WHILE I was away at the firm, we hired some veteran Illinois operatives to help us understand the various downstate. counties. Volunteers came pouring in. The negative ads tapered off because the Daily News and the TV stations were talking about overkill. A poll in early May showed that we had gained ten points and the Senator had lost six points—49 percent to 35 percent.
“We’ve cut his lead in half,” Tommy told the interviewers on Chicago Tonight, a PBS program. “We’re in striking distance. Frankly we’re closer than I had expected to be.”
“Tommy,” Lee Schlenk jumped in, “it isn’t true, is it, that you’ve gone back to being Mr. Mom during the lull in the campaign?”
I wanted to claw my way through the control room glass.
“I think it was known all along that Ms. O’Malley had a case before the Illinois Supreme Court during the spring session. She won it incidentally.”
“You don’t seem to show any sense of shame at taking a subordinate role in the family during a campaign. How do you think the voters will react to that?”
“Maybe they’ll understand that political candidates need to make ends meet.”
“Senator Crispjin has never been a house hubby. Won’t that give him an advantage over you in the election?”
“I made a promise that I would not discuss the Senator during the campaign. I will only say that for me every chance to spend some time with my daughters is a rewarding experience.”
A woman reporter from the Daily News asked, “Your children
threw snowballs at a TV camerawoman at Grand Beach earlier in the year.”
“They didn’t hit her. They weren’t even trying to hit her as was clear from the tape.”
“Proving that they are smart politicians?”
“Proving that they are well-mannered young women who have been taught that the only people you can hit with snowballs are your parents.”
“Tommy,” a woman from the Chicago Defender asked, “is your wife a smarter lawyer than you are?”
My dear Tommy beamed at the question.
“The good Mary Margaret O’Malley is a brilliant and beautiful woman. We do different kinds of law, appellate versus criminal defense, so a comparison might not be fair to me. But whoever said fair. She is a much better lawyer than I am and I’m proud of her.”
Well! All right!
The host (male) asked, “Tommy, the accusation has been made that this festival of ethnic songs with which you’re launching your campaign is divisive and demagogic. What do you say to that?”
“It is really the opposite. We’re including every group we can find—including bluegrass and Yorkshire folk singers.”
“Come on, Tommy,” Lee Schlenk interrupted. “You’re including criminals who have invaded the United States across its borders.”
“Those criminals, as you call them, Mr. Schlenk, are human beings with the rights with which all humans are endowed. Moreover, most Mexican Americans are legally here and many are American citizens, just like you and me.”
The host cut Schlenk off and ended the interview.
“Do you think he believes all that crap?” I asked him in the control room.
“Who knows what he believes,” he said, embracing me, “and who cares as long as he keeps setting me up with those questions.”
“Thanks for the compliments,” I breathed, escaping his kisses.
“I didn’t say that criminal defense is a lot more difficult
than standing before relatively civilized appellate court judges!”
“Beast,” I said returning to the kiss.
The other panel members congratulated him and wished him well during the campaign.
“You’ll catch him,” said the woman from the Daily News.
The ethnic festival and Grant Park was a huge success. There must have been fifty thousand people there in front of the old James C. Petrillo Band Shell, named after a “labor guy,” Tommy pointed out in his brief introduction. Several Mexican-American bands performed, proving that mariachi was not the only kind of Mexican music. Nonetheless the campaign band did perform with considerable verve, the full band backed up by assorted O’Malley cousins.
“These folks,” my husband informed the crowd, “are a thoroughly American phenomenon, made up of Mexican Americans and Irish Americans who have been seduced by mariachi.”
We outdid ourselves and the crowd screamed its approval. We had a lot of voters out there, most of them Chicagoans who would vote for a junkyard dog if he were a Democrat. Still there were great visuals which would appear in whatever ads we were able to pay for in late October.
Then something ominous happened as we were breaking up. The three girls had disappeared.
“Where are the kids, Tommy?
“I hear them screaming somewhere.”
The Chicago cops who were maintaining order heard the screaming too and pushed their way through the crowd. We followed right after them.
The scene we came upon was horrific—and bizarre. A woman, early thirties, was clutching our nine-year-old Mary Therese on the ground. She was screaming her lungs out. The child’s sisters, furies from another world, were punching the woman and pulling her off their little sister.
As we and the police arrived, Mary Therese broke free and rushed into my arms.
“She tried to steal me, Mommy!”
“She kidnapped our little sister,” Mary Rose proclaimed to all around in her most dramatic voice as she pointed an outraged finger. “We stopped her.”
“Jesus told me to take her away from those terrible people,” the woman sobbed. “He said that she would be damned to hell if I didn’t take her.”
“I’m not going to hell, am I, Daddy?”
“God loves you too much to ever lose you, darling.”
The cameras were all around us. You can’t even have privacy in a kidnapping these days.
“Do you think, Tommy,” a woman reporter asked, “that this was a plot by the Senator to ruin your day for you?”
My husband needed a moment to compose himself.
“Of course not. I’m grateful to Chicago’s finest for their prompt reaction …”
“What about us?” Mary Ann demanded. “We found her.”
“I knew you would. But thank you too.”
The police took the woman off to their headquarters and an African-American woman detective led us to a dressing room off the stage of the band shell where we could regroup.
“She tore my pretty Mexican dress,” our little heroine protested.
“She was evil,” Mary Rose declared. “Mo-THER, sit down, you look terrible.”
I did sit down and realized that I was shaking.
“Do you have any bodyguards, Mr. Moran?”
He looked around.
“Our security guys were around earlier. I don’t know what happened to them. The state police were supposed to take over today.”
Joe and Dolly pushed their way into the room.
“Are these folks your security people, sir?”
“No, detective, they’re my staff.”
“What happened to our security?” Joe asked the whole world.
“They disappeared. Find out what the hell happened to them and to the state cops! This begins to look like a setup.”
“Sir,” the detective said to Tommy, “with your permission I will summon some Chicago uniformed police to escort you to your car and then escort you home.”
“Thank you, detective,” I said.
“It was a brilliant concert, Ms. O’Malley. I’m sorry it had to end this way.”
Later that evening, the sedated Mary Therese sound asleep
and the other two girls on watch at the door to her room, our crowd, including the redoubtable Chucky, were sitting glumly in our “war room” pondering what happened.
Joe had screamed at the Governor and demanded the head of the state police on a platter.
“We don’t want them messing around us anywhere,” he shouted. “We were set up.”
We could hear the Governor promise that he would get to the bottom of it.
“I don’t care what bottom you find, Governor. We don’t want your idiots around us any more.”
He slammed the phone down.
He had already dismissed the private security group whose boss had insisted that his men had left only when they thought the concert was over.
“Bobby Bill?” I asked.
“Would he go that far?” Tommy shook his head in dismay.
“He only had to bribe a couple of people.”
“He must really be afraid of us.”
The Mayor of Chicago called to “apologize.” I assured him that Chicago’s finest had saved the day.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Mary Margaret.”
“It goes pretty deep.”
It was all on the nine o’clock news, the success of the concert was hardly noticed. There was wonderful footage of the sisters saving Marytre and of myself and Tommy embracing them. The cops had the name and address of the woman. She was from Arkansas and still insisted, as she had on camera, that Jesus had sent her to save “the pretty girl from her terrible family.” Senator Crispjin’s office had issued a statement which said, “The Senator regrets any violence. However, he feels that a candidate who engages in divisive and demagogic rhetoric runs the risk of offending patriotic Americans.”
Then our Dolly was on the screen.
“Has American politics deteriorated so badly that terrorism has become an acceptable part of a campaign?”
She didn’t add “with the approval of one candidate.” That was against our rules.
“Do you have any idea, Dolly, what happened to the state police detail that was supposed to be protecting the Moran
family or the private security group that has been protecting him up to now?”
“No we don’t. We feel we were set up.”
“By whom?”
Dolly simply shrugged.
“They really want to drive you out of the race, Tommy,” Ric Suarez said softly.
“I guess we have them scared. What do we do now?”
Chucky intervened.
“We sign on Mike Casey’s Reliable Security. It’s all off-duty Chicago cops, the best on the force. We tell the governor that we don’t trust his cops. If he wants them around, that’s fine but we have our own cops and the state police should stay out of their way.”
“They probably won’t try anything again,” Tommy said without conviction.
The Governor called to say that he promised a police car in front of our house every day and night.
Joe told him to keep them out of our way.
That was not the last of it.
The next morning Leander Schlenk reported from Washington that some members of Congress thought that Tommy had organized the kidnapping plot to promote his “faltering” campaign.
In the middle of the following week we were going over to our headquarters to plan for the grand opening. The two Reliables, big linebacker types, joined us at the doorway to escort us towards our van.
Across the street two state policemen were apparently sleeping in their car.
Our middle daughter Mary Ann stopped us at the bottom of the stairs.
“That’s a bad car,” she pointed at our battered old Chevy. “Don’t get into it!”
“Hush, dear,” I said.
She’s our psychic one and has moods like that.
“Run!” she shouted, breaking away from us. “Run!”
We followed her down the street, running to catch up, even the two Reliables.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
Then the blast of the exploding car knocked us to the ground. We were only bruised a bit. The two state police cops across the street were critically injured. A column of flame leaped from the car, closing our house off like the biblical seraphim closed off paradise in the Bible. All the front windows in the house were shattered as were the windows across the street. They were destroying our neighborhood.
Tommy rolled over and flipped open his cell phone.
“Tommy here, get out of there through the back door. NOW! There may be an explosion!”
Then he called the Oak Park Police.
“I think there may be a bomb in a car in front of it … I don’t want to argue with you … Just do it … A bomb exploded in front of my house a couple of minutes ago … PLEASE DO IT!”
We heard a second explosion.
“Forget about it assholes. It just blew up …”
“Ambulances on the way,” one of the Reliables said. “I think the River Forest Fire and Police are on the way.”
“Everyone all right?” I asked.
“We’re OK,” Mary Rose murmured. “Aren’t we lucky Mary Ann is a psychic!”
“It was a BAD car,” Mary Ann said sadly. “It smelled bad.”
There were two explanations the next morning for the explosions.
The Examiner’s headline asked
DID TOMMY BLOW UP HIS OWN CAR?
In Washington Senator Crispjin told a bank of microphones that he deplored the violence in quiet Chicago suburbs and called for an end to it. “I ask my opponent to moderate his rhetoric which I’m sure has enflamed this election.”
“What rhetoric?” demanded a reporter.
“He said that illegal immigrants had the same rights as good American citizens.”
“He only quoted the Declaration of Independence that all men have certain inalienable rights. Since when, Senator, is that inflammatory?”
The Senator backtracked.
“At least he ought to know that immigration is an inflammatory issue in this country.”
“So he shouldn’t talk about it?’
“He should be careful what he says.”
“Are you going to drop out of the race, Mr. Moran?” The national news reporter asked as we watched the installation of new windows.
“No.”
“Are you going to stop talking about immigration as your opponent suggested?”
“No.”
“Have your neighbors complained?”
“Yes, some of them. They want us to move out of the neighborhood.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“Are you worried about the safety of your family?”
“Yes … There is no legitimate appeal in this country from the ballot to the bullet. We’re not the ones making that appeal.”
Those two dialogues looked good on Chicago television. The next poll in the Daily News reported that his lead had shrunk from forty-eight percent to thirty-eight percent. The Examiner and the Senator dropped the issue. The negative ads disappeared for a while.
“Is it right for us to put our children through these risks?” Tommy asked me one night in bed. Neither of us were able to sleep. Nor were we in the mood for making love.
“They say they’re not in any danger as long as Mary Ann’s psychic thing is working.”
“They live in a fairy-tale world. They see us as actors in a movie or a TV series. The good guys always win. We’re wearing the white hats.”
“The larger question, Tommy love, is whether we should be in it. Is it right to risk our lives and the kids’ future in a joust with windmills?”
“What are we trying to prove anyway?”
“Exactly.”
We were both silent for a while.
“Maybe,” he said, “we could withdraw from active campaigning. Tell the world that the risk to our children is too great. We might get a lot of sympathy votes if we did that.”
“Whoever wants you out of the race would not be satisfied with that.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Tommy, do we have the right to quit so our kids are safe?”
“I’ve thought of that too. Would we be letting them down if we cut and run?”
I snuggled close to him, now wanting love.
“They are who they are and who we made them. They’re adventurers. It may be in their genes. They liked Mexico. They like the campaign. If we pull out now because this adventure is dangerous, what will it do to them?”
His fingers found my breast.
“We betray them no matter what we do?”
I groaned as his lips touched my nipple.
“We trust God.”
“Who makes no guarantees?”
God talk really turns me on.
“Don’t stop, Tommy!”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“God’s guarantees are valid only in the long run,” I managed to say.
“In the long run we will all be dead anyway.”
Death talk always turns me on too.
So we defied death.
The two cops survived. We repaired the house and the headquarters on Chicago Avenue. A second delegation of neighbors called upon us to urge us not to move. The bombers were never caught. The kids bounced back quickly. Tommy and I did not sleep very well. We heard from someone who would know that Rodgers Crispjin had told Bobby Bill to call off his troops. I also heard that someone has told the Senator that if this kept up his own life would be in danger. Everyone relaxed a little and we went forth en famille to Rockford to begin our summerlong campaign.
But the violence was not over yet.