Chicago Page 2

  Murmurs of “Wretched judgment” and the like came from the bar.

  “I shall not write of the poor but honest Jewish tailor—”

  “Staple of our trade,” a wag said.

  “—who discovered, sewn in the lining of the coat given to him to be recut for a gentleman’s funeral, those twelve one-thousand-dollar bills, nor of his struggle with his conscience, which urged him to keep them all; nor of his decision to bring the lot before Pharaoh (Mr. Brown), nor of Mr. Brown’s generosity, in spiffing the guy fifty bucks and the promise of limitless custom.

  “Nor shall I write of the bloated plutocrat bitten by the shark, nor of the attempts to hush it up, which, I have found, as have you all, is the most holy charge of our craft. My pen and whatever might be my small abilities will run to none of these reports, nor along the path which might elevate them, if not to the status of art, at least to that of literature.”

  “Why not?” Hanson said.

  “Because he is in love,” Parlow said. The reporters, variously, howled, applauded, or cheered.

  “Love,” Crouch said, “is as much the death of journalism as cooze is its analgesic. It is as the clap to fornication, or remorse to the adulterer.”

  “Who is the fortunate one?” Kelly asked.

  “These lips shall not speak her sainted name,” Mike had said. He sat.

  Chapter 2

  Her name was Annie Walsh.

  At the beginning of their courtship Mike spent quite a bit of time flirting with her.

  He was, as usual, conducting the operation with care, such care consisting, to his mind, in a fine assessment of that point at which his raging lust for her possession would overcome that which he understood as a decent respect for her youth and innocence.

  “It’s something like flying an airplane,” he told Parlow. “It’s designed to be unbalanced. The only way you can keep it in equilibrium is to make it go somewhere. It’s in stasis only before or after it has gone somewhere, or when it isn’t going nowhere anymore—”

  “She’s too young,” Parlow had said.

  “—as, for example, after the Hun has executed the Forbidden Stitch upon your tailplane, and left you looking down for a good place to die.”

  “Save it for your book,” Parlow said.

  “Oh, it’s all going in the book,” Mike said. “One way or another. For it is in me, and, thus, must come out.”

  “Well, I’m sure that it was a traumatic experience,” Parlow said. “For all that it was good, clean fun.”

  “Yeah. It was fun,” Mike said. “That’s the dark, sordid secret that us fighting men carry. A canker on our heart.”

  “You said you weren’t writing a book,” Parlow said.

  “The heart is a fickle mistress,” Mike said.

  “The broad’s too young,” Parlow said. “Also, you fuck around, the Irish? Her father’ll kill you, and that’s not a metaphor.”

  “What if I marry her?” Mike said.

  “Oh my,” Parlow said.

  “Well, people have gotten married for less.”

  “Does she even like you?”

  “Everybody likes me,” Mike said. “I’m a likable guy . . . I’ve got a job . . .”

  “Did you say you might write the novel?”

  “I can do both.”

  “‘A man cannot serve two masters,’” Parlow said. “Who said that?”

  “Lad: A Dog,” Mike said.

  “What do you talk about with this kid? She can talk, right . . . ?”

  “She don’t have to talk,” Mike said.

  “You know what?” Parlow said. “You don’t even fall in love like a nigger. You? Fall in love like a hillbilly: See the girl? Throw her, her two kids, and her banjo, back of the truck, and off you go.”

  “That’s right,” Mike said.

  Mike had first seen Annie Walsh behind the counter at The Beautiful, where he had gone in pursuit of a hunch. The hunch came from a memory of his attendance at Mob funerals.

  It struck him, when perfected, as one of those ideas so clear and simple the recipient cannot believe they have not been exploited before. For why, Mike thought, as does any blessed with true inspiration, would God choose him, a fool and a sinner, to receive this sign of Grace? But He had.

  There, at the funeral, its honoree a representative of the South Side, one Alfonse Mucci, were the warring factions, convened in the usual performance of “peace at the waterhole.” And there was Mike, and there were his colleagues, representatives of the City Desks of the other Chicago papers, each searching for a slant that would be evident to him but somehow opaque to his equally attentive competition.

  Mike’s survey strayed past the reposed-in-respect faces of Mucci’s colleagues and assassins, and onto the floral tributes. Here he found the usual wreaths, crosses, and horseshoes, bearing the usual sentiments; and, wired to their wooden stands, upon each, a small card.

  The crowd had left the graveside, and the gravediggers appeared, but Mike stayed on. He walked around the grave and toward the flowers. He bent to look at the small white cards and found them, each, to be a direction to the deliveryman: A. Mucci/Lakeside, two p.m. And each bore the logo of its supplier. The more elaborate displays had, in the main, been propounded by two enterprises: Flessa’s, of 2331 Michigan Avenue, thus the supplier to the South Side, and “The Beautiful: Florists of Distinction,” 1225 North Clark Street.

  Mike had begun frequenting the two emporia as possibly productive of criminal gossip. He had not been disappointed.

  Of the two, the management of Flessa’s was more garrulous, and happy to regale a customer, for Mike posed as such, with tales of the great, spicing the potentially dry recitation of business with the gossip, overheard by or indulged in with the proprietor, of the colorful vagaries of the Capone Mob. These stories, quips, anecdotes, or offhand comments, Mike threshed for facts, several of which were of sufficient accuracy to have earned him, on two occasions, polite warnings from, as they put it, “Friends of the Big Guy.” The Big Guy, also known as Mr. Brown, was Al Capone; these friends had spoken to Flessa, who, through his new reticence, had made the edict known to Mike, who then curtailed his investigations of Flessa’s.

  Mike’s response to the Call to Adventure, like that of many another hero, had cooled after this first opposition. The Call was repeated on a slow morning in May. He’d come in to take Parlow to lunch, and found him typing. Mike sat by the side of the desk and watched. “The rich the rich the rich make me sad,” Parlow had said. “In this greatest land God ever had the native sense to bless. When any . . .”

  “‘Elevator operator’?” Mike asked.

  “Elevator operator, yes,” Parlow said, “can rise to wealth upon the instant, by the mere possession of a tip: when those absent the understanding that the Lord gave geese can throw darts at a board, and pick stocks whose potential is limited only by the faith and credence of the American folk.”

  “Who do you know who struck it rich?” Mike said.

  “My sister, or somesuch, undoubtedly had a friend at the beauty salon whose husband, boyfriend, bootlegger, lover, chance acquaintance . . . and I’ll tell you what else.”

  “I’m listening,” Mike said.

  “I’m sick to death and want to turn my face to the wall over exposés. ‘Here we find’”—he passed his hand over the pile of books on his desk—“review copies of, what? Exposés: meatpacking, railroads, telephone, the stock market, for the love of God, child rearing, every swinging dick with a typewriter is crafting an indictment of the American Way.”

  “Many of them are women,” Mike said.

  “I stand by the previous statement,” Parlow said. “And there is money in that, too. ‘An exposé!’ the Consumer of Littacher exclaims: ‘Oh my: how astute to note, and how brave to relate that we are all corrupt swine, rooting in the feces-nurtured loam of life.’”

  “I accuse you. You’ve been reading in French,” Mike said.

  “And if I have?” Parlow said. �
��Is that not also a language, as you, no doubt, had noticed, in your sojourn there, amongst the antiquities, their outlines gentled by the wash of time, the German Big Berthas, and the Treaty of Versailles?”

  “What makes you sad about the rich?” Mike said.

  “That which makes everyone sad who is not of their number,” Parlow said. “That they are better off than we; and we brave our unmerited poverty stoically, whilst they sail yachts, and indulge in God knows what depravities in boathouses.”

  “But do you not also hate the poor?” Mike said. “For they possess no money. Therefore what can they do for me, save impotently rage, because I, occasionally, sport a clean collar? Fuck the poor. Further, saving always the criminals, they have misunderstood the situation. For, how do they propose to raise their state? By appeal, finally, to government.”

  “Fuck the poor,” Parlow said.

  “And what about—” Mike said.

  “I’m not done,” Parlow said.

  “What about strikes?”

  “I’m not done,” Parlow said. “And what is government but the nom de guerre of thugs and whores; of greed, which, were it practiced by those out of office, would result in their dismemberment. Strikes I approve of, as partaking both of bootless appeal to ‘authority,’ and crime. Thus, the weary brain might encompass them under two heads equally potential for copy.”

  “Is there a third head?” Mike asked.

  “Yes,” Parlow said, “its name is the lawful petition for redress of grievance.”

  “How shall that be addressed?” Mike said.

  “Not by the American,” Parlow said, “nor the Daily News, nor the Tribune, but by the clubs of the Pinkertons, hewn from trees grown for that purpose.”

  Parlow took the sheet from the typewriter and yelled, “Boy!” He put a fresh sheet in the typewriter, and began to type again.

  “Stand them up against a wall,” Parlow said. He looked up, and shouted, “BOY for the love of Christ!”

  Mike took the typed sheet and waved it over his head. “‘Boy boy and there was no boy,’” he said. He lowered the sheet of copy and began to read.

  “‘Page two: Of Civic Improvement. The parks, won by Abraham Lincoln for our perpetual use, are that transition area so beloved of architects. They do not encompass, but set off Chicago’s beauty. See them from the east, as the eye and the spirit move from the wild of the Lake, to the subdued, the urbs in horto, of a twenty-six-mile-long garden; a pause, if you will, between Nature and Commerce, and on to the . . .’”

  Parlow looked up for a copyboy. “Don’t read that shit,” he said to Mike.

  “What is it?” Mike said.

  Parlow stood. “BOY for the love of Christ, bleeding on the Cross!” he shouted. “Is there no one in this organization doing his job but fucking me?”

  A copyboy came sauntering into the City Room.

  “Where have you . . . BOY, you worthless pig,” Parlow said. The boy began to run toward him.

  “Yes, run. Run. You fucking maggot.”

  Mike held the sheet aloft, and the copyboy took it and ran off.

  “And come back!” Parlow shouted.

  “What is this shit?” Mike said.

  “It is an article on beautification,” Parlow said.

  “Why are you writing it?” Mike asked.

  “I am writing it as a favor,” Parlow said.

  “For whom?” Mike said.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” Parlow said.

  “If you were, what would you say?” Mike said.

  “I am writing it for the new young lady on the cultural staff,” Parlow said.

  “You whore,” Mike said.

  “I’m doing it for money,” Parlow said.

  “She’s paying you?”

  Parlow raised a finger to his lips.

  “Why?”

  “Apparently, she can’t write,” Parlow said.

  “Anyone can write,” Mike said.

  “She’s had a sheltered life,” Parlow said. “Nepotism, that great equalizer, has gotten her a job, but, faced with her first deadline, she’d come down with the fantods. I need a drink.”

  “Let’s get a drink,” Mike said. “You can buy.”

  Parlow shook his head and continued typing.

  “Okay, when you’re done,” Mike said.

  “No, I need a drink now,” Parlow said.

  Mike opened the desk’s bottom drawer. The bottle was there, but it was empty. Parlow shook his head.

  “Go on down,” Mike said. “Go on, I’ll finish it.” Parlow got up. Mike slid into his place at the typewriter. Parlow kissed the top of Mike’s head, picked up his coat from the hat stand, and started out of the City Room.

  The page in the typewriter read: “. . . our native Chicagoan love of flowers . . .”

  Parlow had gone down to get drunk. Mike was left with the unfinished article—his only (but sufficient) clue to its tone and content “our native Chicagoan love of flowers.”

  The previous copy had gone to the compositors, and Mike could only guess at the identity of those clichés still available for use. “What the hell,” he thought, “screw ’em, let the copy desk figure it out.”

  After “Chicagoan love of flowers,” he typed, “which,” and stopped.

  Did Chicagoans love flowers?

  Women loved flowers, he knew. Men did not care. Chicagoans did not seem to love flowers any more than any other group, and probably loved them less, he thought, being more down-to-earth folk.

  But someone loved flowers, or there would be no florists. Mike, like any writer faced with a stringent test or deadline, began to daydream. Who supported the florists? he wondered. Men looking to please a woman, women, the rich, and, he remembered, the gangsters; and thought on this slow day he might haul out his aperçu again.

  Parlow found Mike in the News Morgue, reading a paper from ’23. It was a photograph of a huge floral tribute.

  “The florists,” Mike said. “North Side.”

  “Yes, the Micks have the florists, and their entry to the North Side, its rich apartments, happily served by the delivery boys, ‘Wait right here, while I go into my bedroom, young man, and fetch you something for yourself, dot, dot, dot,’ where was I?”

  “The florists,” Mike said.

  “The North Side,” Parlow said, “widening their commerce also to the selling of hooch, nose candy, opium, and the control of the speaks north of our Rubicon, the Chicago River.

  “The Nation of Ausonia-in-Exile has to their credit: the Negro enclaves of the South and West Sides, numbers, girls, and the aforesaid analgesics. The North Side . . .”

  “Nails Morton,” Mike said.

  “Nails,” Parlow said, “yes, was, nominally, a florist. And he was the Hebrew ombudsman and Jud Süss to O’Banion and his merry band of horticulturists.”

  “Nails,” Mike said. “Pulled in, in his youth, for the murder of this or that odd duck, various other juvenile pranks, including ‘parsimony with lack of intent to share with the cops.’”

  “Judge says, ‘Stateville or France?’ Nails chooses France. Comes home a hero. Grows rich as shit, yellow kid gloves. Riding his horse one day, Lincoln Park, horse throws him. Kicks him to death. You have to love it.”

  “The horse?” Mike said.

  “The horse, munching his ‘hay,’ that night. O’Banion, his myrmidons bust in, ‘rat tat tat.’”

  Mike continued to stare at the paper.

  “The horse,” he said. “What did they shoot him with?”

  “Where have you been?” Parlow said. “They shot him with the tommy gun. Have you no sense of fitness . . . ?”

  “Old days, Roman times, they would have cut his throat,” Mike said, absently.

  “Time marches on. P.S.: they left the tommy gun, on top of the dead horse, discarding it, as it had been defiled by ‘contact with the horse.’ You’ve got to love it. Weiss, Teitelbaum, must have bemoaned the waste of four hundred bucks.”

  “I would mour
n it myself,” Mike said. He held the magnifying glass close to the paper.

  “What are you looking at?” Parlow said.

  Mike was looking at the photograph. He took the magnifying glass and held it over the inscription, spelled out in daisies, in the midst of the horseshoe. “‘All the Best Wishes from those who Wish you the Best,’” he read.

  “Ah, yes, the language of flowers,” Parlow said, “is ‘the language of love.’”

  “I’m working out a lead, alright?” said Mike.

  “Is that what they call it now?” Parlow said.

  “That’s what they call it,” Mike said.

  Mike’s repeated excursions to The Beautiful were decreasingly productive of information as his informant, Annie Walsh, was the impossibly beautiful daughter of the proprietor, who, from his workroom, kept a constant and effective vigil upon her. And, as a demonstration of his fatherly concern, reduced his speech to monosyllables. This, while balking Mike in his attempts at useful conversation, did not prevent him from, silently, and irremediably, falling in love with the girl.

  “What,” he said to Parlow, “am I to do?”

  “If you had what I will call ‘your druthers,’ what would you do?” Parlow said.

  “I would walk into the shop and say, ‘Get your coat,’ and I would take her with me far away, and never let her out of bed.”

  But he had, as yet, even to speak to her beyond the ordering of just those flowers sufficient to excuse his presence in the shop.

  Mike was not, of course, deluding the father, who, in addition to suspecting any man of any age, was especially attuned to the actual appearance, however disguised, of lust; neither was he fooling the daughter, who, like all women of all time, was perfectly aware of both the presence and the degree of men’s interest. His only dupe in the charade was himself. And he paid not only by unrequited longing and by indecision, but by his unexamined but persistent dislike of any duplicity involving his love of the innocent girl. For was he not before her under doubly false flags, his dumb show as a customer masking not only his concupiscence, but his indeed more vile character as a spy? And might it not be argued, he wondered, that information elicited from her or her establishment might eventuate in their chastisement by the O’Banion organization? Which last consideration did not occur to him in his adventures on the South Side, where, had the question occurred to him at all, Mike would have considered himself as “bound to take his chances like the rest of us.”