The Governor's Wife (5 page)

R
odriguez was waiting in a lobby paved in squares of green and white linoleum. He didn’t say a word, just motioned for me to follow. We were buzzed into the morgue by a receptionist sealed up in her own Plexiglas tomb. Rodriguez led me down a dingy hallway to a small office with more linoleum, a table of gunmetal gray, and two folding chairs. Rodriguez pushed out a chair with his foot and slapped a folder on the table.

“What’s this?” I said, taking a seat and flipping the file open.

“It’s the paperwork on Goggin.”

I pushed it aside. “Got a question for you. Beacon Limited.”

“They own companies that build roads.”

“Big outfit?”

“The biggest. Why?”

“Would you be surprised if their subsidiaries use illegals for some of their grunt work?”

“I’d be surprised if they didn’t.”

“So it’s not something anyone should get too excited over?”

“Fuck, no. What’s this about?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you do?”

“You really want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“Smart man.” I opened up the folder again and pulled out Goggin’s autopsy report. It was dated three and a half months ago. The cause of death was given as massive head trauma. Underneath that was a space for manner of death. Someone had typed in the word:
HOMICIDE
.

“The body’s gone, I take it?”

Rodriguez eased his long frame into the other chair and tilted back against the wall. “Long gone.”

“So why are we here?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Four months ago, Goggin’s driving down the Dan Ryan. Kid pushes a rock off an overpass and puts it right through his windshield.”

“A rock, huh?”

“Goggin was killed immediately. We arrested the little prick a day later.”

“Your case?”

“Nah. The detectives who handled it are good. They developed some information in the neighborhood, brought the kid in, and got a confession.”

“Where is he now?”

“Sitting in county, waiting on a trial date.”

I noticed an envelope clipped to the back of the file. It was thick with photographs.

“Mostly autopsy stuff,” Rodriguez said. “There’s a few shots from the scene.”

I flipped through the photos. Massive head trauma was an understatement.

“The kid claims he’s innocent?” I said.

“Aren’t they all? He’ll cut a deal.”

I pulled out a photo of the car with the body removed. The windshield was gone, and the front third of the roof on the driver’s side was crushed.

“Hell of a rock,” I said.

Rodriguez leaned over for a look and grunted.

“Can I talk to the kid?” I said.

“What are you thinking?”

“Don’t know. Where’s the car?”

“Probably down at the pound.”

“Let’s go take a look,” I said.

“At the car?”

“The kid, Vince. Let’s go see the kid.”

T
he kid’s name was Roderick Hampton. I read through his case file as Rodriguez drove us down to the jail. Hampton was sixteen years old. He lived two miles from the crime scene and had been arrested the day after Goggin’s death. According to the file, Chicago detectives had developed a CI who stated that Hampton had bragged about hurling the rock off the bridge. Two locals subsequently came forward and claimed to have seen Hampton running off the bridge at or around the time of the crash. Hampton had been appointed a public defender and would be tried as an adult.

“This happened at three-thirty in the morning?” I said.

Rodriguez looked over. “So what?”

I went back to my reading. Rodriguez pulled into the lot at the jail, and we got out. Cook County Jail is the largest of its kind in the country. It covers ten city blocks and houses almost ten thousand inmates. Rodriguez led us through security to the prisoner-intake area. It looked like a terminal at
O’Hare, except all the passengers were murderers and rapists and all the flights were nonstop to hell. A row of cages ringed the outside of the room and were filled to capacity. Someone yelled Rodriguez’s name, but he kept going. In the center, jail employees sat in front of green computer screens and processed detainees into the facility. We charted a diagonal path through the human debris. To our left, a heavily muscled Latino was sitting in a chair, helping a woman decipher a series of symbols and numbers carved on his chest. She took a picture of the tattoos and typed some information into her computer. The Latino looked up and rattled his cuffs.

“Rodriguez.”

“Jimenez. What are you in for?”

Jimenez shrugged. Rodriguez glanced at the woman who talked as she typed. “Strong-arm robbery. Assault.”

“Next time I see you, we go to that place. For the empanadas.” Jimenez was still talking as we walked away.

“Buddy of yours?” I said.

“Come on.” Rodriguez led me out of the intake area and down a long, dank corridor. A line of fifty men stood in their bare feet, hands on their heads, faces pressed against a wall made of gray cinder block. Opposite them, two correctional officers stood on an iron bench and yelled instructions. A third officer picked through a collection of shoes, sneakers, and boots that had been scattered down the hall.

“Let’s hang for a minute,” Rodriguez said. “Let ’em process these guys.”

The officer picking through the shoes came up with a length of plastic sharpened to a wicked point. He laid it on the bench beside three other shanks, a set of brass knuckles, and a coil of thin wire wrapped around a pipe. Halfway down the line, a prisoner collapsed on the floor and started to spasm. One of the officers on the bench gave Rodriguez a look and motioned us past. We walked down the line, stepped
around the man on the ground, and turned into a short hallway. Another officer stood in front of a door. He had a length of chain and a couple of sets of cuffs on a loop at his belt.

Rodriguez flashed his badge. “Roderick Hampton in there?”

The officer nodded. “You guys don’t have any weapons?”

They’d taken our guns at the door. The officer patted me down anyway. Then the door opened, and we were inside.

“You got any cigarettes?” Hampton was cuffed and reached out with both hands.

“You know you can’t smoke in here,” Rodriguez said.

“Everyone smokes in here.”

Rodriguez narrowed his eyes. “I know you, Hampton?”

The kid’s lip was split and puffy. It cracked and bled when he smiled. “You arrested my brother, Marcell.”

“Marcell Hampton. That’s right. He was hooked up with Six Corners.”

Hampton shrugged like that was news to him.

“How’s it been?” I said.

“Put a beating on me first thing. But they do that to everyone.”

“Your brother still inside?” Rodriguez said.

“He’s doin’ twenty at Stateville. I get over there and he’ll take care of me.” Hampton nodded his head like he was hanging on to that thought for all he was worth. I didn’t blame him.

“You want your lawyer in here?” Rodriguez said.

Hampton looked around. “In where?”

We all laughed, and the kid relaxed a bit.

“Why’d you throw that rock off the bridge?” I said.

“Didn’t do it.”

“Then why are you here?”

Hampton turned his palms up in his lap. Then he opened
up a window in his head and climbed out. After that, Rodriguez and I were alone for a while.

“Roderick,” I said.

He blinked and came back slowly. “Huh?”

“Can you stand up for me?”

The kid’s cuffs jingled as he got up. He was five and a half feet. Maybe an inch more.

“How much do you weigh, Roderick?”

His eyes danced across to Rodriguez, then back to me. “Dunno.”

“Okay. Sit down.” I took out a fresh pack of cigarettes and pushed them across the table. My business card was tucked inside the wrapper. “If it gets really bad, tell your lawyer to give me a call.” Then I left. I knew Rodriguez wasn’t happy, but he followed me out anyway.

“What the hell was that?”

We were sitting in the front seat of the detective’s car, staring at a run of perimeter fencing that sectioned off the jail’s parking lot from the street.

“I wanted to see the kid.”

“I told you he claimed he didn’t do it.”

“Hampton weighs what? Hundred thirty, hundred thirty-five pounds?”

“So what?”

I held up the investigative file. “You read this?”

“I looked through it.”

I took out the picture of Goggin’s car, roof crushed almost flat. “What do you suppose did that?”

“I don’t know. A big rock.”

I slapped a second picture on the dash. It was a shot of a flat slab of concrete, maybe three feet long. “That’s what went through Goggin’s windshield. Thing’s gotta weigh a hundred pounds, easy.”

“Let me guess,” Rodriguez said. “You want to interview the rock?”

“It’s a chunk of concrete. And I’d like to try and just pick it up.” I took a third photo out of the file. “This is the overpass Hampton was supposed to be standing on. Notice the fence that runs the length of it. Gotta be at least six feet high.”

“So what?”

I slid the photos back in the file and flipped it shut. “There’s no way Hampton lifted that slab over that fence and heaved it onto the Dan Ryan. Not that kid. Not at a hundred thirty pounds.”

“Maybe he had help.”

“Your two witnesses say he was the only guy on the overpass.”

“They’re not mine. And maybe his accomplice ran the other way.”

“You believe that? And why are two witnesses watching a highway overpass at three-thirty in the morning anyway?”

A county sheriff’s bus rumbled past, hitting a pothole full of black water and splattering our windshield with specks of mud. Rodriguez flipped on his wipers, and we both watched them work.

“I got things to do today, Kelly.”

“The kid was framed, Vince.”

“Let me guess. You think it all ties into Ray Perry?”

“I’m not there yet.”

“Have you tapped the retainer?”

“No.”

“My finance guy did a quick trace on your money. It came in through a tangle of off-shore accounts. He thinks it’s gonna be tough to track down the ultimate source.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I asked him if the money still spent like cash. He said it did.”

“What’s your point?”

“Enjoy the dough and let Ray live on a beach somewhere. If the case on Hampton’s bad, I’ll make sure he gets sprung.”

“Can’t do it, Vince. You couldn’t either.”

Rodriguez flipped off the wipers and put his car in gear. “You headed downtown?”

“You gonna help me on this?”

Rodriguez sighed and pulled out of the police lot. Being the eternal optimist, I took that as an enthusiastic yes.

I
picked up my car at the morgue and headed north, stopping at The Bagel on Broadway. I got a sack of sesame seed bagels from the tiny Jewish lady hiding behind the counter and walked down to my office. I’d just schmeared one with cream cheese when my phone flashed with Jack O’Donnell’s number.

“Just thinking of you,” I said.

“What do you want to know about Beacon?”

I put down the bagel and pulled out my notes from the night before. “You ever hear of a lawyer named Albert Striker?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“That’s funny.”

“Why?”

“Beacon is made up of at least five subsidiary corporations and a half-dozen limited partnerships.”

“I told you. That’s how they do business. Spread the work around. Keep a low profile.”

“So if I drive by a job on the road, I’m gonna see five different logos on five different trucks?”

“Right, but it all funnels back to Beacon.”

“And who runs the show?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who’s the boss?”

“Each outfit’s got its own president, own engineers. All that crap.”

“And Beacon?”

“Beacon never gets its hands dirty.”

“So you don’t know who runs Beacon?”

A pause. “What’s your point?”

“Albert Striker.”

“I told you. Never heard of him.”

“Striker’s listed as the registered agent for Beacon. He’s also the incorporating officer for Beacon’s subsidiaries.”

“You said he was a lawyer.”

“He’s Beacon’s sole legal representative in Illinois. At least as far as I can see.”

“So go talk to the guy.”

“The address listed in the corporate charter is now a taco stand.”

“Call him.”

“His phone number goes to a recording.”

“Listen, I’ve been covering these guys for more than a decade. Beacon is just a shell. If you want information, you talk to one of the subsidiaries.”

“If I want information on a job, sure. But I want to know who the principals are, who owns the whole thing. If you can’t help me, Jack, that’s fine.” I picked up my bagel and started to chew.

“The job site you were at this morning…”

“What about it?”

“A man was shot.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“They took him to the hospital, but no police report was filed.”

“Are you calling for a statement?”

“You don’t want to fuck with these guys, Kelly. Even if you do carry a gun.”

“I’m not looking to fuck with anybody. Someone takes a bat to my car, however, and we’re gonna have a problem.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Why did you call, Jack?”

“Give me an e-mail where I can get hold of you.”

I gave it to him. “What’s going on?”

“Right now, nothing. In a few days, maybe we should talk.”

“Can you give me an idea of what we’ll be talking about?”

“Not over the phone. I’ll drop you a note.”

There was a soft sound in the hallway. I looked up. Marie Perry stood in my doorway. “I’ll wait to hear from you, Jack.” I hung up. “Come on in.”

She was wearing a black sweater, straight-leg jeans, and suede boots with low heels. Her hair was the color of winter wheat; her eyes looked like a couple of cold blue stones. “Is this it?” she said, taking in my workplace at a glance.

“It’s better if you’re wearing sunglasses. Or drunk. Then again, what isn’t?”

She walked over to my bookcase and picked out a copy of
Oedipus Rex
. Then she put it back and pulled out Euripides’s
Iphigenia at Aulis
.

“You know the story?” I said.

“A man cuts his daughter’s throat to appease the gods and gain himself money, glory, and power.”

“Very good. But Agamemnon was a king. And Iphigenia was saved.”

“Agamemnon was a man. And he intended to kill his own child so his army would be allowed to sail to Troy.” Marie slipped the book back into its slot on the shelf. “Do you work alone?”

“Just me and the ghosts. Why don’t you sit down?” I nodded at an empty chair. She waved me off. I nudged the paper sack on my desk.

“Bagel Deli. Best thing this side of Manhattan.”

She shook her head.

“Suit yourself.” I finished my bagel and pretended not to notice when she finally sat. She put her bag, a big black leather one, on the corner of my desk and crossed one leg over the other. I wiped my hands with a napkin and smiled.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon, Ms. Perry.”

“But you did expect me?”

“I’m not sure why, but yeah, I thought you might get in touch.”

“How’s the investigation going?”

“Haven’t found Ray yet, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Ray’s dead, Mr. Kelly. Or as good as.”

My chair creaked as I moved closer. “If this is a confession, I’m going to have to find a tape recorder.”

The smile stretched across her face like a spiderweb spun from the finest silk. “I’m the last person who would want Ray dead.”

“Did you love him?”

“And if I did…”

“You might be more likely to kill him.”

“Have you ever been married, Mr. Kelly?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t know the answer to that one. And didn’t especially like to think about it. “I’ve been in relationships.”

“A relationship isn’t marriage. The latter has consequences, especially when you’re married to the governor of Illinois.”

“You mean it isn’t all about Christmas at the mansion?”

She recrossed her legs and sighed. Maybe it was all just a
nuisance. Maybe it was the speech she’d intended all along. I couldn’t tell but was happy to listen.

“Here’s what happens,” she said. “You fall in love with a person. Or rather the
idea
of a person. You ever done that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m not surprised. Then you get married and discover what you really have. It’s never what you thought, but perhaps it’s something you can live with. Usually not. So you get divorced, if that’s your thing.”

“And that wasn’t your thing?”

“Not an option. Not for me and Ray. So we became partners.”

“Partners in what?”

“Raymond Perry, Inc. Charity events, fund-raisers, one rubber-chicken dinner after another. You become best friends with people you barely know. And once you do know them, you wish you didn’t.”

“Sounds great. You want some coffee?”

She didn’t say no, so I got up and began to fix a pot. She continued with the lecture.

“You’re not in love anymore. If you ever were. You’re too mature, too sophisticated, for anything so trivial. You’re a team, a partnership, a walking, talking ‘greater good.’ Or so you tell yourself. Along the way, of course, you also stuff yourself with entitlement, arrogance, and an overwhelming sense of self-importance. Movies are especially wonderful.”

“Movies?”

“Two people, together in the dark. You don’t have to touch. You don’t have to talk. And you don’t feel guilty at the end of it because you did neither. Maybe you can even discuss the film later if it was a good one. Movies are a blessing.

“You take a lover if you want. Usually for the sex. But you’re discreet. You don’t embarrass the partnership, because that’s not good business.”

“And that’s what marriage was for you?”

She looked at me with her pale bruises for eyes and didn’t flinch. “I was a coward. Just like everyone else.”

“What does that mean?”

“I liked being Ray’s wife. I liked being first lady.” She shrugged. “Maybe I liked the power, I don’t know. But I hid myself from the rest of it. Sprayed a little perfume over the rotting corpse and opened a window. That was my marriage at the end, Mr. Kelly. And I miss it every day.”

There was truth intertwined with the lies. Where one ended and another began, however, I had no idea. I wasn’t entirely sure she did either. The coffee was ready, so I poured us both a cup.

“You ever hear of a company called Beacon Limited,” I said.

A tinge of crimson swept into her cheeks, and her lips tightened into a thin line. “Of course, I have.”

“Why’s that?”

“They were one of my husband’s biggest donors.”

“Is that all?”

“Ray took care of that end of the business, Mr. Kelly. All I know is that they were generous.”

“What about your father?”

“My father and I aren’t close.”

“Was he close to your husband?”

Her chuckle was spare and raised the flesh on the back of my neck.

“Something funny?” I said.

“My father’s an opportunist and a predator. And he looks after one person. Himself. Ray realized that and kept him at a distance.” She put her coffee down and glanced around my office. “I must say I love the picture you paint. Sophocles and Euripides on the bookshelf, a gun on your hip. Tell me, do you bed your clients as well? Or is that just in the movies?”

“Is that what you came here to ask me, Ms. Perry?”

“I came here to tell you to leave this alone. Nothing good will come of it.”

“I’m supposed to see Karen Simone this afternoon.”

She took a black leather wallet out of her black leather bag and slipped a silver dollar on my desk. “A dollar says you fuck her before you ever find Ray.”

“You know me that well?”

“I’ve been bought and sold myself a few times. So, yeah, I think I do.”

“Keep your money.”

She palmed the dollar and put it back in her wallet. Then she put the wallet back in her bag. “It wouldn’t be fair anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“I know Karen and you don’t.” She got up to leave. “Take care, Mr. Kelly. Let me know if you find out who you’re working for.”

“And if I find Ray?”

“You won’t find Ray, Mr. Kelly. That much I’m sure of.”