Sauce for the goose, p.1
Sauce for the Goose, page 1
part #9 of Jimmy Flannery Series
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
Praise for Edgar Award-Winning Author Robert Campbell
“Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”
— Los Angeles Times
“Robert Campbell has his own sound; he is an awfully good writer.”
— Elmore Leonard
“Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”
— New York Times
Praise for
Nibbled to Death by Ducks
“A pure joy. . . .Nibbled to Death by Ducks provides an entertaining look at the workings of Chicago ward politics even as it exposes the cynical greed of the health care industry. . .Campbell is skillful enough to tickle and chill us at the same time. This is a good one.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Campbell combines some memorable faces with a moody, atmospheric sense of life in a nursing home. . . .Reading a Flannery caper is always fun. . . .” — Chicago Tribune
Praise for
The Cat’s Meow
“A mystery series that. . .just keeps getting better.”
— Chicago Magazine
Praise for
Thinning The Turkey Herd
“Fast, lean, offbeat entertainment.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Flannery is Robert Campbell’s most endearing character, a down-to-earth political small-fry who believes in the system despite its faults. . .He’s at his best in Thinning the Turkey Herd. . .a delight—a man who reason's, coaxes, makes end runs, compromises but never gives up until he’s satisfied that he’s got it right.”
— The Cincinnati Post
Praise for Edgar Award Winner
The Junkyard Dog
“Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”
— New York Times Book Review
“This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”
— ALA Booklist
“Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”
— Publishers Weekly
SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE
Robert Campbell
Publisher’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 Robert Campbell
All rights reserved.
Ayeshire Publishing
ONE
My name's Jimmy Flannery.
My wife's name is Mary Ellen.
She had a baby the beginning of this year. The baby's name is Kathleen.
Like every new father what ever lived I feel a little lost around the house, the baby being the center of my wife's universe. I can understand that because she's sort of become the center of my universe too, I love her so much, but that don't keep me from missing the way it was when there was just Mary and me, just the two of us.
A baby changes your life more than all the career plans and ideas for the future you can imagine. I mean it ain't like it's a dog what you can tell to go lay down in the corner.
Which, speaking of dogs, my dog, Alfie, ain't made up his mind about the newcomer to the household.
First he was my dog and then he got to be Mary's dog and now it looks like he's making up his mind if he should be Kathleen's dog or maybe be his own dog and take on the responsibility of a pet of his own, which is how I sometimes think he thinks about Kathleen.
It's not that Alfie's exactly fickle, it's just that a dog's very practical and will usually go to the person what can give him the most comfort and affection. On the other hand there's dogs who go where they feel they're most needed, just like some people. So Alfie's making up his mind which way he wants to move. My bet is that he ain't going to be taking on any new responsibilities anytime soon.
The first six months I must have been up twenty times a night because Kathleen would spit the pacifier out of her mouth and start fussing, which activates the baby alert, which activates the speaker in our bedroom. So I'd stumble out of bed and stagger into the nursery, stick the gob-stopper back into her little pink mouth, tuck the blanket in around her little chin and go back to bed where I'd lay and worry about why she was so quiet—crib death and all being so much in the news—until I start dozing off, at which time she spits out the pacifier and we start all over again.
Alfie wakes up every time I wake up, and if I don't wake up quick enough he comes in and paws me until I do.
Which maybe looks like I'm wrong about him taking Kathleen on as a responsibility but which—you examine the situation with an eye which ain't clouded with sentiment—only means he don't want to lose any more sleep listening to a wailing baby than he absolutely has to.
Things are easing off a little now, and sometimes Kathleen even sleeps right on through until six A.M.
That's when I get up to get ready for my job down at the Sewer Department where I'm an inspector. Being an inspector means that I don't have to be down in the pipes every day but only now and then.
Also I accepted the position—unpaid—of committeeman in the Twenty-seventh Ward where we live. I been a precinct captain for the Democratic party for about fifteen years so I know the ward like I know the palm of my hand and—like they say—my time had come to step up to the head of the line or take a walk. Not that most people think it means a hell of a lot anymore, the old Machine being rusted and busted the way everybody says it is.
In the good old/bad old days the Regular Democratic Party Organization ran on patronage. If a man needed a job and the Party gave him a job...it expected his vote. A man worked for the Party, he was rewarded with a job. There was some jobs like the one Kippy Kerner had down at the County Building before his retirement where he came in every morning to see that the steam engineer had adjusted the valves on the furnaces. The comedians say that Kippy passed away last year from the hard work of doing nothing, but what they don't know is that Kippy busted up both legs back in '59, falling off a bridge he was maintaining, trying to save his buddy. He had workmen's compensation and health insurance, so he wasn't hurting all that much financially, except he was losing his pride, what with having nothing to do, so the old mayor give him a little something. Which Kippy took even though it meant losing part of his workmen's comp. He wasn't looking for a handout or a free ride. He was down there making sure those valves was checked winter and summer.
It could be true that another person of my acquaintance is sitting in the butter tub, but even if Billy Swinarski don't seem to be doing much, sitting outside the city treasurer's office—which, incidentally, has a big sign on the door—directing people to the city treasurer's office, he's always got a cheerful word and on a gloomy day that can count for a lot.
I got my own job in the sewers through connections but I always worked hard at it, and if you think a job in the sewers is a gift, well maybe you should have another look. Though I ain't complaining. I'm just pointing out that if you don't give jobs to your friends, who you going give them to, your enemies?
Jobs has always been a political issue.
Back in 1947, the Party nominated and elected Martin "Snow White" Kennelly, a reform candidate, for reasons having to do with gambling and a perception of public corruption involving the incumbent too devious and complicated to explain. They figured they could keep him on a leash, but he got away from them; eight years later he goes ahead and tosses twelve thousand patronage jobs into the civil service system. So that's how the party turned their backs on Kennelly and ran Richard J. Daley for mayor. The rest—like they say—is history.
It was business as usual for a while until the Shankman ruling in federal court supposedly ended patronage and nepotism in Chicago forever.
Another thing you could think about is the old remark about how nepotism is only bad when you're not the one getting the benefit of it.
So, anyway, maybe you don't see as many loyal precinct workers walking the streets and knocking on doors, helping their neighbors and getting out the vote on election day, who got jobs down at City Hall running the automatic elevators or chauffeuring aldermen around.
The way we do politics is changing just like everything else. So what you see is lawyers, bankers and wheeler-dealers sp reading the grease around, which is then used on television ads to sell the people on the candidate of their choice. These are the men who end up handing out the deals for floating city bond issues and the contracts for consulting on this or that.
Also, anybody who knows anything about patronage and clout, knows that there's always a mouse hole, an angle, a back door.
Just the other night, Janet Canarias, the lipstick lesbian who stole the Twenty-seventh's aldermanic seat from the Regular Democratic Organization, stops by to chew the fat in her storefront office, which she lets me use to see my constituents on Monday nights, and asks me did I read the editorial about the mayor in the Wall Street Journal?
"I don't ever read the Wall Street Journal. I've got no investments."
"It's not exclusively about business, you know. They have some very interesting editorials and commentaries about politics."
"Well, one way you look at it, politics is business and business is politics."
"That's right. People vote their pocket books more than they vote anything else. That and making sure city services like garbage pickup and snow removal get done."
She's referring to when Bilandic lost the mayoral election to Jane Byrne back in '79 when he does such a lousy job getting the snow off the streets and the public transportation running smooth in that awful winter. Which then sets Byrne up to lose to Harold Washington because she don't understand how it was the time for her to politically embrace the blacks and Hispanics and gays instead of jumping back into bed with the old back-room boys after kicking their asses the way she did. Which, in a curious way, teaches the new mayor the lessons he needs to get elected after Washington dies of a heart attack.
"Can I get you a cup of coffee?" I ask.
"That would be nice," she says. "You mind if I take off my shoes?"
"Why should I mind? It's your office. Go ahead, make yourself comfortable."
She kicks off her heels and stretches her legs—which are very long and much appreciated even by men who don't approve of her lifestyle—out on the desk, wrapping her skirt around her thighs in a very ladylike way.
I bring her a cup of coffee, black, no sugar, the way she likes it and sit down behind her desk with a cup of my own.
"What did the Wall Street Journal have to say?" I ask, getting her back to her original remark.
"They spent a whole editorial praising the mayor for planning to turn over selected city services to the private sector."
"Well, so far they ain't talking about much," I say. "Animal Control and some of the Consumer Information and Complaints."
"That's just the beginning."
"What makes you say that?" She taps the side of her nose.
"Fish?" I say.
"Things aren't always what they seem."
"You got any evidence of a conspiracy, anything like that?" I ask.
She shakes her head no.
"Just a feeling at the back of my neck."
"So, you need any help with the feeling, all you got to do is ask."
"Even if it gives the Party a black eye?"
"It couldn't be anything small," I say.
"I know that, Jimmy. I'm not out there swinging an axe anymore. I know how to pick and choose my battles. It's funny how you start out thinking you're going to sweep the streets clean of every little bit of garbage, then you're happy if you can just keep it from becoming a flood, maybe keep your own street tidy."
"That's the way it's supposed to work, everybody taking care of their own mess, minding their own business and letting everybody else mind theirs."
"It's drawing the line that's so hard to do, Jimmy," she says. "It's drawing that damn line."
TWO
I used to walk the neighborhoods a lot when I was a precinct captain. Now that I'm the ward leader I ain't got the time to do that as much. All of a sudden I'm listening to the stories of every other precinct captain who brings the troubles of their neighbors to me just like my old Chinaman, Chips Delvin, used to have to listen to me. So maybe the committeemen don't get out the vote the same way they used to get out the vote, but no matter what anybody says, the system still works at the grassroots level, and a person without clout can still get some action and satisfaction if he or she knows the right somebody.
I know a lot of somebodies and the ones I don't know my father, Mike, who's a retired fireman and ex-precinct captain hisself, knows.
And the ones Mike don't know Chips Delvin knows. He's still around at ninety, give or take, sticking his fingers in the pie and his nose in the political business which he turned over to me with his own hands. But that's all right, you can't expect an old fire horse to quit pulling just like that. If you stuck him out to pasture he'd just lay down and die.
I give one night a week to listening to everybody's problems in the storefront office.
I give Saturday afternoons to listening to them what can't make it Monday night over to the back room of Brennan's Tavern where Delvin used to hold his meetings when there was too many people to accommodate in his living room, where I do the same for the sake of tradition. People like some things to change but they also don't like other things to change. The trick is to know which is which.
I used to exercise three nights a week over to the Paradise Health Club while Mary was pregnant. She was eating for two and I was eating for three. Now that she's thin again I don't eat as much as I did eight, nine months ago but I still need to knock off more than a couple of pounds because I ain't walking the neighborhoods as much as I used to for the reasons I already mentioned.
That's the way it goes. There comes a time when you change one little thing in your lifestyle and everything starts falling apart.
So, even though I don't go three times a week I go jump around twice a week, Saturday night and Wednesday night.
Sundays we usually go over to my father and mother-in-law's—who's also my stepmother since she's my father's wife as well as being my wife's mother—for Sunday dinner, my old man suddenly getting very traditional in his old age, even though he jogs five miles a day and is in much better shape than I am.
What I'm trying to point out here is the amount of time I don't get to spend alone with Mary.
So when she talks me into going over to the University of Chicago down across the river to take a couple of night classes, I'm beginning to wonder if the blush is off the romance as they say. I understand that she thinks it'll do my career some good if I brush up on my English grammar and maybe take a course in political science but still and all it bothers me a little. I'm not even sure what she's got in mind for me most women, I think, dream bigger dreams for their men than their men dream for themselves—but I don't argue about it.
So it's Monday nights and Saturday afternoons—not to mention this special meeting and that special meeting—doing politics, and Tuesday and Saturday nights over to the gym. Sundays with our folks. Wednesday it's English grammar and composition. Thursday it's political science.
Friday nights Mary, who couldn't give up nursing altogether even if she wanted to, unofficially volunteers her time to a family planning and prenatal clinic. I say unofficially because ever since the federal agency in charge of funding puts out the regulation that money would be taken away if counselors, doctors and nurses in any federally funded clinic mentioned abortion as an alternative to having a child, Mary sits at a desk in the corridor as though she has absolutely nothing to do with the clinic and gives these poor women the information they deserve to have. There's absolutely no paper trail linking her to the clinic and she even pays ten dollars a week rent for the corridor space. So that's the way honest citizens got to split hairs and play games to do what they know is right.
I'm not taking a position for abortion or against abortion. What I'm talking about is a First Amendment right to give and get information vital to a person making a decision about their health and future well-being.
One of the things that gets me is that a lot of the people who are out there protesting in front of the abortion clinics are the same people who bitch and moan about entitlement programs to dependent children and single parents and are also the ones who say build more prisons and expand the death penalty to take care of all the criminals that poverty and social neglect produce.
