Lily Conover, my fashionista production partner on Blessing’s in the Kitchen, our weekly show on the Wine & Dine Network, had landed at O’Hare that morning. When she arrived at my hotel just before three, she was wearing a white blouse under what looked like tailored, formfitting orange bib overalls, cut off a few inches above knee-high white leather boots with high Cuban heels. This was topped off by large round sunglasses with thick white rims and a schoolgirl cap the same color as the overalls on her short-cropped blond hair.
“That outfit could get you shot in this town,” I said, as she hailed a cab.
“Oh, please. You’re going to talk to me about fashion, Billy? You, who walked around New York City wearing a gingerbread man suit, complete with chocolate buttons.”
Following her into the cab, I said, “It’s called Halloween on Wake Up, America! You might try watching the show sometimes.”
“Right,” Lily said. “And the show was over at nine, but you were still in the gingerbread suit at noon. I saw you walking down Seventh.”
“It was a zipper problem. Anyway—”
She interrupted me to tell the cabbie where we were headed.
It’s rare that Lily pays much attention when a restaurateur phones to suggest himself as a guest on our cable show. But this time her interest was piqued, and we were headed to Dann’s Sports Den on Clark Street to film a show that would feature its owner, Charlie Dann, the Puff Potato Man.
Dann had been a lineman for the Bears until his knee blew out in a game against Tampa in 1985. That was a great Super Bowl–winning year for the Bears. But a bittersweet one for Dann, who, after a few surgeries, wound up using a crutch for a while and walking with a limp thereafter.
His life in football ended, he and his wife, Gerta, now deceased, opened the eatery, where he used her family recipes to create an eclectic menu that included a unique air-filled crispy french fry that her mother had named the puff potato. It was not to be mistaken for a potato puff, which was heavier and less pastrylike. In any case, it became a staple of both the restaurant and the cocktail lounge, where, at happy hour, it was as popular as the third-martini-free option.
Dann greeted us at the door. He was a big man. Maybe not Refrigerator Perry big but high and wide enough to make me feel low and nearly narrow. In his sixties, he had the dry, wrinkled face and baggy-rimmed but clear eyes of a heavy drinker who’d been off the sauce for a while. He’d minimized the limp over the years but wasn’t able to hide it completely.
I knew from the moment we shook and he did not try to pulverize my hand that we would get along fine.
“Your guys got here a while ago,” he said to Lily. “They’re waiting in the office.”
She and Dann had already met. She’d headed to the Den directly from the airport to get the paperwork done and to suss out the possible logistics of the shoot. At that time, she’d also reminded the local two-man crew of the time and place. She’s nothing if not efficient.
The Puff Potato Man led us past a long polished bar that looked like it belonged on the set of one of Randolph Scott’s better 1950s Westerns. Probably directed by Budd Boetticher. Behind it were a cheerful-seeming red-haired behemoth of a bartender, a huge mirror in an ornate frame, and about a hundred bottles of booze, plain and exotic, along with photos and trophies Dann had picked up during his salad days.
The remaining wall space was taken up by more photos, jerseys under glass, pressed Chicago Trib sports pages, and the inevitable giant TV monitors displaying videos of Bears games through the ages, the sound turned down to a whisper.
A couple of graying post–Mad Men types in business suits were sipping martinis and debating the relative merits of Walter Payton and Jim McMahon over Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester. One of them paused to question a pudgy young man with hooded eyes and what looked like a homemade crew cut, who was drinking something very brown from a tumbler. He was wearing denim pants, gym sneakers, a yellow T-shirt, and a black satin jacket that had a white onion in the alligator/polo player position over his heart.
He halted in the middle of an energetic response to the query and gawked at us. At me, actually. He seemed on the verge of saying something, but Dann moved us past him quickly.
My host took me through a door at the rear of the lounge into an efficient, clean kitchen, where chefs and staff were getting ready for the evening. Our destination was a small office beyond the kitchen, where the camera, sound, and lights duo Lily had hired awaited us amid more of Dann’s football-career memorabilia.
While the sound guy miked Dann and me, Lily outlined her basic plan: The cameraman would pick me up on Clark Street, heading for the Sports Den, and follow me in. Dann would greet me at the entrance to the lounge (avoiding the restaurant, which was, in Lily’s professional opinion, “CU,” or cinematically underwhelming).
The cameraman would reposition at the rear door of the lounge and tape us as we approached, staying with us while we entered the kitchen area and headed for the office. Then another repositioning to the office door, looking in as Dann and I were seated, he at his desk, with me on the visitor’s chair.
They hadn’t done much to prepare the office. Just punched up the lighting and changed the position of my chair so that Dann and I would be facing each other.
And everything happened that way.
Then, with the camera and Lily’s hawklike eyes on us, we began our interview.
At one point, a pretty waitress arrived with a bowl of puff potatoes, two dipping sauces (one catsup-based and one avocado-based), and a sampling of Dann’s specially brewed pale lager. Both food and drink were pretty darn good.
And so was the interview, if I say so myself.
We went into the kitchen, where Dann took us through the preparation of the puff potato. Though he said he was showing us everything that went into the appetizer, my guess was that he’d probably kept mum on an ingredient or two responsible for his version’s unique taste.
We returned to the office for food talk, and I assisted him in blatantly plugging his establishment—we restaurateurs can be clubby—but the part of the interview that turned out the best involved his reminiscences of four years with the Bears.
I told him so once the camera and lights were turned off and the sound guy was removing the mikes and wires from their hiding places on our bodies.
“I love telling the stories,” he said. “I better. I been doing it for over twenty years.”
“Well, it was a pleasure,” I said, as we walked to the lounge.
“You ought to stick around, Billy. Check out our happy hour. In about twenty minutes this place is gonna be packed.”
I explained that Lily and the technicians would be staying for a bit. Just to pick up footage of the bar action, focusing on customers eating the puff potatoes. “Unfortunately, I’ve got to meet with my morning show producer.”
As we passed the bar, the young guy in the onion jacket hopped from his stool and stuck out his hand. “Hi,” he said to me. “I’m Jonny.”
I shook his hand. “Glad to meet you, Jonny. I’m Billy.”
“I know that. Billy Blessing. Wake Up, America! Weekday mornings at seven. Blessing’s in the Kitchen, Thursdays at nine-thirty p.m., Central Standard Time.”
“Billy, this is my … my sister’s boy, Jonny Baker,” Dann said, a bit sheepishly.
“I’m Jonny,” the young man repeated. His smile was friendly. His eyes were as guileless as a baby’s. “Jonny.”
“What’s the deal with the pearl onion, Jonny?” I asked.
He frowned and looked where I was pointing. When he saw the embroidered object, his face brightened. He turned around and showed me the back of the oversized jacket. It read: “The Thief Who Stole Trump Tower, an Onion City Entertainment.”
“You work with the company?” I asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I, ah … helped make the sets for the movies. I love movies. And television. Almost as much as the Bears.”
Dann gave me a tentative smile. “Jonny helped out with the sets. Nothing to piss off the union.”
“I’m a good carpenter. Right, Charlie?”
“Very good.”
“I saw you on Midday with Gemma, weekdays, noon, Central Standard Time,” Jonny said. “We watched because of Carrie.”
“Did you like the show?”
“Carrie is beautiful,” Jonny said. “And she’s nice. Not mean like Madeleine.”
“That’s enough, Jonny,” Charlie Dann said.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” Jonny said.
The young man looked stricken. He took a backward step toward his bar stool.
“It’s okay, Jonny,” Dann said. “I didn’t …” He turned to the bartender. “J.R., Jonny can have another cola. In a full glass.”
“I heard you talking about the Bears, Jonny,” I said. “You sounded like a real fan.”
“Yes, I am,” Jonny said, smiling again. “Charlie takes me to the games at Soldier’s Field.”
“Soldier,” Dann corrected. “Jonny knows more about the stats than I do.”
The boy rewarded him with a proud smile. Then his attention was distracted by the bartender exchanging his small empty tumbler with a full glass of cola.
“So long, Jonny,” I said.
“Oh! Yeah. So long.”
“C’mon, I’ll walk you to the door,” Dann said.
Out of the boy’s earshot, he said, “Jonny doesn’t need a whole lot of supervision. Since my sister passed away, about five years ago, he usually spends time at home with the help or at his dad’s office, where he watches TV and his brother Dickie looks in on him from time to time. Today, something came up and Dickie wasn’t available.”
“What about Jonny’s dad?”
“Big Jon? The tycoon?” He grinned as if that was a joke. “He’s a little busy to be taking care of the kid. He’s in construction and real estate. Maybe you’ve seen the BDI sign on the building they’re putting up across the street. BDI is Baker’s Dozen Industries. Jon’s doing a lot more hustling these tight money days. But he finds the time for Jonny. He should be here any minute to pick him up.”
“Jonny seems to like it here,” I said.
“And I like having him around. He’s a good kid. Only … he’s not a kid. He’s twenty-six.”
“Seems pretty good-natured,” I said.
“Yeah. Dickie could use some of that.” He frowned. “Sorry. Dickie’s just a little too … intense. But Jonny, he likes people.”
“Except for Madeleine. Whoever she is.”
“Madeleine Parnelle. Her husband writes the Thief Who books. What I’ve seen of her, I can’t fault Jonny on that one. Mother Teresa woulda been hard-pressed.”
We were at the door. A few happy-hour customers were straggling in. They were all in their twenties. They seemed to know Dann, who gave them a wink or a pat on the back.
“The Parnelles eat here often?” I asked.
“Never been in, thank God. Oh, the husband seems okay, if a little distracted, you know what I mean. Like he’s got his mind on some other game. The wife makes up for it. She’s a real presence. A capital B-I-T-C-H. Treats him like shit, and just about everybody else worse than that. I’d as soon my staff not have to take her kind of crap. Work is hard enough.”
“You know the Parnelles from …?”
“I first caught their act at a party at Derek Webber’s. You know, the Instapicks guy.”
I did know. Webber was one of the current Internet gazillionaires. He chaired an assortment of multinational electronic commerce companies. The biggest was a website called Instapicks that had started out a decade ago as a movie rental-sales operation but now sold everything pertaining to the entertainment world, from MP3s to home theaters (“Why settle for Netflix when you can Instapicks?”).
“I wasn’t aware Webber lived here in Chicago,” I said.
“Oh, yeah.” He paused to welcome two striking young female customers.
“Webber’s operation is out in Shamberg,” he said, when I had his attention again. “But he lives in this mansion on North State Parkway, a block down from the Hefner place. He’s the guy behind Onion City Entertainment, producing the Thief Who movie. That’s what the party was for, to hustle local businessmen to invest in the flicker.”
“Did you?”
He smiled. “Not as much as Big Jon, but a couple of pals and I ponied up enough for a point. It won’t kill me if the thing tanks. And if it turns out as big as the books, I won’t kick myself in the ass for ignoring the opportunity.”
I lost him again to a quartet of young men in business suits. I suppose I should have left him to his hosting duties, but I was curious about the CEO of Instapicks and Onion City Entertainment. He struck me as a potential interview subject.
“What kind of guy is Webber?” I asked, when Dann returned.
“A good guy. None of that I-know-more-than-you bullshit you get from some of the new-money boys. Makes you feel he’s vitally interested in whatever you’re telling him. And I gotta give him props for ‘hiring’ Jonny.”
“How’d that happen?”
“He had a lunch for backers and their families, to show off the studio he’d built out at the Instapicks compound. Jon and I took the boy with, and when Webber made his rounds to welcome each of us, Jonny, in that way of his, said he was a good carpenter and asked if he could help out with the sets. Webber was amused. He said if it was all right with his dad, the job was his.
“I drove him out there and watched while he pounded some nails and got to spend time with the crew and the cast. It was great for him.”
“What turned Jonny against Mrs. Parnelle?”
“She saw him standing around, watching the workers, and began shouting that Webber wasn’t paying him to dog it. When I tried explaining the situation, the bitch began shouting at me, wanting to know what I was doing there. Somebody got Webber, who calmed her down. Then he took Jonny and me to lunch and apologized.”
“Webber sounds like an interesting guy,” I said.
“If there were more entrepreneurs like him, the country wouldn’t be so screwed up,” Dann said.
Suddenly his attention was drawn to activity at the entrance. “Well, looky here,” he said with a wide grin. “Heeerrrre’s Big Jon.”
The man who’d just entered was not that big, at least by Dann’s pro football standards. He stood six feet. Medium build. Everything about him looked polished—neatly barbered, his face a healthy tan, his smile exposing straight, gleaming teeth. His dark suit was tailored to emphasize broad shoulders and a thin waist. His black shoes were mirror-shiny. I figured him to be in his fifties. What impressed me most was his style—relaxed, confident, ready for anything. A man totally at home in his skin.
The brothers-in-law embraced. When they pulled apart, Jon Baker saw me, and his face lit up. “Chef Billy Blessing, I’ll be damned.”
He approached with an outstretched hand and gave mine a hearty shake. “I’m Jon Baker, and this is a real pleasure.”
“Likewise,” I said.
“It’s great that you’re featuring Charlie on your cable show,” he said. “I love the show, by the way. Record it. Watch it. Try the recipes. I love to cook. It’s how I unwind.”
“Billy’s morning show is broadcasting from here this week and next,” Dann said.
“Terrific. It’s a great city, Billy. I’ve lived in other parts of the country, but nothing compares.”
“You grow up here?”
“Nooo. I’m … I was a Malibu Beach boy. I met Donna—my late wife—out there when she was working at Cedar’s. She was a Chicagoan through and through, like her big brother Charlie. She hated the West Coast and just about had to put a gun to my head to get me back here, where people have to work for a living. And every day I thank God I listened to her.”
The sound of a digital chirp interrupted him. Both he and Charlie checked their phones. It was Jon’s. “ ’Scuse me a minute,” he said, and walked away from us.
“The guy’s a real dynamo, isn’t he?” Dann said. “And the whole BDI thing, this is all since he and Donna and the boys moved here about ten years ago. Out in California he was what they call a ‘laid-back dude’ who mainly surfed and sunned. Trust-fund baby.”
Jon rejoined us, pocketing his phone. “Gotta grab the boy and run. Pleasure meeting you, Billy.”
“Same here. Good kid you’ve got.”
“You bet. Two of ’em.”
Watching him moving toward his son, Charlie said, “Jon and Donna were braver than I woulda been, having another kid. But Dickie’s as sharp as his dad. He graduated from Northwestern, and he’s working his way up through BDI.”
The bar was going full tilt, and Dann seemed anxious to be about his glad-handing. I thanked him for the interview. He gave me an open invitation for dinner at the restaurant, then limped back into the lounge that was filling with customers, most of whom hadn’t been alive when he’d played for the Bears.
Out on Clark Street, the after-work traffic was congealing. Not a cab in sight.
I started walking north, past buildings of yellow brick and concrete. In the next block was a BDI construction site with a backhoe resting idly at the curb beside a huge pile of sand. In just the few days I’d been in town, I’d seen considerable building and rebuilding taking place. What Nelson Algren had once famously labeled the City on the Make was now apparently a city on the makeover. Mainly by BDI.
Because the sand was blocking part of the sidewalk, I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed the two-lane street, walking against the flow. Continuing north, I spotted a small black SUV parked just past the backhoe. The darkened side window was open a crack, and cigarette smoke snaked through it, mixing with the traffic exhaust. While I watched, the SUV backed up and darted out into the traffic, barely missing a dusty sedan driven by a Germanic-looking guy, who began pounding on his horn.
I had no reason to think the driver of the SUV had any business with me. But there’s that little twinge you get sometimes from a sixth-sense connection made. Usually it’s the feeling that someone’s watching you. At that moment, it was Pat Patton’s death and my potentially perilous situation.
At the corner, the SUV suddenly attempted a U-turn but was only partially successful. A Lincoln Town Car blocked it. When the Town Car moved on, the Accord behind it stayed where it was and the black SUV made his U.
Coming for me, no doubt.
I ran out into the street, dodged a truck, and continued on past a slow-moving Mercedes sedan to the sidewalk on the other side. Before the SUV’s driver could manage a second U-turn, I ran down an alley and hung a right into another alley. Exiting, I continued on a fast walk east and flagged down the first free taxi I saw.
“Hey, I know you, man,” the black driver said, as I pulled the door shut. “You’re the morning show dude.”
“That’s me,” I said, and gave him the name of my hotel.
As he pulled away from the curb, I twisted in the seat to look out of the rear window. No black SUV. When I faced forward, the driver was staring at me in his rearview.
“You see anything back there I should know about?” he asked.
“Not a blessed thing,” I told him.
Why should both of us be worried?