I HEADED to work feeling hungover, though I hadn’t had a sip of booze last night. Instead I’d spent the night trying to work it all out, trying to remain objective and logical, but hitting a brick wall at every turn.
It was time to talk to Kate once and for all. It was time to lock all this down.
On the drive in, at a stoplight, I pulled up ChicagoPC on my phone and found Kim Beans’s weekly column. Sure enough, there was no photograph today, the first time in memory that Kim’s column didn’t contain a snapshot of somebody approaching that brownstone. Kim began her column with this:
No pic today! Sorry! But hopefully absence makes the heart grow fonder!
Making a joke of it. Sounding cute and whimsical. She didn’t look so carefree last night, when her source stood her up.
I wasn’t feeling so carefree, either.
When I got to work, I found Kate’s desk neat and orderly as always, the desk lamp turned off, her coat absent from her spot on the coatrack. She wasn’t in yet. I checked my watch. I was a little late, which made Kate even later. Kate was never late.
“There he is.”
I heard Soscia’s voice.
“The big cop who won the big trial. Now he thinks he doesn’t have to come in to work anymore.”
Sosh was by his desk with my favorite lieutenant, Paul Wizniewski, both of them huddled over Sosh’s computer.
“Where’s Kate?” I asked, taking off my jacket.
“What, you guys don’t ever talk anymore? She’s taking a few days off.”
Of course she was.
“Nice of you to show up,” said the Wiz, nodding.
I had overtime up to my chin and hadn’t taken any vacation all year. I had all kinds of time built up. But I didn’t respond. Wizniewski would like nothing more than to write me up for insubordination.
“What’s got your attention?” I asked, nodding to them as they focused on Sosh’s computer. “Is there a new episode of My Little Pony today?”
“Nah,” said Sosh out of the corner of his mouth. “We’re all about to hear our favorite congressman tell us that he’s going to do us the honor of becoming our next mayor.”
Oh, right. Congressman John Tedesco, the presumed favorite in the upcoming mayoral race to replace Francis Delaney. Since the mayor’s conviction and removal from office three days ago, the congressman had been saying he was “exploring” the possibility of running for mayor and “talking to constituents,” all the bullshit things candidates say before they take the plunge.
I walked over to join them, getting a nice pungent whiff of cigar for my trouble. Wizniewski didn’t even look in my direction, which was fine by me.
I was just in time. The video was live-streamed, and Congressman Tedesco, silver-haired and handsome, had just approached the lectern, which was studded with microphones from various media outlets.
“I scheduled today’s press conference to make an announcement about my intentions for the upcoming mayoral race,” said the congressman. “Over these many weeks, I’ve spoken with many of you around this fine city…”
“Oh, fuck yourself. Just come out with it,” said Soscia.
“But over the last few days, I have come to a different conclusion. I have looked at the state of this city, and I’ve decided it needs a clean sweep. It needs someone from a different generation. It needs someone who isn’t afraid to make the tough decisions, to crack down on the corruption that plagues this city.”
I held my breath. Tedesco wasn’t running?
“This city needs Margaret Olson, the Cook County state’s attorney.”
No. What?
“Get the fuck outta Dodge,” Soscia mumbled.
Congressman Tedesco held out his arm in invitation. Then Margaret Olson approached the bank of microphones and gave the congressman a warm embrace.
“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” said Sosh. “Maximum Margaret?”
I couldn’t believe it, either. Margaret Olson was running for mayor?
I looked at the Wiz, who didn’t say a word. Didn’t seem all that surprised, either.
“I am humbled beyond words,” Olson said into the microphones.
“Looks like you did her dirty work for her,” Wizniewski said to me. “You knocked the mayor out of office so she could take his job. What did she promise you?”
I didn’t take the bait from the Wiz. In other circumstances, I might have, but I was still too stunned to speak.
“When Congressman Tedesco approached me about running, my first instinct was to decline,” said Olson into the camera. “But then I thought about this city and its problems and whether I could be the one to clean it up.”
“You’re a fuckin’ shark,” Sosh said to the screen.
A shark. The same thing Kate said about Amy. The same Amy who swore to me, up and down, cross her heart, hope to die, that Margaret Olson wasn’t prosecuting the mayor for political reasons and that Olson would never, ever run for mayor.
I felt something sink inside me—that feeling again, cascading through my chest, burning my throat, that I didn’t have the entire story.
That feeling, again, that I didn’t know which way was up.