“Mr. Mandel went along with the bullying in his office, I gather—the way Spike Hurlihey taunted you, for instance. What about Mr. McClelland? No one ever mentions him.”
“McClelland? He wined and dined politicians and got them to throw a few alewives our way. He and Mandel figured out how to get rich in a poor neighborhood, but they needed bigger clients, downtown clients, the kind that can pull strings for you. McClelland worked that angle.”
“The Loop office.” I remembered Thelma Kalvin, the manager at Nina Quarles’s law office, mentioning it. “The downtown connections; they were something that Nina Quarles bought from Mandel & McClelland when she took over the South Chicago practice?”
Joel hunched a shoulder. “I suppose. I stopped paying attention to their business a long time ago. Anyway, McClelland wasn’t in the office very often, but when he was, he laughed and clapped along with the rest of the audience over how Hurlihey and his clique talked to me. Only Annie . . .”
“Only Annie didn’t laugh?”
“I helped her with her college applications,” Joel muttered. “She needed to stand out, going up against all those prep school graduates. I helped her write her essays, then I helped her write a song. Her piano playing, she was technically good, but she didn’t have the—the passion to stand out in a crowd, so we thought if she could be a composer . . .” His voice trailed away again.
My brows went up: Joel did have an interest beyond sports and drinking. “Do you still write music?” I asked.
His round cheeks bunched up so high his eyes disappeared. “I fail at everything I touch. My music was derivative, Ira knew enough to tell me that.”
I couldn’t think of any suitable response and even Bernie looked daunted. Joel took the plastic cover off his cup and dug out a handful of ice, which he crunched noisily.
“What about Rory Scanlon?” I finally asked. “The firm is in his building now and there’s a sort of revolving door between the insurance and the legal part of the operations. Was that true in your time, too?”
“Come on, you know the South Side, everyone’s got a finger in everyone’s business,” Joel said. “McClelland and Scanlon both worshipped at Saint Eloy’s. Sol Mandel and my parents belonged to Temple Har HaShem. They pray together, then they get out of the pews and do business with each other.”
“Ira does business with Scanlon and with Nina Quarles?” I asked.
“Quarles doesn’t practice, she just spends the profits. But why shouldn’t we buy our insurance from Scanlon? He’s loyal to the neighborhood, after all, and so is Ira. Scanlon sends Ira some legal business now and then.”
“Most of the people I talk to think Mr. Mandel got you to represent Stella to taunt you. Is that how you felt?”
Next to me, Bernie was quivering with impatience, wanting to leap in with advice about going for the ankles or whacking people under the chin. I put a restraining hand on her arm.
Joel took another handful of ice out of the cup. His eyes flickered to the door—this was painful, he wanted to get away from me to the Pot of Gold. I felt as though I were on Spike Hurlihey’s side, bullying him, and I didn’t like it.
“What about Mandel himself? Nothing anyone is saying makes it possible for me to understand why he would take on Stella’s defense. Annie was his pet, she was the office pet, for that matter—”
“Not everyone felt that way,” Joel said. “She teased Spike and he didn’t like it.”
“Teased him how?”
“Spike passed the bar, but that’s because his dad was the Tenth Ward committeeman, he was tight with the mayor’s family, they pulled a few strings in Springfield after Spike failed the first two times. Word processing was just starting when I worked there, and guys like Spike or Mandel couldn’t type—they’d dictate their mail, so Annie picked up legal ideas from typing everyone’s letters and briefs and so on. She’d give Spike back his letters with paragraphs circled in red and write next to them, ‘I don’t think this is what the statute says. Want me to change it before you send it out?’”
My eyes widened. Hurlihey’s temper was the stuff of legends down in the legislature. Annie must have been brave, or foolhardy, or convinced that Mandel would protect her. Maybe all three.
“You think Hurlihey pushed Mandel to defend Stella because Annie got under his skin?”
Joel reddened but didn’t say anything.
“Did you have a theory at the time?”
“It wasn’t my job to have theories. It isn’t my job to have them now. It’s my job to finish this motion before Ira gets back and shakes his head like a mournful cow over how I can’t get the least thing done in his absence!”
“Right. We’ll get out of your way.” I got to my feet. “Is there anyone who worked in that office, I mean besides Spike Hurlihey, who’s still around?”
“Besides Thelma, you mean?”