Plane in the Lake Read online

  Chapter Nine

  “Where is she?” Brittany asks in exasperation while we stare out the living-room window on a dreary Monday afternoon three days later. We’re waiting for Pat to pick up Brittany and drop her off at a friend’s house.

  I smile inwardly as I watch my daughter bouncing impatiently from foot to foot. Her hand shoots up to the short, spiky bottled-blond hair that has replaced the lustrous auburn hair she was born with. The hairdo seems to be a little touch of rebellion. If so, it’s the only touch of teenage revolution I’ve seen from her. I can live with that.

  “Gawd, this is so lame,” she gripes twenty seconds later. Gawd is pronounced with a hint of Georgia drawl that she picked up while living in Atlanta for the first fourteen years of her life. She’s never sounded like a native Southerner—not with parents who hail from Chicago and Connecticut—but it’s there, particularly when she’s agitated. When you’re fifteen years old, I guess losing a couple of minutes with your friends is a big deal.

  As for me, I’ve enjoyed the morning and am in no hurry for it to end. It’s the first time we’ve spent at home together since I moved her in with Pat a week ago. Pat dropped her off a couple of hours ago while she went to the office to tie up some loose ends on a story. She was due back at noon. It’s now seven minutes after.

  “Relax!” I say with a laugh. “She’ll be along shortly.”

  My daughter gives me an exasperated look, the type reserved for old people who can’t possibly understand the travails of youth. She announced earlier that she was going to walk to her friend’s house. Before Ed’s shooting, I would have been fine with that. Not now.

  Pat’s Sonata squeals to a stop at the curb two minutes later. I walk onto the front porch and lean against the wood railing while Brittany rushes down the steps and races to the street. Pat’s barely out of the car before Brittany is on her as if she hasn’t seen her for, well, a lot longer than two hours.

  “Sorry,” Pat says as they stroll up the sidewalk to the porch. “I was doing an interview for a story. It took a little longer than expected.”

  “That’s okay!” Brittany says brightly.

  Really?

  Pat drops her keys into a colorful handbag the size of a small suitcase and meets my gaze while she climbs the porch steps. “You’re driving, Valenti. Mind eating on the run? We’re going to be late as it is.”

  “Are we going somewhere?” I ask while my daughter scoops up a backpack from the floor just inside the door.

  Pat nods at me, then asks Brittany, “You all set?”

  “Yup!”

  I collect my car keys from the entry-hall table. Brittany is already through the door.

  Pat’s now the one bouncing from foot to foot while she holds the screen door open. “Get a move on, Chubby. Chop, chop.”

  “Where are we going in such a hurry?” I ask while I secure the dead bolt on the front door.

  “I’ll tell you about it on the way,” she calls over her shoulder as she bounds down the steps to the Porsche and yanks the passenger door open. Brittany is already clambering into the back seat on the other side.

  “So, where are you guys going?” Brittany asks after I back out of the driveway and put the car in gear for the five-minute drive.

  “Lunch first,” Pat replies. “Subway or something?”

  Brittany shakes her head. “Not me. I’m eating at Jocelyn’s.”

  “There’s a Quiznos on Cicero,” I say as we near the end of the block. “Does that work?”

  “Quiznos. Subway. There’s a difference?” Brittany cracks.

  I chuckle before responding, “Millions of advertising dollars swear there is.”

  Pat groans. “Don’t get me started on advertising.”

  “So? Where are you guys going this afternoon?” Brittany asks again.

  “I help rehab houses in Lawndale on Monday afternoons,” Pat replies.

  I recall her mentioning it. I wonder what I’ll be doing.

  “The paintbrush!” Brittany exclaims.

  Pat laughs and nods. “Yes, the paintbrush.”

  “The Paintbrush” hangs on the wall in Pat’s home painting studio. It was presented to her by the Reverend Alvin Jakes at the conclusion of the first Lawndale rehab project she worked on. It’s engraved with her name, the address of the house, and the date of completion.

  “You’re taking Dad to Lawndale?” Brittany asks as I pull away from the stop sign at the end of Liberty Street.

  “Yup. Something to keep his mind off everything else that’s going on.”

  Brittany frowns. “Is it safe? Isn’t that one of those inner-city neighborhoods?”

  I can all but hear her mother’s sneering characterization of “colored communities.”

  Pat sighs heavily. “I hate that inner-city tag. Lawndale is a west-side neighborhood that has suffered through some tough times, kiddo. Almost every employer there pulled out after the riots in the late 1960s. That left most folks out of work. That’s what put Lawndale into a death spiral. Reverend Jakes and others have been working to turn it back into a safe and vibrant community.”

  “Pat’s been telling that story in the Tribune for years now,” I add. “Reverend Jakes told me that they probably couldn’t have kept their funding flowing without her help.”

  “I’ve played a very small role,” Pat scoffs.

  “Riiight,” I retort with a sidelong glance at her. She won a local reporting Pulitzer Prize for one of her stories about Lawndale. The paintbrush suggests she’s played a more practical role, as well.

  “Are there gangs and stuff?” Brittany asks.

  “There’s crime,” Pat allows. “But not as much as there used to be.”

  “You’re safe, though, right?”

  Pat turns in her seat to make eye contact with Brittany. “It’s not like I’m out wandering the streets at night or dealing drugs. I’m working with people in the community, so I’m cool with the locals.”

  “How did you first get involved?” I ask.

  Pat smiles at the memory. “I did a story about a church named Calvary New Life that works in the community. Reverend Jakes’s church, as a matter of fact. One thing led to another, and next thing I knew, I had a hammer in my hand.”

  “Like, what do you do there?” Brittany asks.

  “We fix up old houses so families can move in. That’s how they reclaim the neighborhoods. The families and church work together to chase the troublemakers out. It works well.”

  “Sounds cool,” Brittany says as I ease the car to a stop in front of Jocelyn’s house.

  Pat shifts her gaze to me. “Assuming your old man finally knows one end of a hammer from the other, we’re going to put him to work.”

  “One end has a big clawlike thing, right?” I ask.

  Pat chuckles. “There might be hope for you yet. You, too!” she adds to my daughter.

  “Yeah. Right!” Brittany laughs as she pushes the rear door open and hops out.

  “Don’t forget that we’re picking up Deano this afternoon!” Pat shouts after her.

  Brittany replies with a thumbs-up and an enormous grin.

  “Quiznos?” I ask Pat after Jocelyn lets Brittany in.

  “Sure. Music?”

  Dinosaur that I am, I still load discs into the Porsche’s CD player. I browse the collection and select one I think she might like. Pat settles back into the supple leather seat and closes her eyes while she listens. We drive the next couple of miles without speaking. About halfway through a track called Tattoo’d Lady, she starts rummaging in the glove box and comes up with an empty CD case.

  “Is this what we’re listening to?”

  “You bet.” Rory Gallagher. Tattoo. For my money, his best album, showcasing the eclectic range of his musical influences.

  “This is great! How come I’ve never heard of this guy?”

  “He was a lot bigger in Europe than he ever was here,” I reply.

  “How come?”

  “He refused to rele
ase singles, never whored himself to a record label. Plus, he died years ago when he was only forty-seven.”

  Pat frowns. “That’s too bad. How did you hear about him?”

  “Amy.” The crown jewel of my sister’s meager estate had been her prized record collection. More so than whatever was on the radio when I was in my adolescence and early teens, hers was the music I grew up on. I’ve still got her LP records, which have been safely tucked away for years and replaced with CDs.

  “God, I love that song!” Pat exclaims as she hits replay, dials the volume higher, and settles back to listen for the rest of the drive to Quiznos.

  “Drive-through?” I ask while turning into the parking lot. This is the only Quiznos I know of that has a drive-through.

  Her eyes don’t open. “Perfect.”

  I ease into line behind a single car. Guess nobody expects to find a drive-through Quiznos.

  “Nine-inch meatball,” Pat tells me before I ask.

  I’ve never tried one, so I place an order for two meatball subs. Sandwiches and sodas in hand a few minutes later, we pull into an empty spot in the parking lot and let Rory serenade us while we eat. The sub tastes every bit as good as its savory aroma promised.

  “That was damned good,” I say happily when I finish, ball up my napkins in the wrapper, and toss it all at the garbage bin outside the car window. I miss.

  Pat hands me a napkin and points to a spot on her chin. “You missed a spot, Valenti.”

  I wipe the tomato sauce off, collect Pat’s waste, and climb out of the car to stuff everything into the trash container. Then we set out for Lawndale.

  “How’s it going with Britts at your place?” I ask after we turn north on Cicero.

  Pat groans. “What’s with the superhero movies, for God’s sake?”

  Brittany is in a superhero movie phase.

  “I’m enjoying the break from them,” I reply with a laugh.

  “She’s been coming up to the studio and sketching while I paint,” Pat says. “She’s pretty good.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “Turn left here,” Pat tells me after a fifteen-minute drive. “Pull in behind the pickup truck.”

  We’re outside a tiny old bungalow sitting in the middle of perhaps the most woebegone excuse for a lawn I’ve ever seen. The siding has been stripped off the house, and it’s being swathed in white Tyvek HomeWrap. New white-vinyl windows wrapped in cardboard and plastic are stacked beneath a gaping hole in the wall where the largest of them will go. A couple of guys are on the roof laying a fresh layer of shingles.

  “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.”

  “A
poplectic?” 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 return to our painting.

  “Who’s going to live here?” I ask after several minutes, during which I managed to roll paint onto a section of wall without spilling a drop. At this rate, the good reverend is going to be begging me to return.

  “Shit!” Pat exclaims when she misses the paint tray while reloading her roller, adding a nice dash of paint to the floor.

  “Carpet’s coming,” I remind her with a nasty grin.

  “Screw you again,” she mutters while hooking a thumb at her glass eye. “At least I have the excuse of compromised depth perception with this damned thing.”

  I immediately regret my smart-assed remark. Pat seldom mentions the eye, but I know the depth-perception issue challenges her on a regular basis, especially as it affects her personal painting.

  She shrugs it off and gets back to work while she answers my question about who will live here. “They’ll find a family that needs a home and is willing to do the hard work needed to rebuild and reclaim the neighborhood. Folks have to be in for the long haul and be willing to face down the punks and druggies.”

  “Not a job for the faint of heart. Jakes and his people sell the houses to these folks?”

  “Whenever possible. The project needs the money to move on to the next house.”