Hizzoner

William Kunstler: What is your name?

Witness: Richard Joseph Daley.

William kunstler: What is your occupation?

Witness: I am the mayor of the city of Chicago.

The workday begins early. Sometime after seven o'clock, a black limousine glides out of the police-station garage on the corner, moves less than a block and stops in front of a weathered pink bungalow at 3536 South Lowe Avenue. Patrolman Alphonsus Gilhooly, walking in front of the house, nods to the detective at the wheel of the limousine.

It's an unlikely house for such a car. A passing stranger might think that a rich man had come back to visit his people in the old neighborhood. It's the kind of sturdy brick house, common to Chicago, that a fireman or printer would buy. Thousands like it were put up by contractors in the Twenties and Thirties from standard blueprints in an architectural style fondly dubbed carpenter's delight.

The outside of that pink house is deceptive. Number 3536 is furnished in expensive, Colonial-style furniture, the basement expensively paneled; two days a week a woman comes in to help with the cleaning. The shelves hold religious figurines and bric-a-brac. The few books on display are symbols of the home's faith—the Baltimore Catechism, the Bible, a leather-bound Profiles in Courage and several self-improvement books. All of the art is religious, most of it bloody with Crucifixion and crowns of thorns.

Outside, another car has arrived. It moves slowly, the two detectives peering down the walkways between the houses, glancing at the drivers of the cars that travel the street; then it parks somewhere behind the limousine.

At the other end of the block, a blue squad car has stopped near a corner tavern, and the policemen are watching 36th Street, which crosses Lowe.

In the alley behind the house, a policeman sits in a car. Like Gilhooly, he has been there all night, protecting the back entrance, behind the high wooden fence that encloses the small yard.

Down the street, in another brick bungalow, Matt Danaher is getting ready for work. He runs the 2000 clerical employees in the Cook County court system, and he knows the morning routine of his neighbor. As a young protégé he once drove the car, opened the door, held the coat, got the papers. Now he is part of the ruling circle, and one of the few people in the world who can walk past the policeman and into the house, one of the people who are invited to spend an evening, sit in the basement, eat, sing, dance the Irish jig. The blue-blood bankers from downtown aren't invited, although they would like to be, and neither are men who have been governors, Senators and ambassadors. The people who come in the evening or on Sunday are old friends from the neighborhood, the relatives, people who take their coats off when they walk in the door, and loosen their ties.

Danaher is one of them, and his relationship to the owner of the house is so close that he has served as an emotional whipping boy, so close that he can yell back and slam the door when he leaves. But sometimes his stomach hurts in the morning.

They're getting up for work in the little houses and flats all across the old neighborhood known as Bridgeport; and thanks to the man for whom the limousine waits, about 2000 of the 40,000 Bridgeport people are going to jobs in City Hall, the County Building, the courts, ward offices, police and fire stations. It's a political neighborhood, with political jobs, and the people can use them. They rank very low among the city and suburban communities in education. Those who don't have government jobs work hard for their money, and it isn't much.

The ethnic blend is Irish, Lithuanian, Italian, Polish, German—all white. It's a suspicious neighborhood. In the bars, heads turn when a stranger comes in. Blacks pass through in cars but are unwise to travel on foot. In 1964, when a black college student moved into an apartment on Lowe, only a block north of the pink bungalow, there was a riot and he had to leave.

Well before eight o'clock, the door of the bungalow opens and a short, stout man steps out. His walk is brisk and bouncy. A nod and smile to Patrolman Gilhooly and he's in the limousine.

Richard J. Daley is going to work.

The limousine pulls out from the curb and the car with the two detectives follows. They are in the tail car, hanging back to prevent Daley from being followed.

It's a short drive to the job. The house is about four miles southwest of the Loop, within the problem area known as the inner city. If the limousine went east, toward (continued on page 158)Hizzoner(continued from page 153) Lake Shore Drive, it would go through part of the black ghetto. If it went straight north, it would enter a decaying neighborhood in transition from white to Latin and black. It turns toward an expressway entrance only a few blocks away.

The car takes the Dan Ryan Expressway, 12 lanes at its widest point, with a rapid-transit track down the center. It stretches from the Loop past the old South Side ghetto, past the giant beehive of public housing with its swarming children, furious street gangs and weary welfare mothers. The man in the back of the limousine built this expressway, and he named it after Dan Ryan, a big South Side politician, who was named after his father, another big South Side politician.

The limousine crosses another expressway, this one cutting through the big, smoky, industrial belt and then southwest toward white-backlash country. Daley built that expressway, too, and he named it after Adlai Stevenson II, whom he helped build into a Presidential candidate, and whom he dropped when it seemed opportune.

The limousine passes an exit that leads to the Circle Campus, the city's branch of the University of Illinois, acres of modern concrete buildings, one of the biggest city campuses in the country. It wasn't easy to build, because thousands of families in the city's oldest Italian neighborhood had to be uprooted and their homes and churches torn down. They cried that they were betrayed, that they had been promised they would stay. But Daley built it anyway.

Another mile or so and the limousine crosses yet another expressway, this one heading out straight west, through the worst of the ghetto slums, where the biggest riots and fires occurred in the spring of 1968, for which the outraged and outrageous "shoot to kill" order was issued. Straight west, past the house where two Black Panthers were killed, one in his bed, by predawn police raiders in December 1969. Daley opened that artery, too, and named it after Dwight D. Eisenhower, making it the city's only Republican expressway.

When the limousine nears the Loop, the Dan Ryan blends into a fourth expressway. This one goes through the Puerto Rican ghetto and the remnants of the old Polish neighborhood, where the old people remain while their children move away; then into the middle-class far Northwest Side, where Dr. Martin Luther King's marchers walked through a shower of bottles, bricks and spit. It ends at O'Hare Airport, the nation's busiest jet handler. Daley built that expressway, too, and he named it after John F. Kennedy, whom he helped elect President; and he built most of the airport, and opened it, although he still calls it "O'Hara."

During the ride he reads the two local morning papers, always waiting on the back seat. He's a fast but thorough reader and he concentrates on news about the city. Somewhere he is in the papers every day, if not by name—and the omission is rare—at least by deed. The papers like him. If something has gone well, he'll be praised in an editorial. If something has gone badly, one of his subordinates will be criticized. During the 1968 Democratic Convention, when their reporters were being bloodied, one of the more scathing editorials was directed at a lowly police-department public-relations man.

Daley was criticized also, but his official version of what happened on Chicago's streets was printed a week after the Convention ended, its distortions and flat lies unchallenged. He dislikes reporters and writers, but gets on well with editors and publishers, a trait usually found in Republicans rather than Democrats. If he feels that he has been criticized unfairly, which covers most criticism, he doesn't hesitate to pick up a phone and complain to an editor. All four papers endorsed him for his fourth term—even the Chicago Tribune, the voice of Midwest Republicanism—but in general he views the papers as enemies. The reporters, specifically. They want to know things that, because they are little men, are none of their business. Editors, at least, have power, but he doesn't understand why they let reporters exercise it.

The mayor puts down the papers as the limousine leaves the expressway and enters the Loop, stopping in front of St. Peter's church. When the bodyguards have parked and walked to his car, he gets out and enters the church. This is an important part of his day. Since childhood he has attended daily Mass, as his mother did before him. On Sundays and some workdays, he'll go to his own church, the Church of the Nativity, just around the corner from his home. That's where he was baptized, confirmed and married, and the place from which his parents were buried. Before Easter, his wife will join the other neighborhood ladies for the traditional scrubbing of the church floors. Regardless of what he may do in the afternoon, and to whom, he will always pray in the morning.

After Mass, it's a few steps to the side door of Maxim's, a glass-and-plastic coffeeshop, where a table is set up in the privacy of the rear in case he comes in. It's not to be confused with Chicago's other Maxim's, a Near North Side bistro that serves haute cuisine and has a discotheque and a social-register clientele. He won't go to that kind of place. He doesn't like them and people might think he was putting on airs. He eats at home most of the time, and for dinners out there are sedate private clubs with tables in quiet corners.

He leaves a dollar for his coffee and roll and marches with his bodyguards toward City Hall—"the Hall," as it is called locally, as in "I got a job in the Hall" or "See my brother in die Hall and he'll fix it for you."

He glances at the new Civic Center, a tower of russet steel and glass, fronted by a gracious plaza with a fountain and Picasso's awesome metal sculpture. The Picasso is an artistic triumph. He knows that because the city's cultural leaders have told him it is.

He put it all there, the Civic Center, the plaza, the Picasso. And the judges and county officials who work in the Civic Center, he put most of them there, too.

Wherever he looks as he marches, there are new skyscrapers up and finished or going up. The city has become an architect's delight, except when the architects see the great Louis Sullivan's landmark buildings being ripped down for parking garages or allowed to degenerate into slums. None of the new buildings was there before. His leadership put them there, his confidence, his energy. If he kept walking north a couple of more blocks, he'd see the twin towers of Marina City, the striking cylindrical downtown apartment buildings, a self-contained community with bars and restaurants, an ice rink, shops and dubs, and every apartment with a balcony for sitting out in the smog. His good friend Charlie Swibel built it, with financing from the janitors' union, run by his good friend William McFetridge. For Charlie Swibel, that achievement was a long advance on being a flophouse operator and slum lord. Now some of Charlie's flophouses are going to be torn down and the area west of the Loop redeveloped for office buildings and such. Charlie will do that, too. Let people wonder why out-of-town investors let Charlie in for a big piece of the new project without his having to put up any money or take any risk. Let people ask why the city, after acquiring the land under urban-renewal powers, rushed through approval of Charlie's bid. Let them ask if there's a conflict of interest: Charlie is also the head of the city's public-housing agency and, as such, a city official. Let them ask why Charlie's taxes and those of other big real-estate operators and party fat cats were slashed by County Assessor P. J. Cullerton, saving them millions. Let them ask. What trees do they plant? What buildings do they put up?

Head high, shoulders back, Mayor Daley strides with his bodyguards at the pace of an infantry forced march. The morning walk used to be much longer than two blocks. In the quiet of the Fifties, the limousine dropped him south of the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue, and he'd walk a mile and a half up the Avenue, one of the most elegant boulevards in America, grinning at the morning crowds that bustle past the shops and hotels across from Grant Park. That ritual ended in the Sixties, when people began walking for something more than pleasure and a man couldn't be sure whom he'd meet on the street.

He rounds the corner and a bodyguard moves ahead to hold open the door. An elderly man is walking slowly and painfully, close to the wall, using it as support. His name is Al and he is a lawyer. Years ago, he was just a ward boss's nod away from becoming a judge. He had worked hard for the party and had earned the black robe, and he was even a pretty good lawyer. But the ward boss died on him and judgeships can't be left in wills. Now his health is bad and Al has an undemanding job in county government.

Daley spotted Al, called out his name, rushed over and gave him a two-handed handshake, the maximum in City Hall affection. He had seen Al maybe twice in ten years, but he quickly recalled all of his problems, his work, and a memory they shared. He likes old people, keeping them in key jobs and reslating them for office when they can barely walk, and even when they can't. Like the marriage vows, the pact between jobholder and party ends only in either's death, so long as the patronage employee loves, honors and obeys the party. Later that day, Al will write an eloquent letter in praise of his old friend to a newspaper, which will print it.

The bodyguard is still holding the door and Daley goes in at full stride. He never enters a room tentatively, always explosively and with a sense of purpose and direction, especially when the building is City Hall.

Actually, it is two identical buildings, City Hall and the Cook County Building. At the turn of the century, the County Building was erected on half the city block, and shortly thereafter City Hall was put up. Although structurally identical, City Hall cost considerably more. Chicago history is full of such oddities.

The main lobby and upstairs corridors extend through both buildings, but as a political courtesy Daley never goes through the County Building. It is the domain of another politician, the president of the Cook County Board, who is known as the mayor of Cook County and, in theory, is second only to Daley in power. Later in the day, the president of Cook County will call and ask how the domain should be run.

The elevator operators know Daley's habits and are holding back the doors of a car. The elevators are automated, but many operators remain on the job, standing in the lobby, pointing at open cars and saying: "Next." Automation is fine, but how many votes can an automatic elevator deliver?

He gets off at the fifth floor, where his offices are. That's why he's known as The Man on Five. He is also known as dull Mare and hizzoner and duh leader. For many, his name is too sacred to mention.

He marches past the main entrance to his outer offices, where people are already waiting, hoping to see him. They must be cleared first by policemen, then by three secretaries. He doesn't use the main entrance because the people would jump up, clutch at his hands and overexcite themselves. He was striding through the building one day when a little man sprang past the bodyguards and kissed his hand.

Down the corridor, a bodyguard has opened a private door leading directly to his three-room office complex. He almost always uses the side door.

The bodyguards quickly check his office, then file into a smaller adjoining room filled with keepsakes from Presidents and his trip to Ireland. They use the room as a lounge while studying his schedule, planning the routes and waiting. Another room is used for taking important phone calls when he has someone with him. Calls from President Kennedy and President Johnson were put through to that room.

Somewhere in the building, phone experts have cleared his lines for taps. The limousine has been parked on LaSalle Street, outside the Hall's main entrance, and the tail car has moved into place. His key people are already in their offices, always on time or early because he may call as soon as he arrives. And at nine A.M., he, Richard Joseph Daley, is in his office and behind the big gleaming mahogany desk, in a high-backed dark-green leather chair, ready to start another day of doing what the experts say is no longer possible—running a big American city. But as he has often said to confidants. "What in hell do the experts know?" He's been running a big American city for 15 of the toughest years American cities have ever seen. He, Daley, has been running it as long as or longer than any of the other famous mayors—Curley of Boston. La Guardia of New York. Kelly of Chicago—ran theirs; and unless his health goes, he, Daley, will be running it for another four years.

Twenty is a nice round figure. They give soldiers a pension after 20 years and some companies give wrist watches. He'll settle for something simple, like maybe another jet airport built on a man-made island in the lake and named after him, and maybe a statue outside the Civic Center, with a modest inscription, like, "The greatest mayor in the history of the world." And they might cordon off his office as a shrine.

It's strictly a business office. Like the man, the surroundings have no distracting frills. He wears excellently tailored business suits, buying six a year from Duro's, one of the best shops on Michigan Avenue. The shirt is always radiant white, the tie conservative. Because his shoulders are narrow, lie never works in his shirt sleeves, and is seldom seen publicly in casual clothes. The businesslike appearance carries through the office. The carpets, furniture and walls are in muted shades of tan and green. The only color is provided by the flags of the United States and the City of Chicago, and a color photograph of his family. The office is without art. When a prominent cultural leader offered to donate tasteful, traditional paintings to the office, an aide said: "Please, no, he can't accept them. People would think he's going high hat."

The desk, with a green-leather inset, is always clear of papers. He is an orderly man. Besides, he doesn't like to put things on paper, preferring the telephone. Historians will look in vain for a revealing memo, an angry note. He stores his information in his brain, and has a computerlike recall bank.

The work begins immediately. The first call will be to his secretary, to check the waiting visitors and to summon his press secretary so that he can let the aide know if he wants to talk to the press that morning. He holds more press conferences than any other major public official in the country—at least two and usually three a week. In the beginning, they could be relaxed, casual, often friendly and easy, with the reporters coming into his office, getting the questions and answers out of the way and swapping fish stories and a few jokes—always clean jokes, because he walks away from the dirty ones. But with television, the press conferences became formal. They moved to a conference room and became less friendly as the times became less friendly. He works to control his emotions but sometimes finds it impossible not to blow up and begin ranting. Reporters are like experts. What do they know?

If he is going to see them, Earl Bush, the press aide, will brief him on likely questions. The veteran City Hall reporters are not hostile, since they have to live with the mayor, but the TV personalities sometimes ask the questions calculated to cause a purple face and a fit of shouting rather than to evoke information. He knows it, but sometimes it's hard not to get purple and shout.

If he doesn't feel like bothering, he'll just tell Bush, "to hell with them," and go on to other work. Bush never argues. He's been there since the beginning, when he was a hungry journalist running a struggling neighborhood newspaper news service and had a hunch that the quiet man running the County Clerk's office was going to go somewhere. On the day after the first mayoral election, Daley threw three $100 bills into his rumpled lap and said, "Get yourself some decent-looking clothes." Since then, Bush has slept a night in the White House.

After Bush will come someone like Deputy Mayor David Stahl, one of the young administrators the old politicians call the whiz kids. Like the other whiz kids, Stalil is serious, well educated, obedient and ambitious; he keeps his sense of humor out of sight. He was hired for these qualities and also because his father-in-law is a real-estate expert and a close friend of the mayor.

On a day when the city council is meeting, Alderman Thomas Keane will slip in the side door to brief the mayor on the agenda. Keane is considered second in party power, but it is a distant second. He wanted to be in front but was distracted by a craving for personal wealth. You can't have both power and money if the man you're chasing is concentrating only on power. Now Keane is rich but too old ever to be the successor.

If there is a council meeting, everybody marches downstairs at a few minutes before ten. Bush and the department heads and personal aides form a proud parade. The meeting begins when the seat of Richard Daley's pants touches the council president's chair, which is placed beneath the great seal of the City of Chicago and above the heads of the aldermen, who sit in a semibowl auditorium.

It is Daley's council, and in all the years it has never once defied him as a body. Keane manages it for him, and most of its members do what they are told. In other eras, the aldermen ran the city and plundered it. In the mayor's boyhood, they were so constantly on the prowl they were known as The Gray Wolves. His council is known as The Rubber Stamp.

He looks down at them, bestowing a nod or a benign smile on a few favorites, and they smile back gratefully. He seldom nods or smiles at the small minority of white or black independents. The independents anger him more than the Republicans do, because they accuse him of racism, fascism and dictatorship. The Republicans bluster about loafing pay-rollers, crumbling gutters, inflated budgets—traditional, comfortable accusations that don't stir the blood.

That is what Keane is for. When the minority goes on the attack, Keane or one of the administration aldermen he has groomed for the purpose will rise and answer the criticism by shouting that the critic is a fool, a hypocrite, ignorant and misguided. Until his death, one alderman could be expected to leap to his feet at least once each meeting and cry: "God bless our mayor, the greatest mayor in the world!"

But sometimes Keane and. his ever-ready orators can't shout down the minority, so Daley has to do it himself. If provoked, he'll break into a rambling, ranting speech, waving his arms, shaking his fists, defending his judgment, defending his administration, always with the familiar: "It is easy to criticize ... to find fault ... but where are your programs ... where are your ideas?"

If that doesn't shut off the critics, he will declare them out of order, threaten to have the sergeant at arms force them into their seats, and invoke Robert's Rules of Order, which he once described in the heat of debate as "the greatest book ever written."

All else failing, he will look toward a glass booth above the spectators' balcony and make a gesture known only to the man in the booth, who operates the system that controls the microphf on each alderman's desk. The man . the booth will touch a switch and the offending critic's microphone will go dead, and stay dead, until he sinks into his chair and closes his mouth.

The meetings are never peaceful and orderly. The slightest criticism touches off shrill rebuttal, leading to louder criticism and, finally, an embarrassingly wild and vicious oral free-for-all. Daley is a man who speaks highly of law and order, but sometimes it appears that he enjoys the chaos and he seldom moves to end it until the confrontation has raged out of control. Every word of criticism must be answered, every complaint must be disproved, every insult must be returned in kind. He doesn't take anything from anybody. While mediating negotiations between white trade unions and black groups who wanted the unions to accept blacks, a young militant angrily rejected one of Daley's suggestions and concluded: "Up your ass!" Whereupon Daley leaped to his feet and answered: "And up yours, tool" Would John Lindsay have become so involved?

Independent aldermen have been known to come up with a good proposal, such as providing food for the city's hungry, or starting day-care centers for children of ghetto women who want to work, and Daley will acknowledge the idea, but in his own way. He'll let Keane appropriate it, to rewrite and resubmit as an administration measure. That way, the independent reaps the satisfaction of seeing his idea reach fruition and the administration has more glory. But most of the independents' suggestions are sent to a special subcommittee that exists solely to bury their unwelcome ideas.

The council meetings seldom last beyond the lunch hour. Aldermen have much to do. Many are lawyers and have thriving practices; Chicagoans know that a dumb lawyer who is an alderman can often perform greater legal miracles than a smart lawyer who isn't.

Keane will go to a hotel dining room near City Hall. There at a large round table in a corner he lunches each day with a clique of high-rise real-estate developers, financiers and political cronies. The things they plan and share will shape the future of the city, as well as the future of their heirs.

Daley has no such luncheon circle and he eats only with old and close friends or one of his sons. Most afternoons, he darts across the street to the Sherman House Hotel and his office in the Democratic headquarters where, as chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, he will work on purely political business: somebody pleading to be slated for an office or advanced to a judgeship, a dispute between ward bosses over patronage jobs. He tries to separate political work from his duties as mayor, but nobody has ever been able to see where one ends and the other begins.

Lunch will be sent up and he might be joined by someone like Raymond Simon, a Bridgeport-born son of an old friend. Daley put him in the city legal department when he was fresh out of law school, and in a few years he was in charge of the department, one of the biggest municipal law jobs in the country. Now Simon has taken on an even bigger job: He has gone into private practice with Daley's oldest son. Richard Michael, not long out of law school. The name Simon and Daley on the office door possesses magic that has the big clients almost waiting in line. Daley's next oldest son, Michael, has gone into practice with a former law partner of the mayor; he too will soon have a surprisingly prosperous practice for so young and inexperienced an attorney. Daley filled Simon's place in his cabinet with another bright young lawyer, this one a first cousin.

When there's time, Daley is driven to the private Lake Shore Club for lunch, a swim or a steam bath. Like most of the better private clubs in the fine buildings along the lake front, the Lake Shore Club accepts Jews and blacks. But you have to sit there all day to be sure of seeing one.

It's a pleasant drive to the club. Going north on Michigan, he passes through the shadow of the John Hancock Building, one of the tallest buildings in the world and twice as high as anything near it. It was built during his fourth term, despite the cries of those who said it would bring intolerable traffic congestion to the gracious streets around it and that it would lead to other oversized buildings that would destroy the unique flavor of Michigan Avenue's "magnificent mile." That's exactly what's happening, but in his current mayoral campaign. Daley will certainly claim Big John as another monument to his leadership.

From Michigan Avenue the limousine purrs to Lake Shore Drive, with the lake and beaches on the right, which were there when he started, and the great wall of high-rise buildings on the left, which wasn't. Dozens of them, hundreds, stretching mile after mile, all the way to the city limits, and almost all erected during his administration, providing city living for the upper-middle class and billions in profits for the real-estate developers. They are his administration's solution to keeping people in the city.

Behind the high-rises are the crumbling, crowded buildings where the lower-income people live. No answer has been found to their housing problems, because the real-estate moguls say there's not enough profit in building homes for them. And beyond them are the middle-income people, who can't make it to the high-rises and can't stay where they arc because the schools are inadequate, the poor are pushing toward them and nothing is being done about their problems; so they move to the suburbs. When their children grow up and they retire, maybe then they can move to a lake-front high-rise.

By two o'clock, he's back behind his desk and working. One of his visitors will be a city official unique to Chicago city government: the director of patronage. He brings a list of all new city employees for the day. The list isn't limited to the key employees, the professional people. All new workers are there—down to the window washer, the ditch-digger, the garbage collector. After each name will be a resume of the man's background and the job and, most important, the man's political sponsor. Nobody goes to work for the city—and that includes governmental bodies that are not directly under the mayor—without Daley's knowing about it. He must see every name, because the person becomes more than an employee: He joins the political machine, part of the army numbering in the thousands that will help win elections. (They damn well better, or they won't keep the jobs.) He scans the list for anything unusual. A new employee might be related to somebody special, an important businessman, an old political family. That will be noted. He might have been fired by another city office in a scandal. That won't keep him from being put to work somewhere else. Some bad ones have worked for half the governmental offices in the city. There might be a police record, which prompts a call to the political sponsor for an explanation. "He's clean now." "Are you sure?" "Of course, it was just a youthful mistake." "Three times?" "Give him a break, his uncle is my best precinct captain." "OK, a break, but keep your eye on him." As lie has said so often when the subject of ex-cons on the city payroll comes up: "Are we to deny these men honest employment in a free society? Are we to deprive them of the right to work ... to become rehabilitated?" He will forgive anything short of Republicanism.

The afternoon's work moves with never a minute wasted. The engineers and planners come with their reports on public-works projects. Something is always being built, concrete being poured, steel being riveted, contractors being enriched.

"When will it be completed?" Daley asks.

"Early February."

"It would be a good thing for the people if it could be completed by the end of October."

The engineers say it can be done, but it will mean putting on extra shifts, night work, overtime pay, a much higher cost than planned.

"It would be a good thing for the people if it could be completed by the end of October."

Of course it would be a good thing for the people. It would also be a good thing for the Democratic candidates who are seeking election in early November to go out and cut a ribbon for a new expressway or a water-filtration plant or, if nothing else is handy, another wing at the O'Hare terminal. What ribbons do their opponents cut?

The engineers and planners understand, and they see that it gets finished by October.

On a good afternoon, there will be no neighborhood organizations to see him, because if they get to Daley it means they have been up the ladder of government and nobody has been able to solve their problem. And that usually means a conflict between the people and somebody else, such as a politician or a businessman whom his aides don't want to ruffle. There are many things his department heads can't do. They can't cross swords with ward bosses or politically heavy businessmen. They can't make important decisions. Some can't even make petty decisions. Daley runs City Hall like a small family business and keeps everybody on a short rein. They do only what they know is safe and what he tells them to do. So many things that should logically be solved several rungs below finally come to him.

Because of this, he has many requests from neighborhood people. And when a group is admitted to his office, most of them nervous and wide-eyed, he knows who they are, knows their leaders and their strength in the community. They have already been checked out by somebody. He must know everything. He doesn't like to be surprised. Just as he knows the name of every new worker, he must know what is going on in the various city offices. If the head of the office doesn't tell him, he has somebody there who will. In the offices of other elected officials, he has a trusted person who will keep him informed. Out in the neighborhoods his precinct captains are reporting to the ward committeemen and they are reporting to him. His police department's intelligence-gathering division gets bigger and bigger, its network of infiltrators, informers and spies creating massive files on dissenters, street gangs, political enemies, newsmen, radicals, liberals and anybody else who might be working against him. If one of his aides or hand-picked officeholders is shacking up with a woman, he will know it. And if that man is married and a Catholic, his political career will wither and die. That is the greatest sin of all. You can make money under the table and move ahead, but you are forbidden to make secretaries under the sheets. He has dumped several party members for violating his personal moral standards. If something is leaked to the press, the bigmouth will be tracked down and punished. Scandals aren't public scandals if you get there before your enemies do.

So when the people come in, he knows what they want and whether it is possible to give it to them. Whether or not they get it often depends on how they act.

He will come out from behind the desk, all smiles and handshakes and charm. Then he will return to his chair and sit very straight, hands folded, serious and attentive. To one side will be somebody from the appropriate city department. Now it's up to the group. If they are respectful, he will express sympathy, ask encouraging questions and, finally, tell them that everything possible-will be done. And after they leave, he may say: "Take care of it." With that command, the royal seal, anything is possible, anybody's toes can be stepped on.

But if they are pushy, antagonistic, demanding instead of imploring, or bold enough to be critical of him. to tell him how he should do his job. to blame him for their problem, he will rub his hands together, harder and harder. In a long, difficult meeting, his hands will get raw. His voice gets lower, softer, and the corners of his mouth turn down. At this point, those who know him will back off. They know what's next. But the unfamiliar, the militant, will mistake his lowered voice and nervousness for weakness. Then he'll blow, and it comes in a frantic roar: "I want you to tell me what to do. You come up with the answers. You come up with the program. Are we perfect? Are you perfect? We all make mistakes. We all have faults. It's easy to criticize. It's easy to find fault. But yon tell me what to do. This problem is all over the city. We didn't create these problems. We don't want them. But we are doing what we can. You tell me how to solve them. You give me a program." All of which leaves most people dumb, since few citizens walk around with urban programs in their pockets. So they end right back, where they started.

They leave, and the favor seekers who failed to reach him at lunch come in. Half the people he sees want a favor. They plead for promotions, something for their sons, a chance to do some business, to get somebody in City Hall oil their backs, a chance to return from political exile, a boon. They won't get an answer right there and then. It will be considered and he'll let them know. Later, sometimes much later, when he has considered the alternatives and the benefits, word will get back to them. Yes or no. Success or failure. Life or death.

Some job seekers come directly to him. Complete outsiders, meaning no family or political connections, will be sent to see their ward committeemen. That is protocol, and that is what he did to the tall young black man who came to see him a few years ago bearing a letter from a Southern governor who wrote that the young black man was one of the rising political prospects in his state. Daley told him to see his ward committeeman and, if he did some precinct work, rang doorbells, hustled up some votes, there might be a government job for him. Maybe something like making change in a tollway booth. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, now the city's leading black civil rights leader, still hasn't slopped smarting over that.

Others come asking him to resolve a problem. He is the city's leading labor mediator and has prevented the kind of Mrikfs lhat have crippled New York. His father was a union man, and he comes from a union neighborhood; many of the union leaders were his boyhood friends. He knows what they want. And if it is in the city's treasury, they will get it. If it isn't there, he'll promise to find it. He has ended a teachers' strike by promising that the state legislature would find funds for them, which surprised the Republicans in Springfield, as well as putting them on the spot. He is an effective mediator with the management side of labor disputes, because they respect his judgment and because there are few industries that do not need some favors from City Hall.

There are disputes he won't bother with, such as the conflict between two ranking party members, both lawyers, each retained by a rival business interest in a zoning dispute because of their influence. This is the kind of situation that can drive functionaries berserk. Daley angrily wiped his hands of the matter, bawled them out for creating the mess, and let them take their chances on a fair decision. There are so many clients, peace should exist among friends.

The afternoon is almost gone, but the petitioners still keep coming in the front door, the summoned aides through the side. The phone keeps ringing, bringing reports from his legislators in Springfield, his Congressmen in Washington, and from prominent businessmen, some of whom will waste a minute of his time for the glory of telling dinner guests: "I mentioned that to Dick and he likes the idea."

Finally, the scheduled appointments have been cleared, the unscheduled hopefuls told to come back again, a few late calls made to his closest aides. It's six o'clock, but he's still going, as if reluctant to stop. The workdays have grown longer over the years, the vacations shorter. There is less visible joy in it all, but he works harder now than ever before. Some of his friends say he isn't comfortable anywhere but in the office on five.

The bodyguards check the corridor and he heads downstairs to the limousine. Most of the people in the Hall have left and the mop crews are going to work, but always on the sidewalk outside will be the old hangers-on, waiting to shout a greeting, to get a nod or a smile in return.

On the way out, Bush hands him a speech. That's for the next stop, a banquet of civic leaders, or a professional group, or an important convention. The hotel grand ballroom is a couple of minutes away and he'll speed-read the speech just once on the way, a habit that contributes to his strange style of public speaking, die emphasis often on the wrong words, the sentences overlapping and the words tumbling over each other. Wherever he goes, the gathering will be heavy in boosterism, full of optimism for the future, pride in the city, a reminder of what he has done. Even in the most important meetings, they will seek out his handshake, his recognition. A long time ago. when they had opposed him, he put out the hand, and moved the few steps to them. Now they come to him. He arrives after dinner, in time to be introduced, speak, and get back to the car.

The afternoon papers are on the back seat and he reads them until the limousine stops in front of the funeral home. Wakes are still part of political courtesy and his culture. He's been to a thousand of them since he started in politics. On the way up, the slightest connection with the deceased or his family was reason enough to go. Now he goes to fewer, and only to those involving friends, neighbors, fellow politicians. His sons fill in for him at others. Most likely, he'll go to a wake on the South Side, because that's where most of his old friends are from. It might be McInerney's, which has matchbooks that bear a poem beginning: "Bring out the lace curtains and call McInerney, / I'm nearing the end of my life's pleasant journey." Or John Egan's, one of the biggest, owned by his high school pal and one of the last of the successful undertaker-politicians. The undertaker-politicians and die saloonkeeper-politicians have given way to lawyer-politicians, who are no better, and they don't even buy you a drink or offer a prayer.

He knows how to act at a wake, going to the immediate family, saying the proper things, offering his regrets, somberly and with dignity. His arrival is as big an event as the other fellow's departure. Before leaving, he will kneel at the casket and sign the visitors' book. A flurry of handshakes, and he is back in the car.

It's late when the limousine turns toward Bridgeport. His neighbors are already home watching TV, or at the Pump having a beer and talking baseball, race or politics. His wife, Eleanor, or Sis, as he calls her, knows his schedule and will be making supper. Something boiled, meat and potatoes, home-baked bread. She makes six loaves a week. His mother always made bread. And maybe ice cream for dessert. He likes ice cream. There's an old ice-cream parlor in the neighborhood, and sometimes he goes there for a sundae, as in boyhood days.

The limousine passes Comiskey Park, where his beloved White Sox play ball. He goes to Wrigley Field, too, but only to be seen. The Sox are his team. He can walk to the ball park from the house. At least he used to be able to walk there. Today it's not the same. A person can't walk anywhere. Maybe someday he'll build a big superstadium for all the teams, better than any other city's. Maybe on the lake front. Let the conservationists moan. It will be good for business, drawing conventioners from hotels, and located near an expressway so people in the suburbs can drive in. With lots of parking space for them, and bright lights so they can walk. Someday, if there's time, he might just build it.

Across Halsted Street, then a turn down Lowe Avenue, into the glow of the brightest streetlights of any city in the country. The streets were dark before; a person couldn't see who was there. Now all the streets have lights so bright that some people have to lower their shades at night. He turned on all those lights, he built them. Now he can see a block ahead from his car, to where the policeman is guarding the front of his home.

He tells the driver that tomorrow will require an even earlier start. He must catch a flight to Washington to tell a committee that the cities need more money. There are so many things that must be built, so many more people to be hired. But he'll be back the same day, in the afternoon, maybe with enough time to stop at the Hall. There's always something to do there. Things have to be done. If he doesn't do them, who will?