"A politician can go to a bank and say, 'I need money for my campaign,' and borrow it. But suppose the bank is
so
friendly it doesn't press for repayment right away? Or suppose it sort of forgets about asking for interest?"
"Isn't that illegal?"
"If it's found out, sure. Now, Pottle himself I don't know much about. He's only been here ten years or so. There was a rumor he was maybe a tiny bit fast and loose in business dealings, but who knows? Humankind loves rumors, whether they're true or false."
"You'd better hope they love rumors. You run a newsmagazine."
"Hoist by my own petard. In any case, Pottle isn't from here, didn't go to New Trier High School, and lives in a Gold Coast penthouse on North Michigan Avenue. I don't think he likes theater or opera, or any of that kind of thing. His path doesn't really cross Taubman's."
"Damn. Or as you might say, dang. What about Mazzanovich?"
"Ah, a whole different kettle of fish. A kid from a poor family who worked his way up. With his fists, so the story goes. He was a big supporter of the alderman from his area, became a ward heeler, went around to get out the ward vote, drove elderly voters to the polls and so on, and when the man in office retired, Mazzanovich stepped into his shoes."
"Drove dead voters to the polls?"
"Cat!"
"Never mind. How'd he get into the cement business?"
"Well, now, that's a story. There was a cement business called Bio-crete in his ward, owned by an older gentleman. Nice old guy, been in the business for decades, but he made the mistake of backing the wrong person for mayor, despite Mazzanovich warning him it was a bad idea. Anyhow, after the election, city inspectors just kept finding all these problems with Bio-crete's work. Profits fell."
"As one might expect."
"Finally, the man decided to sell out. Mazzanovich just happened to be able to put cash on the barrelhead to buy it."
"Gee, I hate to hear stuff like that. This is my home-town."
"And you want it pure? Cat, influence is everywhere. Payoffs. Vigorish. Connections. Example— a major city organization recently had its annual parade and cookout. Doesn't matter which organization, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers, whatever. You don't need to know. But the young man who was designated to make the refreshments arrangements happens to be the son of a friend of mine. So he called up one of our major fast-food retailers. McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, White Castle. This is another thing you don't need to know. He gets a price per person for a sandwich, side dish, and drink. They say they can provide a choice of two sandwich types, three side dishes, and about a dozen different drink choices. And the price is pretty spiffy, he thinks. Fine. Goes to his boss with the glad news. Boss is horrified. 'You can't use them! You have to use XYZ Catering.'
"So he calls XYZ Catering. They'll provide just one 'choice' of sandwich, a burger. One side dish, coleslaw. And hot coffee. Bummer, thinks my young man. But maybe they're really cheap. And the punch line? No way, José. The cost was three times the cost of the other company! Was XYZ connected? Your choice, Cat, is (a) yes, (b) yes, or (c) yes."
"But in this particular case, the Oz Festival is a city event. The city has always bragged that it tries to make most of the Grant Park events free. Like the lakefront fireworks are free and the GospelFest and all. How would somebody like Mazzanovich influence the festival?" "Let me count the ways. There are so many I don't know where to begin. Let's suppose there are thirty Little Toto Hot Dog Stands around the city that all want to have a booth at the festival. Obviously, you can't let all of them in. You'd have too many hot dogs and not enough ice cream. So somebody makes a decision. Choose Barky's Dogs. The point being,
every time somebody makes a decision, somebody can in
fl
uence that decision.
"
"But it's a group decision, isn't it?"
"Then it takes
more
influence. Listen, I'm not saying that all these events are influence-driven. I really believe that there's a lot of honesty in Chicago. But where there's money to be made, there's influence to be peddled."
I got up, stretched, and succeeded in not yelping as my shoulder screamed at me. "Hal, can you keep an ear to the ground on this? I've got myself into a horrible position. Barry is innocent. Truly. He's just not the sort of person to shoot a defenseless young woman like Jennifer. There's got to be someone out there who had a lot to lose if Plumly talked about something he discovered. And don't look at me that way. I know people always say 'he wouldn't do anything like that' about their relatives. But I'm not naïve and I'm sure of this."
"Roger-dodger. Will do."
"I'll have the Baum story to you by Tuesday."
"What's wrong with your shoulder?"
"Fell."
"Oh."
* * *
There was really no likelihood that Mazzanovich, Pottle, and Taubman had any mutual history. Add to that the unpleasant nature of Chicago politics, and I had gotten so depressed I went out for a drive.
16
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Early in his life, L. Frank Baum wanted to be an actor. He came to Chicago briefly when he acted in his own play
The Maid of Arran
in October 1882.
Theater was unpredictable and low-paying. The more things change, the more they stay the same. For a while, as a young man, he tried to make a go of business enterprises, but he was just too nice a guy. He opened a variety store called Baum's Bazaar in Aberdeen, South Dakota— then Dakota Territory— in 1888, and although he worked hard at it, he could not bear to take money from the very poor. By the time the store went bankrupt, there were over a hundred and fifty nonpaying customers on the books. He tried running a newspaper in the same town, but that went bankrupt, too.
Finally, in 1891, Baum moved to Chicago with his wife and their four boys, the youngest one just a baby. He had secured a job at a newspaper, the
Chicago Evening Post
, and earned $18.62 a week. This was so little, even then, that he finally quit and took a job as a traveling salesman, working on commission, selling china and glassware, which he had to transport in large trunks. With four children, his income still wasn't enough, and his wife supplemented it by giving embroidery lessons at ten cents each.
They lived at 34 Campbell Park, a site that is now renumbered 2233 Campbell Park, changed during the Great 1909 Chicago Street Number Rationalization, but the house is gone. No wonder; it was primitive. There was no electricity in the place, of course, which given the year was only to be expected, but also no running water, and not even gas for gaslight or heat. In the evenings they read by kerosene lamp, and if Baum wanted to write after sundown, he wrote by kerosene lantern or candlelight. If you tried to live like that today, with no heat or light or running water or indoor plumbing, the health department would close you down. For that matter, if you tried to raise children in an environment like that, you'd be arrested for felony child endangerment.
Several days earlier I had driven past the site where the Baums' first house had stood. Campbell Park is a bit south of the Loop and fairly far west. But there was nothing left to see except the general environment, which is totally different now.
Today I drove to his second house, which is still in existence. All the way, I checked the rearview mirror. Nobody had tried to attack me today, but there was a killer out there who thought I'd seen something incriminating to him. I hoped he knew I'd told everything to the cops.
In 1895 Baum and his family moved to this somewhat more livable building at 120 Flournoy Street (now numbered 2149). More livable by their standards, anyway, even though most of us today would consider living like this the equivalent of camping out. This house at least had gaslight and a coal-fired range. The house was near the old Cubs Park at Wolcott and Polk. Baum loved baseball, and went to the park whenever he could afford it. When Baum's wife's mother, a straitlaced old lady, came to visit, she was offended that they could hear the cheering from the park on Sundays.
During all this time, he was writing, and sometimes publishing, stories for children.
Mother Goose in Prose
sold fairly well.
Father Goose
sold very well indeed.
As Baum became more prosperous, he moved the family to 68 Humboldt Boulevard, now renumbered 1667. It was only a mile or so from Tripp Avenue, where Walt Disney would be born a couple of years later. In this house Baum had a study of his own for the first time. The family liked to bicycle in Humboldt Park and picnic on the grass. It was here he began work on
The Emerald City,
which eventually was to become
The Wizard of Oz
. He couldn't sell it. Publishers considered it too radically different from children's stories of the time. It was very "American" in flavor. That was not considered a good thing. It didn't draw a specific moral. That was a serious deficiency. It was quirky. That couldn't be fixed. Finally, a small Chicago publishing house agreed to bring it out, as long as Baum and his illustrator were willing to pay all the expenses.
And then a miracle happened.
There were a few copies of
The Wizard of Oz
produced in August 1900, but distribution of the ten thousand first-printing copies did not begin until September. There was so much demand that another twenty-five thousand were printed in October, thirty thousand in November, and by the new year, ninety thousand had been printed. It was the best-selling children's book of the year. Christmas 1900 was the first year children found an Oz book under their tree. Since then the holiday giving of Oz books to happy children has never stopped.
* * *
With evening coming on, I drove from Humboldt Boulevard to Grant Park. It took me three complete turns around the area, up Michigan Avenue, then east on Balbo to Lake Shore Drive, south on Lake Shore, then west, and back up Michigan, to get up the nerve to park in the Grant Park Underground. I hadn't realized how cowardly I was until now. Each circuit ate up about twenty minutes, with the worst of the rush-hour traffic just coming to an end. Yes, there's a rush hour on Saturday evening, although it tends to be in both directions, into town and out of town, unlike weekdays when it's out of town. It was hard to imagine amid the exhaust fumes and bumper-to-bumper cars that the automobile had been considered a great boon to Chicago when it was invented. City planners were thrilled to get rid of the problems of horse manure and dead horses on the downtown streets.
Getting out of the car in the underground was a mental trip in and of itself. It was all I could do not to glance around for the chipped concrete block where the shot had hit near us on Thursday night. This time I didn't leave my cell phone in the car. Live and learn— and if you learn well enough, you may stay alive.
And finally I was back at the Yellow Brick Road. My notebook was in my pocket. A dozen pens were ready in my other pocket.
Certainly looking at the place Plumly died would tell me something more than I knew now. It had to. On Thursday almost all my attention had been focused on Jeremy. Without him to care for, I should be able to see much more. And maybe remember more.
The Yellow Brick Road ran east-west through the festival, from Michigan Avenue, around the Emerald City castle, to Lake Shore Drive on the far east side. Because I had come out of the Grant Park Underground onto Michigan Avenue, the west entrance was in front of me.
The place was full of cops. The police department calls flooding an area with uniforms "showing a presence." And they were doing it here. The likelihood of a third murder here had to be around zilch, but the mayor was making sure that nobody could say he took the killings anything but seriously.
I made a short right turn into Gillikin country, which was all purple. Here were purple snow cones, several booths of vendors, including books and memorabilia, plus knick-knacks like china Scarecrows, Tin Woodmen, Cowardly Lions, Dorothys, and Wicked Witches. A rare book dealer had a booth called "To Please a Child," after the biography of L. Frank Baum written by his son Frank and Russell MacFall. Now that it was dark, the purple Gillikin country lighting made it difficult to see his wares, forcing him to bring in two hooded high-intensity lights so that customers could actually examine the books.
The Oz lighting plan, which was dramatic, and which had received such good coverage in the media, certainly had a few drawbacks.
Without intending to, I had come into the festival near where Jennifer had died. The Flying Monkeys merry-go-round was turning, its music playing "We're Off to See the Wizard." The purple and ultraviolet lights, and the Day-Glo paint on the merry-go-round, gave an otherworldly glow to the monkeys. Jeremy had loved that merry-go-round. The lights and the monkeys made it unlike any he had ever seen. Fortunately, he knew nothing about Jennifer's death and wouldn't have any bad memories of this ride if I brought him back here.
Who was it who said "nothing to it but to do it"? Taking a deep breath, I handed over a ticket and got on the merry-go-round, and while it was still stationary, I went to the same spot where I had been when Jennifer's head exploded. I could see the event horribly clearly in my mind. She had been walking toward the Emerald City area, which is to say, roughly east. Most of the festival-goers, still unaware of Plumly's death, had wandered over to watch the opening ceremonies at the Emerald City. The band had been playing. Not too many people had stayed here. But even with just a thin scattering of people, the assassin would hardly have stood out in plain view holding a gun, if he was smart. There were only a few places he could have been. He could not have been behind the merry-go-round because he wouldn't have been able to see Jennifer through the solid paneling in the center that covered the machinery. He hadn't been on the merry-go-round. Not only would he have been easily seen, but the shot had not sounded that close.
