Authors: Charlie Newton
"Bullshit."
"Now. That’s an order."
A big shape that’s Sonny Barrett steps out of the bar semi-blinded even at dusk and yells, "Patti. Patti, wait a sec." He gets what’s left of the sun behind him, sees the LT and his bodyguards, and stops. He slows, his head swivels with his shoulders as he sizes up everyone on the wide sidewalk, including the civilians trying to size it up too.
"
Jazus,
Kit. It’ll be dark soon."
I choke into my hand. The bodyguards bend away, trying not to laugh. Kit Carson reswells to full height and rank, glaring at Sonny.
"What?"
"No shit, man.
Dark,
like no fucking light at all, you know? And felons, motherfuckers come outta the woodwork. Evil sons-a-bitches like that one." Sonny points at a crack merchant we’ve put in County on gun charges twice this year. "This is not a safe neighborhood…sir."
Kit Carson is crimson, as red as I have ever seen him, except last Valentine’s Day when he beat a handcuffed prisoner unconscious for kicking his secretary in the crotch. Kit’s wrapped a little tight in a lot of ways that aren’t immediately obvious and he closes the distance.
"What did you say, Sergeant?"
Sonny stops smiling and I realize he’s not a drop drunk and might be doing this for me. Might be. Sonny leans 250 pounds closer to our Watch LT. "I said, sir,
empty-holster-motherfucker,
is what I said."
If I haven’t mentioned it before, Sonny Barrett, drunk or sober, armed or not, is not someone you screw with, and everyone south of the river who needs to know that, knows it.
"I said it to Officer Hazleton, sir; that mick shithead next to you. And I’ll say it again if you’d like. Sir."
There’s a reasonable chance that Kit Carson does not want to die on Seventy-ninth Street. And he’s having trouble gauging Sonny’s condition. More than one cop has died when the day’s internal stress was marinated in whiskey and badly chosen words. I don’t know if Sonny’s playing—his whole act since my gasoline shower has been a bubble or two off—but I’m glad he’s standing there. And that feels funny for both reasons.
Kit Carson looks at me. "IAD, now," and waits until I’m driving away to turn and face Sonny. The last I see of Kit is he and Sonny are squared up, Kit Carson backed by his patrol officers. It looks like a fair fight, even backwards in my mirror.
My cell vibrates before I can get fifteen blocks to the Dan Ryan. It’s the superintendent’s secretary. The message is: "This evening’s IAD appointment has been postponed. Contact the superintendent at 0-900 hours tomorrow."
Strange…but good. At least I think it’s good; now I have time to wallow in the list of charges Kit Carson just said were brewing, any one of which would end my career if Gibbons can make it stick. Hard to figure why smart people aren’t lining up to do this job. My phone announces it has more messages. Eleven, in fact. Five from Tracy Moens and one from Julie. Julie’s is the best: "Box seats tonight! Cubs versus Cardinals."
Yeah, baby! I only get to attend two games a year, always in the bleachers, and never before in a pennant race. I punch-dial instead of steer. "Julie. It’s me. I—"
"C’mon. Right now. Park in my space and we’ll walk down."
"Maybe thirty minutes," I check the Dan Ryan looming ahead, "maybe an hour. Tell me again how to get there."
Sadly, I can’t find anything on that side of the river unless I’m following someone or the directions begin at Wrigley Field. That’s the truth except for a building up in Evanston I visit once a year—next month will be the seventeenth time—I stop out front but never go in, so it doesn’t really count.
Julie does the directions twice, then adds, "Someone wants to meet
the
Patti Black."
Every bit of me slumps. "Not tonight, okay?"
"Cowboy up, girl. We’re trading you for tickets Mayor McQuinn couldn’t get. Give ’em ten minutes of small talk at the bar and we’re four rows back of the dugout."
"Who is it?"
Julie pretends static interrupted us and makes me repeat my question while she thinks up an answer. "Could be a suitor," heroic pause, "maybe a Northside gentleman. Clean underwear
and
fingernails, the whole package."
I veer ten degrees to avoid a drunk chasing his bottle into Seventy-ninth Street. "Why me? Tracy’s dance card full?"
Julie laughs. "So full, sweetie, you can’t imagine."
It took seventy-three minutes. Why? Because the Northside is designed to confuse anyond who didn’t attend graduate school. I had to call for directions three times, each time Julie became less respectful. When I finally arrived, the L7 was a pre-game festival of sporty women who looked it and small groups of Cardinals fans who had no clue
why so many women hung out here.
My suitor was Tracy Moens and no part of her was looking to get laid, much to the chagrin of the male St. Louis fans. We had thirty-five minutes till leadoff and walked out right after I arrived, Tracy, me, Julie, and the deaf poet from last night. I got my apology in, then Tracy dragged me next to her and started bitching.
Two of my fingers remove hers from my arm. "Thanks for the tickets."
"You met with the mayor last night."
She’s mistaken but I don’t give a shit. "It wasn’t a ’meeting.’ We had dinner, a few laughs, kissed around; nothing serious."
Tracy’s frown doesn’t fit her usually glowing face. That makes me happy, possibly number two on the day.
"You met with him out of the office, alone, and in his car. Fifteen hours later, Alderman Gibbons—
next in line
should the mayor die in office—filed two criminal complaints against you. And now a number of residents of District 6 have come forward—all with the blessing of Alderman Gibbons—saying you spent the day asking questions about said alderman."
I sense Kit Carson at work and keep walking; the sidewalks are crowded with fans who are suddenly lots happier than me. "Top secret, okay? The mayor and the alderman are lovers—poodles, KY, sweaters, the whole thing."
Tracy grabs my arm again. "You can talk to me before we print the story or apologize later, up to you." Miss All-Everything redhead smiles all the way to the sharp teeth. "Power of the press. A lot like your handcuffs."
I try to think positive while we walk; try to blot out Her Fabulousness as a living being, her threats, but not her tickets. This is a pilgrimage and I must get my mind right. My team needs me.
Wrigley Field is home to the "Addison Street Miracle" or any number of names used to define the never-even-a-bridesmaid Chicago Cubs. The names usually become less flattering as the season progresses. This in spite of once being owned by the
Chicago Tribune
and attendance records that locusts couldn’t match. To be a fan of these fellows one must have sins; it helps if they’re serious and unforgivable in any other way. But that’s ninth-inning talk and tonight’s game hasn’t started; we’re not behind yet.
Inside, Wrigley looks glorious under the lights—if you could package this it would outsell hope. I’m smiling ear-to-ear, even with the Pink Panther seated at my shoulder. She’s been on her cell since we arrived and bent away so I can’t hear, like I give a shit what she’s into. The deaf poet seems to be having fun, signing on Julie’s leg and pointing like a fifth grader, no different than me. We catch each other’s eyes several times and he shies as often as he doesn’t. Julie buys peanuts and three Old Styles. Tracy spills hers on my sneakers and I remember I’m wearing yesterday’s socks. She pats at the mess with napkins. Her fingernails are perfect. I’m surprised the two handsome men in front of us don’t fistfight to do her clean-up.
Julie nudges me. I look at her looking at the dugout. Alfonso Soriano, 136 million, the next Sammy Sosa. So close I could touch him, swear to God. Alfonso’s smiling at the crowd and, man, does he look like a baseball player. No, Alfonso isn’t smiling at the crowd, he’s smiling at Tracy. Oh my god, he’s waving. She waves back in that perfect benediction it takes movie stars all day to perfect. Suddenly I’m surprised she didn’t sing the national anthem.
"Want to meet him?"
"Huh?" Up until Alfonso Soriano became Tracy’s friend I would’ve cleaned his house daily; now I want to deport him for selling slaves in the Dominican Republic.
Tracy smiles wider at me, then back at Alfonso before he runs his cute little ass out on the field. "We can meet him if you want. No problem."
"And that would cost me what?" I adjust my butt in the seat, hoping she can feel my pistol in her ribs.
She pushes red hair out of her eyes and all the men this side of third base stop breathing. "Cost? You’re a civil servant. I just want to ask questions about your job. Off the record if we have to, but then Alfonso might be," she adds a so-sad grimace, "too busy."
I look at left field. Me and Alfonso, talking baseball, maybe in the dugout, spitting every few seconds. Cisco and Sonny would shit a mountain.
And pictures,
8 x 10s—bullshit—posters. I’ll borrow a uniform. I’ll throw out the first pitch, like the mayor does—
"Okay, we hang with Alfonso first, then we’ll talk. Off the record."
Tracy moves the hair side to side, doing the VO5 Shampoo commercial. "Sorry. We have to talk now, tonight."
"Why?"
"Why?"
Tracy fouls her perfect features. "They’re about to put you in the blocks."
"Who’s they?"
Kerry Wood throws a strike and Wrigley goes World Series. It’s the first pitch of the first inning. You have to be a Cub fan or a horseplayer to understand—"enjoy it early" is the theory.
Tracy hasn’t looked at the field since Alfonso left for work. "Patti, you don’t want to be the lightning rod for this election. Way too much at stake;
lots
of casualties before it’s over."
Casualties
is a stopper, even after Wood throws his second strike in a row. "Casualties? Like dead people?"
She leans back. "Could be."
Tracy is All-Everything, but she’s out of her league if we’re talking about a string of murders to be, especially if they start with the mayor. I lean sideways and stare. We occasionally eye one another like this on the rugby field when the other’s play may have caused personal discomfort. The term is
hospital pass
and it’s used when the ball is passed poorly resulting in the receiver taking an unnecessary beating. There are rumors that she and I are vindictive enough to have done this on purpose.
"Bit of advice, Trace. If you know something, call the cops. Now, before the Cubs bat."
"Oh, god, Patti. ’Casualties’ means political death, a metaphor. I’m a journalist."
"You’re a pageant winner."
Tracy smiles because she is. "I meant ’political’ casualties and we both know it. Talk to me about you and the mayor, and I’ll leave you and your friend the superintendent out."
Wood throws strike three from somewhere out in Waveland Avenue and Wrigley goes apeshit. That helps me not hit her, that and she’d be a handful to fight fair. When the cheering dies to human levels she stares at me too long and adds,
"After the game we’ll need to talk about the body in the wall too."
The Cubs won. I should’ve been too happy to breathe.
As it was I don’t remember much after Tracy and I left our seats, after she said the magic words: "Annabelle Ganz" and "Calumet City." I shouldered out hard, past the boxes and Andy Frain ushers. She caught me outside the gates, under the huge Wrigley Field sign they always show on TV. The crowd celebrated past me but Tracy stayed in my face.
"Last night Area 2 Homicide identified the body you found as Annabelle Ganz. Two hours ago—in a dazzling feat of police work—the late Mrs. Ganz was ID’d as the same Annabelle Ganz involved in a 1987 Calumet City murder—an adult male in a foster home she co-parented. A very strange one—the murder and the home."
I try to sidestep her and the words but Tracy and the crowd won’t let me.
"
The Black Monday Murder
. Fairly famous at the time: October 19, 1987, biggest stock market crash in history. The victim was a business associate of the late Mrs. Ganz and her husband, Roland. Roland disappeared, everybody knows that, and—"
Roland Ganz
repeats in my head; a picture flashes with it. Then filmstrips of pictures, 8mm grainy awful—
Roland Ganz
—a name I never think and never say out loud.
Roland Ganz
booms up and down Addison Street and sucks the life out of my chest. Tracy’s still telling me things I already know intimately when I bolt. Full out, sprinting through headlights and horns and men cursing; sprinting through couples and dogs and piles of leaves; over curbs and across gardens, across streets and more streets, and alleys…until I can’t breathe, until an old red-brick wall overhung with oak and elm branches blocks me. The gate has metalwork, foot- and handholds that I scramble up panting, tearing Julie’s shirt. My sides hurt; I’m lost, and over the top before considering what the gate and wall protected.
I land hard on my shoulder. My heart pounds while my eyes adjust. It’s a park. With rolling hills, and full of stone in deep shadow; the inside edge is barely lit by the overspill of Clark Street’s glow. Demons can make you a sprinter. My demons are Olympians. And it isn’t a park, it’s a cemetery.
And it’s dark. Serious dark the deeper I go. My heart slowly finds a tolerable rhythm and the tingle in my fingertips stops, the traffic noise outside the wall dies to nothing. I brush a plaque that I can barely see. My fingers trace "Graceland Cemetery." The quiet intensifies, if quiet can do that. I creep farther toward the center, groping with my left hand extended. Ornate buildings built in miniature catch what little moonlight there is, but only at a marble corner or a padlocked door.
Mausoleums. And scented night air. Dead flowers, marigolds I think. The path is gravel or maybe a weathered road twisting through headstones I can’t see. Old ones probably, like on the Southside, old trees too—Fast
whoosh
to my left; I jump, stumble…and into hands all over me. Not hands, leaves, an untrimmed branch sweeping the ground. I suck air, step out, and the tree’s weakest leaves blow dead over my gym shoes. I let myself fall. The ground is soft. And the leaves keep blowing. I don’t move. My heart slows and warm tears tell me I’m crying.