About a year ago I called in a favor from a friend. I needed a job, and he worked at a small newspaper in the Chicago suburbs. He insisted he owed me nothing. I flashed the photo of him drunkenly fucking a sad eyed dog, and two seconds later I got assigned to covering the Skokie political scene.
The job didn’t pay well, though working conditions fit me. Most of the time I went to the Skokie town hall, listened to some committee blather on about local business before I headed to a nearby bar where I synopsized the streaming boredom as concisely as possible. I did so with the assistance of a digital recorder, and my partner in print, Adam Horowitz.
Horowitz used to write for the Chicago Tribune, and his name meant something a long time ago. He wrote the kind of articles that ended political careers, and exposed mafia dealings. However, a lifetime slinging ink at the corrupt earned him a lot of enemies. The people he burned, well, once they had nothing to lose they devoted themselves to ruining his life; and the fresh crop of corruption knew to go after him first. He spent decades protecting the world in his own way only to wake up one morning pawning a Pulitzer for beer money.
On the ninth vodka he’d say, “People gotta trust what you say is true. All it takes is the right slander… especially the kind that’s true... no one'll listen again.”
But he was good company on those long boring nights.
“The committee will now take roll. Simon Caprio?”
“Present.”
“Denise Fletcher-Wallace?”
“Good to see you Denise. Louis Boggs?"
"I’m right next to you Dave.”
“It’s procedure. Let’s have some order, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Present.”
So on and so forth. Most meetings amounted to committees getting together to recite the minutes from previous meetings before addressing new business. No one ever seemed to have new business, at least not of any importance. The bureaucracy carried itself along flowing at a sludge pace, but I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to take careful notes on the flight patterns of flies without missing anything critical. Horowitz meanwhile would mutter things to break the stunning monotony:
“I bet Dave wants to fuck Denise. You can tell by the way he perks up whenever she sez anything. That woman could fart, and he’d sit up like a dog whiffing bacon. Sad bastard – I mean I’ve screwed fatter broads, but it’s the fact he don’t do a goddamn thing that’s so pathetic.”
While taking notes I mention, “Denise is married.”
To which the counter comes, “To some corpse working in the library. Everybody in there is dead.”
And he didn’t mean it facetiously. The first three weeks Horowitz ignored me. He figured I’d been sent down by our mutual friend the Editor to keep an eye on him. Suspicions abounded that Horowitz may have, on occasion, slipped out of life threateningly dull meetings to compose his own fictive account of Skokie politics. I can attest that there was not then, and I doubt even now, any truth to such rumors. See, the living hell Horowitz inhabited wasn’t the result of the torturous tedium of low level suburban politics, it stemmed from his own bone deep devotion to the job. I was perfectly willing to fuck off to the bar, and make shit up, but he insisted we stay to get the facts. His code of ethics, sense of duty, whatever you want to call it was the real millstone around his neck. Sure, he wanted to be doing something more important, but, three tequilas along:
“This is my job. I gotta do it. Some greasy pig thinks this is gonna make me quit – ha! Fuck you. Quote me. Print it. End of story.”
I admired that about him. Time went by he didn’t hear me complaining, or catch me trailing him drink for drink. So eventually he opened up:
“I’ve been working this bullshit job long enough to start picking up bits.”
Emailing our story in, close the laptop, and, “What kind of bits?” signal the bartender for a fresh round.
Horowitz says, “Nothing that comes out obvious, not at a glance. Like there are meetings that no one seems to know when they’re scheduled.”
“How so?”
“There’s no record of them. Nothing online, or if you ask around the town hall, but I know for a fact there are closed rooms full of certain city officials talking about something.” I open my mouth, he cuts me off, “And before you ask a dumbass question, I’ve waited outside those rooms to ask the people inside what those meetings are about.” He takes his time, sipping a fresh stout, cocks an eyebrow, “Quote: ‘Street repairs and infrastructure maintenance.’ End quote.”
I shrug, “So? Couldn’t that be the truth?”
He nods, “I thought so at first, however…”
And he takes me down the rabbit hole. According to Horowitz he starts tracking every single meeting that even remotely involves “street repairs and infrastructure maintenance.” This allows him to put together a rough list of city officials who would be at such a meeting. He admits:
“I did it, at first, just to keep my brain active like exercise. I didn’t expect to find anything.”
He starts by following officials throughout their average day. The hope is that tracking officials will lead him to more of these secret meetings. It takes months before he compiles a short stack of names, but that’s the beauty of doing a long stretch: nothing but time.
“On two separate occasions I did my utmost to, shall we say, accidentally stumble into one of these meetings. I got my tape recorder going to catch whatever I can. The second I step in the whole room clams up. Silent as the fucking grave. Every eye is staring at me. And this why good reporters cultivate a reputation for being drunks: it’s an instant excuse.
“I look around like, ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m looking for the meeting about raccoons – scraping the dead ones up. Seems they need new shovels or some shit. Is this not that room?’" Horowitz sighs, “Only problem is you can only pull that shit so many times before someone gets nervous. Don’t have to be right to be suspicious. I learned that from my cat. I thought he was stealing my weed, but no.”
More time goes by during which Horowitz cons his way into every file and brain that can give him anything. Eventually we make it to the top of a heap of circumstantial evidence: seemingly unconnected disappearances; the dramatic ascendance of local politicians, who leave for the city to start meteoric careers; a clockwork spike in infant mortality rates; sewer workers confined to psyche wards suffering from catatonic levels of terror; internet blogs reporting zombie activity in Skokie; the way employees get lost in the town hall on certain days, regardless of having worked there for years, as if the halls suddenly followed some M. C. Escher logic for a short period; rumors about processions composed of black hooded figures.
Leaning back in his barstool Horowitz says, “This town is in league with dark forces. I shit you not.”
The first time I hear it I take it with a grain of salt. It sounds like the plot to a great piece of fiction, and I wonder if he’s just playing with me. Let’s run this by the new guy, see how he takes it. If I react the right way, well then, it must be a good story, and Horowitz can keep on typing it to life. Only there’s something in his eyes, a razor sharp glint warning me Horowitz believes this is all true.
So I play it safe, go with the crazy, “If that’s the case, what are we going to do about it?”
Horowitz laughs, “Look, mafia guys shoot at you, you can shoot back. Devil wizards conjuring murderous shadows – fuck that. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know no hocus pocus protection. There’s black magic shit going down, I am staying away from it.”
That’s how it went for about six months. We stuck to our beat, and every so often Horowitz and I would get drunk enough to babble on about the grim story of the century, the nightmare in Skokie. I went along with it for a laugh, our own private horror story, and I liked the way Horowitz lit up talking about it like it made him feel like a real reporter again. However… I remember in college I noticed a guy wearing a cape. First time I ever saw someone wearing a cape in public. After that I started noticing more people wearing capes. It wasn’t that some fashion trend was flaring up, it was just that I had become aware of something, and just started noticing it more and more often. Sometimes that's the consequence of knowing things.
On my way to a meeting on mosquito abatement I see two officials slip into a room I’m sure wasn’t there two days ago, and glancing back the door is definitely gone. One week see a woman begging to talk to someone in charge because the police are ignoring her desire to file a missing person report on her kid. Catch her name without meaning too, and next week, glancing through the paper, see that she’s died in a car accident, drove straight off the overpass. Killing time smoking in the stairwell a conversation drifts up from the basement:
“That was too bloody. I know it has to be done, but less blood.”
“I feel the same way. At least we got the hearts. That’s what matters.”
“Do you smell that? I smell smoke.”
“Who’s in here?”
Duck out before anyone notices me – better safe than sorry. At the bar that night mention it to Horowitz who simply puts a finger to his lips. He juts a thumb towards the end of the bar. A man in a black suit sipping rum is busy trying to look as pleasant as possible. Yet, the way he smiles seems like the skin or muscles aren’t probably connected. Maybe both.
Shaking his head Horowitz whispers, “Poor bastard. Works at the library. No telling what they’ve done to him. That’s where the experiments are. It all starts here where no one's paying attention, and when it works it drifts into the city. Suburbs: where the wicked go to practice in private.”
Walking home I catch sight of a skinless dog prowling an alley. At that moment I pulled out my phone.
A groggy voice answers, “Hello?”
“Hi, Pete, it’s me.”
“You have any idea what time it is?”
“Yeah, but this can’t wait. I quit.”
The job didn’t pay well, though working conditions fit me. Most of the time I went to the Skokie town hall, listened to some committee blather on about local business before I headed to a nearby bar where I synopsized the streaming boredom as concisely as possible. I did so with the assistance of a digital recorder, and my partner in print, Adam Horowitz.
Horowitz used to write for the Chicago Tribune, and his name meant something a long time ago. He wrote the kind of articles that ended political careers, and exposed mafia dealings. However, a lifetime slinging ink at the corrupt earned him a lot of enemies. The people he burned, well, once they had nothing to lose they devoted themselves to ruining his life; and the fresh crop of corruption knew to go after him first. He spent decades protecting the world in his own way only to wake up one morning pawning a Pulitzer for beer money.
On the ninth vodka he’d say, “People gotta trust what you say is true. All it takes is the right slander… especially the kind that’s true... no one'll listen again.”
But he was good company on those long boring nights.
“The committee will now take roll. Simon Caprio?”
“Present.”
“Denise Fletcher-Wallace?”
“Good to see you Denise. Louis Boggs?"
"I’m right next to you Dave.”
“It’s procedure. Let’s have some order, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Present.”
So on and so forth. Most meetings amounted to committees getting together to recite the minutes from previous meetings before addressing new business. No one ever seemed to have new business, at least not of any importance. The bureaucracy carried itself along flowing at a sludge pace, but I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to take careful notes on the flight patterns of flies without missing anything critical. Horowitz meanwhile would mutter things to break the stunning monotony:
“I bet Dave wants to fuck Denise. You can tell by the way he perks up whenever she sez anything. That woman could fart, and he’d sit up like a dog whiffing bacon. Sad bastard – I mean I’ve screwed fatter broads, but it’s the fact he don’t do a goddamn thing that’s so pathetic.”
While taking notes I mention, “Denise is married.”
To which the counter comes, “To some corpse working in the library. Everybody in there is dead.”
And he didn’t mean it facetiously. The first three weeks Horowitz ignored me. He figured I’d been sent down by our mutual friend the Editor to keep an eye on him. Suspicions abounded that Horowitz may have, on occasion, slipped out of life threateningly dull meetings to compose his own fictive account of Skokie politics. I can attest that there was not then, and I doubt even now, any truth to such rumors. See, the living hell Horowitz inhabited wasn’t the result of the torturous tedium of low level suburban politics, it stemmed from his own bone deep devotion to the job. I was perfectly willing to fuck off to the bar, and make shit up, but he insisted we stay to get the facts. His code of ethics, sense of duty, whatever you want to call it was the real millstone around his neck. Sure, he wanted to be doing something more important, but, three tequilas along:
“This is my job. I gotta do it. Some greasy pig thinks this is gonna make me quit – ha! Fuck you. Quote me. Print it. End of story.”
I admired that about him. Time went by he didn’t hear me complaining, or catch me trailing him drink for drink. So eventually he opened up:
“I’ve been working this bullshit job long enough to start picking up bits.”
Emailing our story in, close the laptop, and, “What kind of bits?” signal the bartender for a fresh round.
Horowitz says, “Nothing that comes out obvious, not at a glance. Like there are meetings that no one seems to know when they’re scheduled.”
“How so?”
“There’s no record of them. Nothing online, or if you ask around the town hall, but I know for a fact there are closed rooms full of certain city officials talking about something.” I open my mouth, he cuts me off, “And before you ask a dumbass question, I’ve waited outside those rooms to ask the people inside what those meetings are about.” He takes his time, sipping a fresh stout, cocks an eyebrow, “Quote: ‘Street repairs and infrastructure maintenance.’ End quote.”
I shrug, “So? Couldn’t that be the truth?”
He nods, “I thought so at first, however…”
And he takes me down the rabbit hole. According to Horowitz he starts tracking every single meeting that even remotely involves “street repairs and infrastructure maintenance.” This allows him to put together a rough list of city officials who would be at such a meeting. He admits:
“I did it, at first, just to keep my brain active like exercise. I didn’t expect to find anything.”
He starts by following officials throughout their average day. The hope is that tracking officials will lead him to more of these secret meetings. It takes months before he compiles a short stack of names, but that’s the beauty of doing a long stretch: nothing but time.
“On two separate occasions I did my utmost to, shall we say, accidentally stumble into one of these meetings. I got my tape recorder going to catch whatever I can. The second I step in the whole room clams up. Silent as the fucking grave. Every eye is staring at me. And this why good reporters cultivate a reputation for being drunks: it’s an instant excuse.
“I look around like, ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m looking for the meeting about raccoons – scraping the dead ones up. Seems they need new shovels or some shit. Is this not that room?’" Horowitz sighs, “Only problem is you can only pull that shit so many times before someone gets nervous. Don’t have to be right to be suspicious. I learned that from my cat. I thought he was stealing my weed, but no.”
More time goes by during which Horowitz cons his way into every file and brain that can give him anything. Eventually we make it to the top of a heap of circumstantial evidence: seemingly unconnected disappearances; the dramatic ascendance of local politicians, who leave for the city to start meteoric careers; a clockwork spike in infant mortality rates; sewer workers confined to psyche wards suffering from catatonic levels of terror; internet blogs reporting zombie activity in Skokie; the way employees get lost in the town hall on certain days, regardless of having worked there for years, as if the halls suddenly followed some M. C. Escher logic for a short period; rumors about processions composed of black hooded figures.
Leaning back in his barstool Horowitz says, “This town is in league with dark forces. I shit you not.”
The first time I hear it I take it with a grain of salt. It sounds like the plot to a great piece of fiction, and I wonder if he’s just playing with me. Let’s run this by the new guy, see how he takes it. If I react the right way, well then, it must be a good story, and Horowitz can keep on typing it to life. Only there’s something in his eyes, a razor sharp glint warning me Horowitz believes this is all true.
So I play it safe, go with the crazy, “If that’s the case, what are we going to do about it?”
Horowitz laughs, “Look, mafia guys shoot at you, you can shoot back. Devil wizards conjuring murderous shadows – fuck that. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know no hocus pocus protection. There’s black magic shit going down, I am staying away from it.”
That’s how it went for about six months. We stuck to our beat, and every so often Horowitz and I would get drunk enough to babble on about the grim story of the century, the nightmare in Skokie. I went along with it for a laugh, our own private horror story, and I liked the way Horowitz lit up talking about it like it made him feel like a real reporter again. However… I remember in college I noticed a guy wearing a cape. First time I ever saw someone wearing a cape in public. After that I started noticing more people wearing capes. It wasn’t that some fashion trend was flaring up, it was just that I had become aware of something, and just started noticing it more and more often. Sometimes that's the consequence of knowing things.
On my way to a meeting on mosquito abatement I see two officials slip into a room I’m sure wasn’t there two days ago, and glancing back the door is definitely gone. One week see a woman begging to talk to someone in charge because the police are ignoring her desire to file a missing person report on her kid. Catch her name without meaning too, and next week, glancing through the paper, see that she’s died in a car accident, drove straight off the overpass. Killing time smoking in the stairwell a conversation drifts up from the basement:
“That was too bloody. I know it has to be done, but less blood.”
“I feel the same way. At least we got the hearts. That’s what matters.”
“Do you smell that? I smell smoke.”
“Who’s in here?”
Duck out before anyone notices me – better safe than sorry. At the bar that night mention it to Horowitz who simply puts a finger to his lips. He juts a thumb towards the end of the bar. A man in a black suit sipping rum is busy trying to look as pleasant as possible. Yet, the way he smiles seems like the skin or muscles aren’t probably connected. Maybe both.
Shaking his head Horowitz whispers, “Poor bastard. Works at the library. No telling what they’ve done to him. That’s where the experiments are. It all starts here where no one's paying attention, and when it works it drifts into the city. Suburbs: where the wicked go to practice in private.”
Walking home I catch sight of a skinless dog prowling an alley. At that moment I pulled out my phone.
A groggy voice answers, “Hello?”
“Hi, Pete, it’s me.”
“You have any idea what time it is?”
“Yeah, but this can’t wait. I quit.”
RSS Feed
