Chicago (14 page)

“I see that kid every other day, I bet,” said Matthew, “and you will too, if you keep your eyes peeled. Next time I see him I will point him out.”

 

15.

MR MCGINTY, IN 2C BY THE BACK
alley door, was a horse-racing fan of the first order, and he went around the building the week before the Kentucky Derby collecting bets. There were fifteen horses in the race and each apartment could choose any horse except the great Seattle Slew, who was reserved for Miss Elminides. The race was as always on the first Saturday of May and all bets and side bets had to be in to Mr McGinty by noon of the day of the race. The minimum bet to get into the pool was ten dollars, and doubling and tripling your bet was “heartily encouraged,” as Mr McGinty said politely but sternly.

I knew nothing of racing and betting, and as usual I went to Edward for elucidation on the matter, and as usual I learned a great deal about a great many matters. It turned out that Mr McGinty was from Kentucky and knew horses and racing and betting intimately and thoroughly. It turned out that Mr McGinty had for many years made a rich living simply from betting on horse races at Arlington Park, on the northwest outskirts of the city. It turned out that Mr McGinty had been investigated unsuccessfully by various legal entities interested in the stunning consistency of his winnings over many years; he had never had a losing week, in more than forty years, and for nearly half of those years he was the single most successful single bettor at the track. The secret to his system, as he had explained again and again in depositions and to friends like Edward, was careful reinvestment of initial winnings; he would win the first race, and then happily play parlays, quinellas, exactas, and trifectas the rest of the day. He rather enjoyed the complicated mathematics of betting, considered himself conservative in tenor (for example he hardly ever picked a horse to win, and most often placed bets on horses to show, which is to say to finish among the top three in a race), and was of an arithmetical cast of mind and could calculate odds and probabilities with startling speed, a skill he proved to one detective with such amazing results that the detective later wrote a scholarly article about the experiment for a professional journal.

His increasing age, however, had eventually made it impossible for him to get to the track every day, and while he read a plethora of racing periodicals, he now reserved serious betting only for big races, for which he would prepare for weeks, and then use Edward as a runner to a friend who called in bets for him at the track. In this way Edward too had become interested in and astute at handicapping, and he and Mr McGinty had even discussed maybe going into business together on a racehorse, although nothing had been decided as yet.

What with Eugenia the actress's death, Miss Elminides unaware of Seattle Slew being reserved for her, and Ovious and his mother abstaining from betting for reasons of their own, the fifteen horses in the race were assigned by Wednesday night, and Mr Pawlowsky posted the chart in the lobby, complete with colored silks and a brief racing and genealogical history of each horse. I was away from the building Thursday and Friday, on magazine business, but Denesh the cricket player told me both nights had been busy with additional bets, and people stopping in to consult Mr McGinty about complicated parlays, and even an enticing offer by the apartments on the third floor to buy out the horses of the second floor, which was overruled by Mr McGinty after spirited discussion.

I got back to the apartment building on Saturday afternoon, just in time for the race, and I found almost everyone in the building crowded into Mr McGinty's apartment, staring at the television, laughing and chaffing and making last-minute bets, with Edward and one of the hermits on the third floor serving as bookmakers. I was startled to see one of the hermits but it seemed to me that people were carefully not saying anything so I didn't say anything. Mr McGinty hushed the assemblage as the horses went to the post, and there was a fraught silence as the gates opened and the horses burst into the sunlight.

Seattle Slew, the favorite, got off to a slow start, but quickly slid up the rail into second place, and for what seemed like forever ran neck-and-neck with another black horse called For the Moment, ridden by the famous jockey Angel Cordero; I remembered Mr McGinty saying that the one jockey who worried him in this race was Cordero, who was a magician and could get any horse to do whatever he wanted at any time. For the Moment was the librettist's horse, and I noticed him in the corner, leaning over the shoulder of little Azad, who was standing on Mr McGinty's night table. No one spoke but there was a sort of low nervous hum as everyone leaned in toward the little black-and-white television. For the Moment stayed in front by a hair until the final turn, when Seattle Slew eased powerfully away and held off a knot of late-charging horses; at the finish it was Seattle Slew by two lengths, with Run Dusty Run in second and Sanhedrin third.

There was a great burst of exultation and laughter, and I stood by the door watching with pleasure, for this was the first time I had seen almost all of the building's residents together, and it was entertaining to watch everyone congratulating Azad, who was beaming with joy at his winnings (he had earned thirty dollars, which he said he and his sister Eren were going to present to their mother). One of the dapper businessmen in 3B had won with Sanhedrin, and as soon as he was presented with his winnings—nearly three hundred dollars, the result of a complicated parlay—he turned and ceremoniously handed it to Mr Pawlowsky, saying that every one of us felt the same way, that we would do whatever we could to assist Miss Elminides in her time of trouble, and here was the first of what he hoped would be many votes of confidence and gestures of gratitude from the residents, who collectively considered Miss Elminides not only a friend but a grace and a gift in this world. There was the briefest of pauses, as I remember, and Mr Pawlowsky stood still for an instant before accepting the money; and then there was a round of applause, and everyone shook hands and clapped Azad on the shoulder as he ran for the stairs clutching his money, and then we went back to our apartments.

Not until two days later did I learn from Edward that half the building had not only laid bets on their own horses but quietly contributed hundreds of dollars more to the bets Mr McGinty had made on Seattle Slew on Miss Elminides' behalf—bets which had earned many thousands of dollars, which also had gone to Mr Pawlowsky for the cause. According to Edward, Mr McGinty had studied this race more closely than any other single race of his career, and had concluded that not only would Seattle Slew win, but that Run Dusty Run would finish at least third, and a horse called Get the Axe would finish fourth; he had laid his bets accordingly, investing every dollar in the building, and the payout was, in short, incredible. About a week later I encountered Mr McGinty at the mailboxes and thanked him for his astonishing work, and he laughed and said if he was really any kind of a good horseplayer he would have guessed that Sanhedrin would finish higher, given that Jorge Velásquez was aboard, and that he had learned his lesson, and would never underestimate Jorge Velásquez again, and in fact would lay serious coin on Jorge next year, if the Lord saw fit to allow him, Daniel Paul McGinty, to remain on earth for one more year, which he surely hoped He would, for there were two extraordinary horses coming of age next year, by the names of Affirmed and Alydar, and in his estimation they were exactly equal in every respect, and their races would be remembered as long as horses raced and people cared about the results.

*   *   *

May was an excellent time to observe constellations in the Chicago sky at night, what with the snow gone and the spring rain receding a bit, and I went up on the roof one clear night about the middle of the month with Edward and Mr Pawlowsky, and savored a conversation I remember to this day, especially when I hear inane chatter about cities and their disparate characters.

It was a cold night and we were all bundled up, Edward in a Navy blanket, and for a while we charted what we could see easily in the sky: Hercules, Scorpius, Lupus, and Serpens, the snake, “in which the brightest star is Unukalhai, the heart of the serpent—isn't that a great name?” said Mr Pawlowsky, who also observed that he had a special affection for Serpens because there had been a Navy cargo ship in the war called the
Serpens,
and it had done good work before being blown to bits in the Solomon Islands, with everyone aboard, sad to say, including a boy with whom he had gone to school, a reed of a boy whose dream was to be a priest.

“This reminds me,” said Mr Pawlowsky, “that you and I might go by the convent this Saturday and help out the sisters. There's a good deal of basic repair work that needs doing and Edward and I thought we might recruit you as stevedore and young muscle. The reward is lunch from the gyro shop. A few of the neighbors are chipping in quietly to be of some assistance to the sisters. Their numbers are declining and there's no young muscle and you never met a kinder gentler bunch of women in your life. I am not religious but if I was
going
to join a religion I would go Catholic just because of those sisters. If they are examples of religious principles in action then the Catholic church is going in the right direction. Edward believes that all religions are cousins at heart and begin in the right spirit but then they are corrupted by the desire for power. This is a shorthand view of religious history but he certainly has a point. Name me one religion that stays true to its founding principles and doesn't get distracted by real estate and money and political or military adventures. You cannot; and no one can, which is ultimately sad, not to mention damning as regards the integrity of religions.”

This line of talk led to discussion of cities like Jerusalem and Mecca and Dharamsala and Rome, in which religions played a huge part in the life of the place, either as keystones of founding tales or destinations for hejira or as administrative headquarters, and Mr Pawlowsky said along these lines he was proud of Chicago for two reasons, one being that Chicago was home to the world's oldest temple of the Bahá'í religion, which was on the far north side of the city and was a lovely place altogether, right on the lake; and also that in Chicago all sorts of religions existed together relatively peacefully, without the usual brawls among faiths, and bloody arguments about who knew God better than whom. “You could not get a better example of irony than religions in general,” said Mr Pawlowsky, “as each one makes some claim to understand and interpret a Force that no one understands at all, which is why I do not belong to a religion, although Edward attends services regularly, all different flavors. The fact is that he has more of a questing intelligence than I do, and I give him a lot of credit for being open-minded. At the moment he is Presbyterian, I believe, because Lincoln attended Presbyterian services while president. This reminds me of the story of Lincoln at a revival meeting, when the preacher asked those who expected to go to heaven to stand, and then those who expected to go to hell. Lincoln stood for neither option, and when asked about it, said politely that he intended to go to Congress.”

I laughed at this, and I could hear Edward snickering, but Mr Pawlowsky was now well and truly launched, and off he went deeper into the nature of cities. “What is it that sets cities apart, that gives them their particular flavors and idiosyncratic characters?” he asked. “Well, there is weather, landscape, topography, geology—the accident of location, so to speak, although no city arises by accident. Almost always a city grows up where trade and commerce can navigate and flow; so most cities are on rivers and lakes and seas and shores. Chicago, for example, where rivers flow into the lake, and the lake thankfully having access eventually to the ocean. But then also there are foods, music, languages, sports, and common myths. Cities are places of concentrated myth, it seems to me. And the myths that develop often have to do with the industries and styles of commerce by which the city earned its bread. So that Chicago, with shipping and steel and livestock, came to think of itself as a burly city, tough and muscular, with rough-and-tumble football and politics and literature. Today of course we are a city of offices and whirring computers and financial shenanigans, but our founding myths remain. I would guess not one in ten Chicagoans has ever seen a real fight where the antagonists are trying to slice each other's throats, but we airily say we are a tough city, nor have they seen a pig or a soybean plant, but we proudly say we characterize and epitomize the rural values of middle America.”

Sometimes Mr Pawlowsky had a tendency to soar a bit, when he was in full oratorical mode, and Edward had taught me how to arrest the flight with a direct question, so I asked him four direct questions: What is Chicagoness? What is the city made of? Why is it different from any other city? What are the things that are here and only here and compose the here of here?

He leaned back in his lawn chair and thought a bit and then he said, “The prevalence of the lake. The way the lake is a sea and not a lake. The way the lake shoulders the city. The cutting of wind off the lake and the whirl of snow. Electrified blues developed by men and women who came up here from the Deep South and knew much about patience and endurance and hope. Our alleys which are another sort of road or path unlike in other cities where they are garbage dumps. South Side jazz. Gyros—we have perfected the gyro, and not even Greece has better gyros than we do. A certain blunt amused attitude.…” He paused a minute and looked at Edward. “Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps,” he continued. “In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An
American
city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps
the
American city—no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is
itself,
all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and venal, almost a small nation, sprawling and vulgar and foul and beautiful, cold and cruel and wonderful. Its music is the blues, of course. Sad and uplifting at once, elevating and haunting at the same time. You sing so that you do not weep. You have no choice but to sing. So you raise up your voice and sing of love and woe, and soon another voice joins in, and you sing together, for a while, for a time, perhaps a brief time, but perhaps not.…”