Jewel bailed on BB for the afternoon to pursue the clue Clay had found in O’Connor’s apartment. The boys brought her Tercel to the curb on Michigan Avenue. Jewel moved Randy to the back seat so she could sit in front. “Clay, you drive. I’m still high from lunch.”
“You smell like a party,” Clay remarked.
“Sangria with the girls. I was pumping informants.” She rubbed her head against the head rest, yawning. “I didn’t tell you to bring him,” she muttered.
“He wouldn’t stay home,” Clay muttered back.
Jewel groaned aloud. “You two clowns behave, hear?”
“Naturally,” Randy said from the back seat.
“Naturally,” Clay said.
“Where’s our paperwork?”
Randy handed a file over the seat back.
Clay said, “Ed says the majority stockholder died about two years ago, and the new owner hasn’t re-registered the place as Adult Use.”
“What does adult use signify?” Randy said.
“It means,” Jewel said, “that unless they’re grandfathered in, they have to go through Revenue and Zoning to register as an Adult Use business. And even if they’re grandfathered in, we have to establish that they haven’t been out of business for any interval since the original registration. Plus, if they’ve diversified, i.e., if they have any dependent divisions, those have to register separately.”
“Gibberish,” Clay said.
“It’s perfectly clear to me,” Randy said. “Even in this republican state, one’s grandfather is important.”
“Right. Except Cook County is solid Democrat,” Jewel said.
“So they register and then they kick us out,” Clay said.
“No, no,” she said. “You don’t know the game. It’s an excuse to get us in the door. Once we’re in, they’re wide open.”
They found the address soon enough, but parking sucked, and they had to weave through the meat packing district looking for a spot.
“This area is one of my favorites,” she said as they crawled through a neighborhood of low brick warehouses and about a million trucks. The sidewalks and streets here were used as extensions of the loading docks. Burly guys carried whole dead pigs on their shoulders. Lidless boxes of dead fish gaped open on the sidewalks. People in rubber waders hosed down the pavement with hot water, and blood literally ran in the gutter, along with lettuce leaves, oranges, and discarded plastic gloves. Jewel sniffed the air and smiled.
“You have strange tastes,” Clay said.
“It’s all real. Stuff is being bought and sold. Food is being prepared and put in trucks and taken someplace where somebody will eat it. It’s not pork futures, it’s real pork. It’s not a law office, it’s actual sharks getting skinned and sliced. Wow, you ever seen so much zucchini in one place?”
She maneuvered them through a steaming maze of trucks, loaded pallets, and workers in gore-stained white aprons.
“Strange place for a porn company,” Clay said.
“Good place for one,” she said. “You won’t find a bunch of soccer moms protesting in the meat packing district. Although condo creep is moving closer every day.”
They parked illegally in half a space by a locked-off lot that hadn’t seen traffic in years. Jewel put her official business tag on the dash, and they picked their way through the detritus of the City of Big Shoulders.
The Artistic Publishing Company was a five-story red brick building occupying half a city block. The name was carved into limestone over the front door, and it rang a bell for Jewel. Who had mentioned this company to her recently?
“What’s that aroma?” Randy said. “Cinnamon?”
Clay pointed to the corner of the Artistic Building.
Jewel gave a heart-cry.
“Hoby’s!” Her stomach rumbled. “I need pastry! I need it now.” Leaving the boys on the street, she ran into the bakery.
Hoby’s Bäckerei was a room-size pastry bong smelling of melted chocolate, browning butter, cinnamon, toasting pecans, and fresh coffee. A guy in white rolled in a big rack of hot cow plops. Jewel bought three and ran back to her team with her white bag.
“These,” she said, handing them out, “are fresh cinnamon cow plops, the finest non-chocolate pastry money can buy.” She bit into the edge of hers. It was so hot, the crunchy crust sizzled against her tongue. “Ohmigod, it’s fabulous.”
“Cow plop.” Randy looked dubiously at his. “I suppose there is a facetious resemblance.” He nibbled. “Good.”
“I wouldn’t eat anything made in this building,” Clay said.
“You eat ’em at work every day,” Jewel said thickly. “Be done in a minute.” She looked at her half-eaten cow plop. “No, I won’t. If I finish this one I’ll want another. Here.” She handed the rest of her cow plop to Randy, who put it all back in the white bag. “Business before pleasure.”
“Must I stay in the car?” Randy said.
“I’ll watch him,” Clay said.
Jewel shook her head. “I just realized, we need his hinky radar.” She scanned the building. “They’ve been here for ages. Wide open in a dozen ways. Their only hope is to make nice.”
“We’re nice,” Clay said.
“Exceptionally so,” Randy said.
Jewel put on her cop face. “Let’s go.”
There was a security guard inside the entrance. You could either turn left and buy porn at wholesale, or you could sign in and go right to a set of blank gray double doors or to the elevators, or straight up a grand staircase. Jewel gave the guard their names and titles. He phoned upstairs.
“Go on up to four. Miss Tannyhill will see you.”
Jewel elbowed Clay. “Tannyhill! Holy shit, do you suppose there’s a connection?”
Clay muttered, “Don’t curse. It puts off the marks.”
On the fourth floor they were met by Miss “call me Onika” Tannyhill. Onika was a sixty-something old bat with hard miles but an excellent repaint job. She wore her dyed orange hair in a smooth Hilary, tons of striking makeup, white mink on the collar of her deep blue suit, and diamonds on her long cigarette holder. Her eyes were as blue and snappy as her suit. She ushered them into a vast, hypermasculine office full of dark wood and leather wing chairs.
They sat in the leather wing chairs. Onika said, “What can I do for the City of Chicago today?”
Jewel explained about Adult Use registration. Then she said, “We were surprised to find that Chicago had another adult publishing company.”
Onika fitted a cigarette into the jeweled holder and lit up. “Don’t mistake me for Christie Hefner. I don’t have her brains or her money. She went to Brandeis for summa cum laude, I went to the Bahamas for a tan. I’m just a bad girl who got handed a great big fun toy.” She grinned around the cigarette holder.
“So Artistic is a family business?”
“Yep. My grandfather founded this company almost a hundred years ago.” Onika sucked in smoke, coughed, sucked deeper, and coughed again. “My father took over in seventy-six. I got it—” she paused and coughed horribly for a minute, then croaked, “Oh, hell,” and stubbed out her cigarette. After a sip from a glass she said, “I’ve only been in charge two years. You’ll forgive me if I don’t know what the kumshaw runs to these days.”
Jewel said, “We don’t do shakedown in my department, ma’am.”
“Guess that’ll have to wait, then,” Onika said, unruffled. “Did you want a tour?”
“That would be great,” Jewel said, keeping her temper. Everyone stood. Something caught her eye. Bingo! “Who’s the blonde beauty in the painting?”
There she was, the minx they’d seen in poppet form both in the locker at the Kraft and in O’Connor’s apartment. The oil painting made her look classier. Jewel was reminded of the nude who reclines full-length over the bar in a cowboy movie. It was a nice painting. The blonde’s blue eyes sparkled, and she seemed to say Peel me a grape from clear across the room.
“Sweet, huh?” Onika said in her gravelly voice. “The original model was named Teüschnelda Wilmerding, but everybody here calls her Wilma. She’s our mascot. You’ll be seeing a lot of her.” She put down her glass, which contained Scotch by the smell of it, and shepherded them all out of her office.