Florence Farley leaned forward, arms on her desk, head lowered, eyes boring into Doyle’s. She said, “And now, at last, in the case of Harvey Rexroth we have proof. It comes from a despicable source, Mortvedt, and his dim-witted accomplice Repke. That is true. But we’ll take it, and use it. We have taped and signed confessions from both of them implicating Rexroth. And he’s worth cutting a deal to get,” she emphasized, slapping her hand on the desk for emphasis.
When Farley had finished, Doyle silently looked out the window behind her. Then he said, “A man I know, Moe Kellman, tells me that years ago Rexroth made serious enemies of a couple of men who are high up in the government today.” The implication hung in the air.
Farley smiled but said nothing. “Could it be possible,” Jack pressed on, “that politics has reared its ugly head here?”
Florence Farley rose to her feet. She shook Doyle’s hand again. With a little smile cold enough to freeze a chunk of warmed brie, she said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Doyle.”
Chapter 34
Exiting the Dirksen Building, Doyle hit a wall of Chicago heat. It was nearly noon, the thermometer on a nearby bank building read a near-autumn record ninety-three degrees, and he had three hours to kill before his flight back to Lexington. His frustrating session with Florence Farley had ratcheted up his blood pressure so much that he stopped in the plaza and took a few deep breaths of the pollution-laden downtown air. That didn’t seem to help. He loosened his tie and took off his sport coat as he walked to the line of cabs on Dearborn Street. Still seething at the government’s rationalization for going easy on Mortvedt, Doyle decided to vent in the company of the only man in town who knew what had been going on with him. He gave the cabbie the address of Moe Kellman’s office.
Hillary, another one of Kellman Furriers’ standard-issue beauties working the front desk, smiled when Doyle walked in, then shook her head. “You just missed him, maybe five minutes,” she said. “Shall I call Mr. Kellman on his cell phone?”
“That’d be great,” Doyle said. “Thanks.”
When the connection had been made, Hillary handed the phone to Doyle. He heard Kellman say, “Jack, welcome back again. How was your command appearance at the Dirksen?” Doyle could picture Kellman’s sly grin at this statement.
I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of asking how he knew about that, Doyle thought.
After a pause, Moe said, “Friend of mine spotted you going in there this morning. I’m glad you got in touch. Here’s where you can meet me. I’ll send my driver for you.” Kellman gave him an address on Sheffield Avenue.
“Wrigleyville, right?”
“You’ll see,” Kellman said, cutting the connection.
Fifteen minutes later Kellman’s driver, a retired Chicago police sergeant named Pete Dunleavy, pulled Kellman’s white Lincoln town car over to the curb in front of a brownstone on Sheffield on Chicago’s north side. It was one the properties directly across the street from Wrigley Field. “You’ll find Mr. Kellman on the top floor,” Dunleavy said.
The front door of the old but recently refurbished structure was open. So was a gate in front of the stairwell. There were apparently two apartments on each of the first three floors of the structure. Doyle read the names on the mailboxes. Scarlatti, Greenberg, Angelici, Grossman, DiCastri, Kellman.… Maybe this is a chapter of the Jewish-Italian Mutual Aid Society, Doyle thought as he began walking up the carpeted stairs.
The top floor proved to be a large loft space with two washrooms, a long bar, and several couches and chairs, the west doorway leading to the spacious front porch. Moe was standing outside, leaning against one of the sturdy wooden railings that bordered the large space.
Doyle had previously viewed these special Cubs-watching venues only on television. Seeing one of them up close, he was impressed. The porch area contained rows of stadium chairs as well as more tables, all overlooking the nearby ballpark. There were two large Weber gas grills adjacent to wash tubs meant to hold kegs of beer. This site was high enough so that most of the interior of Wrigley Field could be seen. Now, of course, with the Cubs season recently concluded in an all-too-familiar deluge of heartbreak and despair, the park was empty.
Moe waved a greeting, then punched some more figures into a handheld calculator. Finished, he smiled and walked forward, extending his hand. “Great to see you, Jack. You look tip-top.”
“Don’t be deceived,” Doyle said.
Kellman said, “Let’s get into the air-conditioning.” They walked into the loft and sat at a table, Doyle reaching for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Kellman’s face was dry beneath his bushy head of white hair.
“You got a relative living here, Moe? I saw ‘Kellman’ on one of the mailboxes downstairs.”
Kellman nodded. “That’s one of my nephews. Goes to law school at Loyola. He kind of keeps an eye on things for us here. Supervises crowd control on game days.”
Doyle grinned. “I suppose ‘us’ stands for your ‘people.’”
A look of irritation flitted across Kellman’s face before he said, “Yes, Jack, ‘my people.’ We bought this property a couple of years ago. The old owner had been selling a few lawn chair seats on the porch for some Cubs games. We spent some money and moved the place up several notches.”
“How much business do you do up here?”
Moe pointed at the calculator that lay on the table. “I just did some numbers,” he said. “If we add six more seats, we’ll bump the per-game gross to over thirteen grand.”
Doyle was stunned. He knew Kellman wasn’t given to exaggerating. The little man said, “The clientele is mainly young, professional people-traders, brokers, lawyers, they get together and form partnerships that rent the space for games. We’ve got room for ninety people up here for a game, on the roof and inside watching on those big TVs. We charge a hundred and fifty bucks a head. For that they get free drinks from thirty minutes before the game to thirty minutes after, free barbecue all during the game served by a good-looking wait staff. And they get the chance to look at the game from up here on high-when they’re not schmoozing, or hustling, or working their cell phones, or trying to pick each other up.”
“Jesus,” Jack said, as he began calculating. “The Cubs have eighty-one home games a year. But you don’t have a full house up here for every game, right?”
“Wrong. There’s so much young money floating around this town you wouldn’t believe it. And don’t forget the power of the attraction. A year ago the Cubs only won sixty-five games and raised their ticket prices. This year they got into the playoffs, so I guarantee you they’ll raise their prices again. And the joint will still be packed for most of the season. It’s incredible.”
Doyle reflected on the recent spate of Cubs mania. Only days before, the team had been within five outs of winning its first pennant since 1945. Then Lady Luck stepped in, wearing a malicious grin. A fan sitting in the front row of the grandstand deflected an apparently catchable foul ball away from the Cubs left fielder. Given new life, the opposing hitter reached base, and the Cubs collapsed, losing that game, then the next one, thus being eliminated. The hapless fan who had touched the foul ball was vilified throughout Cubdom, his suburban residence even being picketed after it was shown on a local television station. The notorious ball, recovered by an opportunistic spectator, was auctioned off for more than one hundred thousand dollars, its new owner vowing to destroy it in a public ceremony. Reading of all this while in Kentucky, Doyle had said to himself, “What a rube town I come from.”
Moe broke the silence. “You remember Mike Royko?”
“Naturally,” Doyle responded to this mention of the late, famed Chicago newspaper columnist.