Burn Marks

6

County Picnic

Once we were on the Kennedy I lost track of Michael. He could afford to do eighty-the highway patrol would give him a professional wink they wouldn’t extend to me. He was waiting for me at the exit to the Northwest Tollway; I had him more or less in view as we started winding our way through the hills that swell to the northwest as you leave Chicago.

I’m not sure I would have found Boots’s spread if I hadn’t been following Michael, at least not on the first go-round. The entrance, which lay on a twisting unlabeled street, was a discreet opening in the hedge separating the road from the gaze of the vulgar. Michael had been going close to sixty around the curves. He braked the Corvette and turned without warning, so that I had to screech to a halt beyond the entrance and find a long enough flat stretch to make a U in. Boys will be boys.

He was waiting for me beside a gate that lay ten feet or so from the hole in the hedge I had turned through. The shrubbery lining the drive partly concealed a ten-foot-high fence connected to the gate. If you tried to breach the ramparts anyway there were a couple of sheriff’s deputies to shoot you down.

“Sorry, Vic,” Furey said penitently, “I thought the turn off was up the road another half mile. Shouldn’t have been showing off on such a dangerous stretch.” When one of the deputies asked me for my invitation, Furey added, “Oh, don’t bother her-she’s with me.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it.” I fished in my pocket for the invitation and held it out, but the guard waved me on without looking at it. This assumption of my relationship to Michael added to my ill humor. I got back into my Chevy while Michael joked with the other men, maneuvered around the Corvette, and drove away with a little spit of gravel. Before the road twisted I could see Furey get back into the Corvette, but I turned a bend and found myself alone on a tree-lined drive.

Whatever damage the summer had done to the corn crop, it hadn’t hurt Boots particularly. The trees here showed full, graceful leaves and the grass beyond them was thick and green. In the distance I could make out a stand of corn. I guess if you’re chairman of the County Board there are ways to get water to your farm.

I turned another bend and found myself at the party. I’d been hearing music blaring in the distance ever since leaving the front gate. Now I could see a big bandstand beyond the main house with a band in straw boaters and navy blazers going full bore. On the other side of the house smoke hovered lazily over what was presumably the barbecue pit. Boots was sacrificing one of his own cows to Roz’s campaign.

A sheriff’s deputy, swinging an outsize flashlight, directed me to a crowd of cars in a big yard northeast of the house. Maybe it was a pasture-I remembered seeing one on a Girl Scout outing when I was eleven. Despite the presence of the deputies-or because of them-I carefully locked the Chevy.

Furey caught up with me as I headed toward the bandstand where most of the party was gathered. “Goddamnit, Vic, what’s making you so shirty?”

I stopped to look at him. “Michael, I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the doubtful pleasure of coming to this shindig. I’m not your date, nor yet ‘the little woman’ whom you can tuck under your arm and hustle past the guards.”

His good-humored face tightened into a scowl. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You treated me like a cipher out there-leaving me standing in the road and then telling the deputies to ignore me because I was your appendage. I don’t like it.”

He flung up his hands in exasperation. “I was trying to do you a favor, save you a little hassle with the boys at the gate. If I’d known you were going to treat it like a mortal insult I’d of saved my breath.”

He strode of toward the crowd. I followed him slowly, irritated as much with myself as with Furey. I didn’t like the little trick stunt he’d pulled at the turnoff, but that didn’t justify my retaliating in kind. Maybe frustration over Elena’s disappearance was making me testy. Or my innate bad humor. Or just being at a Cook County political fund-raiser.

The last time I remembered seeing Boots in the news one of his bodyguards had beaten in the face of a man who had come too close to the boss after a County Board meeting. The man claimed Boots had murdered his daughter- heavy accusations, although he had a long history at Elgin-but breaking someone’s nose seemed like an excessive response to insanity. In fairness to Boots, he’d picked up the guy’s hospital tab later on-but why did he need bodyguards at all?

That was only the most recent public episode Meagher had been involved in. He also had fingers in dozens of business ventures in the state, the kinds of deals where everybody gets rich if they know which way the tax breaks are going to land. Meagher was a you-scratch-my-back kind of guy-he wouldn’t be hosting Rosalyn’s find-raiser if she hadn’t made some significant concessions to him.

It wasn’t as though Roz were a close pal. She’d been a community organizer in Logan Square when I was with the PD. I’d worked with her on some seminars on law and the community-some ABC’s to teach the residents their rights in arenas ranging from housing to immigration officers. Roz was bright, energetic, and a skillful politician. And ambitious. And that meant getting into bed with Boots if she was going to rule a wider sphere than Logan Square. I understood that and I knew it wasn’t any of my business, anyway. So why was I getting my tail in a knot?

I skirted my way through the crowd at the bandstand to a bright canopy covering the refreshment arena. Young women in thigh-high minis were threading their way cheerfully through the throng with canapé-laden trays. Just the costume for a feminist activist like Rosalyn, I snarled to myself. I went up to the bar and got a rum and tonic.

Drink in hand, I jostled aimlessly through the crowd. Behind the refreshment tent people were gathered in a thick, noisy clump, loud enough to drown out the band. Beyond that group the throng thinned down rapidly- the land there was hilly and uncultivated, leading into a small wood.

The terrain and lack of chairs notwithstanding, most of the women were wearing nylons and heels. Two of them had come prepared, though-they were sitting on a blanket, stretching their long, tanned legs and taking innocent pleasure in their own beauty. As I passed they cried out to me in an enthusiastic chorus:

“Vic! Ernie told us you might be here. Come sit down. LeAnn’s pregnant and we didn’t want to spend the afternoon standing in the heat.”

I obligingly stopped for a moment. If LeAnn was pregnant it could only be a matter of months before Clara started a new baby as well. The two had been inseparable since childhood and now, adult and married, they lived in adjoining Oak Brook mansions, were in and out of each other’s houses all day long to borrow clothes, share a cup of coffee, or entertain their children together. And while Clara’s light curls contrasted with LeAnn’s straight dark hair, they looked almost indistinguishable in their Anne Klein shorts suits.

“You having a good time?” Clara asked.

“Great. When is the baby due?”

“Not until the end of March. We’re only telling friends right now.”

I smiled. That included about half the people at the picnic-anyone she knew by name.

I’d met them through Michael Furey. LeAnn was married to Ernie Wunsch and Clara to Ron Grasso. Michael’s continued tightness with the pals of his youth never ceased to astound me. Since leaving South Chicago for college I’ve scarcely seen any of the people I grew up with. But in addition to Ernie and Ron, Michael had seven or eight boyhood friends who got together once a month for poker, went to Eagle River each October to shoot deer, and spent every New Year’s Eve together with their wives. The pals were a major reason I’d never really clicked with Michael. Since I had gone out with him, though, LeAnn and Clara now treated me as if I were one of the girls.

I asked politely about the children, two each, and was gladdened to learn how much they loved school, how happy LeAnn was that they were in Oak Brook now and didn’t have to worry about the public schools, an interjection from Clara on what a good time they’d had themselves as little girls in Norwood Park, but everything was so different now.

“Ron and Ernie here?” I said idly.

“Oh, yes. They went off hours ago to get us something to drink. But they know so many people here I’m sure they got waylaid or sidetracked or something.”

I offered to bring them something, but they laughed and said they didn’t mind waiting. LeAnn put a well-manicured hand on my knee.

“You have such a good heart, Vic. We don’t want to interfere, but we know you’d be great for Michael. We were just talking about the two of you when you showed up.”

I grinned. “Thanks. I appreciate the testimonial.” I pushed myself to my feet, spilling my drink down my pants leg.

LeeAnn looked at me anxiously. “I haven’t offended you, have I? Ernie’s always on my case for saying whatever comes into my head without thinking first.” She reached into a large beach bag and pulled out a handful of Kleenex for me.

I dabbed at the khaki. “Nope. Trouble is, Michael’s a Sox fan-I just don’t think we could ever work things out.”

They gave little shrieks of protesting laughter. I left to their chorus of “You can’t be serious, Vic.”

I turned back through the crowd to replace my drink. Near the entrance to the tent I caught sight of Ron and Ernie. They were deep in conversation with Michael and a couple of other men. Their heads were drawn together so that they could talk over the noise. They were so intent that they didn’t notice my walking up. I tapped Michael on the arm.

He jumped and swore. When he saw it was me he put an arm around me, but he looked cautiously at the other men, as if to see how they took my entrance. “Hiya, Vic. Enjoying yourself?”

“I’m having a great time. You, too, by the looks of it.”

He again looked doubtfully from his companions to me. “We’re right in the middle of something now. Can I find you in about ten minutes?”

So much for gestures of reconciliation. I grinned savagely but tried to keep my tone light. “You can try.”

I turned on my heel, but Ron Grasso put out an arm. “Vic, honey. Good to see you. Don’t mind Furey here- he got out on the wrong side of bed today… No business is more important than a beautiful lady, Mickey. And nothing’s more dangerous than keeping one of them waiting.”

The other men laughed politely, but Michael looked at me seriously. Maybe he was still pissed. On the other hand, he knows that kind of joke rubs me the wrong way, so maybe he was trying in turn for conciliation. I was barely willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Ron introduced me to the two strangers-Luis Schmidt and Carl Martinez, also in construction. And supporters of Rosalyn’s campaign.

“Vic’s an old friend of Rosalyn’s, aren’t you?” Ron supplied.

I nodded. “We used to work together in Logan Square.”

“You were an organizer?” Schmidt asked.

“I was a lawyer. I used to help out on legal issues-immigration, housing, that kind of thing. I’m a detective now.”

“Detective, huh? Like Sergeant Furey here?” That was Schmidt, a short, stocky man with arms the size of sewer pipes straining his jacket sleeves.

They were just interested enough to require an answer. “I work for myself. Kind of the Magnum, P.I. of Chicago.”

“Vic looks into fraud cases,” Ron put in. “She has quite a track record. Keeps Ernie and me on the straight and narrow, let me tell you.”

Everyone laughed politely. His comment seemed so unanswerable that I didn’t try. “I ran into LeAnn and Clara behind the tent,” I said instead. “They thought you guys were bringing them something to drink.”

Ernie hit his forehead. “Mind like cement after pouring it all these years. I’ll take care of the girls, Ronnie-why don’t you guys wait for me here.”

He took my arm and hustled me away to the refreshment tent. “Buy you something, Vic?”

“No, thanks. I’m heading back to the city soon.”

He looked at me seriously, eyes dark in a thin, weather-beaten face. “Don’t take Mickey too seriously. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

I nodded solemnly. “I know that, Ernie. And I think this is a good time to leave him alone, let him get it sorted out.”

“Could you at least wait until after dinner-go talk to the girls for a while?”

He was hoping I’d take their drinks to them. I smiled gently. “Sorry, Ernie. I know LeAnn would love to see you for a few minutes before you plunge back into it with the boys. She’s sitting around back of here with Clara.”

“Okay, Vic, okay.” He shoved his way to the front of the line. Something in the set of his shoulders told me he was wondering what the hell Mickey saw in me.