An hour with the library’s computer specialist reinforced my need to buy my own machine. Not that the specialist wasn’t helpful—she was, very. But the amount of information available at the end of a phone line was so great, and my need for it so strong, that it didn’t make sense to be dependent on the hours the library was open.
I carried the sheaf of printouts to a crowded table in the periodicals room, one of the few places in the building where one could actually sit and read. My immediate seatmates included a small gray man with a thin mustache who was poring over Scientific American and keeping up an anxious commentary under his breath. It wasn’t clear whether he was reacting to the article or life in general. On my other side a bigger man was reading the Herald-Star one word at a time, running a finger under the sentences as he moved his lips. I hoped the new library would include showers in the rest rooms. It would be a big help, if not for my seatmate at least for anyone who had to sit near him in the future.
Blotting out the smell as best I could, I began reading about Jason Felitti, owner of Diamond Head Motors. He was Peter’s brother, younger by three years (born in 1931), educated at Northwestern (business), dabbling in politics and entrepreneurship. Peter, one clip mentioned, had also attended Northwestern, taking an engineering degree. Jason, who’d never married, lived in the family home in Naperville, while Peter had moved to Oak Brook with his wife and two daughters in ‘68. A portentous year in lives around the world—why not for Dick’s father-in-law as well?
Amalgamated Portage, the family business, had been founded by Tiepolo Felitti in 1888. It had started as a simple operation—a single pushcart for hauling away scrap. By Tiepolo’s death in the 1919 flu epidemic Amalgamated had become one of the region’s largest cartage firms.
The First World War had helped their rail line enormously. In the thirties they saw the future and it looked like long distance trucking. They were one of the earliest carriers to build a fleet. Since the Second World War they had diversified into mining and smelting, at first with great success and then with what sounded like equally great disaster.
Peter had sold the mining operations at a loss when his father died in 1975. The business now tried to stay closer to its original mission: cartage. In 1985 Peter had bought one of the fledgling overnight delivery services; that seemed to be doing modestly well. Amalgamated remained a closely held family company, so information on it was sketchy.
Jason had inherited shares in Amalgamated when his father died, but it was Peter who took over the firm. In fact, Peter had been on the management committee for years while Jason just seemed to sit on the board. I wondered if Jason had been tagged early as incompetent, or if the family was so rigidly structured that only the oldest son was allowed to manage. In which case, what would happen to it when Peter died, since Jason had no children and Peter only had daughters? Was Dick the shining knight or did the other son-in-law have to fight him for the spoils?
For years Jason’s main energy had gone into Du Page County politics. He had been a water commissioner, had worked on the Deep Tunnel project, and finally had spent twelve years on the county board itself. At the last election he’d decided not to seek a fourth term.
According to a speech that got a few lines in the Herald-Star’s metro edition, Jason announced he wanted to devote himself full-time to business. Ray Gibson at the Trib thought Jason had been worried about some stories his political challenger was digging up, conflict of interest between his role as a county commissioner and his position as a director of U.S. Metropolitan Bank and Trust. But Gib was always expecting the worst of Illinois elected officials—not that they often disappointed him.
Last year Jason had acquired Diamond Head. The story hadn’t merited more than a paragraph in the business pages. The meager coverage didn’t reveal anything about the financing, although the Sun-Times hinted Peter might have provided some backing through Amalgamated. No one seemed to know how much ready cash Amalgamated had, or whether they, too, had acquired a heavy debtload during their mining fiasco. It didn’t sound as though Dick had married into the colossal financial empire I’d always imagined.
“U.S. Met,” I said aloud, forgetting I was in a library.
I startled the little gray man into dropping his magazine. He stared at me briefly, muttering to himself, then scuttled to a distant table, leaving the Scientific American on the floor. I picked it up and laid it on the table, patting it in what was intended as a reassuring manner. He had picked up a paper and was staring at me over its edge. When he realized I was looking at him, he raised the paper to cover his face. It was upside down.