The pungent aroma of garlic and hot grease permeated the windows of my Audi as I sat, waiting for Mateo Ortiz to show his face. According to a Chicken Shack employee I had been pestering, Ortiz had been a prep cook there for five years but was now working for the Chef Boyardee of Italian restaurants, Pasta Perfect. The current employee had been reluctant to talk, but eventually, I’d annoyed her enough that she’d passed on Mateo’s name to get me to leave her alone. This employee claimed Ortiz had been fired under sketchy circumstances, and sketchy circumstances were a reporter’s dream scenario.
Lifting a travel mug of Earl Grey to my mouth, I took a sip, contemplating the revolving door of employment that was food service and how this bribery scenario might play out. How many employees had passed through the hamster wheel that was this one restaurant chain? Surely someone had stories to tell about their boss.
And did someone have stories to tell about the inspector, too? If there was a payola relationship between Morales and Gaetano, it was easy to assume there could be others who had been offered an inspector special. Straight-up greed and the story was basically told. If this was nothing more than a couple hundred bucks here and there, it wasn’t front-page material. But throw a challenging personal financial situation into the mix, and that could mean the inspector needed more cash than one small restaurant chain could provide—and therefore more participants. Or maybe his boss was involved, too? Getting his own cut. Maybe even steering the ship with Chicago’s version of “You pat my back, I’ll pat yours.” That made it company-sanctioned graft. A side hustle. I knew I was reaching, but this was Chicago, after all, with a deep pay-to-play history that extended even further back than the Al Capone gangster years. And a city that birthed corrupt aldermen like rabbits.
I’d been parked on the street on the west side of the restaurant where Ortiz now worked for almost forty-five minutes and still had seen no sign of the guy. Rather than making me hungry, the odors were souring my stomach. I flipped on the A/C even though it was only 75 degrees, just to get the stench out before my hair smelled like sautéed peppers.
It was nearly four o’clock and too early for the early bird special crowd, but the staff would be well into prep for the upcoming dinner rush. A handful of late-model cars were jammed into the tight space behind the building next to the dumpster, leaving what precious parking there was open for paying customers. I stared through my windshield at pedestrians’ faces, assuming the guy would be on foot. Like most Chicago neighborhoods, street parking here in Little Village was a fraught affair full of confusing permits, an hour spent circling the block for an open spot, and short time limits on the commercial streets, so driving to work was annoying, at best.
My source claimed Ortiz worked the dinner shift Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but I had yet to match anyone to the photo I’d seen on his Facebook page. Unless he had snuck in the back entrance or called in sick, my target was eluding me. As I waited, I scrolled my phone out of boredom one more time, calculating how much longer I should sit here before pushing off the task for another day.
My Twitter feed buzzed with commentary on the judge’s death. Most of it was banal or inane. Scanning for any tidbits that seemed inflammatory or overly personal, I looked for postings that might spark a hint of the man’s backstory, perhaps by a disgruntled neighbor or former friend inclined to weigh in.
My article was gaining eyeballs, but so much of the story felt untold. Several texts to Michael confirmed that CPD had not yet identified the SUV, nor had they found the judge’s Lexus. Not surprising. It was probably already at a chop shop in Indiana. What I couldn’t let go of was why kill the guy? He had offered up the keys. Willingly handed them a seventy-thousand-dollar car without a fight, so why shoot the man? He wasn’t some fool trying to play tough guy over a hunk of metal. Knocking him to the ground with the butt of the gun would have been just as effective. Killing him made no sense if this was just about the car.
A CTA bus squeaked to a stop across the street. After the bus continued its route, I watched a man cross over toward the lot. Mid-thirties. Stocky. Hispanic.
I plopped my tea back in the cupholder, grabbed my bag, and beelined for the guy.
“Excuse me. Are you Mateo Ortiz?”
He stopped, giving me a confused look. “Yeah, who are you?”
“My name is Andrea Kellner. I’m a journalist with Link-Media,” I said, handing him my card. “I understand you used to work at The Chicken Shack, the one over on Cermak.”
He perused my offering before responding. “So? Who hasn’t? What about it?”
“You’re making it sound like it’s a revolving door. Why is that?” I watched his face as he sized me up, seeing the reaction I’d grown familiar with. What the hell do you want?
“Because it’s food service,” he said, as if it were the dumbest question he’d ever been asked. “Because the pay is crap. Because they treat people like shit. Duh! You’ve been living in Lincoln Park too long, lady, if you need someone to explain that to you.” He looked me up and down, taking in my leather shoes and silk blouse.
I ignored the dig. “Well, the way you said it, I thought maybe there was a bigger problem at The Chicken Shack compared to other restaurants. Did I misread your comment?”
“Everybody I know can tell you about half a dozen jobs they’ve had that were no different. More if the place hires undocumented workers. Come on, you know this. Everyone knows how it works. If you’re thinking this is some big exposé, reporter lady, let me tell you, no one cares. People just want their damn food, and they want it cheap. They don’t care that the guy scrubbing their dishes is living on seven bucks an hour. Or that some guy named José has to get to work at five a.m. to meet the delivery truck. Or that four other people are still working at two o’clock in the morning, bagging trash and cleaning out grease traps.”
“But they care that their food is safe to eat.”
He looked at me, then shot his eyes to the ground, shaking his head. "So that’s what this is about. You want to talk about the King of the Chickens?” He laughed and kicked at a plastic bottle top at his feet. "Good luck with that. I gotta go to work.”
“King of the Chickens? Is that a name you’ve given him, or is that what everyone calls him behind his back?”
“That’s just my little pet name for him. Depravado, or sleazebag to you white folks, is what everyone calls him.”
“You do mean Orlando Gaetano, right? The owner? I hear he fired you. Is that why you call him a sleazebag?”
“Hold it, lady. I didn’t do anything to get myself fired. Gaetano just makes shit up when he doesn’t like the look of your face anymore. Doesn’t matter how long you been there or how good you are at your job. The minute you do something horrible, like asking for a raise one too many times, he cans your ass.”
“You were fired because you asked for a raise?”
“Like I said, he’s a cheap son of a bitch, and the last thing he wants is anyone around with an opinion or a mouth. Open yours and you’re gone. You put up with his shit and stay quiet, or you’re out on your ass. There will always be some other fool desperate for a job, or with a sketchy job history, or just so damn broke they’ll take anything. Most of us aren’t working in this industry because we have a lot of options. Gaetano knows it and takes advantage. And anyone who needs to suffer through that environment is on a short leash. The store managers are just mini versions of this goon, doing his bidding. Right before I got canned, one of my coworkers, Sebastian, demanded overtime pay for the sixty-hour workweeks he was putting in. Threatened to report Gaetano. Surprise, surprise, a week later the assistant manager ‘accidentally’ splashed hot grease on the guy’s arm.” A scowl of contempt washed over his face. “That was just a warning.”
Based on the narrative playing out in the bribery case, I wouldn’t have expected Gaetano to be a model businessman, but an intentional burn was another thing. And if he was willing to infect his customers with disease-carrying insects, what else might he be doing to shave expenses to line his own pockets?
“That’s extreme.” On its face, I wasn’t sure I bought the grease-burn-as-threat story, but I tucked it away. “How do I get a hold of your friend Sebastian?”
He looked up at the sky and shook his head with a sigh. “I’ll see if he wants to talk. He works the lunch shift at a place in the Loop these days. More than anyone, he knows what Gaetano is really like and still has the scars to prove it.”
“Gaetano sounds like a total ass,” I said. “I assume employee relations weren’t the only area where he played fast and loose with the law.” Ortiz’s hatred of the man was crystal clear, but would he take it a step further and help me out? “While you worked at The Chicken Shack, did you ever see health inspectors on-site?”
He looked at me and clenched his jaw, calculating my motives, I assumed, and his risk.
“So that’s what this is about. You’re looking for dirt on the inspections. You’re hassling the wrong guy. Nothing good will come out of it, not for me. I got fired from one job for opening my mouth. Do you think employers like it when staff bad-mouth owners?” He nodded his head toward the restaurant. “I don’t need them thinking I’m some troublemaker. I’m still on probation, and the quickest path to ending this job too would be my name in print trashing my former boss.”
He shook his head and stepped toward the door.
“What if we talk off the record?”
He stopped.
“I won’t use your name or any information that might compromise your identity. If this guy is as bad as you seem to think he is, shouldn’t people know about that?”
He turned. “I don’t know. Look, I’m not going to shed a tear if King of the Chickens gets dumped with an enormous pile of chickenshit, but there are a lot of good people who depend on those jobs, even if he is a corrupt tyrant. What happens to them if the boss man goes down?”
We looked at each other for a moment. I couldn’t argue with his concern for his former coworkers, but how long would it be until someone died of food poisoning? A slap on the wrist wasn’t going to turn Gaetano into a changed man.
“I’m going to be late for work. I gotta go.” Ortiz turned toward the building.
“I understand your concern,” I said to his back. “But one way or another, there will be consequences that affect the business, and therefore the employees,” I added. “It might not hit them now, but it will eventually. What if someone dies from food poisoning?”
He turned, grimacing at my drama ploy, but I had his attention.
“If something horrible happens, those jobs will be gone,” I said. “What isn’t clear yet is how big of a problem this is. I want to know how long this has been going on. Is there more than one inspector involved? What if other restaurants, places Gaetano isn’t involved in, have been paying off inspectors too? I understand your hesitation. You’re concerned about the people you know who are forced to work in these awful conditions because of circumstances. What I would ask you to consider is how you’re going to feel if we learn customers are being seriously sickened, or if someone dies, and you had knowledge that could have prevented it.”