That seemed to be a repetition of words he’d heard from his father more than once; Ira turned red, but subsided.
“The night I stayed late putting together an argument for the Buy-Smart women, Spike was working late, too. Every now and then he’d make some crude crack about how even if I got the case, I’d be a fool in the courtroom—fall over my feet because I was too fat to see them, or get a mistrial for making a pass at the judge—like you, Spike and Mandel and the others assumed I was queer and they loved to rub it in. By and by, McClelland came in. He went to his office and Spike, giving me this shit-eating grin, went in with him. McClelland’s office shared a wall with the women’s toilet, but Annie and Thelma, they were the only two women on staff and neither of them was in, so I went in and heard their whole conversation through the grate.”
“Sneaking into the women’s toilet, no, not even that was beneath you,” Ira said.
“I heard McClelland feed Spike his presentation,” Joel shouted. “I heard that, and then I got to be part of the process of watching Spike win the chance to take the case to trial. Which he lost, even with McClelland in the second chair, and then I realized, after he ran for office and became our state rep, that Spike wanted to lose the case. Buy-Smart gave him campaign contributions. The whole thing was a fucking racket.
“And that’s what happened with Stella. We all had to make our case, and I didn’t want to take part. Was I a crybaby? A queer crybaby, not big enough to play in the big leagues? Didn’t I know about Gideon v. Wainwright? Stella might be an unpleasant defendant, but she deserved counsel. This was how lawyers proved themselves, but if I wanted to sit in a corner and masturbate over Annie instead of pulling my weight in the firm—apparently I could be queer and in love with Annie at the same time! And so on it went and so of course, whiny crybaby that I am, I caved under the pressure. Not like you: you would have stood up to Spike and Mandel and McClelland like you did to Richie Daley and the Machine when they came after you. Just like you did to George Wallace in Selma. But not me. And now, by God, I am going to have a drink, and fuck you, Ira Previn. Fuck you and fuck all those like you.”
IT AIN’T BEANBAG
“That was terrible,” Bernie said when we were back in the car.
“Yes, I’m sorry you heard all that. It’s the bad part about my job—trying to find out what happened tears scabs off wounds and you see people at their rawest.”
“But who was right? Joel is a crybaby, like his father says. Maybe he was wrong about the people he used to work for?”
“I don’t think so. For one thing, I don’t know Spike Hurlihey personally, but I know how he operates, running the House of Representatives in Illinois. He does bully people and pressure people, and force them to give him money if they want to do business in the state.”
“What was this machine that the father stood up to?”
I tried to give Bernie a one-paragraph primer on Illinois politics and power. “Politics is a way dirtier game than hockey.”
“Hockey isn’t dirty!”
“Enforcers?” I quizzed her. “Trying to whack people in the ankles to get them out of your way?”
“Oh, that—it’s what you have to do if you want to win.”
“Maybe you’ll become a U.S. citizen after you finish with Northwestern: you’d be perfect in a state legislature. Congress, for that matter. Money changes hands, and sometimes there’s physical violence, too. Like the first Mayor Daley—he had goons who went around breaking windows on people’s cars or houses if they put up posters for candidates running against him. Death threats—I’m sure Ira wasn’t exaggerating when he said he got those. But the biggest thing is having to give a lot of money to politicians if you want to do business, or have laws passed in your favor. It’s a terrible system. And it sounds as though Spike Hurlihey got his training in a nice nest of vipers.”
“Hockey is definitely not so dirty as that. And it’s easier to understand. Does anything the crybaby said make you know if he was lying about Uncle Boom-Boom and the diary?”
“He made me know about someone else who was lying, or at least holding back on the truth. I want to talk to her while I’m still south, but I can drop you at the Metra station to catch a train back to the Loop.”
Bernie elected to ride over to Ninetieth and Commercial with me, to Rory Scanlon’s building, where Thelma Kalvin held the fort for the Paris-shopping Nina Quarles.
It was nearly the end of the business day when we pulled up in front of Scanlon’s building and Thelma Kalvin was not happy to see us.
“We’re about to close the office. If you make an appointment for later in the month we will find a way to fit you in.”