Buying the Night Flight by Georgie Anne Geyer

Newman, who wrote so well and so sensitively about the city; the brilliant Lois Wille, who helped so much in easing me on as the "third woman"; the rowdy, wonderful Howard Ziff, with his big black beard; Ed Gilbreth, who knew Chicago politics backward and forward .... I wish I could mention them all, for in truth I loved them all. And I sat in the most extraordinary seat in the city room, as fate would have it. In front of me sat Mike Royko, then simply a rewrite man but later to become "the" satiric genius of our generation and a fellow columnist. On my right hand sat Jay McMullen, the crack and wry City Hall reporter later to become the celebrated husband of Mayor Jane Byrne. And on my left was the wonderful Bill Newman, with his elegance of expression and his subtle charm. What a triumvirate!
    Then one Thursday our wonderful city editor, Ritz Fisher, called me up to his desk and said, "Gee Gee, we've got a good one." One of the reporters who covered the Mafia had arranged for a "waitress" by the name of "Irene Hill" to cover a big Mafia wedding that Saturday. I was Irene Hill.
    I spent hours in our morgue studying the mug shots of the leading Mafia figures, and I dutifully bought my waitress uniform in the cheapest place I could find. What perhaps was most strange was how very easy it was. Late that Saturday afternoon, dressed in my "costume," I simply went out to the Tarn o'Shanter Country Club. On the road outside, as usual, FBI men, reporters, and others waited to catch glimpses of the hoods rushing in, in their big black limousines. I walked by and in, in my uniform.
    To my chagrin, however, I was initially placed in an upstairs room where I would not be able to see the participants at all. So as soon as I could, I slipped out and began serving drinks on the patio where everyone was arriving. I quickly spotted Tony Accardo; his right-hand man, Jackie Cerron; Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. I made sure to serve them drinks, noting down every little comment and gesture in my mind.
    Then once again I was relegated to Siberia. After serving my designated table in a corner of the enormous room filled with some two thousand, I realized that since cocktails I hadn't seen any of the "biggies." So I began to wander around with my champagne and finally, to my delight, found the entire bunch, all men and about thirty of them, seated together in a dark side room. I had started pouring the champagne when, to my horror, a swarthy gnome of a man jumped up and pointed his finger precisely at me.
    "Don't give us none o' dat," he virtually shrieked.
    I froze in place, then fled back to the kitchen.
    "You're pretty dumb," said the bartender. "That's the eleven- dollar-a-bottle champagne. That room gets the twenty-five-dollar-a- bottle stuff."
    At 2:00 a.m., weary but happy, I walked out to the road where the FBI and the other reporters still were waiting. A guard motioned us over. "Now, girls," he said, "be sure not to talk to those reporters." I assured him I would certainly do no such thing.
    The next Monday my front-page story appeared, with a picture of me primly attired in my waitress uniform. It began, "The mob went to a party and I went along for the ride."
    But those stories were unusual. More and more, pursuing my early passions, I covered race relations. In those days a white woman could still drive around most black sections of Chicago, even to night meetings; I only had one threatening scene -- and that taught me a great deal.
    In the middle of a bright and sunny weekday I had driven out to West Madison Street to attend a Planned Parenthood meeting in a very poor and particularly dilapidated black section of the city. The once-proud old buildings now had only their fronts to recommend them; once inside, you found that the hallways stank and you picked your way with revulsion over the filth, feces, and refuse. As I walked to the building from across the street after parking my little Volkswagen convertible, I noticed four