Free The Governor's Wife by Michael Harvey Page A

the doorknob and walked in. Bones was sitting on a stage at the far end of a dusty hall. He had a cigar in full boil and was blowing clouds of blue smoke toward a tin ceiling. Bones was on the phone but waved me over. As I got closer, I realized the receiver had a cord that connected to a large black base unit. Then I realized the base unit had a rotary dial. Bones finished up his call just as I arrived.
    “If you’ve got a subpoena, just leave it at the door.” Bonesseemed to like his little joke and sucked hard on the cigar. I watched his cheeks pump like tiny gray bellows and wondered when was the last time anyone in the Chicago media had gotten a picture of this guy.
    “How you doing, Bones?”
    “Like you give a fuck. Sit down.”
    Bones still had the voice of a politician—rippling like a cold river over hard stones. His appearance, however, hadn’t fared nearly as well. In the twenty-five years he’d run Cook County, McIntyre had made a habit of wrapping himself in suits made of English wool, ties of Italian silk, and French cuffs all around. Today, he wore a threadbare pair of Dickies work pants, a blue sweatshirt with a hole under the arm, mismatched socks of green and gray, and a battered pair of Nike running shoes.
    “What’s with the phone?” I said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s got a rotary dial.”
    “So what? They tried to give me one of those push buttons. I told them to keep it.”
    Behind Bones was a large-than-life poster for the 1968 Democratic Convention. On the other side of the stage, Bobby Kennedy reached out of a convertible to tousle a small boy’s head. From the phone to the politics, everything in the place reeked of throwback. Nothing more so than Bones himself. The man had once been a king maker, a guy who could get out the vote or kill it, depending on which way the wind was blowing off Lake Michigan. Bones had taken his retirement when the
Chicago Tribune
discovered he kept two women on the county payroll for the exclusive purpose of providing Bones with sex. The women were twenty-five and twenty-three, respectively. Bones was sixty-eight at the time. And happily married for fifty years.
    “How’s the wife?” I said.
    “Faith? Never better, never better.” Bones took a pull on his cigar and sent another stream of smoke spiraling toward a fan beating overhead.
    “I’m here about Ray,” I said.
    Bones nodded. I could have said Daffy Duck, and Bones would have nodded like that was what he expected.
    “You’ve been to see Marie.” Bones didn’t ask. He knew. And when Bones knew something, he didn’t waste time with competing points of view.
    “I talked to her, yeah.”
    He licked some old-man crust off his lips and laid the cigar, still smoking, in a cut-glass ashtray. Fifteen years ago, Bones had gone to a doctor who told him he had all five major risks for heart disease, plus a couple more the doctor had never heard of. Bones told the doctor he’d rather die than give up his cigars. The doctor told him that was a distinct possibility. Bones left the office that day looking to strike a deal with himself. According to legend, he never ate another piece of red meat, stopped using butter, and refused to drink any whole-milk products. He started running five miles every morning and hadn’t missed a day in more than a decade. Gray sweats, Bears cap pulled low over his eyes, black socks instead of gloves wrapped over his hands, Bones became a lakefront fixture. And he always ran alone. That was Bones. Cigars and all.
    “Why do you care about Ray?” he said.
    “Someone hired me.”
    “Someone hired you. So you just jump in and start screwing with people’s lives?”
    “Your daughter seemed fine with it.”
    “Leave her alone.”
    “Where’s her husband?”
    “How would I know?” Bones flapped a hand around the empty hall. “You think I’m at the top of the food chain here?”
    “Why did Ray disappear?”
    “Thirty years in prison might do it for me. How