White Collar Girl (22 page)

“I love you,” he said. “I wish we could have made this work.” He held me for a long time before he made it out the door. I could still feel his breath on my temples and the side of my neck even after he'd gone.

•   •   •

A
fter Jack left I had a good cry, mostly to prove his theory wrong and convince myself that I was not a cold, unfeeling woman after all.

Once I'd calmed down, I reached for the telephone, thinking I'd call Mr. Casey so he could hear the news from me. But I lost my nerve and tried Scott instead. There was no answer. That made me cry even more. I knew better than to call M. She'd only tell me to patch things up with Jack so finally, I composed myself enough to call my mother.

She came over an hour later with a bottle of brandy and a box of chocolates. As soon as I saw her I had another good cry. I supposed I was more upset than I'd thought. After I calmed down, we sat on the couch with an ashtray and a box of tissues planted on the cushion between us. We opened the brandy but didn't bother with the chocolates.

“You know, I almost called it off with your father.”

“You did?”

She nodded, contemplating a cigarette. “I thought there were too many hurdles in our way. Grandpa didn't like him. And
Grandma—well, you know how she is—she just went along with whatever Grandpa said. And I was a New Yorker. I wasn't sure I wanted to move to Chicago. I wasn't sure I could see my life here.”

“So what made you go through with it?”

She struck a match and held it, the flame less than an inch from her cigarette. “Because I loved him.” She inhaled deeply and shook out the match. “I realized that no matter how difficult it might be, I didn't want to be without him.”

I took a sip of brandy. “I don't feel that way about Jack.”

“I know you don't.” She smiled. “But you had to figure this one out for yourself. And I knew you would. I told your father you'd come around.”

“So Dad didn't like Jack, either?” I was surprised that my father even had an opinion on this at all.

“It's not that he didn't like him. He just didn't think he was the right man for you.”

I took another sip of brandy. “Do you think Eliot would have liked him?”

She leaned her head back and let a faint smile play upon her lips. “You know Eliot. He liked everyone.”

When she said that, an unexpected flare of resentment shot through me.
Eliot, the perfect, favorite child, the golden son and fair-haired boy who loved everyone and everyone loved him.
My reaction caught me off guard. How long had that been festering? I immediately felt guilty for thinking that way, but I couldn't help it. Eliot had been canonized, and I couldn't compete with the dead.

“God, I miss him,” I said, mentally backpedaling. “There's so much I wish I could talk to him a—”

My mother placed her hand on mine. “Don't.” Her eyes were
closed, cigarette smoke curling up around her cheeks. “I can't,” she said. “I can't talk about it.”

I didn't want to break her, but I couldn't
not
talk about it anymore. “Sooner or later we're going to have to.”

“I know. I know.” She squeezed my hand. “But later, okay? We'll talk about it later.”

•   •   •

I
met Scott the next day for lunch and misted up when he took me in his arms. He held me longer than he normally would before guiding me over to a table. After we were seated, he reached across and ran the back of his hand along my cheek. I leaned in to his touch like a purring kitten.

“So how are you doing with all this?” he asked.

I covered his hand with mine and sniffed away my tears. “I'm sad about it, but I know it was the right thing to do.”

We sat there for a moment, looking at each other. It was almost as if we were seeing each other for the first time, or maybe just in a new light. I was single again. So was he. I knew we were both thinking that same thing. Neither one of us could turn away until the waitress interrupted to take our order.

“Well,” he said, after she'd disappeared, “I'm sorry it didn't work out. I knew you guys were having some problems, but—”

“
Some
problems? That's an understatement.” I laughed sadly and shifted back into the platonic slot we both knew and were comfortable with. “All we did was argue. And isn't it coincidental that every time we had a really big fight, I just so happened to have had a piece in the paper that got some attention? I could have set my watch to it.”

“He was just jealous, insecure,” he said.

“It wasn't so much jealousy as it was competition. I felt like he was always measuring his own accomplishments against mine,
and if he didn't do better, it upset him. And then there was his family.”

“But I thought his family was one of the things you loved about him.”

“It is. Or it was. But the more time I spent with them, the more I realized it was really just the idea of them that I loved. Except for his father. I'm still crazy about him.”

“Isn't he a judge? Traffic court?”

I nodded.

“I've had a few cases with him. Seems decent enough.”

The waitress came back with our order. Scott folded back the top of his bun and inspected his hamburger. “So are you
really
okay? You seem okay. But I can't tell if you're just putting on a brave front.”

“For you? Please.” We locked eyes again like we had before. I smiled and looked away, fiddling with the napkin holder. “Okay, enough of this talk. How are
you
doing?”

He scrunched up his handsome face. “It's a whole different ball game being on the defense side.”

“I'm sure it is. I remember when you wanted to be the one who put the bad guys away.”

“Yeah, and now I'm the one helping them go free.” He tried to smile, but there was too much regret in the way.

“Why don't you quit? You were talking about doing that before.”

“It's not that easy.”

“Why not?”

He wouldn't say. Instead he shook his head. “The legal system's not perfect. Doesn't matter which side you're on. People think it's about finding the truth and dispensing justice, and sometimes that happens, but it's more by accident than design.
It's really not about being right. It's about being more persuasive. And honestly, it's about money and power.”

“But c'mon,” I said. “Are you really that surprised? You always knew the justice system was flawed. Even when you were a prosecutor.”

“I at least had a little faith back then. Now I don't know what I have. I don't even know what I'm doing.”

“Then quit. You can practice a different kind of law. Join a firm.”

“I can't. Someday. Soon. Maybe. I hope. But I can't right now.” He took a sip from his drink. “I'm just trying to get through the day. Putting one foot in front of the other . . .”

As we were leaving the restaurant I remembered I had something for him. “Here—” I reached in my bag and handed him my copy of
Profiles in Courage
. “You said you hadn't read it yet.”

He balanced the book on his open palm and ran his other hand over the cover as if he could feel the words rising up off the pages. “I'll get it back to you.”

“You'd better.” I smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek like I always did. Only this time I wanted him to hold me again like he had earlier.

As I watched him walking away, his broad shoulders disappearing into the crowded sidewalks, I questioned what had just come over me. Was I really feeling all this for Scott, or was I merely trying to mask my pain over Jack? I forced myself to clear them both from my mind and headed back to the city room.

Benny was at my side as soon as I reached my desk. “I heard about you and Jack,” he said.

“Wow, that was fast. How did you find out?”

“This is a city room—we're always the first to hear
anything
.”

I smiled.

“Maybe you and me, you know, maybe you'd let me take you out sometime?”

Dear sweet, young Benny. I looked at him and sighed. Even if I had been interested in him, office romances were generally frowned upon. “Thanks anyway, but I think I'll need some time before I'll be ready to date anyone.”

•   •   •

I
recognized the voice on the telephone immediately and dropped down into my chair. I'd been sure that Ahern had all but written me off. I hadn't spoken to him since last October, when I'd let the D'Arco story get away. Before that it was the insurance-fraud scoop that Walter had run with. It was February now and I already had two strikes against me as far as he was concerned.

“Can you meet me in thirty minutes?” he asked.

He said it was important, and I knew I couldn't afford to mess this one up—whatever it was—and there was a lot happening out there. As of January 1957, Eisenhower was back in office for another term and there were plenty of changes in Chicago. The biggest news was that Benjamin Adamowski had been elected the new state's attorney. He was a Democrat turned Republican who, in a local upset, shockingly defeated Daley's man, John Gutknecht. I remembered talking about Adamowski with Judge Casey. Adamowski had run on the promise of cleaning up the corruption in Cook County and that was bad news for the Daley machine.

All this was running through my mind when I met Ahern at Union Station. It was a big station, a place where we could get lost
in the rush-hour crowd. I spotted him on one of the long wooden benches in the main terminal. He saw me, stood up and motioned for me to follow him. I lagged a good distance behind while he led me down to one of the tracks for the Milwaukee-bound trains. It was cold, dank and dark down there, and I smelled the heavy scent of creosol wafting up from the ties.

One of the conductors called out from the train steps, “Boarding now. Doors closing on the Milwaukee North.”

“I've got a bit of news for you,” Ahern said, pulling a cigarette from his pack and cupping his hand around his lighter as if blocking an imaginary wind. “I'm leaving the mayor's office.”

“What?” I watched my breath cloud up in the frigid air and dissipate. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to work for Adamowski. I'll be one of his aides.”

“So you're becoming a Republican now?” I was incredulous.

He drew down on his cigarette. “I don't think of it so much as Democrat versus Republican. I see it more as a chance to do some good in this city.” He watched the train bound for Milwaukee ease away from the station. “I like what Adamowski stands for. I like what he's trying to do. I've seen too many dirty dealings inside the Daley administration. I don't want to be a part of that anymore.”

He looked at me, and through a haze of cigarette and train smoke, I saw something different in his eyes. He'd dropped his political mask just long enough for me to see the real Richard Ahern. All this time I'd thought he was feeding me stories because he had an ax to grind. It never occurred to me that the things he'd seen and condoned inside the mayor's office had stayed with him, possibly keeping him up at night. For the first time since I'd met Ahern, I considered the possibility that he might actually be a decent guy after all.

“Well, thanks for letting me know.” I thrust out my hand to
shake his. “I wish you luck in your new role. It was good working with you.”

He laughed, ignoring my gesture. “This isn't good-bye, Walsh.” He dropped his cigarette to the platform and ground it out with a twist of his heel. “Far from it.” He laughed a little harder. “Hell, we're just getting started.”

The penny dropped, and my heart started racing. I may have been losing my source in Daley's office, but I was gaining something better: a direct line to the state's attorney's office. I'd heard the accusations Adamowski had been making; Daley was looking the other way while traffic courts fixed tickets, while police officers ignored bordellos and even patronized them. Daley washed his hands of any wrongdoing even while his precinct captains were under indictment for various crimes. Adamowski didn't let a day go by without claiming Daley was involved with one scandal or another. Adamowski had a mission to bust the Daley machine wide open, and apparently Ahern planned to leak their attacks step by step to the press, specifically to me—and for reasons that I still didn't understand.

•   •   •

A
fter our meeting at Union Station Ahern's tips came rapidly, and by the spring of 1957, four months after Adamowski took office, I had scooped half a dozen front-page stories.

I was the one who broke the story about the postmaster general taking kickbacks, followed by the one about a brothel that hosted a police chief's bachelor party. I brought Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Copeland articles on political fixers, on parking ticket fixers, tax evasion and all kinds of dirty politics down at City Hall.

My parents were well aware of my accomplishments, though they didn't say much about them. Still, I was pleased, despite my colleagues—especially Walter, Henry, Peter and Randy—being
unhappy about this development. Even Marty, who'd once been my greatest supporter, was cagey around me, secretive about his stories. The others had always been that way.

Now, instead of Benny, they picked on me. Mercilessly. I was the target, the source of their amusement, the butt of their pranks. I did a good job of laughing it off—like the time they hid my attaché case just for grins. I smiled each time they gave me a phony set of revisions for one of my stories or called me up from across the room, disguising their voices, pretending they had a hot tip for me. I was a good sport. Tough. I could take it.

But I admit that one day it got to me. Unbeknownst to me, Randy had started up an internal comic strip featuring me, the ruthless reporter, with my high-heeled shoes and a sword in one hand, my briefcase in the other, trying to get the scoop on crime and injustice in the streets of Chicago. He'd left the cartoon sketches on his desk where he knew I'd see them. Randy had turned my fingernails into talons, my nose into a beak. He had turned me into a vulture.

I remember how I was still laughing for all to see just before I slipped into the ladies' room, locked myself inside the last stall and sobbed into my fisted hands. I pressed my forehead against the marble wall, the coolness soothing the heat coming off my face.

Never cry in the city room. Never. Ever.
Marty had gotten away with it, but that was because he was having a nervous breakdown. I'd seen Gabby and M and some of the other sob sisters fall apart at their desks in front of the men, who sat back and snickered or else showered them with pity. I swore I'd never let them see me cry, and yet here I was bawling my eyes out.

I had to question if this job was worth it. What was I trying to prove? The guys were never going to show me any respect as a reporter. My parents were never going to change just because I got a couple of stories published. They were too far gone, and I
had to accept that I couldn't do for them what Eliot had done. I couldn't be my brother. Maybe I wasn't cut out for the life of a journalist after all. But even as I said that, I knew they were just words. I couldn't walk away. Not after I'd come so far.

I must have stayed in that bathroom stall for twenty minutes. I was exhausted by the time I unlatched the door, relieved that no one else was in the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face and wiped the mascara from underneath my eyes with a brown, scratchy paper towel. Forcing a smile on my face, I went back out to my desk, acting as if everything were fine.