The fried something was spicy, which I liked, but gooey, which I didn’t. I tried a spoonful of a slaw, which was crunchy with a pleasing peanut under-taste. I was about to cut into a whole grilled fish when the gaveller noticed.
“You’re eating our food!”
“It’s been on my table getting cold,” I said. “I thought you’d decided you didn’t want it.”
The note-maker finally looked up as his pals grabbed the food and slapped it onto their own table. “Watch out; you’re spilling sauce on the map. It’s the one Taggett gave me—I haven’t had time to make a copy!”
He dabbed anxiously at the document in front of him. Glare from the overhead lights made it hard for me to see, but I could tell it depicted the lakefront. A thick black line showed the current shoreline; dotted lines a few inches to the right, filled in with orange and green, presumably showed the proposed landfill.
Mona saw me looking. “This is private business! Simon, put all those papers away so we can eat. Taggett’s coming tonight—we can go over it with him after the meeting.”
Gifford Taggett was superintendent of the Chicago Park District. Like every other office in the city or county, who you knew mattered more than what you knew. Taggett had served as ward committeeman, fronted deals for road construction, roughed up opposition to garbage dumping in the marshes on the far South Side. As a faithful foot soldier for the Cook County Democrats, he’d been handsomely rewarded with the patronage-rich post of park superintendent.
“If the map belongs to the Park District, surely it’s public business,” I said. “I’m a Cook County taxpayer, so I have an interest in it.”
“These are preliminary drawings.” Simon rolled up the map after one last anxious dab with his napkin.
“They’re not the ones your boy Leo showed at your last meeting?”
“The process is iterative,” Simon said stiffly. “After tonight, we’ll have a sense of which way public reaction is leaning.” Assisted by an impatient Mona, he shuffled the other papers into a haphazard stack and set them next to him on the bench.
The harassed server came to take my order. I pointed at the crunchy slaw and grilled fish my neighbors were eating and she raced off again.
“By the way,” I said, “you never did tell me whether you saw what happened this morning with Lydia Zamir.”
Simon nodded. “That’s all anyone could talk about in the office today. Metra needs to get fencing in place so no one else can get onto those tracks.”
“You know she’s missing, then?”
“Hadn’t heard that,” the gaveller huffed.
“I called Streets and San and they came out with a power hose to clean that underpass,” Mona said. “If she shows up there again, I’m going to take stronger action.”
“Right,” I said. “The rats and all. Did you know her name before she made today’s news?”
All three shook their heads, but Mona added, “Even if we’d known she was some kind of singer, that didn’t make it right for her to camp out under the tracks like that. The noise she made—we’re trying to attract tourists and businesses here. A smelly loud homeless person, even if she’s a musician, drives people away. She used to sleep on the university campus, but they managed to force her to leave. SLICK doesn’t have that kind of power.”
“I think we’re inured to the homeless in America,” I said. “I see them in front of Neiman Marcus when I’m on North Michigan, but that doesn’t keep people out of the store. Why do you think Coop cares about her?”
Mona’s thin red lips flattened. “To make himself into a nuisance. If we want x, he demands y, simply to be as obstructive as possible.”
“So you don’t think he has a genuine interest in her well-being?”
“You mind telling us your name and why you care?” The gaveller’s eyes were bright with suspicion.
“V.I. Warshawski.” I handed out cards.
“Investigator?” the gaveller growled. “What does that mean?”
“Someone who carries out inquiries into the causes or background of events.” I smiled brightly.
“Did Coop hire you to follow us?” Mona demanded.
“Funnily enough, Coop thinks you hired me to follow him. Unfortunately, my trailing skills have gotten soft in the online era. I have no idea where he is. That’s what I was hoping you could tell me—his last name, a phone number, an address.”
“He’s never signed in at any SLICK meeting,” the gaveller complained. “He only shows up when he wants to cause trouble.”
“Which means he’ll probably be there tonight,” Simon added.
“He has anger management issues,” Mona said. “People tell me he can’t hold down a job because he ends up blowing up at his boss or coworkers if they rub him the wrong way.”
She couldn’t tell me what people had said this—just people.
The three finished their meal as my food arrived. They paid quickly but had some trouble extricating themselves from the table—they kept dropping spreadsheets and maps, but the gaveller put his substantial bulk between me and their table to keep me from lending a hand.
9
A Super Meeting
Even though I got to the Prairie Savings and Loan building late, a lot of people were still in the lobby. Community groups—birders, fair housing advocates, community benefits supporters―were handing out flyers. Everyone was eager to talk to me about the need to protect the lake or to make sure local people got jobs if the city undertook a major reconfiguration of the shoreline.
“Taggett’s coming. It’s our chance to confront him.” I heard this a dozen times: no matter what project or political viewpoint, everyone knew that the park superintendent was the first and last court of appeal.
When I’d pushed my way into the meeting room, I looked around for Bernie. She was in the front row, close to the stage where Leo Prinz sat. From the back of the room, I’d seen Simon push Leo away from the table where the SLICK officers were seated. He was laying out charts and maps and apparently told Leo to move his computer—the uproar from the crowd meant I couldn’t be sure what anyone was saying. Leo was balancing his computer on his knees, frowning at the machine, which kept sliding off his legs. He looked up once at Bernie, but blushed and turned instantly back to his laptop.
I managed to work my way to the front and tapped Bernie on the shoulder.
She sprang up, oblivious to the people she bumped into. “Oh, Vic! You’re here! Merci mille fois. Leo is nervous; it does him good to have friends in the audience. He is brilliant, you understand, but shy.”
“That’s okay, Bernie—you have enough energy for two. Or sixteen, for that matter.”
I found a chair near the back, behind the white-haired woman I’d spoken to after the previous meeting. Nashita, that was her name.
From the snatches of talk around me, excitement over Lydia Zamir appeared greater than interest in Gifford Taggett and the lake. Landfill and federal guidelines weren’t as gripping as learning that a singer with a tragic history had been camping nearby.
I tried picking out strands of conversation: people were vehement about the quality of Zamir’s music—some thought she’d been a talented and fearless artist, others that they were tired of so-called artists hammering their audiences with political messages. Still others were focused on Metra’s responsibility for this morning’s near-tragedy.