Michael Harvey - The Fifth Floor

“Not exactly the happily-ever-after you plan on, is it? I was thirty-two years old. Hell, that was more than thirty years ago.”

Smitty moved forward to the edge of his seat. One disinterested leg crossed over the other. His foot dangled at the end, bobbing time to a beat only he could hear.

“Thirty-two. My own byline at the Sun-Times. Phone calls from New York. Newsweek had its eye on me. Did you know I was short-listed for a Pulitzer?”

He looked over, a bit of challenge in his eyes.

“No, I didn’t. Congratulations.” I said it neutral, enough to keep the conversation moving. The old man wasn’t stupid. He knew I didn’t really care about his would-be Pulitzer. He also knew I had to listen, so he sunk into it.

“A seam corruption out of the First Ward. Alderman’s name was Frank Raymond.”

I’d heard the name but not much else.

“Before your time,” the reporter said. “A throwback guy. Big cars, silk suits, cigars, the whole thing. First Ward was filthy with the bent-noses. Still is, I assume.”

I nodded. Smitty ignored me and plowed ahead.

“Anyway, Frankie liked sex. Problem was, he liked it with little girls.”

“Hold on. I remember that.”

That got a cackle. “Figured you might.”

“Maybe 1975, around there?”

“That’s right. Even got a picture of him with a kid. ’Course, back then we didn’t use photos the way they would today.”

“I bet.”

“Look up the clips. Story ran on the front page for two weeks. First, it was the sex stuff with Frankie. Then he started talking and they took down the largest child pornography ring in the Midwest. Wound up passing new laws on child prostitution as a result of that story.”

The old man’s gaze crept up and over my shoulder. I let him sit with his memories. After a while, he came back.

“They sent Frankie away for two years. I thought it was light time. One of those country-club pens.”

“What did Frankie think?”

“Never got a chance to ask him. He took a slug of bleach a month into his sentence.”

Smith coughed up a bit of phlegm. He spit it into a napkin, looked at it, folded the napkin, and put it in his pocket.

“That’s the way it goes, you know. Highlight of my career. At the time I thought it was just the beginning. But it turned out to be the end.”

“How’d you wind up down here?”

It was the second time I had asked the question. This time I got the glimmer of an answer.

“I rode high for another year or two. Downtown loved me. Mostly because they thought they owned me. See, Wilson’s men gave out the tip on Frankie. Not the Wilson you know. This was his old man. Alderman out of the Tenth Ward.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Sure you have. Red face, white hair, and pinkie rings. Never made it to mayor, but he ran Chicago’s City Council in the seventies. Anyway, he wanted to put one of his pals in the First Ward chair but couldn’t move on Raymond.”

“So he dropped a line to the press.”

“To me, in particular. I checked it out. All true. So I ran with it.”

I nodded and thought about Fred Jacobs: his green pants, white socks, and two Pulitzers. In Chicago, most things never change.

“You were tight with the old man?”

“No one was tight with old man Wilson. Never really wanted to mingle, that guy. Nothing like the son. Still, for a while I had a number to call. Then I got on the wrong side of the books. Didn’t know it, but managed to, anyway.”

“How?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“It was the fire. The big one, 1871.”

Somewhere a coin dropped.

“I’ve heard of it,” I said.

“Course you have. Here, let me show you something.”

The reporter unfolded from his chair and shuffled down a linoleum corridor. In a back room were some boxes and a wooden filing cabinet that looked like it came from the public library of my youth. Smitty opened up the second drawer and pulled out a folder.

“This article right here. Read it and weep. My ticket to Palookaville.”

The clip was bound up in a plastic binder. It was the same clip I had pulled out of the Chicago Historical Society, the reason I had come down to Joliet. I felt the society’s copy in my pocket and read the headline aloud.

“FORGET O’LEARY’S COW. DID A WILSON BULL KICK OVER THE LANTERN?”

Underneath was a short blurb.

Two historic families linked to Chicago Fire conspiracy.

“Seemed harmless enough,” Smitty said, and lit up a cigarette. “Just an old story I got onto. Crazy theory. Started by Mickey Finn, of all people.”

“Mickey Finn? As in slip-him-a-mickey Mickey Finn?”

“Sure. Finn was a Chicago guy. Didn’t you know that?”

I shook my head. Smitty exhaled a cloud of blue velvet and picked a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue.

“Guy was five feet nothing. In the 1890s, he ran a place called the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden Restaurant. Nice name, huh? Down at the ass end of old Whiskey Row.”

“Whiskey Row?”

“Today it’s known as home to the Chicago Public Library. Back then, Mickey offered his own sort of education. Taught the local kids how to lift a wallet. Then he’d set them loose on his customers after they’d had a few.”

“Mickey got a cut, of course.”

“Like something out of Oliver Twist was Mickey. Little bastard invented a special drink. Called it the Mickey Finn Special. When one of his waitresses saw a big billfold, the customer got himself a Special as his next drink, whether he ordered it or not. Guy would wake up in an alley somewhere, wallet and money gone. And that was if Mick was feeling generous.”

“Sounds like Chicago,” I said.

“Crazy town.” Smitty took in another lungful of cancer and offered up a smoky chuckle in exchange. “Jesus, I do miss it sometimes.”

The reporter dropped his cigarette to the floor and rubbed it out with his foot. “Enough of that. You want to know how Mick fits into the article I wrote.”

“Be nice.”

“Okay, it goes like this. Around 1895 or so, Mickey Finn began pushing a story around town. Claimed Charles Hume started the Great Fire. Hume was the editor of the Chicago Times. Heavy hitter around town. Last name like Kelly, you gotta be Irish, right?”

I nodded.

“So was Mickey Finn. I’d pour us some Jameson now if I had any. But those days are long gone.”

I got us a couple more warm Buds from the reporter’s desk. Smitty liked the idea and produced a bottle of Ten High bourbon. It didn’t have a cap, but that didn’t seem to bother Smitty. He poured it on top of the Bud and screwed it straight down. I lifted my glass and drank. The reporter waited until I was done before he continued.

“Hume hated the Irish. Do you know he actually wrote an editorial suggesting Chicago should hang its Irish from the city lampposts. Be a nice decoration, according to Hume.”

“Sounds like a real visionary. How did the Wilson family fit in?”

The reporter held out a hand for patience. “Our current mayor’s great-great-grandfather. Man he was named after. John Julius Wilson.”

“Seminal seed of the clan.”

“One and the same. In 1870 he’s a shanty Irishman just off the boat. Like tens of thousands of others. But not so. According to Mickey Finn, Wilson finds himself a friend in Mr. Charles Hume. A powerful friend who suggests Wilson dabble in real estate.”

“And…?”

“Wilson was the straw man. Winds up buying a flock of land for Hume and the Times. In the Irish tenement section of Chicago.”

“Where O’Leary’s barn was located?”

“Exactly. So they bought this land low-”

“Planned to burn out the area, clear the land, and sell it high.”