The Fugitives (8 page)

“Jackie Crackers.” Argenziano shook his head. “A name from the dead.”

“Is he dead?” asked Kat.

“Figure of speech,” said Argenziano, fixing her with the pair of eyes that she knew was the last thing James Patrick Sheehan had seen before an epidural hematoma had plunged him into the coma from which he’d never awoken.

“Of course,” she said. “But then, you wouldn’t know, would you?”

“Like I said, I haven’t heard anything about him since he left here.”

“How long had you known him?”

“Met him at P.S. 102, in Brooklyn. He was a couple of grades ahead of me. That was a million years ago.” Argenziano leaned back and looked into the middle distance, rather theatrically contemplating the past.

“So you’re childhood friends.”

“Yes.”

“And you hired him.”

“I did.”

“But then he leaves and you never hear from him again. It’s odd.”

“It happens.”

“Did you have a falling-out?” asked Kat.

He laughed. “No, nothing like that.”

“And he left right after this theft is alleged to have taken place.”

“Looks like we’re back where we started,” said Argenziano. He glanced at his watch.

Kat flipped through her notebook and stopped at a page with car rental information on it. “My source claims to be in possession of proof of the theft.” She looked up.

“What ‘proof’?”

“Don’t know,” shrugged Kat. “I only have the claim.”

Argenziano impatiently waved off someone behind Kat. She turned around and saw a black-clad hostess retreating. The queue of people waiting for tables had grown longer. Their section remained empty. He leaned forward.

“OK,” he said. “I’m going off the record now. Got it? Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s
possible
that South Richmond
might
have advised the Chippewas that it could be mutually advantageous to regularly set aside a rough percentage of cash receipts prior to their being entered on the top line.”

“OK,” said Kat. She felt a growing excitement.

“If something like this were to happen, it would be, ah, customary for this to be cash that South Richmond would take physical possession of. It would be good business.”

“How so?”

“It just would be.” Argenziano paused slightly between each word, for emphasis.

“Is it legal?”

“Is it legal,” said Argenziano, with a laugh. “Kat, this is a legitimate business. This is what I’ve been saying all along. There are official documents on file with official government agencies that prove this. My point here is that in the hypothetical situation we’re discussing, a single individual would have to actually carry the money from point A to point B. Physically, like, in a briefcase.”

“And that individual is Saltino.”

“Oh, it has to be Saltino, if you are dead set on writing a story about someone strolling out of my casino with a brown paper bag full of U.S. currency. This is not going to be depicted as part of a pattern of activity that could be construed as consistent with that of a corrupt organization. OK? One big weekend, one man’s temptation boiling over. That’s the frame this story has to fit inside of, if you want any help from me at all.”

“What makes you think I need your help?”

“Here you are. Who’s your source?”

“That’s confidential.”

“I’m going to bet that it’s not someone who can speak, how do I put it, authoritatively on these matters.” He removed the napkin from his lap and tossed it over the steak. It immediately absorbed some of the bloody fluid pooling on the plate. He stood. “You’ll need some cooperation on this end.” She reached into her purse and pulled out one of her cards and handed it to him.

“Call me if you want to cooperate,” she said.

He stuck the card in his breast pocket without looking at it. “Enjoy the rest of your lunch.”

7

I
WOULD
know this dude Salteau was bullshit even if I didn’t remember him from Manitou Sands. He was not like any damn Indian I ever heard of. He didn’t talk right look right or walk right. He messed up these stories I’ve heard a thousand times. I don’t mean he changed them around I mean he wasn’t thinking in the right direction. And he didn’t know anybody at all. Who ever heard of an Indian not knowing anybody? There’s always some cousin around or something.”

From the e-mail Becky Chasse had sent her on Tuesday. A name from so far out of the past that the idea of the woman living, continuing on outside of Kat’s fixed concept of her, thrilled and unsettled her. She’d brought it to Nables to ask if she could take a look.

“Who’s this Becky Chasse? Why’s she writing to you?”

“She probably knows that none of those little local papers can handle a story like that. They probably wouldn’t touch it if they could.”

“No but why’s she writing
you
?”

She’d told Nables that she and Becky had gone to the U of M together. He hadn’t seemed to realize that nobody who went to Ann Arbor would go back to a place like Nebising, or go to work in the cage at Manitou Sands for that matter. Michiganders mostly got out of Michigan, if they got the chance. Nables had very limited ideas about what constituted a dead end, though. He’d been made a columnist after he’d brought a Pulitzer home to the long-suffering
Mirror
for a three-part series on extortionate lending practices on the South Side generally and in Grand Crossing particularly, but despite having been given carte blanche it turned out that there was nothing in the entire world (nominally, his beat) quite as corrupt or done quite so badly as it was in the ghetto at home. His ledes, usually drawing a contrast between some showy boondoggle that benefited the few and the hidden and unrelieved suffering of the many, became notorious for their vitriolic hyperbole, and he’d been kicked upstairs and named midwest editor when his columns, as reflexively indignant as they were, began to irritate even the constituencies he was defending, who had grown tired of being called credulous fools for playing the lottery or enthusing over some costly civic initiative.

Nables had gazed at the e-mail for a long time. He’d manufactured an office for himself by barricading his desk behind tall lateral filing cabinets. Everyone else sat in the bullpen. This cheerless, metal-lined space contained no clue to his character, his personal life, or his vanities. Kat thought of him as an unexceptionally intelligent man with a certain kind of inflexible integrity that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and she didn’t know how she felt about it. She wanted her incorruptible heroes to be genius rogues, and that wasn’t what she had here with Nables.

“Do Native Americans gamble at these casinos?” he’d asked, finally.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because if I’m going to send you to Michigan I want to know who this is ripping off and why I ought to care.”

“I think up there it might be mostly white people.” She’d pushed her hair out of her face, and shrugged. “A lot of people from Chicago have houses on the lakeshore.” She’d shrugged again. “Local interest.”

“Local interest,” said Nables. “Like we couldn’t find ourselves some god damn white man banging a tom-tom and calling himself Geronimo right here in the city of Chicago. If you’re telling me that this is where a lot of rich folks go to spend discretionary income, maybe you ought to think and tell me again.”

Kat hadn’t been sure what her trump was. Story about the hijacking of racial identity?

“You are aware that Michigan is the state that gave us Eminem? I am interested, Kat, in injustice. Not in exasperation. There are no African Americans, and I presume that there are no Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, or Asian Americans for that matter, who are not exasperated by, who are
unaware
of, the ways in which we are belittled and stereotyped, mimicked and plagiarized. We are all
aware
and we have made it our project to make other people, white people,
aware
. And what have white people done? This is what white people have done. They’ve learned to express regret, to watch what they say in public, to exalt carefully selected public figures, to scrupulously integrate their advertising, and to visibly celebrate a diversity that exists only in that advertising. Meanwhile, the master program continues uninterrupted. Underpay us, siphon money out of our neighborhoods, cheat us out of an education, keep us high, put us in jail. How does pointing out one more time the ways in which insult is added to injury help? See, I don’t think you can answer that except to say that it doesn’t.”

Story about an audacious theft?

“
Audacity
is a term I prefer to reserve for the exercise of righteous daring. The word is derived from the Medieval Latin:
audacitas,
or boldness, derived from Classical Latin,
audacis,
genitive case of
audax,
or brave. How we would be degrading this ennobling word, a word describing a way of being that I would like our citizenry, our young people, to aspire to! Theft in all its forms is craven, a hidden act that takes place in the shadows even when those shadows are cast by the collusion of so-called respectable people and institutions. Theft is not worthy of celebration—certainly not in a daily newspaper serving a city renowned for the stunning cupidity of those who purportedly act for the public good. No, a theft is a theft, Kat. A theft is a theft. I do not think that it is in the interests of our readership to glamorize the act because of the means of its accomplishment. In
Othello,
Shakespeare writes, ‘The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.’ Well, in this case I believe Mr. Shakespeare is dead wrong. Shakespeare is wrong. The robbed that smiles is stealing something more from his own self.”

Story about the Mob’s influence on casino gambling?

“Now, how do we know that this story has to do with the Mob? The Mafia? La Cosa Nostra? Because this old college roommate of yours
says so
? This has become another easy shibboleth in a culture addicted to shortcuts. The
Mob
. Let me tell you a story. Where I grew up, there was a pizza parlor. Little pizza parlor on Forty-seventh Street right where I grew up. And when we went in there, there were these coolers filled with colored fruit drinks. And do you know what we called it, the various colored liquids bubbling in these coolers? ‘Mafia juice.’ And when we saw cigarette machines outside the corner store, or in a cafeteria, or at the pool hall, we called them ‘Mafia cigarettes.’ And when there were those coin-operated mechanical horses they have chained up outside the five-and-ten? We called those ‘Mafia rides.’ You know why we called them that?
We were lazy
. We knew something was off, yes, we knew something was wrong about those watered-down drinks, about those stale cancer sticks, about those twenty-second rides, but did we look deeply at the reasons why those things were put there, where
we
were? No, we did not. We did not. If we had, it might have told us something that we didn’t want to think about. We had told ourselves the story we needed. We did not wish to
be
informed. Well, the purpose of a newspaper is to inform and educate the population, not to cater to its fantasies about the causes and conspiracies underlying everyday facts of life. Mafia. Tell me, Kat. How would it sit with you if I told you that casinos were elements of a
Jewish
conspiracy? Or, better. Better still. What if I were to say that the Chinese were involved with gambling? Fan-Tan. Pak Kop Piu. Long,
long
history of gambling in Chinese culture. That is a fact. Hmm, must be the Chinese involved. Not quite so
obvious
a story now, is it, Kat?”

Story about greed and temptation?

“Are we supposed to suggest to our readers that money will set them free? Are we supposed to appeal to their basest fantasies about what it is that money can do for them? You know what I see when I go outside and look at the young men there? Half of them want to be basketball stars. The other half want to be rap stars. Basketball and rap. And you think, I know you’re thinking, well, that is just one segment of the population. I assure you that it is not. I was at a dinner the other evening. A very elegant dinner at the well-appointed home of a man who is rightly considered a pillar of the community. Elegant dinner in Highland Park, night falling on quiet streets lined with homes that spoke eloquently of achievement, of permanence, of perseverance. Well, this man’s son and two of his friends came in. They were boys from the affluent suburbs. Boys who’d never done without anything, who understood what money could buy because they’d always had those things, and they’d watched their parents go to work each day—lawyers, doctors, businessmen, college professors, executives, board members, volunteers reaching out if not to the world at large then at least within their own community. Citizens who live by the credo that my own grandmother lived by and put to me: work hard, follow directives, and be credible. And do you know what these young men, the product of affluence, the flower of their generation, spoke of as they deigned to sit down with us for dessert? They spoke of getting rich. They spoke of getting rich in a manner that would enable them never to work again. They spoke of billions. The language today is of billions, as if mere millions,
hundreds
of millions, could never be enough to sate their desire for money. The surefire idea:
that
was the extent of their plan; to devise the surefire idea that would bring a veritable cavalry of white knights sweeping in with cash sufficient to idle them for the rest of their days. And I could tell that the parents of this young man, to whom it has never occurred to stop working and building and ceaselessly trying to make a difference in their community, were embarrassed by their son and his friends. I could tell that, in that moment, they felt as if they must have done something gravely wrong, must have failed somehow to impress upon him that the money was merely one part of the reward one reaps for a lifetime of hard and fulfilling work. There was a palpable sense in that dining room that for all that they had done by way of example, for all of their attempts to influence their son’s thinking, something, something terrible, had influenced his thinking more than they ever could. What might that something have been? Could it possibly have been the continuous depiction of wealth as an end in itself in our mass culture? Let me ask you: is it responsible to add even
one stick
of kindling to a raging inferno?”