Final Stroke (23 page)

FOURTEE
N

Although it was early in the day, the weather outside
made it seem like night. The two day shift guards at the Saint Mel in the Woods Rehabilitation Facility main lobby desk amused them
selves watching smokers try to suck down a few drags without getting soaked as wind-blown rain slanted beneath the portico at the entrance. Technically, smoking was allowed only around the corner from the entrance in an unprotected area with benches and a sand bucket for butts, but the wind from the southeast caused smokers to try to find whatever protection they could, a course of action that amounted to pacing along the western edge of the portico.

“Think one of us should go out there and tell them they’re sup
posed to be around the corner out in the rain?”

“Wouldn’t do any good. They always insist they’re on their way in or out. That’s why they keep pacing. They’ve lost their regular smok
ing spot and they’ve got to keep moving.”

After a man in an overcoat stepped around the corner to smash out his butt, he ran back inside, taking off his coat and shaking it out
in the vestibule.

“Won’t see many smokers this day. Look at him, like a hound dog come out of the pond.”

The next smoker to venture out was in a wheelchair, a man in a leather jacket and a red baseball cap. The man had gotten off the el
evator, circled the front counter and was now sitting outside beneath the portico puffing away.

“Think he’s a patient or a visitor?”

“Could be a rehab outpatient. I’ve seen him before.”

“If he is, he’s new. Not here long enough to know he can go up to the fourth floor and use the private balcony.”

“What private balcony? I didn’t know there was a balcony up there.”

“Nurses and aides smoke out there, and sometimes use their cell phone minutes out there. As a courtesy, they usually allow smokers in wheelchairs, too. Of course they lock up the balcony when the in
spectors are here.”

“Look now. He ain’t just smokin’, he’s got a cell phone.”

“Yeah, maybe he went outside to use it instead of in the building.”

“We gonna roust him for smoking under the portico when he comes back inside?”

“What do you think? Is it worth it? Or should we let it pass?”

“Maybe the guy’s got no car to smoke in. Maybe he took the bus here like a lot of us poor folks has to.”

“I see your point.”

“Another thing in the guy’s favor, he’s using his cell phone outside even though usage isn’t as serious here as back at the hospital. Not as much equipment that can get messed up.”

“Okay, so we don’t roust him.”

“Would you say the same if he was black?”

“Come on, don’t get on me.”

“Okay. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“Here he comes back. Soaked from the lap down.”

“Yeah, wind blowing under the portico. Notice how his phone is tucked away so we don’t have to say anything that’ll complicate his life or our lives.”

“Is it a lot quieter working this place than back at the hospital?”

“Hell yes. Back there you don’t know what might come through those doors.”

Both guards glanced back as the man in the leather jacket and red baseball cap headed for the bank of elevators. Directly in front of the elevators, mounted in a frame on a high chrome stand, was the sign an
nouncing that cellular phones were not to be used beyond this point. When the man wheeled his chair past the sign and into an elevator and the door slid closed, the two guards turned back to look outside, wait
ing for the next smoker.

“It’s usually like a graveyard here at night. Sometimes I can hear the old folks snoring out in the nursing wing. ‘Course in this weather with the flight paths at O’Hare switched around …”

“When you goin’ on nights anyway?”

“I feel like I’m on nights now from the look of that sky out there.”

“Come on, for real.”

“In three weeks I go on for two.”

As the two guards stared out at the rain slanting beneath the portico, a rumbling gathered overhead. In a lounge to one side of the lobby, visi
tors, unfamiliar with the fact that strong southeasterly winds changed the takeoff patterns at O’Hare, stared up at the ceiling in disbelief.

The sharp cold of the morning rain surprised her. Although ther
e

had been no wind at all the previous night as she peeked out the front window of the apartment at the man shadowboxing in the parking lot, that had apparently been the calm before the storm.

A couple weeks earlier, weather reporters had been hyping the early spring weather, one even implying that the warm weather of late February and early March might be a positive effect of global warm
ing. But now, strong wind slanted the rain as if it were snow, biting when it smacked her face. As she ran from the apartment entrance to her car she imagined a reporter using this cold snap to discredit global warming. If she were with Steve and a reporter used the cold snap to do this, she knew it would make him sad. He’d stop smiling, look down, shake his head, and she’d know what he was thinking. He’d be thinking that the entire world and everyone in it had had a stroke.

On the roads, drivers who had also been bitten by the cold and wet were angry, honking and cutting one another off even though it was Friday morning and folks should be looking forward to the week
end. At a stoplight, when a car refused to move ahead so the honking car behind could squeeze through for a right turn on red, the Hispanic woman being honked at held up her middle finger for the Oriental man behind to see and the man reacted to this by angrily holding up his middle finger. Perhaps because the weather made outdoor activi
ties impossible, traffic was heavy, folks out banking or grocery shop
ping or getting the dog groomed, or simply letting off steam on the last day of a hectic work week.

To Jan, the world seemed an especially cold and violent place that morning, a place in which no one would give a damn if an old woman in a nursing home was shoved through death’s door prematurely, a cynical place where disability is equated with death. That some might even wish early death to the disabled in order to ease the health care burden on the economy depressed her. But when she parked her car
and ran into the library, it was warm and bright and the head librarian greeted her and she recalled the times she’d been here with Steve. Sud denly she felt much better about the world and got down to work.

It didn’t take long on the computerized newspaper and periodical search systems to find references to the Gianetti family. The first was a series of articles published after Antonio Gianetti’s death in May of 1986. Gianetti’s life fit the mold of a mobster. The organization he allegedly headed (there was always that word
allegedly
in the referenc
es) had been into gambling, loan sharking, construction and trucking scams, prostitution. According to the articles he’d been one of the last old-time Chicago hoods. Even his death—found shot in the head in the trunk of his Lincoln—followed the pattern.

A columnist in the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a semi-humorous piece shortly after the killing indicating that there hadn’t been this kind of gangland execution in a long time in Chicago and perhaps the city fathers could capitalize on it by having some kind of lakefront festival. It would be a celebration of the old days with its “olde-time” lessons. The serious part of the article speculated that someone out
side Chicago might have fingered Gianetti for giving organized crime a bad name, perhaps having the hit man, or men, flown in and out. The article further speculated that a national or international orga
nization might have felt Gianetti was getting too wholesome of late, being he hadn’t been in the news in a long time and seemed to enjoy the privacy of his family life. The article also hinted the killing might have had something to do with Illinois or Chicago politics, but gave no specifics.

When Jan searched for other things that might have been going on in 1986, she found the Chernobyl disaster had taken place shortly before Gianetti’s murder. The Chernobyl disaster occurred in late April, but because news was slow coming out of the old Soviet Union
the news peaked in early May, Chernobyl taking over the front pages while reports of Gianetti’s murder were buried inside. Chernobyl, 1986. Yes, that was probably the reason the word
Chernobyl
was part of Marjorie’s vocabulary. Her husband murdered when Chernobyl was in the news.

Jan spent over an hour going through all the articles she could find on Antonio Gianetti. The result was more of the same. Gianetti had been suspected of heading an “old-fashioned Chicago-style” orga
nization for almost three decades, had been charged with numerous crimes but never prosecuted, and apparently leaned toward so-called “clean” businesses like gambling and construction and the wholesale produce business, only occasionally venturing into prostitution. The two things that stood out after reading all the articles were that Gia
netti had maintained a low profile in the years prior to his death, and had also managed, during his entire career, to keep any mention or coverage of his family out of the media. In all the articles, not once was his residence, or even whether he lived in the city or suburbs, mentioned. One article written after his death alluded to this, saying maybe Gianetti had been more powerful than anyone imagined, and implying that, over the years, he was able to get to newspaper editors as well as television and radio station managers in order to maintain his privacy. Apparently he’d been a big Reagan supporter and worked behind the scenes to make sure, as one article put it, “There’d be no more Kennedy or Carter style Democrats put into office.” There was no mention in any of the archived articles from the eighties and nine
ties of Marjorie or Antonio Junior.

Looking further back into the seventies and even the sixties, Jan found a cross-reference mentioning Gianetti in a
Newsweek
article about waning support for then President Nixon. Gianetti was one of several “so-called self-proclaimed patriots” quoted in the article.

“Yeah, I like Nixon,” Gianetti was quoted. “I got a nephew come back from Vietnam with his arms blown off but I still support the guy (Nixon). Someone’s got to stop the Commies.” The article went on to say that Gianetti apparently put his money where his mouth was, using his influence to get jobs for Vietnam veterans in Chicago’s busy produce market district where it was rumored the Chicago mob con
trolled a lot of what went on.

When Jan sidetracked into the Chicago produce market topic in her search on the computerized system, she came across Steve’s name. Her first thought at seeing his name on the computer screen was of his stroke because, in a way, the world seemed a much smaller place now, the world shrinking because of the media and mass communication the way it suddenly shrinks for a stroke victim.

The article mentioning Steve concerned a suspect in a then re
cently-exposed scam in which trucks entering the South Water Market Street produce market were expected to pay a “parking fee.” During police questioning of the suspect, whose name was Rickie Deveno, there was an implication that a Chicago private detective might have been hired to enforce some of the fees, and Deveno had named Steve Babe. But the article went on to say that, after Babe was brought in, and after several truck drivers were questioned, it was found that Babe was not involved and Deveno had apparently pulled Steve’s name out of the air to protect his relatives who were actually the ones providing the muscle in the scam.