“How y’all doing, Pat?” one shouts down with a big grin.
“Good, Pete. You?”
“Outstanding!” he replies before he greets me with a friendly nod. “Hey, man.”
I smile back and return the greeting.
A diminutive, rail-thin Black man with a close-cropped head of graying hair steps through the front door and bounds down the steps as we come up the sidewalk. The smile his face splits into reminds me of why I love this man to bits. Reverend Alvin Jakes came into my life after Pat was shot last year. He stuck around to offer his support during my father’s trial as well as throughout the ordeal of Titan Development’s attempt to bulldoze our neighborhood. He wraps Pat in a bear hug. His eyes twinkle mischievously when he looks at me over her shoulder and asks, “Is this the new recruit?”
Pat steps out of the embrace. “I warned you that he may not be of much use.”
“She’s been talking about me again, has she?” I ask.
The reverend grins, then grasps my arm and tugs me toward the house. “Yessir, but you’re still welcome.”
“Thanks,” I mutter while shooting a sideways stink eye at Pat.
“Uh-huh,” he says. His eyes drift heavenward when he adds, “We appreciate every one of God’s children that He sends to help with His work here.”
“Once you see me with a hammer in hand, you may question His wisdom,” I say.
He wraps an arm around my shoulder. “It sure is good to see you again, Tony. All is well?”
I nod. Something in his eyes telegraphs his knowledge of recent events around our house, but he doesn’t broach the topic. I’m grateful.
“What are you gonna have us doing?” Pat asks.
Jakes winks at me. “Considering Tony’s hammer handicap, I think you two should do some painting.” He looks me up and down. “Did you bring any old clothes?”
I shake my head.
“We oughtta have something you can slip on over those nice uptown threads.”
“They’ve got a ton of old stuff you can throw on,” Pat adds.
Jakes squeezes my shoulder as he turns back to the house. “Pat knows where to find ’em.”
She takes my arm and leads me inside. More effusive greetings welcome us to Lawndale before Pat heads to the basement with me in tow, pulls a pair of well-worn but clean coveralls from a wire strung between two crosshatched ceiling beams, and tosses them to me—all the while chattering with a couple of guys who are busy hanging drywall. I pull on the coveralls. Now protected against unruly splatters of paint, we make our way back upstairs. After a brief tutorial by Pat, we begin slopping paint on the walls of a bedroom.
“I hear there’s been some action on the lawsuit front,” she says.
“Yup. Now that they’ve had time to sniff out where the money is, Butterworth Cole has amended the lawsuit to add the principals of Windy City and Megan Walton’s estate as defendants.”
“Plenty of money in the Walton family,” she says with a healthy measure of distaste.
“Not a Walton family fan?” I ask.
She frowns. “I was assigned to help a cub reporter cover Jonathan’s society wedding a few years ago and to write a profile on the Walton family. Not a nice group of people. I don’t get the public fascination with people like them.”
“The whole celebrity thing, I guess. Nothing new in that. It’s been going on for decades.”
“I suppose. It just seems worse now.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I say. “Maybe it’s that old saw about people who are famous for nothing more than being famous? They seem to be breeding like rabbits these days.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” she grumbles.
We paint in silence for the next couple of minutes.
“Nice work,” she says with a snort when I slop a giant glop of paint on the floor. “We’ll be putting carpet in, Valenti. No need to paint the floorboards.”
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“Anyway, back to the Waltons,” she says. “It might be worthwhile for you to know a little more about them.”
“Shoot.”
“Lillian Walton is a staple of the Chicago philanthropic and fine-arts scenes—a true matriarch of Chicago society. Young Jonathan married well, to a wife in the mold of his mother. Mind you,” Pat continues with a sardonic smile, “there’s just a whiff of distaste amongst the true hoity-toity when it comes to the social standing of his wife.”
“Why?”
“For starters, she doesn’t come from old money. There also seems to be some doubt that her grandfather came by his money honestly in the age of the robber barons. Anyway, between his mother’s and wife’s fortunes, Jonathan is a lucrative target for a lawsuit.”
“Sounds like it,” I say while dipping my paint brush into the can and carefully working off excess paint so as not to soil any other forbidden surfaces.
“Megan’s mother, Annabelle—an absolute rich bitch if ever there was one—is Jonathan’s sister. Annabelle’s husband’s grandfather made a killing during the Prohibition era, sometimes literally, if the rumors are true. Not that the family talks about that. Megan had a huge trust fund that’s just waiting to be picked over in a lawsuit if she’s found to be at fault for the crash. Her mother is apparently apoplectic about the possibility of even a penny of that money ending up in the pockets of ‘a dirty damned politician’ like Senator Evan Walton.”
“Apoplectic?” I say with a chuckle.
“Writer word,” she replies sheepishly.
“Nice to be hanging out with such an erudite painting partner.”
She smiles. “Screw you, Valenti.”
The Walton nonsense reminds me of the Rice family bullshit I suffered through during my marriage. They all sound like peas in a pod. As if defending Billy Likens isn’t motivation enough, inflicting a stinging defeat on the Waltons would be satisfying as hell. We
