Windy City Read online

  Praise for

  Windy City

  “Delectable … offers an insider's view of the kind of urban political fray—albeit fictional—that Barack Obama emerged from as an Illinois state legislator representing Chicago's South Side…. Windy City's ar ticulate and witty protagonist … must juggle dirty secrets and deal making.”

  —USA Today

  “Entertaining and well-observed … Simon renders the details and the inner workings of City Hall with wit and aplomb … Simon's Chicagoans may be con artists, crooks, amoral opportunists, or blowhards, sometimes all of the above, but the author still treats them with great affection and respect, creating an impressively large and diverse cast of characters.”

  —ADAM LANGER, Chicago Tribune

  “[A] great novel … filled with emotional turmoil, gritty political decisions, murders, homicide attempts, a suicide and even a touch of romance … Readers who bleed politics will quickly recognize the 50 diverse wards mentioned throughout the book. But even for the politically clueless, Simon's book reads as a deft introduction to the world of corrupt Chicago electioneering…. While the shelves of local booksellers creak under the weight of books on Chicago politics, Simon offers something different with Windy City: a more human and fully realized portrait of the people caught up in contemporary public life.”

  —Time Out Chicago

  “A hilarious satirical novel about politics in Chicago.”

  —CLARENCE PAGE, Chicago Tribune

  “Comic but sneakily affecting … the rich multiculturalism of the American city is not a new phenomenon … rarely, however, has it been depicted with such unabashed affection…. The zeal with which [Scott Simon] celebrates the city, warts and all, is hard to resist. His book is larded with insider bonus features that hard-core Chicago aficionados will delight in … well-served by Simon's choice of hero…. Windy City, for all its emphasis on the sausage-factory venality of big-city politics, seems intended mainly as a big, sloppy valentine to the cultural jambalaya that is 21st-century Chicago … It's good to see the old place shamelessly flattered for a change.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Pitch-perfect … Scott Simon, NPR host of “Weekend Edition,” knows his way around ward politics…. His dialogue throws off sparks and shrieks like a Chicago El-car. Recommended to all political junkies.”

  —The Roanoke Times

  “A rather sentimental, positive picture of the democratic process.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “[A] big-hearted bear-hug of a novel … embracing roots and family, ec centricities and failings, and dappled with the sights, sounds and grit of the Windy City—makes this an energizing and loving contemporary urban fable.”

  —GO Magazine, AirTran Airways

  ALSO BY SCOTT SIMON

  Pretty Birds

  Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan

  Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball

  For my mother

  “WINDY CITY.” Chicago's exposed location between the Great Plains and the GREAT LAKES—and the wind swirling amidst the city's early SKYSCRAPERS—lend credence to the literal application of this famous nickname … but the power of the name lies in the metaphorical use of “windy” for “talkative” or “boastful.” Chicago politicians early became famous for long-windedness, and the Midwestern metropolis's location as a host city for POLITICAL CONVENTIONS helped cement the association of Chicago with loquacious politicians, thus underlying the nickname with double meaning.

  THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHICAGO 2004

  UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

  CHICAGO AND LONDON

  The usual disclaimer must be stressed: This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is strictly coincidental. The characters that inhabit this book should not be confused with present or past Chicago mayors and city council members, or any actual politicians anywhere. The wards described in the story are located where they actually are in the city, but in some cases I have hastened demographic trends. In a few instances, I have risked having real-life persons make an appearance in this story, but have taken care not to put too many words in their mouths.

  ome people will vote for you because they like the sound of your name. Some people won't vote for you because you've got a name that reminds them of a malodorous vegetable. You get some votes from people who think you're Italian. You lose some votes from people who think you're Sicilian. Your name reminds some people of the kid who sat behind them in the third grade. Pray that kid never smeared snot on their arm if you want their vote. Some people think you must be someone, they saw on TV. Some people saw you on TV, so you must be an ass. People you've never met feel intensely about you. Some people—they can't quite say why—don't like something in your face. Don't complain that it makes no sense. It's life. It's nature. It's the birds and the bees.

  “You think I'm kidding? You think you're above all that? You want to tell me that when you look down at nine names on the ballot for Water Reclamation District trustee, you know who they are? You know where they went to school, what they do, and how they plan to get the fish turds out of your drinking water? You say to yourself, ‘I like her name, it rhymes,’ or ‘He's Cuban, they're smart.’ Then someday, a bomb knocks out a grate, a wind whips up the water, and suddenly those anonymous souls are the most wanted people in town.

  “Bills, votes, raising money? Every grand or noble thing you've ever done can be undone by the damndest thing. You forget Lech Walesa's birthday. You tell a joke about a rabbi. You say, ‘Jeez, blacks really are better at basketball,’ and next thing, you've got pickets in your front windows, from the NAACP to the Kosciuszko Society to the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

  “But somehow, it keeps the tanks off the streets. Trash gets picked up, snow gets plowed, the trains make all the stops. I admire anyone who has the nerve to put their name on a ballot. You're inviting fifty, fifty thousand, or one hundred and fifty million strangers to heave a tomato at you. Or worse—ignore you. It's appalling and amazing. It's ridiculous and irreplaceable. Hardly any of us wind up being Lincoln, Churchill, or LaGuardia. Most of us aren't even Hoover or Carter. But so far, no one here has been Pol Pot or Stalin. Of course the game isn't fair. It favors the rich, the beautiful, and the shameless. But everyone gets a chance to try.”

  SUNDARAN “SUNNY” ROOPINI

  ALDERMAN, 48TH WARD

  ALDERMEN OF THE CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL

  1st Ward: Artemus Agras

  2nd Ward: Evelyn Washington

  3rd Ward: Dorothy Fisher

  4th Ward: Wanda Jackson

  5th Ward: Vera Barrow

  6th Ward: Grace Brown

  7th Ward: Miles Sparrow

  8th Ward: John Reginald

  9th Ward: Daryl Lloyd

  10th Ward: J. P. Mulroy

  11th Ward: Alfredo Sandoval

  12th Ward: Linas Slavinskas

  13th Ward: Brock Lucchesi

  14th Ward: Collie Kerrigan

  15th Ward: John Wu

  16th Ward: Shirley Watson

  17th Ward: Evelyn Lee

  18th Ward: Kevin Corcoran

  19th Ward: Mitya Volkov

  20th Ward: Janet Watanabe

  21st Ward: Tomislav Mitrovic

  22nd Ward: Jesus Flores Suarez

  23rd Ward: Felix Kowalski

  24th Ward: Sanford Booker

  25th Ward: Alonzo Guttierez

  26th Ward: Rod Abboud

  27th Ward: Donald Stubbs

  28th Ward: Astrid Lindstrom

  29th Ward: Gerald White

  30th Ward: Wandy Rodriguez

  31st Ward: Luis Zamora

  32nd Ward: Emil Wagner

  33rd Ward: Patrick Tie
rney

  34th Ward: Regina Gregory

  35th Ward: Carlo Viola

  36th Ward: Keith Horn

  37th Ward: Vernetta Hynes Griffin

  38th Ward: Aidan Ruffino

  39th Ward: Salvatore Del Raso

  40th Ward: Cyril Murphy

  41st Ward: Ivan Becker

  42nd Ward: Sidney Wineman

  43rd Ward: Kiera Malek

  44th Ward: Harry Walker III

  45th Ward: Adam Wojcik

  46th Ward: Jane Siegel

  47th Ward: Cassie Katsoulis

  48th Ward: Sundaran Roopini

  49th Ward: Anders Berggren

  50th Ward: Jacobo Rapoport Sefran

  THURSDAY NIGHT

  The mayor was found shortly after eleven with his bronze, brooding face lying on the last two slices of a prosciutto and artichoke pizza, his head turned and his wide mouth gaping, as if gulping for a smashed brown bulb of garlic with life's last breath. Blood from his gums had already seeped into the tomatoes, prosciutto, and caramelized onions. His blue oxford-cloth shirt was unbuttoned. His red tie had been slipped out of its knot and trailed forlornly from his collar. His heavy gray slacks were laid across the back of the sofa where he was sitting for his last meal, illumed by the cold glare of the television set.

  The security guards who had rushed in heard the ice in the mayor's bourbon crackling while it melted (it was that fresh) over the cloaked gallop of their thick shoes against the great carpet. Three men's magazines were fanned across the sofa, each with the kind of cover that, in Indiana, would call for the woman's bosom to be enrobed with a brown paper strip. But the guards' attention was drawn to the bold red letters they saw marching across the mayor's boxer shorts: BIG DADDY.

  One of them reached gently for the mayor's arms to feel for a pulse. Another slowly passed a hand over his eyes, and softly called his name—it was how they were trained—while the third muttered some kind of code, colors, numbers, alphas and tangos, into a minuscule microphone in his hand.

  Mrs. Bacon, the mayor's secretary, edged close to their burly gray shoulders to peer into the mayor's blank brown eyes and shakily point her hand at the slogan on his undershorts.

  “I'm sure they were a gift,” she said quietly.

  It was the mayor's habit to have one extra-large pizza from Quattro's delivered to City Hall by ten each night, after he had returned from an evening's round of appearances. His standing order specified extra cheese and prosciutto. When the kitchen staff at Quattro's deduced the pizza was destined for City Hall, they spontaneously contributed extra glistening strips of onions and grilled peppers. His security guards joked that two officers were required to carry the pizza across the threshold of the mayor's office; it felt like carrying a manhole cover in your arms. So much extra cheese had been loaded onto the pizza that when anyone took a bite—an endeavor that involved opening one's mouth as if for a molar examination—they had to pull gooey strings away from their teeth to almost the length of their arms.

  Most politicians groused that over an evening of cocktail receptions, fund-raising dinners, and precinct meetings, they never got a chance to eat. They needed to keep both hands free for handshakes and clapping shoulders. They couldn't chance that a sprig of parsley from a canapé might blemish their smile and photograph like a vagrant's missing tooth. They didn't want to be seen swallowing steak tartare on a round of toast, only to be asked, “Do you know how that cow was slaughtered?”

  But the mayor's immense appetite was too well publicized for him to plead self-restraint. He risked political peril if he appeared to be indifferent to the specialties of any neighborhood. This guaranteed that on any given night, the mayor consumed cheese pierogi, chickpea samosas, pistachio-studded cannolis, and/or sugar-dusted Mexican crescent cookies in his nightly rounds. And consumed them in toto, for half portions were considered fraught with risk. “How can I tell the good citizens of Pilsen that I have to go easy on this magnificent tres leches cake,” he remonstrated, “because I'm saving room for the ale cake in Canaryville? They might suspect that I truly like only two of the tres leches. I mean, when they've seen me make room for the packzi in Logan Square”—a cream-filled, pre-Lenten donut that was popular in the city's Polish bakeries—“how do I explain any diminution in my commitment to the pastry of Pilsen? A man has to consider the consequences before he keeps his mouth shut.”

  So the Quattro's pizza would be waiting at the mayor's office as a reward for his duodenal daring. He would lift the top of the box with a great, yeasty smile.

  “Goodness gracious, our citizens mean well,” the mayor would explain as steam from the pizza seemed to plump his whitening eyebrows. “I can't disappoint them. How can a man of my positively legendary cravings ever convince anyone that I can't have just one more bite? If I turn my nose up at a shrimp and ginger wonton, I risk offending the entire Fifteenth Ward. I just might have to put new traffic lights up and down Canal Street. Bibimbop, halvah, or chitterlings, a man in my position can't refuse hospitality. It does not promote domestic tranquility These days that's practically a matter of national security. It is positively antediluvian not to recognize that.”

  The mayor sprinkled antediluvian over his conversation like fresh cracked pepper; he believed it made everything tastier. He excoriated all political rivals as antediluvian, the state and federal governments— which had a depressing tendency to be run by elected Republicans— and any other daily source of irritation, including the city's newspapers, banks, and any restaurants that did not deliver beyond a twelve-block radius.

  It was the mayor's custom to remove his pants and unbutton his shirt while he sat at the coffee table in front of the television in his office and punch out the numbers of local stations to follow himself on the ten o'clock news. Mrs. Bacon would overhear him cheering or swearing loudly and ingeniously as he ascended the dial:

  Two: “Dumb-ass hayseed! A year ago, you were reading pork belly prices on a station in Iowa that didn't carry farther than a lightbulb! Now you're some kind of ex-pert on pub-lick fi-nance. The nerve! The stupefying effrontery! As if she knows any more about pork bellies than she does about finance!” Five: “I am not going to listen to any grown man who wears makeup for a living and isn't dressed in velvet tights! And I know it's not cause you're gay ’cause you wouldn't be so ugg-lee if you were!” Seven: “Un-cormp-reeehending, ass-licking ingrates!” Nine! Eleven! “Antediluvian enemies of the people!” Thirty-two!“Super-sillius ass-hole! You couldn't show a slug how to curl up and sleep!” Forty-four! “Oh, my, but I shine! I might have my annual bourbon!”

  On Thursday night, Mrs. Bacon had entered when she realized that she had not heard the usual fusillade. With rising alarm, she rapped her hand on the thick polished door; on hearing no response, she turned the heavy brass handle and found the mayor slumped onto his last meal.

  The three guards who rushed in at her cry reacted with professionalism. But their voices quavered as they called out to him gently, and their hands fumbled slightly as they undid the buttons over his wrist. Their attachment to the mayor was personal. They didn't really know—didn't really care—if he was a competent and incorruptible civic leader. They knew he was good company, a man who worked hard, laughed at himself, and batted down the darts and knives of political combat with contagious zest. The applause and smiles that crowds cascaded on the mayor fell on his guards, too. They shared his chores, his travels, his foes and friends, his frustrations, his feats, his humor, his phrasing. When traffic snarled, when an elevator was slow, when planes were delayed, the guards shook their heads and exclaimed, “Positively antediluvian!”

  All of the guards had prepared for the chance that one day they might have to repel an obstreperous protester from the mayor's path, wrestle away a weapon, or even throw themselves in front of an assassin's shot. The mayor was a compelling personality. Some reactions he aroused were ferocious and threatening. But that they should finally be summoned to his side to protect him from a prosciutto
and artichoke pizza …

  “I should have come in earlier,” Mrs. Bacon said in a small, quiet voice as the boots of a paramedic team squished ruthlessly over the thick olive-colored carpet of the mayor's office. The head of that shift's security team, a large blond man whose shoulders strained against the sockets of his dull gray suit, had taken Mrs. Bacon gingerly into his long arms and softly patted her back.

  “It would have made no difference,” he assured her. “It happened so quickly.”

  “I could have cleared out … all this,” she said, making a small, stabbing motion at the melting bourbon, the curling pizza, and the mayor's abandoned slacks on the sofa next to the sheaf of Indiana-offending magazines.

  “It doesn't matter,” the security chief reassured her.

  “It's just so … pathetic,” said Mrs. Bacon.

  A paramedic crew had been assigned to an anteroom near the mayor's office a few years before. It was more a sign of the times than of the mayor's conspicuous magnitude in the city, or even the robust demands he made on his health. In five years of duty, the crew had transported just one case to the hospital (an old alderman, Stefano Tripoli of the 11th, snipped himself while zipping up in the men's room; thereafter he was known as Lefty), and one case to the morgue (a homeless man who had frozen to death while trying to sleep through a snowstorm against the Randolph Street wall of City Hall).

  A woman paramedic held up the mayor's gray slacks by a belt loop. They looked like the skin of a small elephant.

  “No wallet. No keys,” she announced.

  “He wasn't robbed,” said Mrs. Bacon.

  “We carried everything,” the security chief explained.

  The mayor's empty pockets were renowned. He believed it was a mark of distinction to walk through each day unencumbered by the tedious need to fish out bills or coins. “You jangle with each step,” he once told his guards. “How can a man concentrate?”