“The guy’s pretty damn pompous too,” Farmer weighed in. “I don’t see that side of him playing well with the hoi polloi; the rank-and-file voters in this town don’t have any use for snobs. Hell, when Martindale was out in front of this building last fall blowing hot air around, I went up to him afterwards and asked if he had his eye on the mayor’s chair. And you know what his answer was?”
“I believe we’ve heard the story before, but I don’t suppose that will stop you from regaling us with it yet again,” Anson Masters snorted.
Farmer ignored the sarcasm. “Here’s what he said, and this is verbatim: ‘I am here to serve my city, and if at some future time it is the wish of the populace that that service be in elected office, I have no choice but to accede to those wishes.’ Talk about somebody who stuffs his shirts.”
“Agreed, the guy’s stuffy and arrogant, and probably more than a little naïve, too. But look at what he’s got going for him,” O’Farrell countered, holding out a hand and ticking off reasons on his nicotine-stained fingers.
“First, he’s tall, wavy-haired, and I suppose handsome in a nose-in-the-air kind of way, while Ed Kelly’s short and dumpy and always looks like he’s slept in his suit. So stuffy or not, right there Martindale’s got a lotta the women’s vote, right?
“Second, unlike the mayor, he’s articulate, even if he is spewing bilge most of the time. Hell, he’s big-time college stuff, Harvard and then Yale Law, isn’t it? That makes him strong on Lake Shore Drive, Astor Street, plus Sauganash and Beverly Hills, at the very least.
“Third, although he’s Episcopal — what else? — his wife is a Catholic, same as Kelly, so the mayor don’t get too much of an edge on that count out in the parishes, right?
“Fourth, even though he’s not active in the steel company, the guy is part of a successful family worth millions, and some of the smarts of the previous generations figure to have rubbed off on him. Stack that up against a mayor who’s been in office for what — five years — and hasn’t proved he can run anything well.
“Fifth, and most important, Martindale appears to be as clean as a nun’s habit on Easter morning, while Kelly — well, calling Ed shady doesn’t even begin to describe the man.”
“Yeah, Dirk, but offsetting everything you said, Kelly’s got the machine behind him,” Eddie Metz piped up. “And it’s his own damn machine, his and Pat Nash’s, with Nash pulling all the strings that make our dear mayor dance. You said yourself the city’s solidly Democratic. With all the pork they can hand out, that’s gotta be worth thousands of votes.”
“Pork?” It was the City News kid, frowning again.
“Patronage,” Metz said impatiently. “As in city jobs, handouts, and shit like that.”
O’Farrell waved a hand dismissively. “I still say Martindale can counter that. Kelly’s not all that popular, even with a lot of the old-line hacks in his own party. You know damn well the only reason he’s got the job at all is because Tony Cermak caught that bullet supposedly meant for FDR down in Miami.”
“Yeah, our martyred, grand, and glorious late mayor, rest his soul,” Farmer hissed.
“Admit it, Cyril, Cermak was really an okay guy — a little dumb and maybe just slightly crooked, but okay,” Masters said. “If he’d lived, he would have turned out to be a decent mayor — not brilliant, maybe, but decent. You’re just cynical about everybody.”
“And you’re not?” Farmer retorted. “And what’s this ‘just slightly crooked’ crap? You got a short memory. If Cermak had been in City Hall much longer, people woulda started wishing Big Bill was back.”
Masters cleared his throat, as he always did when he was about to place himself above the fray. “Mine is a measured, healthy cynicism, Cyril, born of years as a passionate observer of the human comedy. And I—”
Farmer pushed back his chair and stood. “Oh, shove it, Anson! You are as sour as I am, probably sourer, and you damn well know it. Are we going to do this pool, or not?”
“Well, it’s your show, Packy,” I said impatiently. “Let’s get going before our city desks start wondering how we’re justifying these princely salaries.”
“Okay, here’s how we’ll do it,” Farmer said, reaching for a pad of half-sheets of copy paper. “Everybody put down their name and the date they think Martindale’s going to announce, and we’ll save the sheets until the big day, when the one of us who was closest gets twenty-five Washingtons.”
“What happens if Martindale never decides to run?” Metz asked.
O’Farrell threw up his arms. “Eddie, for God’s sake, what the hell d’ya think happens? Then there’s no wager, of course — no pool, no money, no nothing. Do we have to spell everything out for you in words of one syllable or less?”
“Cut the jawing and give us all the damn ballots, will you,” Masters sighed, “before it’s time to break for lunch.”
O’Farrell passed them around and everybody scribbled, each of us looking around furtively as we did. Then we all gave the folded sheets to the City News kid to lock in his drawer, seeing as how none of us completely trusted any of the others, and with reason.
For the record, I put down October 28, which was four months to the day before the primaries. I still think it was a good guess, but of course, we will never know.
Chapter 5
Wet snow flurries floated down on the city that February Tuesday, which slowed the morning rush hour traffic, including the streetcars, and which also made me ten minutes late getting to the pressroom at 11th and State. Normally, my coming in at 9:10 was not a cause for concern but, as I was about to learn, this day would be far from normal.
“Damn it, Snap, where have you been?” Nick Corcoran, sweat beading on his upper lip and in twin arcs above his overgrown black eyebrows, pounced on me as I entered the room, which was unusually crowded and noisy. Nick was our overnight man, a 35-year Trib veteran who liked the graveyard shift because he didn’t have to work too hard and had almost nothing to do with any level of management back in the Tower. He was terrified of anyone or anything that smelled of management.
“Jesus Christ, Snap, all hell’s breaking loose, didn’t ya hear about it on the radio or anything?” Nick rasped over the din made by the other reporters and, as I now noticed, photographers as well, including two of our own picture jockeys, McGee and Langley.
“I didn’t turn on the radio this morning. What was I supposed to hear, for God’s sake?”
“Martindale,” Nick sputtered, starting to hyperventilate. “Martindale. Lloyd Martindale. Got shot clean through the pump. Body found a few minutes after 6:00 this morning by a newsie who happened by.”
“Where?”
“Lying near his car in a parking lot on Broadway about a block north of Diversey, close to a restaurant where he’d been addressing some sort of ‘citizens against crime’ group. He left the place alone a few minutes after 11 last night, so he probably caught it just a little later.”
“I’ll be damned. You filed, of course?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, about ten graphs, with a couple of fairly good quotes from Fahey about how it looks like — surprise — a mob hit. Of course it’s a mob hit. I was too late to make the three-star, though. The city desk’s been hollering for you since quarter to nine. And the commissioner’s holding a press conference in his office here at 10:00. Prob’ly wants to beat Courtney to the punch. I was afraid you wasn’t gonna make it.”
“I’m sure you were. I’ll call in right now and calm down all the generals in the tower. Can you stick around and give me a hand at the press conference?”