The masseuse, her pawnbroker, his running mate and the people of Illinois

By David Heinzmann

I’ve been a reporter for 17 years and have covered various corners of crime and corruption in Chicago for most of that time. But it wasn’t until I recently started helping the Tribune cover Illinois politics that I had cause to take my notebook into a massage parlor looking for answers.

But that’s where I was last Thursday, in downtown Villa Park, at a furtively run establishment known to its faithful as the Eden Spa. It took some shoe leather to get there because the vague directions on their web site were out of date. I’d started out with the photos on the site’s gallery confirming the employment of the girl I was looking for: tall, tanned and blonde, dressed in white lingerie and stockings. But they don’t publish the exact address on the web site, so I had to call. The Eden had recently moved, it turned out.

A very, very friendly woman answered the phone and gave me precise directions that led me directly to an unassuming little one-story office complex in the western suburb. At the end of the row of storefront office suites stood one unmarked door, window curtains drawn, no signage. You’d never notice it.

I walked into a cozily lit reception area. Paneling. Candles flickering. A dish of peppermints. I took one and smiled at the nice lady while she gave some other caller the exact same directions she’d given me minutes before.

When she hung up and turned her attention to me, I asked, “Is Mandi available?”

Two days before, on election night I had been sitting at the city desk watching the election returns firm up in the various primary races. Election night in a newsroom is always an electric event, waiting for hours to see where the upsets will be, and then reacting, pounding out stories and making phone calls to get the winners and losers on the line for a quote while the night’s deadlines come hurtling at you.

It was a crowded field for lieutenant governor with six candidates in each party’s primary. Mostly little known state lawmakers were expected to vie for the chance to be the governor candidate’s running mate. But as the numbers shaped up Tuesday, it became clear that the Democratic winner was going to be a quirky candidate nobody had paid much attention to.

Scott Lee Cohen was a pawnbroker with no political organization, and nobody took him seriously. It seemed he couldn’t win. What nobody knew was that Cohen has access to a couple million bucks and had decided to spend all of it running for lieutenant governor, a job with little power or formal role in state government. But the thing is, even though it's not much of a job, the primary nominee gets locked into the gubernatorial ticket. So a controversial lieutenant governor -- or "lite gov" --candidate can sink a govenor's candidacy. (see 1986; Adlai Stevenson; Lyndon Larouche)

Oops.

So early Wednesday morning, I started to sift through what we knew about Cohen. He owned a pawn shop, and he’d told a Sun-Times columnist months before that he’d once been arrested for domestic battery in 2005. Cohen’s office then returned my call from the night before. The candidate had just won a stunning victory but he didn’t want to talk to me. He’s tired, and thinking about going on a vacation, his spokesman said. You understand.

No, I didn’t. In fact, I’d never heard of a politician winning a big upset victory at the polls and deciding he would make no public appearances, and instead go into seclusion for a few days. So I argued. Eventually, they relented and granted an interview with Cohen for that afternoon. In the meantime I ordered the domestic battery case file from the courthouse.

When we sat down in his West Loop campaign office, Cohen told me about his dreams of helping put Illinoisans back to work. Incentives for business, green energy, etc.

That domestic? Oh, his girlfriend was drunk and he never touched her. She calmed down and dropped the charges. It was a rough time in his life because he was going through a divorce. I had to admit I could see how a difficult divorce from your wife might put some serious stress on your relationship with your girlfriend.

I asked a lot of questions and Cohen talked and talked, and then I left. When I got back to the office, the domestic battery file had arrived. Well, it was a little different from what he’d told me. The girlfriend said he’d put a knife to her throat. The police took pictures of abrasions on her neck. They called an ambulance. Hmm.

Also, the file gave me the woman’s name for the first time. Amanda J. Eneman. I googled her, of course. And guess what came up:

The Eden Spa.

2005. Just a few months before the knife incident. A prostitution sting. Eneman charged. I ran to a computer in the newsroom that gives us access to Cook County court records and looked up the charges. She’d pleaded guilty to prostitution, servicing an undercover cop for $150. (The cop’s actions in that case are a story for another time.)

And so began the brief flaming saga of Scott Lee Cohen, which ended last night with his tear-drenched press conference in a North Side bar during half time of the Super Bowl while clutching his bawling children, and sputtering out that he was acquiescing to Mike Madigan’s demand that he get the hell out of the race before he dragged Gov. Pat Quinn’s candidacy to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

“Is Mandi available?” I had asked.

Not right then, came the answer. Mandi usually makes her appointments in advance. Did I have an appointment? Nope.

So the woman asked if I’d like a session with Gabby, or some other name I didn’t catch, or herself, actually. She was available.

“No, I need to see Mandi.”

Did I want to leave a number? I gave her my card. She read it and the smile finally went away. Later that night Amanda left a message on my desk phone, telling me she didn’t want to talk to me. Two days after that, she released a statement, through the high-profile California lawyer Gloria Allred, saying she didn’t think the Scott Lee Cohen she knew—the once she met while giving him a massage at the Eden Spa, the once she said held a knife to her throat--was fit to hold public office.

Sunday night Cohen said vehemently that Amanda’s opinion had nothing to do with his early retirement from Illinois politics.

Mondegreens

by Barbara D'Amato


I've just learned a fine new word. I've needed this word for years and never knew it existed. The word is "mondegreen." A mondegreen is a misheard word or phrase, but not just a simple misunderstanding. To be a mondegreen it has to give a new meaning to the word or phrase and it's best of all if the new meaning is funny.

Although nobody told me, "mondegreen" has been around since 1954 when the writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay she wrote for Harper's Magazine. She described her mother reading a poem to her from Percy's Reliques, the 17th century ballad called "The Bonny Earl O'Murray." It went--

"They hae slain the Earl O'Murray
And laid him on the green."

She heard it as:

They hae slain the Earl O'Murray
And Lady Mondegreen."

More than one child has thought the Lord's Prayer went this way, "Our father which art in heaven, Harold be thy name." My father's name actually was Harold, so I found this one very funny.

In the course of reading a lot of manuscripts, blogs, and some published material where somebody ought to have known better, I've run into a few goodies:

An author on a listserve, talking about a book he wanted to summarize: "This is the jest of it."

And yet another who was criticizing a writers net-presence, said, "He is being very short-sited."

And: "Charles was an invertebrate gambler."

And: "Mr. Sander received a plague for salesperson of the year."

A writer referring to the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal in New York said, "This is a real abject lesson." And, believe it or not, a blog referred to Spitzer's "peckerdillo." It's possible that this mondegreen was intentional.

Ed McBain used a childrens' misunderstanding of a hymn "Gladly the Cross I'd Bear" as a Matthew Hope title "Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear."

If you have some mondegreens -- and you must have run into many -- send them in. I jest love them.

Greektown on a Thursday night...

We missed you, David and Sean!

Rip Van Winkle syndrome (or I wish I were the Flash)

by Michael Dymmoch

When she retired, my mother told me she never had enough time to do all she wanted. Since I was juggling a house, a job, a kid, and a writing career, I thought she was crazy. Now, not so much. I retired. I traded my house for a condo (no lawn to mow; no driveway to shovel; Maintenance washes the windows). My kid grew up and became self-sufficient. Now I never have enough time.

It’s not just that the pace of life has quickened. Scientists have evidence that age related changes in our nervous systems slow nerve transmission and subsequent response time. Old people don’t just seem slower; they are.

Some days I feel like one of those Sci-Fi characters who’s stepped through a portal to a place where time passes at a fraction of “normal” speed. When—after a day’s sojourn—she returns to her own world, twenty years have passed. I sit down to look something up on the internet, or write a letter or… When I next look at the clock, two or three hours, or a whole day, sometimes an entire week has passed.

Writing is sometimes like that.

Reading is almost always like that if the book is good. But that’s not a bad thing.

An Open Letter to People Who Send Me Crazy Emails...

by Sean Chercover

Dear Crazy People,

One of the great joys of my job is the email I get from readers. That someone actually finds my writing entertaining, moving, thought-provoking, or annoying enough to take the time and write to me … well, it’s rather humbling, and I do appreciate it.

When my first book came out, the letters surprised the hell out of me, probably because I’d never written such a letter (I did call Saul Bellow once, in a moment of youthful folly, to wish him a happy birthday – he was very gracious). I always assumed that authors were too busy to read fan mail, and what did I have to say to them anyway, besides, “I enjoyed your book”?

I obviously didn’t realize what a pleasure it is to simply be told, “I enjoyed your book,” until I'd written one. Anyway, it’s a beautiful thing when a complete stranger reaches out like that, and while I certainly prefer the happy letters, the critical ones are sometimes helpful, and all are welcome.

But then there is your letter.

I am, by nature, a suspicious guy, and in my books I try to pull back the curtain and look at what goes on behind the scenes. The whole idea of "secret knowledge" fascinates me. I do a lot of research, and I’m fortunate to have great sources both in and out of law enforcement.

But, for the record, what I write is fiction.

I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, and I know that conspiracies really do exist. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a conspiracy, kept secret for almost 40 years. Watergate was also a conspiracy, of course. As were (off the top of my head) the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Operation Paperclip, Project MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, etc., and so on, and so forth.

History is rife with conspiracies. Of those I named above, only Watergate was busted “in the act”, so people who deny the existence of conspiracies on the basis that it is “impossible to keep a secret” are fooling themselves.

Having said that…

Your letter is all kinds of crazy.

And while I’m flattered that you have selected me as the person to help you publicly expose “the hidden truth” you’ve discovered, I have some bad news for you.

You have not discovered the hidden truth.

• The Illuminati do not secretly control the Federal Reserve. Neither do "the Jews", you racist nutjob.
  
• The Masons do not secretly run the Catholic Church, while pretending to hate Catholics.
• The 1993 WTC bombing was not an FBI false flag op.
• The assassination of JFK was not a secret operation carried out by "the Blacks" (see, "the Jews" above).
  

I wish I were making these up. I am not. These, and many others, have come to me from real readers. You know who you are. And, while I appreciate the support, I respectfully suggest you see a doctor.

But if you won't see a doctor (because the doctors are all conspiring against you!), if you feel compelled to expose "the hidden truth" you've discovered, you'll have to do it without me. I have my own crazy conspiracy theories to write about.

Of course, mine are true.

And although no one has yet written to me about the moon landing or Paul McCartney, I feel compelled to preempt such letters by saying: I strongly believe that we DID land on the moon, and Paul did NOT die in a car accident in 1966, only to be replaced by a look-and-sound-alike.

Call me gullible.

To writers: Do you get these letters, or do I just attract crazy people? If you do, please share, I'm eager to hear.

To all: Do you dig on conspiracies like I do? And if you do, please share your favorite.

Have a crazy day.

Fragments of the past

By David Heinzmann

Not long after I put up a web site to promote my book I received an email from a woman in the western suburbs who introduced herself and said she knew my family from the little farming community Downstate where my parents grew up. Because of the size and remoteness of Stark County, Illinois, and the decades that had intervened, the connection through my book was a delightful surprise.

Then last weekend, just before my book signing and discussion was about to begin at Centuries and Sleuths, the great mystery book store in Forest Park, in walked the woman, whose name is Julann, and her husband. I signed a couple of books for her and she apologized that she couldn’t stay because she had to run her husband to the airport. But before Julann left she handed me an envelope of 60-year-old photographs and a letter.

My head was supposed to be on the coming discussion about crime and corruption in Chicago, but suddenly I was transported to a post-WWII world of farmhouse dinners and big band dances. The photographs were of my parents—my late father and 85-year-old mother--as a young couple. Some of them were wedding photos I’d seen before, but some were images that were completely new to me, including a shot of my father carrying my mom around on his shoulders on a sunny day. And then there was the letter--on blue stationary, in my mother’s distinctively formal slant.

Dated 1946, it was from my mother to Julann’s mother just after her wedding. My mom was 22 at the time and had been a bridesmaid in the wedding. There was nothing extraordinary in the four pages other than some minor-league intrigue over the attentions of two young men apparently trying to ace my old man out of the picture. Nonetheless the letter offered the wonderment of discovery. A glimpse of my mother’s thoughts as a young, single woman. This was a person whom I and my five siblings never knew, and here was a document of who she was and how she thought, a record beyond the faded and malleable recollections of later life.

A few days after this happened, my wife and I were talking about the letter and she said, a little wistfully, “That will never happen again.”

A handwritten letter, forgotten for 60 years in a shoebox or drawer somewhere, landing in a someone’s lap and revealing some little sliver of the distant past. She’s probably right. Nobody sends letters anymore. We send emails and they get deleted, or merely lost in our own vast digital clutter. But who knows, maybe 60 years from now our grandchildren will stumble on some dusty and scratched little flash drive—the one plugged into this computer right now. Maybe they’ll find a machine that can read such outdated technology. And maybe there will be a few random missives from the old folks sitting there waiting for them.

…

A couple of weeks ago I told a story about my brief time in Haiti several years ago, and that in the wake of the earthquake I wondered what had become of the Hospice St. Joseph, the mission where I stayed when I was there. After a few emails I learned last week that the nuns who run the mission and their lodgers survived by fleeing to their large courtyard, but the building itself collapsed. Many of their staff, who live in the surrounding Christ Roi neighborhood, lost family members in the disaster. It’s hard for me to fathom the collapse of that sturdy old building, and it saddens me that this is relatively good news.

….

One last thing. I was thrilled by Kevin’s post Friday about the discovery of correspondence between Walker Percy and Bruce Springsteen. I became obsessed with Percy in college and in a weird way he paved my path in life. Or at least pointed me in this direction. The Moviegoer was assigned in an introduction to American civilization class I took as a freshman. I figured any field that would teach this book as a primer on our own civilization was probably where I belonged, and I became an American civilization major. In the American Studies department I fell under the spell of two professors. One was an English and creative writing teacher who finally cracked my knucklehead open to receive literature, and planted the seed that I might myself write something worth reading. The other was an historian of social reform movements who once slyly told me I should read detective novels because they had all the relevant social consciousness that highbrow literature too often lacked. Twenty years later and here I am, still turning this nugget from The Moviegoer over in my head:

“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

Thank you, Dr. Percy. And thank you, Kevin.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

By Kevin Guilfoile

This is a fan letter—of sorts. I’ve always been an admirer of yours, for your musicianship, and for being one of the few sane guys in your field.

Last year, a friend sent me a link to a story about a missed connection of fan letters between Bruce Springsteen and the author Walker Percy. When I clicked through to the story I think I must have been trembling.

Percy had been an obsession of mine since high school when I first read my sister's copy of The Moviegoer, which she had carted home from college. My devotion to Springsteen went back further, to junior high, when I had raided my older brother's record collection and became fixated on making mix tapes which were not so much mixes as a reordering of Springsteen playlists according to my whims. The fact that there might have (almost) been a connection between a New Jersey rocker and a Natinal Book Award-winning southern novelist seemed to somehow validate the hours and hours I had spent on repeated listenings and re-readings of their work.


The letters are almost perfectly heartbreaking. Percy (who writes near the end of his life) is a devout Catholic who mentions their shared admiration for Flannery O'Connor (a friend of Percy's), but who misreads Springsteen's Catholic upbringing as spiritual devotion comparable to his own. When he received the letter, Springsteen was unfamiliar with Percy and must not have known what to make of it, so he didn't reply.

Years later, Springsteen read The Moviegoer and saw in it many of the same themes that he had been writing about his entire career. He remembered that letter and instantly regretted not writing back. By this time Percy was dead, so Springsteen wrote to Percy's widow:

It is now one of my great regrets that we didn’t get to correspond....The loss and search for faith and meaning have been at the core of my own work for most of my adult life. I’d like to think that perhaps that is what Dr. Percy heard and was what moved him to write me.

Every writer gets asked "Where do you get your ideas?" and it's mostly an impossible question to answer. But I usually know I have a good premise for a story when I discover that two seemingly unrelated things bouncing around in my head turn out to have some kind of connection. Maybe it's a real connection or maybe it's one that develops in my mind. But this correspondence that never took place is, for me, an almost perfect tale. (Percy was a terrific letter writer, by the way, and his collected correspondence with his lifelong friend Shelby Foote is one of the best books on writing I have ever read.)

I was reminded of all this last week when I was watching Springsteen on Elvis Costello's show Spectacle, which airs on the Sundance Channel (Spectacle is a fantastic program for any music lover, incidentally. Costello is a terrific interviewer, and the performances are great.) "In the end, my music has always been about identity. Identity, identity, identity," Springsteen told Costello. "Who am I? Where do I belong? What is the code I'm trying to live by?"

That's the place, not in a church, where Walker Percy and Bruce Springsteen would meet.

"Troops" - When a Good Word Goes Rogue

by Laura Caldwell

I'm an author, not an etymologist, but I truly like when people create new words or abbreviations (or even use old words in inappropriately creative ways to describe our new world). For example, I'm in full support of texting and emailing with abbreviations like ‘tmrw’ for tomorrow, and BTW for ‘by the way’, or ‘u’ for you. I recognize some people despise such ‘words,' and I get it, but I’m a time-saver more than anything. (For the record, I do, however, have a visceral negative reaction to ‘LOL.’ Too precious for me.)

I’ve been known to bastardized words myself. Much to the consternation of my law students, when I find myself perplexed I often say I’m ‘corn-fused.’ It’s something I picked up from my friend, Dustin. A silly expression, it indicates profound confusion. If my law students and I are discussing an appellate court ruling, it’s easier to me to label myself corn-fused at the wording of the opinion than to say, “I am really, really, really befuddled.”

But there is one word that’s making me nuts these days, one which everyone seems to be using incorrectly, even the President of the United States last night (and all the Republicans who responded, BTW). And no one seems to realize they're using it wrong. (Personally, I think if you shorten a word or turn a phrase into an acronym or simply mishandle a word, you should do so intentionally, otherwise people will be corn-used). But in this case, no one seems to be aware of the misuse. The word I’m referring to is troops.

The definition of a “troop” is a group of soldiers. Therefore, there will not be, as President Obama said this week, 30,000 additional troops sent to Afghanistan. (That would mean that if, say, there were 10 soldiers to every troop, there would be 300,000 additional soldiers heading overseas]. When Obama says 30,000 troops are on their way, he actually means 30,000 individual soldiers.

Why does this make me so crazy? For one reason, given the strict definition of the word, it’s absolute misinformation to say that 30,000 troops are en route to Afghanistan. For another, it seems to depersonalize our men and women in the armed forces. A troop sounds so official, so powerful. Yet when you imagine a lone soldier in her bedroom, packing her bags in order to deploy the next day, it pulls the heartstrings, it’s real. As the linguist John McWhorter wrote for NPR a few years ago, “…using a name for soldiers that has no singular form grants us a certain cozy distance from the grievous reality of war.”

The Grand Unified Theory of Story

By Marcus Sakey

So it’s Wednesday morning on a bright, chilly day in Chicago. Beck’s Sea Change is on iTunes, and I’m alternately coughing—lousy time to get sick—and engaging in the loosest sort of brainstorming. That’s too vaunted a word, really. Daydreaming is more accurate. Toying with the raw elements of new stories.

This happens to me every time I head into the third act of a novel, as I am about to do with my as-yet-untitled fifth. My head begins to detach, to loose the lines that have kept me tied to a story for a year or more. It’s something I used to fight aggressively, believing that I wouldn’t be able to finish if I drifted too far. And that’s probably true, but over the last few books I’ve learned that my subconscious is apparently cognizant of the need to eat, and it doesn’t stray past the point of no return.

I do, however, begin to wonder what might be next. I drift and sort and look for things that turn me on.

And I’d like your help.

I am by nature a system breaker. I’m good at looking at things and figuring out how they work. It’s a skill I’ve tried to apply to writing. While I don’t believe in a Grand Unified Theory of Story, there is an algebra to storytelling. There are rules and logical forms that can inform your choices.

But, just like in physics, it’s often the most basic questions that are least susceptible to solution. And most basic of all to good storytelling is this: What makes you love a book?

This is where you guys come in.

Here’s what I’d like you to do. Think of one of your all-time favorite books. A novel so good that you had the conflicting desires to tear through it and yet also to savor it. A book that’s lingered in your memory, with characters you missed when it ended. Don’t tell me MOBY DICK—I’m not analyzing enduring scholarly worthy, and besides, I won’t believe you anyway. What I’m interested in is a book that grabbed you and wouldn’t let go.

Got one? Good. Now take a minute and think about why you love it.

Obviously, there are going to be some things that we can count on. You’ll have adored some or all of the characters. It will be a ripping good tale. There will be stakes and consequences and the possibility of disaster.

So let’s take those things for granted and go a little bit deeper. What makes this book special for you?

I’ll give you an example of what I’m looking for. A book I felt that way about was NEUROMANCER, by William Gibson.

Yes, it had all of the above. I loved the characters and the story burned along and it had significant stakes both personal and metaphysical.

But thinking about it right now, two distinguishing factors come to mind. The first is the world, which was thoroughly and convincingly imagined. Gibson created cyberpunk—coined the term, in fact—and his future was one that I felt I inhabited from the first words. I believed in it. I could see the connection between our world and his, a perception that was enhanced by the way the characters took it for granted, maneuvering through it with neon cool and switchblade sensibility.

The second factor is that though it was science fiction, and though it borrowed the trappings and texture of film noir, it was at heart an adventure story. I was the boy reading adventure tales under the blankets by flashlight, and a huge part of me still is. I will always love a good adventure—especially if it feels fresh, as Gibson’s did.

So that’s my request. Obviously there are no right and wrong answers, and you can go into as much or as little detail as you like. But seriously, if you have a couple of minutes, this would be incredibly helpful to me. And those of you who lurk but never post, this would be a great time to bust your cherry.

Thanks in advance!

Serial Killers in Real life

By Jamie Freveletti

Here’s the promised blog about John Wayne Gacy, one of the most notorious serial killers in history. He lived in the suburbs of Chicago, and before he was done had killed 33 men and boys.

William Kunkle, the State’s Attorney charged with prosecuting Gacy, took a job as a partner in my first law firm. Each year Bill would gather the new associates together and give a presentation about the Gacy trial, complete with a slide show of the evidence found on the Gacy property. Gacy buried his victims in his backyard, and bulldozers were brought in to uncover the evidence. Because the speech was given during lunch time, Bill ordered in pizza. As each slide appeared on the large screen, I found myself unable to eat. (Bill, if you’re reading this and still giving the Gacy speech, you might want to rethink the pizza angle).

These images are burned into my brain. Some were so horrific; I wondered how Bill, the police, and especially the families of the victims, could sleep at night. Perhaps they don’t. I read that Bill watched Gacy die by lethal injection and described it as a privilege to be there. After viewing the slides, I can see why he felt that way. It was like staring into hell. I’ve never discussed these photos in detail outside of that conference room, and I doubt that I ever will. No one should have that floating around in their head. I won’t inflict it on you, either.
To this day I have a hard time reading fiction with serial killer plots. Once you’ve seen the actual results of these killers, you’ll never read fictional killers or the new, detailed and violent story lines that a reviewer recently derided as “torture porn” without thinking that the serial killer is added as a form of antagonist shorthand. They don’t convey the true horror of a serial killer, and they don’t convey enough empathy for the victims. And, inevitably, the serial killers in fiction kill women, not men. Yet, the statistics show that 40% of victims of serial killers are men. Gacy’s victims were all male.

Of course, another part of me is glad that the writer doesn’t “get it.” Why should they? Do we really need that much reality in our entertainment? Here I am, protecting you from a detailed description of Gacy’s crime scene, yet I’m complaining about the lack of detail in a fiction book. Perhaps those writers that give the briefest discussion of the serial killer have it right. They want you to know that the antagonist is bad, but don’t want you to lose too much sleep over a story that, in the end, should entertain.

I know I’m not being too helpful here. I read for a good story, an interesting character, and for just enough thrills and chills to keep me interested. If I want to get a “real” story, I can pick up a book about true crime. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing about a serial killer, but I’m afraid I’ll pull up images from the crime scene and write something so detailed that no one will wish to, or should, read it.

I realize that this is just my personal thing. Writers have been using the “wicked witch” motif for years. I use it myself, and my books contain quite a bit of violence as well. Psychologists argue that children view fairy tales, with witches plumping up young children in order to eat them, as a way to release and work through their fears. I get it. But each time I read about another body found in Ciudad Juarez, 300 plus victims and counting, I realize that there’s nothing entertaining about actual serial killers. These people are out there, and while I don’t live my life in fear of meeting one, I do understand that true, predatory evil exists.

Eleanor

by Libby Hellmann

A few months ago I wrote about people in the mystery community who have made a difference in the way we relate to each other. Who’ve helped create a sense of caring and concern for all of us, whether we’re readers, writers, publishers, agents, or booksellers.

Well, you’ve done it again... this time in spades. Here’s the backstory.

Many of you know Chicago author Eleanor Taylor Bland. She wrote 9 fine novels featuring police detective Marti McAllister. More important, you couldn’t anyone who was more generous with her time, talent, and money than Eleanor. In fact, she was my mentor. I had just completed my first novel (it was never published, and it shouldn’t be), and Eleanor critiqued 25 pages at the Dark and Stormy Nights conference. I remember her saying, “Hey, you have a lot to learn, but I think you have something here. Don’t give up. “ A year later I landed in her writing group, and although it was tough love, it was love. No one was more delighted than Eleanor when AN EYE FOR MURDER was published.

But my story is just one of many. I knew that then, but I know it even better now. You see, Eleanor’s in trouble.

She’s been battling cancer now for over 20 years. It keeps coming back, and they keep taking out organs to get rid of it. Her last bout was grim – she never really recovered 100 per cent. Furthermore, they told her then they couldn’t do much more for her if it returned. Her body is too frail, and she couldn’t take it.

The cancer came back. In addition, it turns out that she’s broke. She hasn’t been writing or promoting for years, and her royalties have dwindled to almost nothing. She has a tiny pension, but as generous as she’s been to writers with her time, that’s also how generous she’s been to her family. A dollar never burns a hole in her pocket if she can give it to someone else. And just to make matters worse, she was recently evicted from her apartment.

A good friend of hers, Chicago author Mary Harris, filled me in a week ago and asked what we could do. We’ve since put out the word in the community that she needed help, and your response has been overwhelming. I’ve had probably about 50 emails, some from people who never knew Eleanor, asking how they can help. People who do know her keep telling me how much she means to them, how they'll never forget something she did for them years ago. Money is coming in every day. In less than a week, we’ve collected enough for her moving expenses, and we are starting to allocate funds for her future rent and medical expenses.

To all of you who have already contributed, I’m keeping records and will fill you in on the exact amounts and how we've allocated it in the spring. To those of you who didn’t know about her situation, email me if you’d like to help.

But most of all, I want to recognize all of you for caring. The people who make up the mystery and crime fiction community are the most generous, giving people I know. You see someone who needs help, and you are there, no questions, no strings. You want to help. Do you know how special that is? I am grateful to be a small part of this community, and I know Eleanor is thrilled.

Thank you.

This is probably gonna start a fight but…

by Michael Dymmoch

Shakespeare’s tragedies featured great historical figures with tragic flaws. Macbeth, Othello, and Lear were all great men—at least by definition—with major flaws that brought them down. I’m not an historian, but LBJ seems to have been a similar figure in more recent times. Revisionists are already writing flattering tomes about the Great Society and the path that brought Johnson to the White House, tomes that bemoan Johnson’s involvement in Vietnam as the evil that men do. Richard J. Daley, Chicago mayor for 21 years and—according to some—“the last of the big city bosses,” was probably another. The first mayor Daley never murdered anyone, so he’ll probably never be the subject of a dramatic tragedy, but he was the subject of a number of great books including Mike Royko’s Boss and Len O’Connor’s Clout.

The current Mayor Daley will certainly be the subject of some interesting books. Mike Flannery recently did a ride-along with the Mayor during which Flannery snatched the Mayor’s infamous notebook, the one in which he writes notes to himself about problems he observes while riding around the city. Staff members are said to be in terror of that notebook because apparently the Mayor follows up. Daley is a favorite of other journalists—he can always be counted on for memorable footage for the local news. I think he also qualifies in the category of a great man with a tragic flaw.

I don’t recall anyone ever impugning Richard M. Daley’s integrity. He seems to be a man who loves his family and his job. There’s no question that he’s done great things for Chicago. And he's managed the city while dealing with numerous unions and powerful interest groups, developers and the Catholic church.

The Mayor may have appointed Matt Rodriguez Superintendent of Police to please Hispanic voters, he initiated the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) to involve citizens in policing their own neighborhoods. Subsequent Superintendents appointed by the Mayor, Terry G. Hillard and Philip J. Cline, have been able men, good leaders, well liked by the rank and file, and respected by the public. Under Cline’s administration, the city’s murder rate declined despite reduced numbers in the CPD. (I personally observed Superintendent Cline in uniform, on the police lines at anti-war and immigration demonstrations.) The current Superintendent, Jody Weis, has been more controversial because of the clash between the existing Chicago police culture and Weis’s FBI training/experience, but there’s no question the Mayor had the best interests of the city in mind when he made the appointment.

He also appointed able men to run the Chicago Public Schools. Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan have gone on to national positions. The current CPS CEO, Ron Huberman started as a CPD patrol officer and worked his way up to Assistant Deputy Superintendent before moving on to the run the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. He’s subsequently worked as Mayor Daley’s Chief of Staff and Chairman of the CTA.

Mayor Daley is a brilliant administrator but he has a tragic flaw. Apparently he cannot be wrong. He seems constitutionally unable to say the words “I was wrong. I’m sorry.” His take-over of Meigs Field, his single-minded pursuit of the Olympics, and his recent leasing of the city’s parking concession (for 75 years!) are examples of mistakes he's made, but the best he can offer by way of apology is “mistakes were made.”

Our Mayor has promoted literacy, the Chicago Public Library and the library’s One Book, One Chicago Program. He’s greened up the city with an ambitious street-tree planting program, even closed—some would say destroyed—an airport to create open space on the lakefront. Almost every time he appears on TV, he promotes Chicago as a world class city. And he seems completely sincere.

Mayor Daley is not flawless, but he’s pretty damn good.

Chicago, crime, writing, and Seinfeld

by David Ellis

Just a few things I want to get off my chest.

1. Dick Adler was always a great reviewer of thrillers for the Chicago Tribune and I just recently found him in the blogosphere. I highly recommend his blog. And it has nothing to do with the fact that he just said my novel, THE HIDDEN MAN, was the best thriller of 2009.

2. I was rocking my baby daughter to sleep this evening and watching a Seinfeld rerun. Although there are many, many memorable cameos in that series, I am now convinced that there is none better than Bookman, the Library Cop. For the life of me, I don’t know how he went through that entire rant with Jerry without bursting into laughter.

3. Congratulations to our newcomer Bryan Gruley on the Edgar nomination for Best First. I’m looking forward to reading STARVATION LAKE and some of the others on the list. But I noticed something missing from that list—BAD THINGS HAPPEN by Harry Dolan. Am I missing something? Was this not released in 2009? Is he not American? Because it’s one of the best books I have read in a very long time. Great fun.

4. The “scandal” surrounding Governor Quinn’s early release program has been—surprise—completely blown out of proportion. From a political and public relations perspective it was a blunder of monumental proportion. But substantively, what they did hardly made a difference compared to the previous policy. Instead of making inmates wait 60 days in prison before being granted “meritorious good time” (MGT), they granted it right off the bat. Sounds bad until you consider that they pretty much always give out MGT in full, anyway, so these inmates getting released from prison after 7 days or 22 days or whatever—all that Quinn’s policy did was shave a month or two, at most, off their sentences. You want to argue that they shouldn’t give out MGT so freely? Fine, go ahead, I might agree, but that’s nothing new. That wasn’t the story. The part that Quinn played just shaved a matter of days off someone’s sentence. That person who got out after 18 days in prison and committed another crime—well, if the old policy had been in place, he’d have been out after 60 days and probably would have committed the same crime. 60 days versus 18. That is basically the whole story.

5. And when the media reports that someone was sentenced to 3 years for battery and only served 35 days in prison, we need to keep in mind that this only could have happened if that person had spent a great deal of time in county jail, awaiting trial (i.e. the person couldn’t make bond and stayed locked up pending trial). You get credited for time served in county lock-up pending trial. Sometimes cases take so long to go to trial, the amount of time you serve in county, awaiting trial, ends up being half or more of the sentence you ultimately receive. So if you are getting a day for a day, and you walk into prison already having served half your sentence—well, yes, you aren’t going to spend much time in prison. But you did serve time—just not in prison. And anyone who thinks county jail is better than state prison is dreaming.

6. I’m just going to say one more thing on this topic. A lot of people think that the 60-day-minimum rule is discriminatory against the poor. It is a fact that in many cases, the people who couldn’t afford bail and awaited trial locked up in jail will ultimately spend more time in prison than those who could afford bond and were living in their comfy homes prior to trial. Same crime, same sentence, the poor person serves more time because of the 60-day-minimum policy. In fact, the current Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, whom I consider to be one of the finest jurists I have ever known, back when he ran the criminal courts in Cook County, held that the 60-day policy was unconstitutional for this very reason. His decision was reversed by a sharply divided appellate court, but even the judges finding it constitutional didn’t think the policy was so grand.

Let’s see … I covered Chicago, writing, and crime. I guess that means I’m done.

'satiable curtiosity

by Barbara D'Amato


"In the High and Far-Off Times, the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He only had a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side, but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant -- a new Elephant -- an Elephant's Child -- who was full of 'satiable curtiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions."

Thus begins "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling, one of the most charming and wittiest of tales for children. I read it to my grandchildren several times a year, and it's fun for adults as well. Some years ago, an edition appeared in which "'satiable curtiosity" was changed to "insatiable curiosity," thus entirely removing the charm. [The good news is that, as far as I can tell, that edition is no longer in print.]

Heaven forefend some innocent child might think "curiosity" was "curtiosity" or go through life saying "satiable."

This brings me, without too huge a leap, to a subcategory of censorship I'll call well-meaning paternalism.

"Out, crimson spot!"

Yes, that's one of Thomas Bowdler's "improvements" on Shakespeare. Bowdler, who gave us the eponym "bowdlerize", in fact did not fix Shakespeare himself. His sister Harriet did. But they had to publish Family Shakespeare under his name because they could not admit that a gentlewoman even understood Shakespeare's racy passages.

I've heard recently that Harlequin is going to reprint some 1940s pulp fiction--re-edited to make the scenes of women being physically abused by men more PC. As a result, not only is the work of fiction altered, but our ability to study these books and learn about the 40s is crippled.

I think you can in fairness ask a writer to be somewhat ahead of his or her time, somewhat less in thrall to the prejudices of his or her day, and disapprove of bigotry. But is not fair to ask them to be generations ahead. However, that's not my point. My point is that you, whoever you are, don't have the right to make my decisions for me.

Yes, a lot of Raymond Chandler includes homophobia.

Yes, I have a few friends who want the singing crows scene in Dumbo ["I seen a horse fly"] to be cut from the film.

Let this stuff alone.

I can figure out these issues for myself. My grandchildren can figure them out, too, and so can you and so can most people who take time to read.

It's partly the arrogance of "fixing" the words of great writers of the past that is reprehensible. Equally unacceptable is the condescending paternalism of deciding what I, or my grandchildren, or anybody else out there is able to handle. We can make up our own minds. In fact, if we're not allowed to do so, we may never learn how.

Rant over.

But if you had an example to add, I'd be interested to hear it.