by Henry Perez
“Al, you need to get your head straight, or you’re going to lose Erin, I can see it in her eyes,” Andrews said, following Chapa into the kitchen with a plate and two dirty forks in his hand. “Her priorities right now are different than yours, and they’re the right priorities, so that’s not going to change.”
“I’ve thought about all that.”
Andrews nodded and followed Chapa back to the living room.
“I’m supposed to be spending time bonding with my daughter, and instead I’m dancing back and forth between stories I don’t give a shit about and one that is potentially bigger, but that probably won’t add up to anything.” Chapa could hear the weariness in his own voice. “It feels like everyone is a step ahead of me, and I don’t like that feeling.”
“Here’s what you need to do, Al. They’re going to can your ass, probably after this week, or next, maybe in a month, but it’s going to happen, right?
“That’s where the smart money is.”
“No one ever bet smart money on you one way or another.”
Chapa smiled.
“When the Chicago Record finally gets around to putting you out of your misery, I’ll give you the keys to our condo in Key Largo. We won’t be using it until next year, so you can spend two weeks, a month—hell, go join the tribe of colorful, eccentric beach bums down there, whatever. Just get away for a while.”
Chapa thought about his friend’s offer. It wasn’t a bad idea.
“But isn’t this hurricane season?”
“C’mon, Al, with you around it’s always hurricane season.”
Chapter 56
There was no visitation for Jim Chakowski. No one was around to plan it. Even if his brother wasn’t being held in custody on weapons charges, there was very little chance Warren would’ve been up to the job.
But Jim Chakowski, though he’d left no will, had made funeral plans, bought a plot, and paid for it in advance. So four days after his death, Chakowski’s remains were buried in a short but surprisingly well-attended service.
Chapa dusted off his black suit, picked a simple tie off the rack, and dressed to honor his colleague’s memory.
Warren was brought to the gravesite in handcuffs by two uniformed policemen, which Chapa found distasteful. He thought they should’ve sent a couple of plainclothes cops, and planned to write about that in his column. Several of Jim Chakowski’s friends and neighbors walked over to offer their sympathies to Warren, who struggled to raise his head in acknowledgment.
Carston Macklin, the Record’s managing editor, was there along with several of the newspaper’s leading suck-ups. Sullivan was there too, doing his best to avoid eye contact with Chapa.
None of that came as much of a surprise. What Chapa hadn’t expected, however, was how many local businessmen and politicians showed up.
The mayor didn’t make it—she rarely attended this sort of thing—but Monica Brown, her chief of staff, was there, along with an alderman or two. Dr. Walter Bendix stood nearby, looking at Chapa like he had something on his mind.
Huddled off to one side of the burial site like some sort of teenaged clique were Frank Gemmer, Clay Hunter, Greg Vinsky, Richard Wick, Charles Stoop, Ted Bruce, and a few other serious-looking men, one of whom Chapa guessed had to be Willie Blair. They stopped talking to one another when Vanny Mars showed up just before the graveside service began.
After a pastor, whose church Jim Chakowski may or may not have attended, finished a dull and uninspired service, most of the personal acquaintances filed by Warren once more. All of the community leaders headed in the opposite direction.
Chapa watched Carston Macklin walk over to Warren and try to comfort the man. His effort appeared to be genuine, and that he meant whatever he was saying. Maybe Macklin was capable of human emotions after all. But Chapa needed a lot more proof before he’d sign off on that bit of revision.
Macklin was heading toward Chapa now, and the look on his face was anything but consoling.
“We need to have a meeting, Alex. Today.”
“I’ll be in the office later,” Chapa said and walked away.
He saw Sullivan watching them from what the editor probably hoped was a safe distance. Chapa wasn’t sure there was such a thing where he and Macklin were concerned.
Warren looked up as Chapa approached. He didn’t know what to say to a grieving brother. But then again, who does?
Before Chapa could say anything, Warren reached up and clutched his arm.
“Hey, none of that,” one of the officers, a man with a gentle face and a voice too soft for a policeman, said as he yanked on the cuffs.
“It’s okay,” Chapa said, trying vainly to wave off the cop’s attempt to protect him from his prisoner.
Warren responded by tightening his grip until it hurt, though Chapa wasn’t about to let the officers know that.
“Help me, Alex. Help me.”
He looked much worse than he had in the restaurant a few days ago. The skin under his bloodshot eyes was a mix of red and violet.
“I’m working on it, Warren.” I’m working on a lot of things right now, Chapa added in his own mind.
Chapter 57
As he left the cemetery, Chapa couldn’t stop thinking about the gaggle of community leaders who had shown up at Jim’s funeral. Maybe they were fond of him because of the way he did his job. Or maybe there was something else.
Chapa couldn’t get over the way they congregated together, like some sort of animal pack. Okay, so they didn’t want to be close to the guy who’d barged into a meeting at City Hall carrying a rifle. He got that. But still, there was something odd about the whole thing.
Maybe they were just comfortable around one another. Or it could be that they were keeping an eye on each other.
He needed to get more insight on who the players were. After all, Clarkson had speculated that the killer he was tracking had woven himself into the fabric of every place he’d lived. Chapa was on his way home to change into some more reasonable clothes when he decided to make a call.
Tim Haas answered his phone on the first ring. Chapa hoped he could take advantage of what he sensed was Tim’s desire to be a big shot. When he tossed a lunch offer Tim’s way, it sealed the deal.
“Do I get to pick where we eat?”
“Well, yes, sort of. I want to go someplace where a lot of the people who work at City Hall go.”
“I don’t know about that.” Tim’s voice carried a combination of disappointment and concern. “I want to help you, and I’m sure by now you know I’m the sort of person who can, but if they see me talking to you—”
“So what? I’m not doing any sort of trash piece on city government, you’re not going to be quoted anywhere. I won’t take notes or record our conversation. I just need you to point out who’s who, so I can do my job better.”
“I can tell that to anyone who asks?”
“Absolutely, tell anyone who asks that you painted them in a good light.”
The silence let Chapa know Tim was thinking it over. The young man’s hunger for significance had its own scent. It was a need that would either get him to the top or in a whole lot of trouble one day.
“Let’s meet at The Dancing Clown, that’s where a lot of them go.”
The Dancing Clown, a newer restaurant located in downtown Oakton, had something of a split personality. By day it was a popular lunch destination for area professionals who came tumbling in around noon to escape their banks and office buildings. But after hours, as the downtown was abandoned to local street gangs, hookers, and the homeless, the place underwent a seedy transformation.
Chapa saw Charles Stoop wave to him as he walked in, ten minutes before Tim Haas was supposed to get there. Chapa responded with a polite but neutral tip of the head, then watched as Stoop tried to process why he was here and whether to invite him over. He appeared to eventually decide against asking Chapa to sit at the table he shared with Franklin Gemmer and Clay Hunter.
A tall,
slim man in his early twenties, who smelled like he’d just finished sneaking a smoke, seated Chapa at a cramped half-sized table near the other side of the large room. Chapa took off his light-brown suede coat—the one he’d decided to wear while his leather jacket was convalescing—and slid into the tight space.
Across the crowded restaurant, Chapa could hear Franklin Gemmer talking about some new security system, but he couldn’t figure out whether the guy was pitching or merely boasting.
Chapa was splitting his attention between the menu and the door, as he kept an eye out for Tim. Gemmer was still holding court at the power table when Chapa noticed a familiar face smiling at him from the other end of the room.
Leah Carelli was sitting in a crescent-shaped booth overlooking the rest of the room. She was flanked by Vanny Mars on her left, and a blond woman whom Chapa did not recognize on her right.
When Chapa didn’t return the smile, Leah slipped a wink at him in a way that no one else would notice. The gesture across a crowded restaurant belonged to just the two of them, and filled the moment with a certain intimacy.
But Chapa knew that in a sense Leah had been winking at him since the moment he saw her at City Hall. Turning his attention to the other two women at the table, Chapa immediately and involuntarily determined that Leah was easily the most attractive of the three.
He was trying to decide just how certain he was about Vanny’s original gender when Tim dropped into the other chair.
“Wow, couldn’t they find you a smaller table?”
“You kidding, this is an upgrade from the serving tray they first offered me, though not much of one.”
A waitress wandered over. She looked tired and bored like she’d lived this day thousands of times before, but at least she didn’t smell like Marlboros. Tim ordered without opening the menu, Chapa took a little longer before settling on something called the Chicken Del Rey sandwich.
“Who’s the third member of the Oakton City Supremes?” Chapa asked and tossed a glance toward Leah’s booth.
“Let’s see…Oh, you mean Tammy Trench, right? The one who’s not Leah or Vanny?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s her. She runs a tile and carpeting business.”
Tammy glanced over and noticed Chapa and Tim. She smiled, softening her severe, high-maintenance looks.
“She’s the third member of the Clinton Avenue Cougars. There are a couple of others who come and go, but those are the founding members.”
“Yes, you mean the thirty-plus women who go for young guys. I’ve heard of this group before but didn’t know who all the members were.”
“I don’t think any of those chicks have been thirty for some time. But yes, that’s what they do.”
“Do you have firsthand knowledge of this?”
“Well, let’s just say I’ve made Tammy smile before.”
“Thank you for sharing that, Tim.”
“They get around, at least Tammy does. Leah might just be more of a flirt. They say Vanny’s been married six times or so, Tammy twice. Leah is more of a mystery.”
Chapa was trying to process the idea that Leah Carelli, the same hot, shapely, young lady with whom he’d shared a number of memorable nights was now a “cougar,” when Dick Wick walked in, followed a minute later by Greg Vinsky. They headed straight for the power table, and pulled up chairs alongside their associates.
“And those guys over there, are they ever seen apart?”
Tim didn’t have to turn around to know who Chapa was talking about.
“That’s who makes the decisions in this town. Every time there’s a photo of a ground-breaking ceremony you’re bound to see one or more of those guys in the background horning in.”
“Have you dealt with many of them directly, Tim?”
“Four of those men know me by name. That’s what matters around here. Three have asked me for help with their websites or computer systems.” Tim smiled like someone keeping a special secret. “I know some things.”
Chapa had met guys like him before, and felt certain Tim didn’t know half as much as he liked pretending he did.
Greg Vinsky and Charles Stoop were joking and laughing like lifelong friends. Chapa had no stomach for that sort of phony corporate chumminess between men who probably wouldn’t cross the street to say hi to each other if they didn’t have to. He remembered when Carla left her job at the law firm she worked for shortly after Nikki was born. How certain she had been that all of her work friends would stay in contact with her. That lasted two weeks, maybe three.
“Are all those guys really friends?”
Tim shrugged. “Not sure. They each disappear into their private lives only to reemerge when the time comes to get their name in the paper, or on some new contract or regulation.”
He glanced back at the power table, then inched toward Chapa and lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you what, though, you don’t cross those guys.”
“What happens if you do?” Chapa asked as the image of Jim Chakowski’s house flashed across his mind.
“Take a look at that guy.” Tim pointed to a solitary man sitting across the room at a table that was even smaller than theirs. “That’s Brent McGraw, he used to be a quasi-big shot, but not anymore. Those guys pretty much ran him out. You should talk to him sometime.”
Tim was done with his sandwich, and Chapa could tell that he was getting a little uneasy about being there.
“How was your sandwich?”
“Good. It’s always good here. How ’bout your Chicken Del Rey?”
“Fit for a king. Look, Tim, don’t try to be a big shot, not here in this town. Only bastards and suck-ups thrive in this town, and I don’t believe you’re either. Stay under the radar.”
Tim nodded, then got up to go, and Chapa knew his words had failed to register. He watched the young man leave, then signaled the waitress to come over.
“Could you do me a favor?” he asked, straining to read her name tag, “Amanda, could you bring my check to the small table over there? I’ll be joining that gentleman.”
Chapter 58
“You’re taking a chance, Mr. Chapa.”
“I do that sometimes, and it’s Alex.”
Brent McGraw looked like he’d just climbed out of a thrift store donation bin. His white shirt was badly in need of a run-in with an iron, and his hair could’ve used a trim anytime last month.
“I used to be one of them, but not now.”
“What happened?”
“I challenged the system, spoke up against a bad zoning change. They didn’t like that and cut me off.”
“They can do that?”
He smiled, and the wrinkles across his forehead lined up in formation.
“Every major decision in this town that involves money is made by those men plus a couple more, and maybe Vanny Mars and Tammy Trench, and always in concert with the others.”
Chapa kept looking over at the two tables, couldn’t help himself. He watched as Greg Vinsky said his goodbyes and left, and then Charles Stoop did likewise a couple of minutes later. Chapa waited to see if Stoop would look his way, but he seemed to make it a point not to.
“But it’s a big town. How can just a handful of people—”
“No, it’s not a big town, not really. Oakton is a little speck of nothing that’s grown like a weed. Most folks here live at one end of the city or the other and don’t give a shit about what goes on downtown.”
“That’s an old story, Brent. Rockford, Aurora, Joliet, Elgin, and probably hundreds of other towns across the country have struggled with that problem.”
“Yes. But it’s different here in Oakton, and Jim Chakowski knew that.”
Chapa was starting to realize that Jim Chakowski had known a lot of things. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a pen and began casually doodling a stick figure on his napkin, like Clarkson had done. He made sure McGraw could see it, and watched for a reaction, saw none.
“You do understand, don’t you, that Oakton c
ouldn’t function this way if your employer wasn’t in bed with those people over there?”
“You’re saying the Record is in the tank for these guys?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but I believe Jim got pressured from time to time to spin a story one way or another or kill it altogether.”
Chapa was thinking back through his own stories and remembering a few that he’d been nudged off of, or that had wound up getting marginalized when they finally saw print. At the time he hadn’t spent too much energy worrying about it. There’s always the next story to move on to.
“Look, Alex, in Oakton, everyone works together. This is a go-along-to-get-along city.”
“Don’t most cities and towns operate that way to some extent?”
McGraw appeared to get lost for a moment as he stared at the three men who remained at the table.
“Sure,” he said, turning back toward Chapa. “Only here, the price for not going along can be very high.”
Knowing that silence is often the greatest tool in getting someone to volunteer information, Chapa didn’t say anything. He sensed that McGraw had more on his mind.
He was right.
“Look around, Alex. Each of the neighboring towns have buildings going up or businesses opening their doors. But the only way that happens in Oakton is if one or more of the men at that table have something to gain from it.”
The waitress brought McGraw’s bill, tossed it on the table by his drink. Chapa reached across, picked it up, and checked the total. It wasn’t much. He reached in his wallet and dropped two fives.
“I don’t need the charity, Mr. Chapa.”
“Charity my ass, consider this an investment in your comeback.”
McGraw laughed a little, like it hurt to do so, then mouthed thank you.
“Tell me something, how far would those people go to protect their way of life, their style of doing business?” Chapa asked, nodding toward the other tables.
“As far as they had to.”
Chapa lowered his voice.