The three former politicians-and former prison inmates-stood at the bar to give ”Wild Bill” Henry an education in what was about to happen to him.
The occasion was a party celebrating the former alderman`s 56th birthday Tuesday night. It was also a fundraiser to defray legal bills for a federal extortion trial that William C. Henry, former alderman of the 24th Ward, will begin next week.
Former Aldermen William Carothers (28th), Clifford Kelley (20th) and Wallace Davis (27th) bitterly denounced the federal government as Henry shyly chuckled. An organ played somewhere in the background. Politicians, their wives and other well-wishers drifted by to shake Henry`s hand at the $50-a-ticket function for the William C. ”Bill” Henry Offense Fund.
Henry said everyone attending understood the fund is for his defense, but he favored the ”offense” tag to show his optimism in the days before a jury is picked to decide his fate.
Henry sipped water for a throat ruined by laryngitis. He looked at the ground and at his mother, seated along the wall of the Excalibur nightclub on North Dearborn Street, as the men talked.
”He won`t be able to swallow. You can`t taste. You can`t breathe,”
Davis said about how Henry would feel the first time he sits in a federal courtroom, watching a judge and jury decide where he`ll spend the next few years. ”We all love Bill; that`s why we`re here. But Bill, buddy, they`re going to open your eyes.”
The former political jailbirds were there to cheer up their old friend. They waved their arms. They shouted and swore as they told war stories about going to trial and going to prison.
Davis spent 4 years in a federal penitentiary for his part in an extortion scheme at City Hall. Kelley, who once ran the 20th Ward and is now a radio celebrity of sorts, spent 9 months in a federal prison farm for his involvement in the scheme. And Carothers was sentenced to 3 years in a federal prison in Indiana for conspiracy and extortion in a separate shakedown plot.
Henry, the former boss of his West Side ward, was one of the most flamboyant characters in an increasingly conformist Chicago City Council. He was the one in the bright pastel suits, the guy who told stories about winning a racehorse in a poker game and tying it to a post in his alley, the man who tried to revolutionize Chicago`s palate with his Soul Cola soft drink.
The drink wasn`t popular; the horse is long gone; he still wears the suits.
Kelley was on his way to make a speech to a local school council to encourage parents to become involved in their children`s education. But before he left the dimly lit, third-floor area of the dance club, he had time to hurl a string of epithets in the general direction of the U.S. Justice Department. ”They`re all racist bastards, Bill,” Kelley told his former colleague.
”And what really bugs me is that I see black FBI agents running around that federal building, and if they`re stupid enough to be in the FBI,” he exclaimed, then spelled out what he felt should be ”kicked every day.”
Carothers said his legal experience could not be found in any law book or in television courtroom dramas. ”It`s all bull. . . . That`s all I got to tell you, buddy.”
Henry heard their advice and counsel and hugged them. He maintained that the government was more interested in prosecuting a handful of black politicians than it was in cracking down on drugs and drug dealers.
He said he was shocked, however, to learn that former Cook County Chancery Court Judge David Shields and politically connected 1st Ward attorney Pat De Leo were convicted a few hours earlier of federal bribery charges.
”Of course you`ve got to be concerned when you hear that because they were two good men that went down,” Henry said. ”But the way I look at it, hey, if you don`t enjoy this thing called life, well, who knows when God will pull the plug on you.”
At Excalibur, Henry was greeted by such politicians as state Senate President Philip Rock (D-Oak Park), former City Corporation Counsel James Montgomery, Ald. Robert Shaw (9th) and dozens of other political types and friends. Rock gave Henry a hug, questioned him about his health and playfully punched him on the arm.
”How ya doing?” asked Rock, who is rumored to be considering a new career on the Illinois Supreme Court. ”West Siders got to stick together.”
Henry was charged in a 29-count federal indictment last year of allegedly using his office to guarantee himself cars, cash and a diamond ring. He faces charges that he extorted money and luxury cars from two men, including a Roselle auto dealership owner who sought to operate a car-rental franchise at O`Hare International Airport.
Holding court Tuesday night, he bitterly complained about the state of politics in Chicago, about the demise of the ward organizations he spent his life supporting and the new politics where neighborhood activists find themselves elected to office but without a support structure to get things done.
He joked about the history of his ward organization, for which as a teenager he began working as an assistant precinct captain. Other city politicians cut their teeth there.
It was the kind of place in the old days, he said, where the dead would cast ballots, and rummies and drifters would vote three or four times for the promise of a bottle or a few dollars.
It was the ward President Franklin Roosevelt once called the most Democratic in the country for its dependable machine-voting patterns. It is now overwhelmingly black and poor.
After a long apprenticeship, Henry was elected in 1983. But he was dismayed to find that the late Mayor Harold Washington, also elected that year, sought to keep white liberals in his political coalition by pushing ethics legislation.
”These new guys in the council, they`re too quiet and afraid of their own shadow,” Henry said. ”Sure I had style. Sure I was flamboyant. You`ve got to have some fun in life or why even do it?”
The council Henry left in April after being voted out of office is losing many of its characters. The legendary political body that personified Chicago`s own style of laissez-faire government is growing increasingly docile and compliant as the federal investigations continue.
Former Ald. Fred Roti (1st), who can still be seen occasionally at City Hall, is facing his own bribery trial soon. But former Ald. Edward Vrydolyak
(10th) has left politics and the nickname he hated, ”Fast Eddie,” behind him. He`s a grandfather now. Even some of Henry`s foes, including Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd), have stopped their yelling, finding it easier to make friends with Mayor Richard Daley than to hold news conferences against him.
All those changes, Henry said Tuesday, have left the council short on entertainment value and the aldermen short on the ability to ensure some help for their constituents. Even as he faces trial, Henry still ridicules the notion that aldermen should publicly champion ethics legislation while many of their constituents are poor and jobless.
”It`s easy to have ethics when you`re rich,” Henry said in a quiet moment Tuesday. ”But our people elected aldermen who could do something for themselves and their neighborhood.
”A poor man wants a guy who can get him a job. He doesn`t need a lot of speeches. That`s the difference.”
