The Governor's Wife

ALSO BY MICHAEL HARVEY

The Innocence Game

We All Fall Down

The Third Rail

The Fifth Floor

The Chicago Way

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2015 by Michael Harvey

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harvey, Michael T.

The governor’s wife / by Michael Harvey. —First edition.

pages    cm

ISBN 978-0-307-95864-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-307-95865-5 (eBook)

1. Private investigators—Fiction. 2. Political corruption—Fiction. 3. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.A78917G68 2015

813’.6—dc23                   2014014535

eBook ISBN 9780307958655

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image composite: Angela Butler Photography / Getty Images; David Henderson / OJO Images / Getty Images

Cover design by Oliver Munday

v4.1

a

For my mom and dad

M
y laptop is set up so a tiny black box flashes in the corner of the screen every time I get an e-mail. The alerts arrive like an endless parade of crows, pecking away at me with people I don’t want to talk to and problems I’d rather ignore. I don’t know how my Mac got programmed to do this and have no idea how to stop it. So I live with my birds. The one that hired me fluttered in at 2:14 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. I took one look at the subject line and clicked through to read the rest.

Mr. Kelly,

Would like to retain you to find Raymond Perry. Use any and all means at your disposal to accomplish same. Global search okay. Money, no object. If you are willing to take the job, please hit reply to this message. A $100,000 retainer will be wired into an account set up for you. Another $100,000 will be wired when you locate Mr. Perry. A separate fund for expenses will also be established
and replenished as needed. Details on accounts, etc., will be forwarded upon acceptance of the terms of employment.

I’m sure there’s a manual somewhere that sets out the guidelines for when and how private investigators should take on new cases. Knowing the name of your client would seem to be a necessity. When the proposed retainer hits six figures, however, necessity becomes a somewhat elastic concept, and guidelines tend to get tossed out the window. Be that as it may, the money wasn’t what did it for me. Don’t get me wrong. The cash caught my eye. In fact, there might have been a moment or two of involuntary drool at the prospect of two hundred K sitting in a bank account with my name on it. But the reason I hit
REPLY
was not the money. Really. It was the name. Raymond Perry. As I waited for my newest client to get back to me with particulars such as account numbers and wiring instructions, I plugged Perry’s name into Google. I knew the story. Hell, everyone knew the story. Still, it made for good reading. I brewed myself a pot of coffee and caught up on Illinois’s former governor and convicted felon. I started with the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list and Perry’s mug shot residing, as it had been for the past year and a half, in slot number one.

T
here were more than five thousand articles on Raymond Perry’s sentencing hearing. The
New York Times
did a tick tock of the day that ran four pages in one of its Sunday editions. It even had video clips and still photos of Perry culled from the day’s coverage. I pulled up the piece and started to read. On February 15, 2012, Raymond Perry and his wife, Marie, left their house at 7:37 a.m. Media choppers followed them from their home in Winnetka, all the way down the Edens and into the Loop. Perry’s black Caddy pulled up in front of the Dearborn entrance to the Dirksen Federal Building at 8:29. I clicked on a video clip labeled
PERRY ARRIVAL
. The press was corralled behind steel barricades set up on either side of a pair of revolving doors. Camera shutters snapped and questions flew as Perry helped his wife out of the backseat. The former governor navigated the thirty feet of pavement like a seasoned pro—head high, left hand holding his wife’s, right hand extended in a small wave to a woman who carried a
YOU
’
RE STILL OUR GOVERNOR
sign
and bobbed up and down with the boundless excitement that could only have come from living in downstate Illinois. Perry pushed through the doors at 8:33 a.m. I clicked on a second clip that picked him up as he ran another gauntlet of cameras in the lobby. Reporters continued to yell questions, but Perry kept his head down and made straight for a set of security scanners. He talked with his attorney, Kenneth Krebs, as they waited at the metal detector, then beelined for a bank of elevators. Perry hit the elevators at 8:41. His wife was never more than five feet from his side.

I rewound the clip and watched it a second time. Then I went back to the article. Perry took the elevator up twenty-five floors to courtroom number 2503, home of the honorable James J. Hogan. Four months earlier, Perry had been convicted in the same courtroom on seventeen counts of wire fraud and racketeering. Like any red-blooded Chicago politician, Perry had only done what came naturally. He’d met with potential donors and threatened to destroy them unless they ponied up enough dough for his reelection run. Not a big deal, except the feds were listening, and Perry didn’t pull any punches when it came to his lust for campaign cash. The trial lasted almost a month, but it was really all over once the government played its first recording. It’s not that Chicagoans were especially bothered by the idea of a politician lining his pockets. They just didn’t appreciate having their civic face rubbed in it.

According to the
Times
log, Perry walked into Hogan’s courtroom at 8:47. Hogan called proceedings to order at just after nine. The hearing dragged on for almost three hours. After lunch, the judge asked Perry if he wanted to speak. He declined. Hogan grunted and moved on to sentencing. The long-faced Irishman gave Perry thirty-seven years in the federal pen, with a minimum of thirty years to be served before any possible parole. As the sentence was read, Marie Perry sat pale and perfect on a bench behind her husband. Krebs tugged
at his client’s elbow and whispered in his ear. Perry listened and frowned. Otherwise, the former governor was stoic. He nodded toward Hogan as the judge left the bench. Then Perry shrugged on his coat and walked out of the courtroom. It was just two in the afternoon.

There were maybe fifty people milling around in the corridor when Perry made his exit. The press was generally prohibited from taking photos or asking questions outside the courtrooms, so most of the reporters had already scurried downstairs to get going on their stories or set up for an exit shot. Perry talked privately with his attorney for approximately ten minutes. According to the
Times
, the two stood close together, foreheads nearly touching. At one point, Krebs gripped his client’s shoulder and Perry nodded slowly. When they’d finished, he clapped Krebs on the back and found his wife’s hand. They walked down a long marble hallway, toward an area the bailiffs had cordoned off. The former governor stopped at the velvet rope and turned, a half smile playing across his lips. An AP photographer managed to sneak a single shot—Ray Perry’s
Mona Lisa
moment as the world crashed down around him. It was a photo that would threaten to melt the Internet in the hours and days that followed.

Just beyond the velvet rope and around a corner was an elevator that ran all the way to the basement parking garage. Marie Perry pressed the
DOWN
button, and the arrow above the door lit up almost immediately. That was when Ray told his wife he had to go to the men’s room. Marie said she’d wait. Ray insisted she go on ahead. According to Marie Perry, her husband said he wanted “a moment alone.” There was no one close enough to hear the Perrys as they called for their elevator. There was, however, a set of security cameras. And the
Times
had gained access to them.

I punched up a file labeled
DIRKSEN SECURITY FOOTAGE
. The first image was of Perry and his wife, standing in the
hallway. The second picture showed Marie stepping into the elevator. Then came a series of still shots. Perry heading into the men’s room, time stamped 2:24 p.m. Perry coming out of the men’s room, time stamped 2:36. Perry standing in front of the elevators, glancing up at the camera. Perry getting on the elevator himself.

I knew how the tale ended, but read the rest of the
Times
article anyway. The elevator car that stopped on the twenty-fifth floor to pick up Ray Perry had one passenger in it: a journeyman electrician named Eddie Ward. Eddie was in the federal building that morning to do some work on the twenty-seventh floor and was en route to the thirteenth to check out a relay switch. There were no cameras inside the cars, but footage from another hallway camera showed Ward, Cubs hat on and a canvas tool bag slung over his shoulder, getting off on the thirteenth. The elevator then proceeded, nonstop, to the garage level. Perry’s wife was waiting when the elevator doors opened. The car, however, was empty.

It took a couple of minutes for Marie Perry to realize what was happening. At 2:43 p.m., she called her husband’s cell phone. It went to voice mail. Marie called Krebs at 2:45. He came down to the garage, accompanied by three state police officers. At 2:52 a call went out to secure all exits to the building, and police began a floor-by-floor search. When the Canine Unit showed up, the media began to stir. Within a half hour, the place went up for grabs.

CNN broke the story at 3:35 that afternoon. As police scurried to and fro behind her, a blond reporter named Whitney Wild stood in the lobby of the federal building and told the country about the rumors starting to swirl. First, it was that Perry had taken ill. Then, he’d tried to take his own life. Finally, the truth. Illinois’s disgraced, impeached, and convicted felon of a governor had taken a powder—disappeared without a trace. Investigators would later speculate that an
access panel in the roof of the elevator car might have been breached. Every door or hallway that would have gotten Perry out of the elevator shaft, however, was covered by a camera. Perry never appeared on any of the footage. He’d simply vanished.

I closed up the
Times
article and looked out the window. It was late in the afternoon and the traffic on Broadway was light. The sun was low in the sky and mellow, spreading itself over the North Side like a soft cloak of spun gold. I pulled a worn copy of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
from the side drawer of my desk and leafed through it until I found the story of Daedalus and Icarus. A master craftsman, Daedalus had fashioned wings for his son out of feathers and wax, then taught him to fly. Icarus, however, ignored his father’s warning to navigate a middle course. Instead, he set out to touch the sun.

…
Icarus began to feel the joy

Of beating wings in air and steered his course

Beyond his father’s lead: all the wide sky

Was there to tempt him as he steered toward heaven
.

Meanwhile the heat of sun struck at his back

And where his wings were joined, sweet-smelling fluid

Ran hot that once was wax. His naked arms

Whirled into wind; his lips, still calling out

His father’s name, were gulfed in the dark sea
.

I closed the book and thought about Ray Perry. An unknown when he ran for governor, his campaign had been electrifying; his rise, meteoric. The downfall, when it happened, seemed more inevitable than tragic. Too much, too soon never worked very well, especially in Chicago. My laptop beeped once. I looked over at the screen. Another black bird had arrived. This one carried a hundred thousand dollars
in its beak—an offering from my newest client, still without a name. I knew that should bother me, and knew I’d probably regret the fact that it didn’t. For now, however, there was work to be done. And a modern-day Icarus to be fished out of the drink.