White Collar Girl (25 page)

•   •   •

I
was standing in the cold, covering a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new wing of the Michael Reese Hospital. The November winds were gusting while all the reporters huddled together. The mayor was there for the event, proudly saying to the press, “We are here today to commiserate that Chicago is becoming a leading disease center. . . .”

I watched his press secretary slap the sides of his head while we all chuckled, writing down the mayor's latest gaffe.

I was still laughing about that to myself when I went back to the city room. I hadn't even gotten my coat off when Benny pulled a chair over to my desk. He wanted to finish up a piece we'd both been assigned to the day before on a bridge fire. He leafed through his notes while I did the typing, my fingers still stiff from the cold.

“Oh, wait—” He'd stop me every few lines to insert a thought or change a fact. “That was the fire commissioner who said that.”

“I know, Benny. I got it. See?” I pointed to the line. It was a routine story. I could have written the piece with my eyes closed.

The entire time Benny and I were working, Randy was singing
He's Got the Whole World in His Hands
and improvising
with bits like, “
He's got the printers and the slot man in his hands / He's got the printers and the slot man in his hands. . . .
”

That past summer Randy had won a singing contest sponsored by H. C. Schrink & Sons, the owners of Eskimo Pies. Crooner that he was, Randy brought down the house with his rendition of
Some Enchanted Evening
and walked away with the grand prize, a six-month supply of Eskimo Pies.

Ever since then he'd been talking about leaving the paper and pursuing a career in music. Not that he didn't appreciate being able to make a living as a cartoonist. He did. But as he put it, “I'm tired of scraping by. Music is where the money is. I'm talking serious money. So what I'm gonna do now is,” he'd told us all, “I'm gonna go talk to Pendulum Records and I'm gonna sign a record deal with them.”

“Would you listen to him?” Walter had laughed. “Our boy Randy here's gonna be a big recording star. A regular Sinatra.”

“You might not believe this, Walter,” Randy had said, his voice taking on a ferocious volume, “but I've got talent. A real God-given gift. And I'm gonna be rich someday. Filthy rich.” He was trembling. I don't think he'd ever stood up to Walter—or maybe to anyone—before.

The Eskimo Pies had run out, and as far as we knew, Randy still hadn't spoken to anyone at Pendulum Records. The last time I asked him about it, he said his wife was having gallbladder surgery, as if that should have explained it. She still hadn't had the operation, and according to Randy, she was feeling fine.

I was remembering all that when Henry came rushing into the city room. He twisted out of his overcoat and tossed his hat on his desk. “Ellsworth around?” he asked.

“You looking for me?” Mr. Ellsworth had been over by M's desk before he appeared in the aisle.

Henry rushed to his side. “I got something big. You're not
gonna believe this. I just got an earful from my buddy at the Bureau.”

“Well, are you going to tell me or just make me stand here and guess?”

Henry lowered his voice and said, “Can we go somewhere private?”

The two of them disappeared into one of the conference rooms, and through the glass panels I watched Mr. Ellsworth stop stroking his beard, which probably meant that Henry had given him something good. A few minutes later Henry returned to his seat and started typing, not saying a word to the rest of us.

My curious nature took over and I couldn't help but glancing over Henry's shoulder, reading as he typed: .
 . . FBI sting operation . . . Probing corruption in the Cook County judiciary system . . . Undercover mole planted inside the system, posing as a corrupt lawyer . . .”

At lunchtime I slipped out of the city room and went around the corner to call Ahern at the state's attorney's office. It was bitter cold, and I could hear the wind whistling through the glass doors on the phone booth.

“What do you know about the FBI's sting operation with the courts?” I asked.

He sighed loudly into the phone, as if I were annoying him. “The Bureau's handling all that. You probably know more at this point than I do.”

I gripped the receiver and sighed louder than he had. I knew he was holding out on me. If the FBI was investigating the Cook County judiciary system, Adamowski and the state's attorney's office had to be in on it. Hell, Adamowski was probably the one who'd tipped off the Bureau.

“Well,” I said, before hanging up, “if you hear anything, let me know.”

•   •   •

T
he next morning I attended a press conference held by the Illinois Department of Transportation. They were presenting plans to reconstruct a bridge feeding into the downtown area.

The room was small and the radiator heat steamed up the windows and made me groggy. I fought to stay awake while a spokesman boasted about the thousands of vehicles that accessed the bridge daily and the estimated $5 million allotted for repairs. I stifled a yawn and glanced around the room. The reporter next to me was checking his wristwatch while the one on the other side was playing a solo game of tic-tac-toe. It would be another twenty minutes before we'd be out of there.

Afterward I stopped into a Peter Pan Snack Shop for lunch and sat at the counter. I ordered a burger and a malted, my reward for having sat through the press conference. I reached inside my attaché case for the
Tribune
. It was the first chance I'd had that day to read the paper.

I sipped my malted as I read through several articles, one of which was Henry's story about Operation K, which was what the FBI was calling it—
K
as in
Kangaroo
, as in
Kangaroo Court
. It was clear that the Bureau had strategically leaked information to the press, probably wanting to make people nervous so they'd come forward or else slip up under the stress.

For some reason Mr. Ellsworth had buried Henry's piece in the Neighborhood News section. He probably figured that a couple of crooked cops, a bribe here, a fixed parking ticket there wasn't exactly front-page news for Chicago. More like business as usual. No one paid much attention to that sort of thing.

But there was something else on that page—something completely unrelated that caught my eye. It was just a three-inch piece that Peter had written about a butcher shop on Ashland
Avenue accused of selling horsemeat and passing it off as beef. Just the word
horsemeat
alone made me stop. I was stunned and reread the snippet. My brother was the only other person I knew who'd been looking into this matter, and I could never understand why the
Sun-Times
had dropped the investigation. But given what Peter just reported, I figured this racket was still going on.

I looked at my burger resting on the plate and removed the bun to inspect the meat. It looked normal, like any other burger, but because of Peter's article, I questioned the color, the texture, the way the fat pooled and congealed on the lettuce leaf. I hadn't even taken a bite yet, and now I couldn't. Instead I pushed it aside, finished my malted and asked for my check.

When I got back to the city room, I went straight over to Peter's desk with my newspaper in hand.

“What do you know about this?” I asked, slapping his article down before him.

“Oh, that?” Peter adjusted his eyeshade and glanced at the paper. “What about it?”

“How'd you find out about this?”

“I don't know—got a call from some disgruntled customer, I think—”

“Do you have any more information on this? Do you think there are other butcher shops doing the same thing?”

“Whoa, slow down there, Walsh. What's this all about?”

“I think maybe there're more butcher shops doing this.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” Peter adjusted his eyeshade again and squinted at me. “This was just a butcher, down on his luck, looking to cut corners. There's nothing more to it. The authorities closed down the shop.”

“How about if we team up on this?”

“On what?” Peter shook his head. “There's nothing to team
up on. I already told you, it was an isolated case. There's nothing more to it.”

“So you don't want to look into this any further?”

He laughed. “No. I don't want to look into it any further.”

“Then do you mind if I do it myself?”

He rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself. But wait—” He reached into his drawer and pulled out a file—“you might as well take these with you.” He handed me a few sheets of paper with his notes scribbled down. “Knock yourself out, Walsh.”

I went back to my desk and read through everything Peter had given me. I immediately followed up with the customer who had discovered the problem.

“It just didn't taste right,” she said when I reached her on the telephone. Turns out her son, who taught biology at Francis Parker High School, took the meat down to the lab. “That's how we found out it was horsemeat.”

According to Peter's notes, the butcher said it was his horse, an old mare that he'd recently put down. The butcher, who was falling behind on his bills, had the horse ground up and packaged and sold as beef. That was the end of the story for Peter, but there had to be more to it. I knew Eliot had spent two months investigating this very subject. He'd told me once that he suspected there was horsemeat sold throughout the city, even to school cafeterias and fine restaurants. I was tired of covering bridge repairs and road closures, fires and car crashes. The horsemeat scandal had reinvigorated me. And I thought maybe, if I learned more about it, I would know for sure if that article Eliot had been working on had anything to do with his death.

•   •   •

A
fter work that day, I went back to my parents' house to try to locate Eliot's notes on the horsemeat scandal.

My father was in his office, working, and my mother was
visiting with the poet Delmore Schwartz, who happened to be in town. My mother was sitting with her legs crossed, the top one swinging back and forth. She was laughing, smiling and chatting. I hadn't seen her like that in so long. She knew how to shine, truly sparkle. When she was like that, you could see what it was about her that had captivated men like Hemingway and possibly Schwartz.

I said a quick hello, slipped upstairs and went into Eliot's room. I sat down at his desk, running my hands over the curve of the wood, the cigarette and water ring scars along the top. The typewriter I'd once wanted so badly was right there, ominous and forbidding, like a flashing red
don't touch
button. How could I resist? I placed my fingertips over the keys and thought about the horsemeat article.
I can do this
, I told myself.
I can do this
. I pulled open the desk drawers, leafing through his folders and notebooks, the pages yellowing, the smell of aging paper and ink breaking down.

“What are you doing?”

I jumped at the sound of my father's voice and sheepishly tried to hide the papers in my hand. I felt like I'd just been caught stealing candy. “I—I was just looking through some of his notes. I—I was thinking of picking up one of his stories.”

I expected my father to explode, but he only leaned against the doorjamb and spoke in a soft, calm voice. “Which story?”

“Huh? What?” I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

“Which story do you want to pick up?”

“Um, I was thinking about the last one he was working on. You know, about the horsemeat scandal and . . .”

My father began nodding as if he understood, fully on board, and yet the expression on his face was bewildering. I couldn't read him at all. “Well, then, by all means, you need to dig right in and do that, don't you? Here.” He quickly stepped inside the
room. “Let me help you. Let me give you a hand. Let me—” He reached over and yanked out the top drawer, flinging the contents about the room.

For a second I thought the drawer had slipped by accident, but then I realized he'd done it intentionally.

“Let me help you, Jordan.” He threw the drawer halfway across the room and reached for another.

“Dad, calm down. Why are you doing this?”

“Couldn't let sleeping dogs lie, could you? Couldn't just let it be.” With a sweep of his arm, he cleared a bookshelf and hurled another drawer of papers onto the floor. “That was your brother's story. You leave it alone, goddammit.” He had started for another drawer when my mother and Delmore appeared in the doorway.

“Hank, stop it. Just stop it. What are you doing?”

Delmore grabbed my father in a straitjacket hold, tightening his grip the more my father twisted and turned, trying to get free. The only other time I'd seen anyone so out of control was the day Marty Sinclair had his breakdown. Seeing my father like that—and knowing that I'd set him off—shook me hard. My father was growling and cursing. If he ended up in the hospital like Marty, I didn't know what I'd do.

I'd started to panic, thinking we should call for a doctor, when at last all the rage burned itself out of him and my father calmed down. Delmore loosened his grip, and my father composed himself, shrugging out of his hold. He was breathing heavily, and sweat had collected on his brow.

“All right. All right.” My father held his arms out to his sides, presenting himself in full surrender. “Everybody just relax.” He muttered something else and walked out of the room, his shoulders sloped, broken, his head hung low.

After my mother and Delmore went back downstairs, I did my best to straighten up Eliot's room, put his papers back inside
his desk and straighten the lampshade. Before I left the house that day, I drew a deep breath and went to see my father. He was in my parents' bedroom down the hall, sitting on the bed in the dark. I found him staring out the window, the only source of light in the room. His back was turned toward me.