hair, courtly manner, and kindly uncle eyes.
“A distinguished educator,” Sunny continued. “The author of acclaimed biographies of Fredrick Douglass, Leroy Paige, and Duke Ellington. Winner of the Bancroft Prize for American History.”
Sunny looked at a paper he had taken from his coat and paused to find something that he had circled on. “He has served on and chaired presidential commissions on poverty, race relations, and preschool education. He has more honorary degrees than Alderman Slavinskas here has cufflinks.” The aldermen sat back and barked. “He also serves on almost as many corporate boards.” Sunny read off the names, like items on a takeout menu. “All-State Insurance, Bally Total Fitness, Northern Trust, Quaker Oats, the Tribune. Yello.”
“Free checking, free breakfast, free Internet, and a gym pass,” said Linas. “I've met him. He's a hoot. He's clever. But I don't know.…”
“You want this Taliban John Palmer to chair a commission, Sunny?” asked Arty Agras.
“Alderman Roopini wants him to chair us, Arty,” Linas Slavinskas said, looking across the table. “With a chair and whip. The other names were just tin cans. Sunny gave us a little target practice. He's suggesting that we make the professor mayor.”
Arty's jaw slumped. He looked over at Vera, then Fred Sandoval, then back at Sunny.
“He's written good books, I'm sure,” he told Sunny directly. “But he has no experience.”
“So he has fresh ideas.”
“Would you choose a brain surgeon who didn't have any experience?” asked Linas. “Just a lot of fresh ideas?”
“Maybe to operate on you, Linas,” Vera offered.
“Politics isn't brain surgery,” answered Sunny. “We're living proof. Someone who can choose good people to do a few worthwhile things— I'd settle for that.”
“He doesn't know politics,” Daryl Lloyd said more sharply.
“A university president?” Sunny raised his eyebrows in return, as if challenging something his daughters had passed on from a smart-aleck friend. “I'll bet he plays politics at least as well as someone who's never run for office north of the Orange Line.”
The other aldermen groaned and clapped at Sunny's gibe, so tellingly tailored to Daryl's ward. But before they could catch their breaths, Stuart Cohn had made a thrumming sound in the back of his throat until the aldermen had turned around to face him. Sunny had made sure that Cohn and Christa Landgraf sat against the wall. They had been summoned there to counsel elected officials, not share their deliberations.
“This is all very creative,” he said with his courtroom raptor's countenance. “But I've just checked statutes. The law states that the council has to elect an alderman mayor. No civilians. So someone in the council would have to resign. Let's say you can get someone to do that tomorrow. Even tonight. Then Mr. Roopini here could appoint Dr. Palmer to take that seat, and he could receive votes for mayor. But the law also clearly states that the new mayor has to be chosen at the first business session following the resignation or expiry of the old mayor. That's this session. The meeting we're in now. Your interesting idea, Mr. Roopini, may be a few hours too late.”
“We're recessed,” Vera Barrow pointed out. “Can't we just stay in recess and come back in a few days? It's a legalism, but—”
“You mean leave without ending the meeting? Get out before we choose a mayor? We'd be laughingstocks,” said Fred Sandoval.
“We're not?” asked Vera.
“I'd have to gavel that down,” said Sunny quietly, after a pause. “As Stuart says, the law is clear. And it's right. We're elected to disagree, raise our voices, threaten, trade, but finally do something. Politics isn't supposed to be just putting a live wire up the public's ass and turning their stomach rumbles into policies. Some things—this thing right now—we're supposed to do on our own. We can't just duck and wait to hear voices from a burning bush. We have to decide.”
The buzz of the lights suddenly made Sunny slap the back of his neck. He could feel his shirt chafe and sting like a grimy bandage. His feet itched. His hands tingled. He wanted to open a hole in the back of his head. Steam and brine,
he guessed, would trickle out. After a pause, he looked down the table to Stuart Cohn and Christa Landgraf.
“Let me ask our learned counsels.” Sunny paused to take a breath. “What if I resigned as alderman of the Forty-eighth Ward right now? And then, as acting interim mayor, I appointed Dr. Palmer alderman in my place?”
Christa Landgraf began to run a thumb over the spine of an ordinance book, but Stuart Cohn offered an answer instantly.
“You can't resign as alderman and be acting interim mayor.”
“What if I did it in the same second?” asked Sunny, lifting one of the white printed sheets in front of him. “Not page one, then page two, but two sides of the same paper at the same instant?”
Sunny flipped the page, back and forth, back and forth, as if performing a card trick. Cohn stared into the wall behind Sunny, as if trying to count the rustles and swishes.
“That's a chicken or egg question,” he said. “Which comes first, the resignation or the appointment? As presiding officer, your interpretation would prevail. As long as it were upheld by the council.”
“Yes,” said Christa Landgraf. “But, no.” She had thrown back a page and pressed the stub of a short pencil into a boldfaced line. “You couldn't appoint Dr. Palmer alderman until he's registered in that ward. I'd guess he's registered in the Second or Forty-second. Not the Forty-eighth.”
“This time of year,” said Arty Agras, “he's probably teaching inamorata, or whatever you call it, in Orlando or Cuernevaca.” Arty pronounced the name of the Mexican town as if it were a country Irish dish.
“That just shows he's smart,” said Vera. Sunny pressed his fingers together in a steeple below his chin.
“This is Chicago,” he said. “The dead can vote. Surely we can figure out a way to register a man who's still alive.”
Stuart Cohn had turned his forehead down into his palms and rubbed his temples with the heels of his hands. Then he stopped. Stuart never took off his glasses in public—he felt it would be as perturbing and revealing as removing a toupee—but now he raised his glasses from his nose, pinched himself between the eyes, and resettled his spectacles.