status during the Byrne administration. Lady Jane had followed up on Mayor Bilandic’s “Beautiful Chicago” theme by giving the city’s east-west base street a needed facelift. A hundred trees had been planted along the half-mile stretch that designated the mall, the sidewalks had been extended and paved with octagonal grey brick, and car traffic was closed between the elevated tracks at Van Buren on the south and Lake Street on the north.
She stopped at the Benton Place alleyway that ran along the south end of the Chicago Theater The marquee lights had been turned on when dusk was still a rumor. Gregg Aliman was putting on a show tonight, whoever he was. Now, Sinatra...
As she backed into the alley, a passerby was telling her companion about a cat who went “poody” on her stole. In front of Shoppers Corner, the black preacher Marclinn residents knew as Brother Preacher Man tapped his humming microphone to ensure that it was working.
Another nice man who helps others, she thought. Just like Michael... The sidewalk preacher spoke nightly on the evils of tobacco, adultery, and crack: Wilma caught a whiff of baking bread from Skolnik’s each time a gust of wind came up around her. She fingered the babushka in her pocket, deciding to tie the lilac colored cloth like another scarf around her neck, thinking that Henry would be driving up any minute now.
Henry Mazjec was her nephew and had worked for the city for eighteen years. More to please his auntie Wilma than his father Bernard, Henry, a thin man who dressed like he was one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables, picked Gramma up every December ninth, so that she could visit St. Adelbert’s on the tenth, and on whatever holiday gettogethers there were.
The cold was making her giddy, huddled up in her ‘sweater and jacket and long underwear under her grey slacks. Oh, Henry, where are you? Then, just to think about something other than the wind, you’ll look better in a sweater washed in Woolite...
* * *
At the Marclinn, Colin Nutman was talking to Mike Surfer over a Co’Cola. “Mike, you want to wheel out there and protect Grandmama,” the Englishman with the de-formed hand said. “That’s it, ennit?”
“She’s so tiny, Colin.”
“Mike, the papers are saying this guy uses a blowtorch on his victims. How’s he gonna get away with that in front of the theater, hmmmm?” Nutman often went right to the jugular.
“She’s so tiny,” Surfer repeated.
* * *
In the Benton Place alleyway, Francis Haid stepped forward to say hello.
Chapter Thirteen
“Don’t you dis me,” Conover said to the hustler leaning in the doorway of Ronnie’s. “You best not play me for some bluegum moke, Erwin. I’m tellin’ you what it is, like.”
The off duty cop from the district across the river was standing next to a beater of a Gran Torino. Only car fuckin’ spics ever buy, he thought every time he saw one cruising the streets. When he was down slummin’, as the cops at Chicago Avenue or Saloon Street called the Loop beats, he was very big at trying to hip to the black experience. About twenty years too late.
Erwin “Smooth Tee” Truvillion, his unlucky sounding board, thought that the blond cop was better suited to block traffic. Only reason he was down here clownin’ was to impress that white trim that, right this minute, was waiting in line for her steak dinner. Tee shot a brown eyeball into the fast food joint and saw Conover’s cop pal Mather further back in line by the steam tables: Ooo-wee, Home. Tee had to admit that Reve Towne was one fine piece.
He guessed that Conover was blowing pone his way to catch the trim’s attention that he was hip. It seemed that the grey meat only showed when the girl was visitin’ that cripple place across the street. Now, Conover was right in his knowledge that Tee made his living by procuring gold chains from the necks of unsuspecting El riders and hawking the golden lovelies out here when the dark came
She stopped at the Benton Place alleyway that ran along the south end of the Chicago Theater The marquee lights had been turned on when dusk was still a rumor. Gregg Aliman was putting on a show tonight, whoever he was. Now, Sinatra...
As she backed into the alley, a passerby was telling her companion about a cat who went “poody” on her stole. In front of Shoppers Corner, the black preacher Marclinn residents knew as Brother Preacher Man tapped his humming microphone to ensure that it was working.
Another nice man who helps others, she thought. Just like Michael... The sidewalk preacher spoke nightly on the evils of tobacco, adultery, and crack: Wilma caught a whiff of baking bread from Skolnik’s each time a gust of wind came up around her. She fingered the babushka in her pocket, deciding to tie the lilac colored cloth like another scarf around her neck, thinking that Henry would be driving up any minute now.
Henry Mazjec was her nephew and had worked for the city for eighteen years. More to please his auntie Wilma than his father Bernard, Henry, a thin man who dressed like he was one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables, picked Gramma up every December ninth, so that she could visit St. Adelbert’s on the tenth, and on whatever holiday gettogethers there were.
The cold was making her giddy, huddled up in her ‘sweater and jacket and long underwear under her grey slacks. Oh, Henry, where are you? Then, just to think about something other than the wind, you’ll look better in a sweater washed in Woolite...
* * *
At the Marclinn, Colin Nutman was talking to Mike Surfer over a Co’Cola. “Mike, you want to wheel out there and protect Grandmama,” the Englishman with the de-formed hand said. “That’s it, ennit?”
“She’s so tiny, Colin.”
“Mike, the papers are saying this guy uses a blowtorch on his victims. How’s he gonna get away with that in front of the theater, hmmmm?” Nutman often went right to the jugular.
“She’s so tiny,” Surfer repeated.
* * *
In the Benton Place alleyway, Francis Haid stepped forward to say hello.
Chapter Thirteen
“Don’t you dis me,” Conover said to the hustler leaning in the doorway of Ronnie’s. “You best not play me for some bluegum moke, Erwin. I’m tellin’ you what it is, like.”
The off duty cop from the district across the river was standing next to a beater of a Gran Torino. Only car fuckin’ spics ever buy, he thought every time he saw one cruising the streets. When he was down slummin’, as the cops at Chicago Avenue or Saloon Street called the Loop beats, he was very big at trying to hip to the black experience. About twenty years too late.
Erwin “Smooth Tee” Truvillion, his unlucky sounding board, thought that the blond cop was better suited to block traffic. Only reason he was down here clownin’ was to impress that white trim that, right this minute, was waiting in line for her steak dinner. Tee shot a brown eyeball into the fast food joint and saw Conover’s cop pal Mather further back in line by the steam tables: Ooo-wee, Home. Tee had to admit that Reve Towne was one fine piece.
He guessed that Conover was blowing pone his way to catch the trim’s attention that he was hip. It seemed that the grey meat only showed when the girl was visitin’ that cripple place across the street. Now, Conover was right in his knowledge that Tee made his living by procuring gold chains from the necks of unsuspecting El riders and hawking the golden lovelies out here when the dark came
Similar Books
