“Not exactly The New York Times. In fact, it doesn’t even rate in Joliet. And that ain’t good.”
Another draw on the cigarette and a gurgle in the lungs.
“How’d he wind up there?” I said.
“Not sure.”
“You heard things?”
“I always hear things.”
“Bad things?”
“If they were good, a guy like me wouldn’t hear ’em.”
“No details, huh?”
“You going to see Smith?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Ask him yourself. I don’t know the guy, so I’ll stay out of it.”
I figured that was decent of Jacobs. Or as close to decent as this reporter was likely to get. “Thanks, Fred. I’ll let you know when I have something.”
I punched off and called directory assistance for Joliet, Illinois. There was no listing for Rawlings Smith. I called down to the Joliet Times. A sleepy female picked up on the fifth ring. I told her a reporter named Smith had left me his card and wanted to interview me for a story. She told me the guy I was looking for worked weekends and would be in at nine. I smiled for a second time, got out of bed, and got dressed.
JOLIET IS ABOUT forty miles outside of Chicago. Famous for nothing except its prison. Remember Joliet Jake from the Blues Brothers? He did his time inside Joliet’s Stateville lockup, home to two thousand of Illinois’ worst. I cruised past the big walls and kept moving. The Joliet Times was located in a storefront downtown. At the back of the empty newsroom was a cubicle. Inside it, the old crime reporter I was looking for.
“Call me Smitty,” he said.
So I did.
“Smitty, thanks for taking the time.”
I had called ahead and told him I wanted to talk. He didn’t ask why, so I didn’t offer. Now he was here. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Not a problem, Mr. Kelly. What can I do for you?”
I could see the reporter thirty years prior, brown hair, eyes sketched in blue, sharp features and intelligence everywhere. Now it had all gone to booze and cigarettes. A life swallowed up in a matter of newsprint and missed deadlines.
“I’m here about an article you wrote.”
“Been a reporter a lifetime, son. Wrote a lot of articles.”
From his bottom drawer Smitty pulled out a can of Bud and poured it into a water glass. It was more warm foam than beer, but that didn’t diminish his enthusiasm. Smitty tipped the glass my way and took down half of it in one go.
“Management doesn’t seem to care much on weekends, so I indulge. You?”
“No, thanks. How did you get here, anyway?”
“You mean paradise?”
“I’m sure it has its moments.”
He poured the rest of the beer into his glass and watched it settle. I watched with him. Then he continued.
“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.”
