So by the time I walk back through the maze of corridors created by partitions set up for these office cubicles over the years, handwritten notes have landed on Dunleavy's desk.

  It's a known fact that anybody actually caught using one of them computers is in danger of getting fired on the spot. That's the threat Dunleavy is supposed to've made in the heat of irritation one day. So now every time he leaves his office to go out, he whistles to let them know he's coming.

  The way old men do things to save themselves from their own ultimatums can be very complicated.

  Anyway, Dunleavy's sitting there at his desk with the usual mountains of plat books, maps and papers piled everywhere.

  "So, Jimmy Flannery, is it?"

  "It is, Mr. Dunleavy."

  "Mike Flannery's boy."

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Dunleavy. The very same," I say, repeating the ritual sentences like I been doing for years.

  "That was a tasteful laying out you give old Delvin."

  "And the funeral oration at the graveside?"

  "Very tasteful," he says. "Also the funeral feast. Very tasty. What can I do you for?"

  "There's a building over in Bridgeport. Two buildings, actually, what was made into one by these sort of enclosed breezeways."

  "You got an address?"

  I give him the numbers there on Lowe near Thirty-third.

  "What would you like to know about them buildings?" he asks.

  "Mostly who owns them."

  He gives me a look. "And why would you like to know that? Now that you've acquired a house in Bridgeport, just down the street from where the old mayor once lived, are you getting ideas about acquiring real estate?"

  "I'm not looking to buy them buildings. Even if the thought ever entered my head, I ain't got the money."

  "But soon could have it, ain't that right, Jimmy?"

  "I beg your pardon?" I say, which is the funniest damn thing to say when you expect somebody's ready to say something what could be insulting.

  "I mean when you run for committeeman in the Eleventh—when you get it handed to you—you'll be rubbing shoulders with the power elite. Ain't that what they call it nowadays? The power elite?"

  "I don't know what they call it or even who they might be," I say.

  "Don't come all over dumb with me, Jimmy," the old mans says.

  "I wasn't saying I don't know who this power elite is, just that I don't spend much time rubbing shoulders with them."

  He stares at me for a long time, peering at me like an old turtle with these lidded eyes with pouches under them, a man crowding the edges of life, going to be a hundred when the century turns.

  "God Almighty, maybe you ain't as clever as they think you are. Maybe you really don't know that this invitation from Lundatos to run the Eleventh with him hand in hand is an invitation from the fifth floor."

  "From the mayor?"

  He nods.

  "I hardly ever meet the man, let alone talk to him, let alone have any conversations about my political situation."

  "You're being tapped on the shoulder. That's how it's done sometimes. Out of nowhere. Something happens that gets somebody high up's attention. They have their little talks. 'What about this Flannery? He looks a likely lad.' 'And so he is. A little headstrong. A little bit of a loose cannon. Apt to defy authority.' 'Wild and unsteady, is he?' 'I wouldn't say so. Not as wild as he used to be. Not lately, anyway. Got hisself a wife.' 'That's always good.' 'Got hisself a baby.' 'Even better.' 'Father was a fireman and a loyal precinct captain for many years.' 'God bless him.' You see, Jimmy, that's the way it goes."

  He does all the voices and he's pretty good at it, this old actor what's seen it all and built hisself a structure of empire so complicated that it's a scramble, he don't want to know about, for everybody to get all he knows into them computers. To create some order. Otherwise, when he dies, the city will forget streets and alleys that only this old man remembers, and, who knows, like magic, parts of Chicago could just disappear.

  "That building on Lowe is owned by Davidian and Associates, a holding company, which owns a majority interest in Parnell and Jones, a management company, which had a majority interest in Twenty-first Century Properties, a development company, which is fully owned by Carteret Enterprises, a leasing company, which is one of the major real assets of Higgens, Huggins and Burke, attorneys-at-law, one of the silent partners of which is Margaret Cooley Burke Lundatos. Which is, no doubt, what you already surmised."

  "Oh, it figured, all right," I say, not telling him that I've already been told.

  "Well, let me tell you, if you're also surmising other things. Leo would have had nothing to do with the death of that girl."

  I'm about to correct him and say woman when I realize that any man under fifty is a boy and any woman under sixty a girl to a man Dunleavy's age.

  "What can you tell me about Lundatos?"

  "I got maybe twenty years on him. So I know about him, the way you know about him, from what I read. Maybe a little more."

  "So you wouldn't know much about the kind of man he really is?"

  "What you see is what you get," Mike says. "That was his trouble, wasn't it? He never tried to cover his tracks."

  "Some people'd call that arrogance," I say.

  "And some people'd call it being open and aboveboard."

  "What would you call it?"

  Dunleavy's thoughtful for a long time. I eat my lunch and let him work it through, how he wants to approach what he's got to say.

  "He was a careful man at the beginning," Dunleavy says for starters. "You remember 1957?"

  "How could I remember 1957? I wasn't even born."

  "In 1957, Harvey Pullman, the state treasurer of Illinois, drops dead of a heart attack and they find half a million dollars in cash in his closet which sends the investigators along the money trail that leads to racetrack stock deals. Lundatos is on the Sanitary District Board at the time and in a position to do many favors for the track concerning water. Also sewage disposal. That's when he was first associated with Delvin. Some people, in fact, said that Delvin was his Chinaman."

  "That's what Lundatos told me."

  "Lundatos was among the beneficiaries of these racetrack deals. He first denies and then admits he's got shares—I don't know how many, but substantial—in the Hanover Trotting Association."

  "He could've bought them," I say.

  "Probably did. A penny apiece. What I'm saying is that he knew how to dodge bullets even back then before he even made his run for the U.S. Congress. That happened the next year."

  "With Mayor Daley's blessing is my understanding."

  "Oh, yes, though Hizzoner couldn't understand why this young man what was doing so good in ward politics and had a future in Chicago would want to go back to D.C. so far from home," Dunleavy says. "The mayor was grooming him for his own job, you understand. But Leo's got different ideas and Richard J. goes along. Twenty years later, Lundatos is sitting there in the Congress and it comes out that he sponsored some legislation which helps some development projects of which this promoter, Eddie Ward, was trustee. There's talk of conflict and so forth but Lundatos points out that the thousand bucks he put into one of the profitable ventures on which he made a hundred thousand had been put into a blind trust so how did he know what was going on?"

  "And whoever raised the question believed that?"

  "This Eddie Ward quit as trustee, Lundatos sells his interest, and it goes away."

  "What you're saying here is Lundatos did what half the Congress does."

  "Nothing special. Why not? Something's going to get done anyway and somebody asks you to grease the rails a little bit, what's to hurt? You're getting advice which you got no reason to think ain't good advice from important and powerful people, so where's the danger? Where's the sin?"

  Dunleavy rocks in his chair and makes a noise in his chest. At first I think he's choking on something and start to lean forward to slap him on the back, but he puts up his hand and says, "It's all right. It's all right. I'm just laughing."

  "What're you laughing about?"

  "I was just thinking. It ain't the big crimes that brings these people down, it's petty theft. They get in the habit of taking little favors. A free trip to the Bahamas. A free golfing week at Pebble Beach out there in California. A chauffeur-driven car you can park in front of a water hydrant without worrying you'll get a ticket."

  "A lot of that?"

  "As much as Lundatos wanted."

  "Nothing out-and-out against the law, though?"

  "Under the rules at the time. I'm not saying just according to custom. I'm saying under the sweet rules and regulations these congressmen make up for themselves, rules that let them convert stationery allowances they don't use into cash which they can put into their own pockets. And did to the tune of maybe five or ten thousand dollars each per year."

  "I remember hearing something about that. Wasn't that privilege ended?"

  "Around 1977."

  "I just read the indictment against him in the Weekly Congressional Record down to the library," I say. "That was the year they claim he set up the means to milk his petty-cash account."

  "So he wasn't being too careful anymore."

  "And he had a beard," Dunleavy adds.

  "What do you mean, a beard?"

  "He had a couple of million dollars in unused campaign funds. He never needed it. He had a safe seat. The voters sent him back to Congress like they was just punching his train ticket."

  "Until this last time."

  "How was he to know things'd changed as much as they had? But at the time we're talking about, he had a couple of million the high rollers contributed to his campaign. Let him do what he wanted with the money. Under the rules, he could've tucked it under his arm and walked away with it."

  "So why did he loot the petty cash?"

  "If he looted it. Charged but not proven is the way it goes. Innocent until proven guilty. And for a while there, after his defeat, it looked like it'd never come to a hearing let alone a criminal trial."

  "Until a hooker's found dead in the bathtub in his high-rise hideaway," I say.

  "Well, three floors don't make a high-rise, but I get your meaning," he says.

  "So you ain't answered me. Why?"

  He thinks a little bit.

  "You take Nixon."

  I make a face.

  "Here's this fool what lets his aides talk him into snooping around Democratic Headquarters, see if they got any dirty tricks up their sleeve. He was paranoid they was out to steal the election away from him the way a lot of people thought they done when Kennedy defeated him. You remember?"

  "Mayor Daley was supposed to have fixed the election results in Chicago, which won the state, which gave Kennedy the electoral votes he needed to win," I say.

  "That's the way they played that tune," Dunleavy agrees. "So these fools go out and hire a bunch of gazooneys couldn't rob a kiddy's piggy bank."

  "The plumbers."

  "They was plumbers all right. Okay, it hits the fan, a little second-story job that went astray. Forget about it. Dummy up. But this mental giant's got everything down on tape, including the fuck this and fuck that. That kind of language we know everybody uses every day but we're not ready to admit. Especially not if you intend to have some woman transcribe the notes into hard copy."

  He's using a computer phrase, hard copy, so he gives hisself away. He ain't all that dumb about the new-age technology that's taking over the world.

  "Maybe all these schmucks think the way that recent bad-boy senator thinks," he goes on. "Maybe he can get his secretaries worked up with the dirty language. Anyway, when it all comes out, why don't Nixon just dump the tapes, which, as a point of historical fact, was recorded on the system put in by Kennedy. Anybody asks, he tells them to go to hell. He burnt them. They was his tapes and he burnt them."

  "But he was arrogant," I say.

  "In the true meaning of the word. To make a claim without the right. Nixon thought he could fight the battle on the grounds of executive privilege, which would have been a very useful principle for him to be able to claim in future."

  "And what principle was Lundatos trying to establish?"

  "Laissez-faire. One. An economic doctrine that's against government regulation of commerce. Two. Noninterference in the affairs of others. He was dumb for doing it the way he did it, but I really think he was fighting for the system of perks and privileges the Congress has enjoyed for many years. His mistake was in thinking the rest of the club would back him up given the temper of the times."

  I sit there chewing it over.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you, Jimmy?"

  "You can tell me how come a commercial enterprise can do business in a residential neighborhood."

  "There's an exception for professional undertakings. Doctors, dentists, accountants, lawyers and so forth."

  "There's always exceptions, ain't there?" I say, getting to my feet.

  "Well, you should know, Jimmy. You're managing to find them all the time."

  TWENTY-SIX

  I go see Abe Binderman over at the Crime Lab. We've been friends from a long ways back when I convinced this man what had a nose like a forty-nine-cent pickle that looks wasn't everything to women. A good heart and other physical considerations could loom large in their consideration. He's been married for a long time now, with I don't know how many kids.

  Even so he don't greet me with all that much enthusiasm, having learned that when I come see him at his place of work, I've usually got a favor to ask, which I always make plain he don't have to honor in spite of the good turn I done him.

  "I'm afraid to ask to what do I owe the honor of a visit," he says, "because you might tell me."

  "You get the medical examiner's report on one Mavis Hovannis?"

  "Complete with vaginal, anal and oral swabs, stomach contents and fingernail scrapings," he says.

  "So tell me," I say.

  "There's nothing to tell. They were sent and then they were followed by a request for their return. Is this another alleged crime you're going to make a mess about?"

  "You know, Abe, maybe you been too long in this job. When you start thinking that it's better to keep your nose and your desk clean, your eyes and your mouth shut, then you could be in danger of not doing the job the people pay you to do."

  "You can't make a case of corruption or malfeasance for every body that turns up in the city of Chicago," he says.

  "Mavis Hovannis, aka Fay Wray, is the only body we're talking about here. You have a chance to look at the specimens they sent you?"

  He hesitates a tick too long and I know that he did more than just take a look.

  "You got curious, didn't you, Abe? They ask for the return of this evidence and it makes you curious."

  "I looked over the report very carefully and made some serology tests."

  "How about DNA?"

  "Are you crazy? Those tests don't cost a nickel or a dime. They aren't routine. They're only done on special request."

  I take the handkerchief Lundatos had bled on out of the envelope in which I put it to carry around.

  "What's this?" Abe says.

  "It's a bloodstained handkerchief," I say. "You need a special order to test it for me?"

  "Is that all you want me to do? I can do that."

  "I want you to also tell me if it matches the blood type found in the sperm Hackman took from the body cavities of Fay Wray."

  "All I can do is tell you if there's a gross comparison," he says.

  "That's enough."

  "It won't do you much good. I sent the samples back as requested."

  "I want to thank you, Abe," I say.

  "Well, I don't forget the favors you've done for me. Also..."

  "Also what?" I say, when he don't finish the thought.

  "Also I don't always just clear my desk and keep my nose clean. This woman struggled. There was skin under the nails. I'll see if there's a match with your bloodstains in case there's nothing in the sperm. Everybody's not a secretor."

  I don't ask for the technical explanation of that, but just stand there listening, glad of the fact that he's leveling with me.

  "There was froth in her lungs," he goes on.

  "Nobody's trying to say she wasn't drowned," I say.

  "But I've got an idea they're not entertaining the notion that she was held down. There's severe pressure bruising on the chest."

  I thank him again. He stops me at the door.

  "One thing, Flannery," he says. "I'm pleased to help you, but I see no reason to cut my own throat. When I give you the results of the tests on that handkerchief, I want you to forget where you got them."

  "I know the rules, Abe."

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It's in the papers, the Sun-Times and the Tribune. Joe Medill of the Trib and Jackie Boyle of the Sun-Times both devote their columns to the possibilities of a local scandal involving a dead prostitute and a disgraced national politician.

  Anybody who knows anything about the way decent newspapers work knows that they go running around checking their facts, digging in here and there. Turning over rocks. Greasing palms and filling pockets if they have to, what with the competition nowadays. Looking for a Deep Throat.

  Ever since Watergate everybody what's got a column or access to a paper, even a shopping rag, thinks they could be Woodward and Bernstein.

  They're also very careful to check their facts because of what my political science teacher calls "this most litigious of all nations."

  So I'm not surprised when Jackie Boyle finds me over to the Homewood Tavern having a root beer out of the wood, which is a very rare drink to find in this day and age.

  "Can I buy you another?" Boyle asks.

  "One's my limit," I say, "but if you're having a beer, I'll buy you one. Anything stronger or more expensive you'll have to do on your own."

  "Won't be that way forever," Boyle says, making like he's grabbing the handle of a stein to indicate to the bartender that he'll have a draft.

 

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