The 600 pound gorilla, p.1
The 600 Pound Gorilla, page 1
part #2 of Jimmy Flannery Series
Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
Praise for EDGAR AWARD WINNING Author - Robert Campbell
“Campbell writes with wit and vigor. The comparison not unflattering is to Elmore Leonard.”
—— Los Angeles Times
“Robert Campbell is an awfully good writer.”
—— Elmore Leonard
“Robert Campbell is one of the most stylish crime writers in the business.”
—— New York Times
Praise for The 600 Pound Gorilla
“From Robert Campbell, the author of The Junkyard Dog. . .We expect good writing, and the 600 Pound Gorilla does not disappoint. . .an expert piece of work in which wacky humor and high seriousness are palatably mixed.”
—— The New York Times Book Review
“Chicago is a better place because of Jimmy Flannery, a precinct captain in the 27th Ward. He is in politics to help his neighbors. . .a novel idea in the here-and-now.
—— Daily News
Praise for Edgar Award Winner
The Junkyard Dog
“Dialogue so breezy it stings your eyeballs, spirited characterizations of Jimmy’s proud ethnic neighbors, and the ward healer’s cocky defense of the old ways, the old politics . . . You can’t help liking Jimmy Flannery.”
—— New York Times Book Review
“This truly innovative private-eye character moves credibly through a brawling, tough-guy atmosphere in a plot that’s both twisty and witty.”
—— ALA Booklist
“Written in an appealing argot, this mystery has full characters, a satisfying ending and a nice balance of hardboiled action and romantic tenderness.”
—— Publishers Weekly
The 600 Pound Gorilla
Robert Campbell
Publisher’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1987 R. Wright Campbell
All rights reserved.
Cover Design © 2015 Ayeshire Publishing
ONE
In the winter back in seventy-eight Bilandic is sitting in the mayor's chair when a blizzard hits Chicago. The services for which the city is famous fall apart. The snow sits there, tying up traffic, crippling the elevated trains, sending Bilandic into a panic during which he compares the criticism he's getting to the crucifixion of Christ and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Which succeeds in losing him the primary.
So, this winter it starts snowing before dawn one day and it don't let up.
The newspapers don't write much about it and the television stations sort of mention the possible dangers involved here like it's a minor matter, but there's the feeling they're just waiting for something unexpected to happen before they jump all over the mayor.
Then the old furnaces, boilers, and steam lines over to the Lincoln Park Zoo start busting at the seams and popping their lids.
It's the kind of pickle the voters of Chicago like to see their public servants get into. They use things like this as a test of the way the politicians handle themselves.
This thing about the zoo has got a special kicker, a sentimental extra. The heating plant that supplies the monkey house and the gorilla habitat gives up the ghost, which means that Chicago's sweetheart, Baby the Gorilla, has cold pinkies and toes, and the people don't like that one bit. Even when there's plenty of them what ain't got much heat in their own homes.
TWO
I get a call from Barker Jefferson. He's the mayor's main man. Who is being brought out to run a race because of certain things—like the Shakman decision, which didn't bust up the Democratic Machine as bad as the reformers thought it was going to do.
They was all for this Shakman thing because it was supposed to wreck the patronage system in Chicago. The way it was supposed to work was, if you had a city or county job but you didn't want to work for the party on Election Day or buy tickets to your precinct captain's booster picnic, you could take a pass. And if the ward boss or alderman—who is usually one and the same, but not always—tries to get you fired, a federal judge kicks his ass and you don't lose your job.
Of course, when the reformers get into office, they don't like the Shakman decision so much anymore. They find out all it does is freeze the old patronage people into their jobs, which it would take a court order and three sticks of dynamite to get them out. I'm the first to admit that plenty of ward-heelers just punch the clock and collect their pay, sleeping here and there the rest of the time, but most of us—me included—do the job. I'm inspector for the Department of Streets and Sanitation now, reading meters and checking pipes, but I did my time down in the sewers. Getting a political job in the old days did not always mean getting a free ride.
I think it's always going to be favor for favor. A person works to put another person in the spot where he can do favors, and who's that person going to do the favors for? People what didn't lift a finger? So, it don't matter what they call it or how they do it, a person takes care of his friends.
This election year the mayor's going after the seats for aldermen in every ward where he hasn't managed an accommodation. That means he's making Jefferson put on the gloves and go out against the field.
There's three runners—Rosenquist, Trebova, and Calcazone—what know each other and who, it looks like to me, are sticking their toes in the water to decide which one has the best chance. There's this Hispanic woman by the name of Janet Canarias, another newcomer to Chicago politics, who is also a leader in the Gay Liberation Front, and—I've been told—the most gorgeous lipstick-lesbian in the city.
And there's "Chips" Delvin, my boss and Chinaman what watched over me from the beginning. This name he gets for the way he fights when the chips is down. He's been alderman for a long, long time and the ward boss for longer than that. He's a very tough opponent, but he's getting old and tired. And the makeup of the Twenty-seventh is changing.
We've always had Italian, Swedish, Polish, Irish, Jewish, German, and Oriental. But lately we got more colored—all kinds. Puerto Rican, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Vietnamese, and American black. We even got some New Yorkers.
This is the Twenty-seventh and I've been a precinct captain here nearly all my adult life. I'm a small potato. So why is Jefferson calling me? He tells me would I come down to the mayor's office and consult on the emergency of snow, ice, and overloaded furnaces what is facing the city. I call Delvin's office but he's otherwise engaged, which I understand to mean he's taking a nap because he's getting on in years and ain't got it like he used to. So I leave the message that I'm going down to see the mayor at Jefferson's invitation.
Barker Jefferson is a very short man with big shoulders and huge hands. My hand disappears inside his paw, but he's kind enough not to squeeze.
"We waitin' on you," he says.
I'm beginning to feel very important.
The mayor starts to laugh the minute Jefferson shows me through the door.
"Here he is," the mayor says, "Jimmy Flannery, the people's choice. I never see a man pile it so high. I only heard about it after, but he starts with a drunk fireman, who died cracking up his car against a lamp post, and makes him into a hero. To the widow of which I give a medal so the Polacks will get sweet on me." This story he's having so much fun telling has to do with a couple of people I look after in the Twenty-seventh, a certain fireman, Mooshie Warnowski and his wife. Just before he's ready to retire at full pension, he runs his car into the lake and drowns. So, maybe he drinks a little, but I don't see that's any reason for his wife, who's a good woman, to lose her benefits. I put in a word here and a nudge there, and pretty soon the story of how Mooshie dies just sort of snowballs into this heroic thing where he deliberately drives his car through the railing so's to keep from hitting a nun and these kids walking home from a field trip.
It suited the mayor to hand out a medal for heroism to Mooshie's widow at a big ceremony, which could have, indeed, raised the mayor's standing in the eyes of the Polish community.
"Sit down, Jimmy," the mayor says, "and take a load off."
Which I do with all these heavy people grinning all over me.
Except for Jarwolski, the chief cop of the city, who ain't grinning. "I know Jimbo, too," he says. He also knows because once he overheard me say it, that I think anybody what calls me Jimbo is an asshole, so he calls me Jimbo to see if I want to make a case with him. But I also learn a long time ago not to stick my head in the fan while it's running. "He interrupted a meal I was having with some friends and gives me indigestion," Jarwolski goes on. "Also he make
"We're not here to cut up old corn fields," the mayor says. "We're here to nip some dangerous weed in the bud should this stormy weather bring me special troubles. I don't expect to find my ass hanging out in the cold and freezing like what happened to Bilandic back in seventy-eight. I got the snow clearance crews out in force and . . ."
Wally Dunleavy is Superintendent of Streets and Parks, so why ain't he sitting in?
". . .there isn't a vagrant or a bum in town what hasn't got a shovel in his hands. The traffic's going to move, the trains'll run." He leans forward, folding his hands on the desk blotter and smiling his winning smile at me. "What we got is a special problem. The engineer over to the zoo tells us the heating plant in the monkey house is about to explode he keeps driving it as hard as he's been driving it."
"I read about it," I said. "I see it on the late news."
"The bastard press and the television stations, too, are out to get me," the mayor says, "but I'm hard to get."
"Yes, sir," Jefferson says, and the mayor tosses him a quick look to let him know this ain't a public ceremony and he don't need a cheering section.
"The weatherman says freezing cold's going to chomp down on this town as soon as the snow stops falling. We got to get the apes, especially Baby the Gorilla, situated elsewhere right now. There isn't enough room to put all of them in other buildings inside the zoo grounds. I got other people working on places for the baboons and the spider monkeys. But, now, we got to think of something really nice for Baby."
This summer, in a popularity poll taken by Channel Two, Baby wins out in a five-way race for the mayoralty, two-to-one over her nearest rival, who happens to be the man sitting across the desk grinning at me.
"Baby is the sweetheart of Chicago," the mayor says, "and we wouldn't want her to catch a cold. One sneeze from her could easily do to me what the snow did to Bilandic."
"Mr. Mayor," I say, "if it's your intention to seek counsel in a matter concerning the zoo and an occupant thereof, it seems to me you'd do better talking to the Director of Parks and Recreation."
"I see this as a sanitation problem, Flannery."
"Then Wally Dunleavy is the man to see."
"A toilet problem."
"Then you should see my boss, Delvin."
"I am seeing him. I'm talking to his best man, isn't that right? Why do I want to bother Delvin with a small problem, which we can solve with out disturbing one of his many naps, which a man his age needs, when I can talk to you?"
Dunleavy and Delvin ain't sitting in because of what they done against the mayor in the campaign. Even though Dunleavy and Delvin are planted too deep to tear them out, the mayor ain't about to give them any watering so they can flourish. But he'll pour gasoline on them every chance he gets and stand around waiting for somebody to strike a match. There's nothing I can say.
"So, Jimmy, you got any ideas where we can house Baby until we get a new furnace into the monkey house? What type of establishment do you have in your ward what would fill the bill?"
"I think you already know, Mr. Mayor, that the Twenty-seventh has got more bathhouses—".
"Because you've got more faggots," Jarwolski butts in.
"—than any other ward in the city. I don't know much about gorillas—Baby's kind—but I know they come from the jungle and it seems to me a place that's hot should be like a vacation for her."
The mayor looks around at his cronies like I was a pet dog what just done a triple somersault with a half-twist off Michigan Avenue Bridge. Then he stands up and sticks out his hand at me.
As I shake it, he says, "You choose which bathhouse. I'm leaving the well-being of the city's sweetheart in your hands."
I walk out knowing I've just been had.
THREE
I'm on the way up the stairs of the six-family tenement—which has only got five flats because the first-floor corner is a grocery store—where I live with my lady, Mary Ellen Dunne, when Mrs. Bilina, a nice Bohemian lady, opens the door of her apartment and sticks her head out.
She's dressed all in black and I know that, unless she's jumping the gun, her husband has finally passed away after a long illness. Then I hear somebody hammering inside and I know they're building the dead man his coffin.
"Mr. Flannery. . ."
"Jim. We've been neighbors long enough you should call me Jim."
"Mr. Jim Flannery, my Stefan has gone to God. You'll do me the honor. You should carry my husband, Stefan"—her Stefan must be six foot six and weighs three hundred pounds—"to his grave tomorrow morning? I got already seven pallbearers. Eight makes it even."
I'm glad there's eight, which is insurance against hernia.
"Sure I will, Mrs. Bilina. Are you burying him so soon because of the cold weather?" I say.
"Yes. The ground don't get frozen with the first snow," she says. "It's when this snow stops and the temperature drops it'll be very hard to dig any graves. They'll maybe have to stack them up and wait for spring like they done other years. I don't want to take such a chance. I want Stefan should lie down for the long sleep next to his brother, Deiter. Stefan forgave his brother the terrible things he did years ago, but after all, my Stefan was almost a priest and was, no doubt, a saint. So, who'll forgive sinners if not the priests and saints? Also, in the Eastern Orthodox Church we bury the next day."
"Like the Orthodox Jews. Dead before sunrise, buried before sunset."
"I don't know where you come by some of your ideas. You're Irish, ain't it? You'll come tonight, when he's dressed, and look on my Stefan?"
"I'd love to Mrs. Bilina."
We're having early supper, five o'clock, because I called Mary at Passavant Hospital, where she's a nurse, and told her I got many things to do that evening. My old man is sitting down with us.
"What's on your mind?" Mary asks.
"I was just thinking about Mr. Bilina."
"Are they burying him from home?"
"It looks like it."
"He was an old man and a good man. He's got nothing to worry about. What else is bothering you?"
"Nothing else."
"Something else," Mike says.
"You two are a picture," I say. "You sit around like a couple of Irish witches reading tea leaves."
"We know when you got troubles, Jim," my father says.
"I'm called down to the mayor's office today. He asks me what to do about the gorilla—"
"Baby?" Mary yells out like a kid hearing about her favorite doll.
"We got that many gorillas in town you don't know there's only one that anybody cares about?" I say, a little snappish.
"Hey!" she says.
"So what about the monkey?" Mike says.
"The mayor asks me to find a place to keep it until they get a new furnace in the monkey house. He shouldn't have a tragedy so close to the primary."
"Which reminds me," Mary says.
When I look at her to find out what she's been reminded of, she gives me a shake of the head and tells me to go on.
"So you got a six-hundred-pound gorilla on your hands," Mike says.
"Well, less than half that. She weighs a little over two hundred."
"Same difference. I was thinking of the joke about where a six-hundred-pound gorilla sits—"
"Wherever it wants to sit," I give him the punch line. "But this is no joke."
"I don't see what the trouble is," Mary says. "In fact, it looks to me as though the mayor is placing his confidence in you over a very important matter."
"In the first place, this should be a problem for Parks and Recreation. The mayor's got one of his own people running that department, so why shouldn't he be going through them? I'll tell you why," my father says. "So if anything at all goes wrong, his people ain't to blame. Also, the mayor calls in Jim instead of Dunleavy, who's Streets and Sanitation, or Delvin, who's the boss of Sewers, to let Dunleavy and Delvin know they've lost their juice. They're being told they got nothing to contribute to this situation. If things go right, he's giving one of their underlings—"
