The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [63]
After arriving, she’d checked into a modern minimalist hotel and spent one day at the beach and one day at the Harold Washington Library, reading up on Jameson. Multiple degrees from prestigious schools: Yale, Duke, Harvard. Named one of Forbes magazine’s “Fifteen Smartest Tycoons.” Married, with handsome children. One was in real estate in New York; another was a fledgling producer in Hollywood. His wife, Myra, was active with local charities, especially animal ones. Their name was on a primate house at one Chicago zoo and a dolphin facility at the other. He’d made a fortune trading Eurodollars (which Nada’d tried to study up on before declaring the topic both boring and irrelevant). In addition to trading, he’d made good money buying real estate in neglected city neighborhoods. In one article, Jameson remembered his first major purchase decades ago: an entire block of Halsted Street just east of Wrigley Field. “I bought when the Germans were moving out and the gays were moving in,” he was reported to have said with a laugh. “Follow the gays. That’s been my MO ever since.”
With her feet, Nada traced a curving walk of new bricks around an impressive garden built in vertical steps leading to a large fountain. Half a dozen men were working the grounds—mowing and weeding and trimming—and the blades from their instruments chirped from the hedges like hungry starlings. No one paid any attention to her.
Dressed for golf in short sleeves and creased khakis, Jameson emerged from behind the screened front door and stepped out onto the porch to meet her.
“Ms. Gold,” he shouted as she approached.
Nada walked up the steps and extended her hand, which Jameson accepted in a chivalrous manner. A wind forced itself along the building’s eccentric curves and corners like soft breath through a woodwind, and to Nada’s ears it sounded like the house was greeting her with a low moan. She twisted her body to observe it at close range. From so near, she could see the door and the narrow columns to each side and the bricks just above her head, but nothing of the upper stories.
Across the porch and through the heavy doors, Nada followed Jameson into a large foyer. Probably thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long, the floor was covered with enormous old carpets from Central Asia. To her left was a fireplace taller than she was by a head. Given its location by the door, it had no doubt been a source of welcome warmth to long-ago winter visitors, but today Nada was met by the chill and low thrum of retrofitted central air. F-sharp, she thought. To her right were large mahogany panels carved with what looked like New Testament scenes—apostles and such. Five women her size could have stood on one another’s shoulders and they still wouldn’t have been able to touch the checkerboard of expensive wood squares that constituted the ceiling. Antiques lined the wall to her right—chests and chairs and bureaus and tables—and above the furniture were old portraits of unfamiliar old men. Including the door and the paintings and more carving on the furniture, she counted seventeen crosses.
Opposite the crosses were tiny paintings or pictures in frames that looked to Nada like square rivets in steel. Further distorting her sense of scale were wooden double doors, two stories high, leaning against the wall and carved with repeating patterns of circles stacked on one another like pyramids. The wood had an inky grain, like it had been painted black at one time and restored.
“I always wondered what the inside of this house was like,” she said.
Jameson nodded. “You lived nearby, I know.”
She tossed her index finger over her shoulder. “Just on the west edge of the park. You could see this property from our roof in the winter. I liked to count those chimneys. The bishop used to live here, right?”
“The cardinal’s residence,” Jameson said. “I bought this home from the Catholic Church.