If you don’t know Lawlor, it’s because you get all your news from microform copies of the Chicago Daily News. Local boy made, well, “good” would be putting a values spin on it. Local boy made national superstar was more like it.
Although I tried never to watch the show, you can’t live in Chicago and not know Lawlor’s face—it’s on the sides of buses, on billboards, on the back of the Herald-Star. GEN, the Global Entertainment Network, whose lead cable news show Lawlor hosts, often features him on its billboard along the Kennedy Expressway.
Lawlor’s signature is a blue-checked work shirt, open at the throat to show he’s a working man who scorns the suit and tie of an effete liberal journalist. His thick black hair is artfully tousled on-air: America’s in danger, I don’t have time to comb my hair!
For his anniversary carnival, Lawlor incongruously wore his checked shirt with a dinner jacket, a modern one with square pockets sewn to the jacket front. An American flag picked out in jewels was on the lapel. It had a fancy little ear of corn on top of it, as if to point out that he could afford diamonds and rubies, but he was basically a Midwest hick at heart.
Lawlor was working the room with one of those top-grossing stars whose name and face you keep seeing in Us and People. My red evening dress is a backless ankle-length number, but the star, whose smile seemed epoxied in place, made me feel overdressed. When Lawlor came over to where I was standing with Murray Ryerson, I tried, discreetly, to see how his date kept her breasts from tumbling out of the front of her dress, since it opened all the way to her waist. More epoxy, I decided, keeping a glass in my right hand and food in my left so that I wouldn’t have to touch Lawlor.
“Hey, Ryerson, thanks for showing up.” Lawlor’s eyes scanned the room behind us, looking for people more worth his attention.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Murray said with unnecessary heartiness.
Lawlor smirked. “And who’s the talent?”
“V. I. Warshawski,” I said.
“I haven’t seen you before. Out of town?”
“Totally local,” I assured him. “Steel City. And you?”
“What’s ‘Steal City’? The Chicago motto?”
“Very clever, Mr. Lawlor. I’ll have to put that in my blog, how clever you are, and what a thrill to meet you, and so on.”
I kept my voice languid, trying, for Murray’s sake, to keep the venom I felt out of it. Even so, Lawlor’s lips tightened and his eyes narrowed. He put his hand on the star’s elbow and started to guide her away, but she stayed put. Perhaps she didn’t like him any better than I did; perhaps it was her publicist’s idea that she be seen with him on the entertainment sites.
“Are you with GEN?” she asked.
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Murray Ryerson and I have worked together on a number of stories.”
Lawlor eyed me in a way that made me long to take his ribs apart. “She your legwoman, Ryerson? Why’d the network give you the one with the body and me the ugliest guy in Chicago?”
“I guess our looks match our results,” I said.
Lawlor frowned; the veneer of charm vanished to expose a startling rage. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Murray knocked my arm hard enough that the wine sloshed over the rim of the glass. We all exclaimed at the mishap, and the star allowed Lawlor to lead her away.
“Why the fuck did you have to say that?” Murray demanded.
“It was just banter, Murray. I didn’t know he was sacred and that you’re not allowed to answer back to his gibes. Is it critical for your career for me to find him and apologize?”
“No, no, don’t!” Murray said. “Your apology might involve black eyes and stuff that would really end my career.”
“And that flag pin—does he have that glued to every garment he owns?” I fumed. “What’s with the ear of corn? Is he showing that he’s the corniest man in America?”
“Where have you been since campaign season started, Vic? That’s Helen Kendrick’s signature—U.S. flag with corn from the heartland. Ethanol is a big chunk of her husband’s family fortune, you know that. And Lawlor is her number-one booster.”
Kendrick was running for Senate. She thought the last time America had been a great country was the day before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, so it was no surprise that Lawlor backed her campaign.
Various other media and entertainment celebrities drifted by. If I did keep a blog, I’d have written up the number of national figures who felt their careers required them to get freshly Botoxed and painted, and show up in little numbers by Chloé or Vera Wang. I didn’t care about spotting stars of GEN’s reality show All-American Hero. What staggered me were the senators and even Supreme Court justices who’d flown in from Washington to see and be seen. That told a sobering tale of how influential Lawlor’s voice was on America’s political scene.
A few minutes later, Harold Weekes, head of GEN’s news division, ambled by. Even though I thought he was the slime on the pond, I smiled, said little or nothing, and even let him leer at my cleavage.