Windy City Blues (4 page)

At two o’clock, it had already been a long day. Back home, I dropped the stomach and intestines of an unidentified animal into Punim’s bowl. The gloppy thud brought her running into the kitchen, where she attacked the entrails like the sweet little kitty-cat she was. I needed some couch time. To assist her digestion, Punim would soon curl up on my lap, and the two of us would drift off together while the facts of the case swirled around my subconscious and Punim chased and devoured the small animals of her dreams.

The cell phone ended my nap. Punim voiced her irritation and ran off. On the phone a soft male voice. “Uh, yes. You want to know about Mr. Gelashvili?”

I recognized the voice. “Mr. Palmer?”

“May I ask why you should care about Mr. Gelashvili?”

“He was murdered. I’m being paid to find out why.”

“Don’t you believe the police can figure it out?”

“When my investigation is finished, I’ll tell you what I believe.”

“And what makes you think I can help your investigat
ion?”

“Why would the CEO of a giant media corporation take the time to personally call a city editor just to kill a story about a guy who writes parking tickets?”

Deep sigh, then, “Where shall we meet?”

Palmer insisted we meet in “your neck of the woods,” and I gave him directions to Mocha Mouse. I got the idea Palmer had not ventured much north of downtown. He kept asking how to spell major streets like Halsted and Armitage. When I told him just to tell the cab driver the address, he informed me he was going to travel by “elevated train.”

From my table, I watched a tall, plump, white dress shirt with gray slacks walk into the wood-centric, bebop-jazz-themed coffee shop of graying ponytails, pierced noses, and enough tattoos to be measured in square yards.

“Coffee, tea, various fruit-based drinks?” I said.

“Nothing, thank you,” Palmer said, sitting down before wiping his head and forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. He leaned forward on his elbows and looked me straight in the eye. He wore no rings although his fingernails were clean, even, and polished. “I’ve become so accustomed to communicating by email,” he said in an East Coast aristocratic accent I recognized from old movies. “Now, please, what did you want to know?”

I had the feeling he was anxious to talk.

“The stringer who wrote the original article about Jack Gelashvili’s murder, Peter Ross, told me you relayed a message from Konigson saying the article should be hacked down to an insignificant nub. Is it true?”

“Mr. Ross was very upset about this. While I had no obligation to explain anything to him, I did tell him Mr. Konigson had personally called me. I had no more information to share with him.”

“Got anything to share with me?”

Palmer dabbed his forehead again. “I’m not sure. That is, you are correct to think it unusual for someone in Mr. Konigson’s position to personally call an editor. I must say, it piqued my curiosity as well. I had never expected to speak to the man, yet there he was on the phone, wanting to talk to me.”

Palmer reminded me of a painfully shy, über-intelligent child desperately trying to break out of his shell.

“What exactly did Konigson say to you?”

Palmer laughed or coughed, I wasn’t sure which. “Well, he told me to make sure there’s not a human interest story surrounding Mr. Gelashvili. When I told him a good article had been written by Mr. Ross, he spoke quite harshly and used crude language. He threatened me, actually.”

Palmer turned his attention to an area of thrift-shop couches arranged in a circle where tie-dyed kids held hands with closed eyes, creating a kind of peace-circle ambience. He looked like he wanted to ask me about it. “Don’t ask,” I said. “Now, why didn’t the all-powerful Oz just tell you to kill the story?”

He laughed or coughed again. “In retrospect, I think fear. He was afraid other media sources might pick up the story and try to investigate. An obit of a poor immigrant would help discourage investigation by sending a signal that the case had been looked into, so why bother?”

“Sounds like you’ve really thought about this,” I said. Palmer didn’t respond. “Konigson was afraid of something related to Gelashvili’s murder. But when he demanded the story be nothing more than a glorified obit, he didn’t even bother making up a reason?”

“I’m afraid that’s pretty much what happened. That arrogant—” Palmer suppressed a thought.

“What is it?”

Palmer looked at the meditating kids. “The arrogance of money. One with money need not fear consequences.”

Had the corrupting influence of money been lost on Palmer only to have been found with Gelashvili’s murder? “You could’ve told me all of this on the phone.”

Palmer took a deep breath. “Yes, it’s perfectly normal that you should wonder why I came all the way up here to meet you. And to be absolutely honest, I’m still processing my motivation as well. Perhaps it was just the timing. Mr. Konigson’s phone call stirred up emotions inside me. I was never one to question the way things were, and suddenly I’m conflicted. You were the first person to directly ask me about the Gelashvili article. Now that someone else is demonstrating a keen interest, I feel compelled to discuss my internal struggle.” Palmer leaned back in his chair and briefly closed his eyes.

“So what are you doing here?” I said.

Palmer straightened up and gave me a quizzical look. “How do you mean? We agreed—”

“No, I mean here in Chicago. I would never have pegged your personality surviving a big-city newspaper.”

Palmer smiled and nodded. “I know now that you are correct. The
Republic
chose me, and not the other way around. In fact, my entire life has been chosen for me.”

“Before you tell me the story of your life, can you make it remotely relevant to the squelching of the Gelashvili article?”

Palmer thought for a second. “Yes, I think what I have to say will be relevant, if only parentheti
cally.” He looked squint-eyed and then rubbed his forehead. “Actually, it may be more relevant than either of us realizes. I have a feeling that insights previously unrecognized may surface—if you don’t mind listening to me.”

“By all means, sir. Tell me your story.”

“My family comes directly from the New York of the Gilded Age…”

Palmer began his story of childhood WASP ostentation complete with exclusive private schooling for children of the super-rich who also possessed remarkable intellectual gifts. That the written word became the source of Palmer’s fascination delighted his mother, although his father would have preferred that his son’s encyclopedic mind took advantage of the less subjective world of finance. As he spoke, the phrase “proper breeding” repeatedly flashed through my brain.

Palmer had spent his life in a bubble, focusing only on the journalistic and literary tasks put in front of him and excelling at each level. Family contacts ensured that opportunities to work at the most distinguished publications were available to him. As a gesture to his father, he also obtained advanced degrees in finance and law, earning one of the top ten scores in the country on his CPA exam. Palmer’s cultivation amidst the elite publishing families of Manhattan guaranteed a symbiotic relationship with the media’s gradual corporatiz
ation and culminated with his appointment to oversee all of the Dow Jones consumer-oriented publications.

“Over the course of many years in New York financial publishing, I realized I was an oddity,” Palmer said and, without any detectable change in his aristocratic inflection, began deriding himself for a life of shallow nearsighte
dness. Purely out of curiosity, I asked him to elaborate. “Wall Street,” Palmer said. “Specifically, the blatant way investment banks controlled the country.”

I didn’t know if I had ever been so underwhelmed. “Are you kidding?
That
came as a surprise to you?”

Palmer stared at me for a solid five seconds. “Have you ever seen Mr. Konigson?”

“Only newspaper headshots of his shaggy face.”

“I’ve never seen him without three former navy SEAL bodyguards surrounding him. I used to see nothing peculiar about living this way. Gradually, my eyes opened. My revulsion for the controlling gentry stems from having lived among them so long. Someone as far removed as you from the
elect
of finance has the ability to see much more clearly than someone like me, who has known no other reality.”

Palmer’s deadpanned sincerity filled me with shame.

“Excellent observation. But did you think Chicago would be a bastion of provincial virtue?”

Palmer smiled. “Chicago was not New York. That was enough for me. I had been groomed to one day own or run a media company. Many argued I shouldn’t settle for being an editor. I, however, welcomed the reduced role in the journalistic
scheme
.”

When Palmer spat out the bitter taste of “scheme,” he said more than all his preceding words combined. Perhaps I should investigate how far a disillusioned journalist would go to get the truth.

“So what I know for sure is that we have a media billionaire personally ordering one of his hundreds of mid-level deputies to kill a story of no consequence about a person of even less consequence. I certainly appreciate you coming to meet me, Mr. Palmer, and I sympathize with your career disappoint
ment, but as I said earlier, you could’ve told me this on the phone.”