Had I just witnessed an alderman being bribed?
I couldn’t be certain, but that envelope had looked suspiciously like a wad of cash—and a big one. The delivery man’s words—“Do what you’re paid to do”—rang in my ears. If Striker Farnsworth had a side hustle, it wouldn’t be a surprise, given his breed. The phrase “Chicago Alderman” was synonymous with the word grift, but what was Farnsworth selling? And was the guy with the widow’s peak the beneficiary or simply the go-between?
I slid into my Audi and watched the pickup from my rearview mirror as it pulled out, turning right onto Mannheim Road. I pushed the ignition and put the car in gear. Striker was three cars ahead of me and moving south. I kept the pace without effort, traffic cooperating, my mind wandering through all the ways the brief exchange I’d witnessed felt odd. Layer in the discussion inside the office between Striker and Rastello and it felt like I’d just watched two minutes of a heist movie without any context. I didn’t know what was going on, but it sure had all the markings of something shady.
Industrial buildings and open land slowly morphed into entry-level suburbia as we drove further away from O’Hare. Not the gated community, high-end mall, helicopter-parent variety of suburbia; instead, the surroundings were an endless, nameless series of bland mini-strip malls tenanted by tax preparers, vacuum service centers, and cut-rate immigration attorneys. This was not the high-rent district.
We picked up a stoplight about seven miles later, and Farnsworth turned left onto Grand Avenue. I’d followed his lead for about five miles when he slid into a parking spot in front of a small mom-and-pop ice cream shop. I drove past him and eased into the next open slot. I wasn’t exactly super-stealthy spy material, but I didn’t imagine Striker would have noticed he had a tail. But now what?
I popped on my sunglasses and moved toward his car, intending to use the ice cream shop as my ruse. He was already out of his vehicle, cell phone in hand, having stopped to read something on his screen. I maneuvered past him and eased into a chair at one of the bistro tables on the makeshift sidewalk cafe behind a woman managing a squawking newborn and a toddler about to have a tantrum because he’d licked off all of his sprinkles and wanted more.
Striker’s aldermanic office was two doors from the ice cream shop, and it was a safe bet he was headed inside. However, “man goes to work” wasn’t exactly great reporting.
Rastello, and whoever this guy was with the funky hairline, expected something from Striker. A paving company and an alderman. A city contract was my first thought. Striker was certainly in a position to influence who received preferential treatment when contracts were doled out. And possibly to arrange a no-bid deal, depending on how closely the community had eyes on him. I jotted a note on my phone to look for the paving contract associated with an office park that Striker had referenced.
As I sat, contemplating the endless varieties of aldermanic greed and pretending to be engrossed in the flavor-of-the-day, a male voice yelled, “Yo, shithead!”
Striker lifted his head and turned toward the sound. “Love you too, asshole. What do you want?” he replied.
The woman with the kids clucked at the language, visibly irritated that her precious ones were hearing bad words.
Moving between the parked cars, Orlando Gaetano ambled up to Striker on the sidewalk, belly first, his complexion even worse in the light of day than it had been in the fluorescent glare of his restaurant. Striker knew Gaetano, too?
The men stood playing their little game of curse word one-upmanship, which seemed to be their version of male bonding in the same way that sports affiliations and “high school back in my glory days” were for others. I watched, bored by their boorishness, wondering if mommy was going to chastise the men or complain to shop management, and ran through the list of Chicken Shack locations, coming up with nothing that would have overlapped with Striker’s span of control.
“How’s our project coming?” Gaetano asked. “Or are these guys still jerkin’ each other off rather than tending to business?”
“It’s a process. I’ll get it there, but sometimes, people need a little finessing. A little reassurance, if you know what I mean,” Striker said.
Striker had puffed himself up, taking on an “I know what I’m doing” tone. I could call bullshit from here. In my experience, when a supposed tough guy had to work to make himself sound confident, he had shit. But I had no inkling what kind of project they were talking about unless Gaetano was opening a location out here and encountering problems. And this sounded strangely similar to the conversation I’d just overheard between Rastello and Striker, minus the thick envelope.
“I’m getting tired of these fucks who act like they’re some big swinging dick just because they have some thousand-dollar-an-hour attorney shuffling paperwork for them and standing in the way,” Gaetano said.
“Excuse me, can you please watch your language?” Mommy interrupted, her hands covering the toddler’s ears. I chuckled to myself, wondering what new words the little one would take to daycare tomorrow.
The men gave her half-assed smiles, looked at the kids, then gave each other an eye roll.
“Trust me, okay?” Striker said. “I gotta manage this. Gotta manage the process, the people. I can’t bulldoze this through without causing other problems. It’s a little sticky, but you’ll get what you want. As you know, I want this done as much as you do. So do our mutual friends. I deliver. I always deliver.”
Striker’s phone rang, and he barked at the caller. “Doesn’t anyone do their fucking jobs right the first time? Give me twenty minutes. I’m on my way.”
He turned back to Gaetano. “I gotta go. Look, this guy may have the suits in his pocket, but we’ve got our own brand of artillery. He won’t outlast us. We’ll talk next week.”
“All right. I’ll give it a little more time, but I’m ready to step in if this gets bogged down.”
The men clapped each other on the back and headed for their respective cars. Zoning or permitting were the only things that made sense. The only things I could think of that Gaetano would need from Striker. And Gaetano was not a man who took no for an answer. Images of Sebastian’s damaged flesh flashed back into my mind.
But what did Rastello need from him? Something bigger. Something more difficult. Something more expensive than a permit for a single restaurant.
I waited until the men had pulled away, then marched over to Striker’s office. A young woman in her early twenties was at the desk. Phone in one hand, she was patiently explaining to a caller that the alderman’s office could not stop roofing companies from sending her postcards despite how often they cluttered her mailbox. As she spoke, she rifled through an inbox that overflowed with mail of her own, likely full of solicitations as well, the kind that didn’t involve undocumented personal favors.
I scanned the small office. Two mismatched desks in the main space. A small table piled with manila folders. File cabinets along the back wall. Campaign signage from the last two election cycles rested above, serving as a reminder of Striker’s tenure. And an open door in the back connected to what I assumed was Striker’s personal office. Bare-bones, garage-sale chic, and not even a potted plant to give life to the dreary space.
She was alone in the office, and I ran my eyes over her desk, taking advantage of her distraction, noticing a large roll of construction blueprints on the credenza behind her. They had unrolled about a foot, and the stack of bound documents was thick. My condo remodeling had yielded around ten pages of floor plans, electrical, and plumbing schematics. This bundle easily contained a hundred pages or more. This had to be a commercial project.
“Sorry to make you wait,” she said, her smile bright.
“You have much more patience than I do,” I said. “I probably would have given her the number for the post office ten seconds into the call so she would bother someone else.”
“We get a lot of that.” She laughed. “Elderly residents who don’t know where to get help call in thinking the alderman runs everything around town, so he must be able to fix everything, too. Most of the time, they’re nice. Just confused or lonely. It’s just part of the job. I’ve only been here a few months, but I kinda like helping them out.”
Her tone told me these types of calls were a common occurrence. Where had Striker found this woman willing to work for what had to be garbage pay, still showing up to work, happy to help granny with her junk mail problem? Did she make service calls to rescue lost kitties, too?
“What can I help you with?” she asked.
“I’m a reporter with Link-Media. I’m doing a story about how the construction industry is faring in the local economy,” I said, keeping my pitch vague.
I’d decided to keep my storyline only a slight stretch of the truth. I sucked at lying, and since I already had Lane’s fake paving project out in the world to inadvertently trip over, keeping two pieces of BS in my head was more than I could manage.
“Oh, um, how can Alderman Farnsworth help with that?”
“I have a number of sources for big statistics. Things like how the sector has increased overall, year-over-year, in the metro area, and economic contribution to the community. That big-picture stuff with so many zeros that only an economist or a finance geek would care about.”
I laughed, trying to make my fake assignment sound like a treatise.
“Even my eyes start glazing over when someone starts talking local GDP. My readers care about how their lives will be made better. What employment opportunities might be coming up? What construction projects will screw up their morning commute? So, I thought one of the ways I could make the story hit a more personal tone is to speak with a few of the aldermanic offices. You guys clearly know your constituents and have insight into upcoming projects, so I was hoping you could tell me a little about projects your office is excited about.”
“Gosh, I’m not sure I know what to say.”
“How about if I shoot some general questions at you, just background stuff, and we can go where the conversation takes us?”
I smiled reassuringly, and she nodded, seemingly unconcerned that her boss might not want her talking to a reporter. She was likely too new in the job to have been reprimanded for a disastrous quote or a comment that wasn’t ready for prime-time release.
“I know spring is the busy construction season, and it’s already September, but have you had an increase this year in permits or zoning-change requests?” I started with the easy stuff to get her comfortable with the line of questioning.
“I wasn’t here yet, but Natalie, the woman that trained me, she said we had about fifty percent more permits compared to last year. I guess everyone wants to remodel their house all at once.”
“That’s a lot, congratulations. And very good news for the community. What about commercial projects? Anything big happening? I know the alderman loves to let the community know about new jobs coming.”
Her phone rang. She held up a finger and began listening to the caller. I turned my attention to the stack of plans behind her. The cluster of text visible in the lower-left corner was too small to be readable from where I stood. My remodeling experience told me that this data would contain the history of the document, preparer, dates, revision history, etc. The pertinent data that would have clearly identified the project, the developer, and the architect was still tucked in the roll, but I could make out three letters in large font: APR.
“These phones are never quiet for long. Between the calls, the walk-ins, and the normal office business, we usually try to have two people in the office in the morning. These old people get up early.” She laughed again.
“We were talking about commercial projects before your constituent called. Are there any big projects in the pipeline?”
She jerked her head quickly to the credenza behind her. “No, nothing,” she said, turning back. Her voice had gone flat, and she absently grabbed at the first document on the top of the inbox pile and pulled it close, avoiding my eyes.
She was lying to me. Why?