Once the axe had actually fallen, Murray seemed more relaxed. He took a job with Sophy Durango, as her campaign’s media adviser. They exploited the Kendrick campaign’s hiring of Miles Wuchnik to dig up dirt that didn’t exist on Chaim Salanter, and Durango’s poll numbers going into the end of summer kept climbing. Sometimes class wins.
Murray and I both put as much muscle as we could into getting Tommy Glover released. Murray framed the copy of the Southwest Gazette story he’d bought for the show; I delivered it to Tommy Glover in person.
Tania Metzger at Ruhetal agreed to act as Tommy’s advocate. She got the Open Tabernacle Church to rally around him—they were, after all, an open community, embracing people wherever they might be on life’s journey. The church was able to get his arrest voided, although that took an amazing amount of work. And they found a place for him in a group home. The Tampier Lake Township Fire Department made him their honorary mascot, so that was one happy ending.
Dick came to see me one night. I was back in my office part-time, trying to assure my clients that I hadn’t become such a media hound that I’d forgotten my professional commitments. Dick wouldn’t apologize for his partners, but he did say that the “incident” had caused them to draw up strict guidelines for the use of outside investigators, and what those investigators could do.
“Louis has agreed to take early retirement. We believe him when he says he didn’t know he was giving Xavier Jurgens money to kill Miles Wuchnik, but we’re a little concerned about the ethical lines he may have crossed.”
I didn’t argue with him about it—he’d done more than many in his position might have. He left behind a case of Barolo. I was touched that he’d remembered my favorite wine after all these years, although I couldn’t help wondering if I was letting myself be bribed into silence by accepting it.
Right before Labor Day, Chaim Salanter sent his private jet to fly me to Marlboro with Max and Lotty so we could attend Jake’s end-of-the-season concerts. The pilot had just brought Arielle Zitter and Nia Durango back from Israel in time to start the school year. Arielle, like me, had fully recovered from her drug overdose.
When we boarded Salanter’s plane, the flight attendant gave us each an envelope, with information about the jet’s amenities, how to make phone calls on board, and the sanitized, public version of Chaim Salanter’s life. My envelope also included a check, for fifty thousand dollars, drawn on Salanter Enterprises, labeled “for professional services.” Which covers a lot of ground indeed.
Chaim’s gratitude spread in several directions. He persuaded Boadicea Jones to come to Chicago to give a private reading from her new Carmilla book for the girls in the Malina Foundation’s book groups. That event brought girls and parents back to Malina in record numbers. He also hired Kira and Lucy’s mother to work as the resident housekeeper at his fifteen-room Michigan cottage—another happy ending, especially since he had a couple of horses out there.
My own happiness during the flight to Marlboro was muted: Leydon had died the week before. Murray’s on-air claim that she had regained consciousness was never true—just an effort to get Wade to expose himself.
I went to the funeral with Faith and her daughter, Trina. Neither Sewall nor his mother attended. Leydon’s will specified that she wanted to be cremated, and her ashes spread in Forest Park’s Waldheim Cemetery, where the anarchists Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman lay. Sewall threatened to go to court to block the burial, claiming that Leydon was not in her right mind or she wouldn’t have chosen a posthumous way to embarrass her family further.
Faith told Sewall that by the time he got an injunction, he’d have to get a rake to collect his sister’s ashes, and that he would look pretty darned stupid. I don’t know who was more impressed, Trina or me.
Jake’s High Plainsong group played the funeral service at Rockefeller Chapel. They let me dust off my rusty alto to take part in singing the Stravinsky setting of Psalm 39, which Leydon had liked all those years ago. Dean Knaub conducted the service and delivered the eulogy.
“We know that Leydon did not believe in God, or the Resurrection of the Body, but there is an immortality to love, to the love within Leydon that made her lay down her life for a stranger, to the love of her friend, Victoria, who risked her own life to see justice done to that same stranger.
“Perfect love casts out fear, we are told. None of us is capable of perfect love, but as we help each other along this difficult journey which is life, the love we bear for one another does ease our burdens. And even in death, that love binds us together; truly, in death, we are not divided.”