by Neil Turner
“What if the family can’t get a mortgage?”
“Reverend Jakes has recruited a couple of community banks to get involved. New Calvary will take out a mortgage if they have to, then rent the house back to the family on a rent-to-own basis until the homeowners can get their own financing.”
We paint and chatter for another half hour before Pat lays her brush aside. I pause in midstroke and realize that she’s finished two walls in the time it’s taken me to do about ninety percent of one.
She looks at her watch. “You go ahead and finish that wall while I start cleaning up. We need to get you home before Brittany calls.”
I think about Pat as I finish. I came to understand last year just how deeply immersed she is in Chicago and have developed a deep appreciation of who she is. Despite having been raised in the same neighborhoods and attended the same schools, I’ve somehow managed to get through the first few decades of my life without contributing ten percent of what she’s done. For all the social climbing I’ve done, hers has been far and away the richer life. With that lesson learned, I’ve been playing catch-up—not that I’ll ever come close to matching her accomplishments. At least I’m now in the game.
“Have you and Penelope developed a sense about how vulnerable Billy Likens and his partner are?” Pat asks once we’re in the car and on our way back to Liberty Street.
My thoughts turn to the NTSB investigation and the lawsuit that R & B Ramp Services is caught up in. “Sort of. There are so many moving parts to this thing. It’s like trying to sort out a giant jigsaw puzzle with a couple of thousand scattered pieces. Papa’s trial last year was like a ten-piece toddler’s puzzle in comparison.”
Pat snorts at my analogy.
“Really,” I insist. “I’m so over my head with this thing that it frightens me.”
“You’re not up to the challenge?” she asks sharply as we coast to a stop at a red light.
“I promised Mel I would look out for Billy, but I’m not sure how to do so in this damned case. I can’t stand the thought of letting them down.”
Pat turns sideways in her seat. “Look at me,” she commands. I do. “This sounds an awful lot like what I heard from you last year, Tony—the whole ‘I’m not good enough, I’m going to get Papa executed’ crap you were spewing before you went to trial and got him acquitted. Why is it so hard for you to accept that you’re smart and capable?”
I gaze back at her angry face and shrug. Over the years, my older brother, my ex-wife, former business colleagues, and a string of disillusioned girlfriends have all attested to what a worthless piece of shit I am. I’ve always had a tough time arguing against what seems like a mountain of evidence. I do try, but it’s a constant struggle, and I’m sometimes prone to backsliding at the merest hint that they had me pegged correctly.
The honk of a horn behind me interrupts our staredown. I glance up to see that the light has turned green. Cicero Avenue may be clear ahead, but I’m in no doubt that the lawsuit littering the road ahead will severely test my limited legal skills. Penelope is probably going to have to bail me out if we hope to save Billy’s and Rick’s asses in court.
Chapter Ten
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with Papa and Ed Stankowski shortly after ten o’clock the following evening when I start nodding off and decide it’s time for bed. I drain my glass of bourbon and get to my feet. “Bedtime for me, gentlemen.” I fix them with a pointed look and add, “Stay in the house tonight, you two.”
Ed smirks at me and lifts his damaged left arm in its sling, reaches inside with his good hand, and produces his pistol. “I’m right-handed. I’ll be fine if anything goes down.”
Officer Marty Zeller, who quietly told me that he’d driven here at the end of his shift after being told Ed was here tonight, turns a questioning gaze on me.
“I found these two sitting on the front porch with a couple of beers last night,” I tell him over my shoulder as I rinse my glass.
Zeller rolls his eyes. “Even if you had two good hands, Ed, the two of you sitting out there is dumb as shit. Tony’s right. Stay inside. I’ll personally drag your asses back into the house if I catch you out there.”
Ed doesn’t argue.
Papa’s another story. “You no tell me what to do at my home!”
Zeller ignores my father. “Get your head out of your ass, Ed.”
Ed glares at him. The ‘head up his ass’ crack was apparently going a little too far. Cantankerous old bastards that he and Papa are, they’ll probably take an entire case of Moretti outside and guzzle the whole thing before the sun rises.
I should have crawled into bed the moment I got home from work this afternoon. The evening began with my father demanding that I bring Deano home from Pat’s house, where he’s still recuperating. I continue to refuse, reasoning that Deano is safe there. Apparently, the Deano argument isn’t finished.
Papa looks up at me after I put my glass into the dishwasher. “Deano, he come home tomorrow.”
“I’m done arguing with you,” I retort as I head for my room. I’m asleep almost before my head hits the pillow.
A popping noise interrupts my sleep three hours later, the same sound I’d heard the night Pat was shot before my eyes. The sound of feet pounding through the living room brings me fully awake.
“Call 911!” Zeller calls out from the front of the house as more gunfire erupts outside. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he shouts while I scramble out from under the covers and grab my cell phone.
I’m connecting with the emergency operator when I reach the living room and follow Zeller’s voice onto the front porch. The smell of gunpowder hangs in the heavy night air.
“What the hell were you two thinking?” Zeller is yelling at a stunned Papa while I give the 911 operator our address.
Zeller steps past Papa and bends down. Ed Stankowski is crumpled in the corner of the porch. “Ed?” Zeller pleads. “Ed!”
“Ed’s hit?” an approaching voice asks out of the darkness in the front yard.
“Bad,” Zeller mutters. “You put down the bastard who shot him?”
“Yeah,” Max says as he arrives at the porch rail and stares in horror at his wounded friend, whose breathing is distressingly labored. Max slams a meaty fist into the railing. “I told the stupid bastards to get inside when I heard them out here a little while ago.”
“I sorry,” Papa murmurs as he gawks at his bloodied friend.
“A lot of fucking good that does Ed now,” Max snarls at him.
I inform the operator that a retired cop has been shot, then send Papa inside to get a blanket. Zeller reaches over the rail, squeezes Max’s shoulder, and points into the yard. “You’re sure that guy’s down?”
The second mention of a guy down registers in my discombobulated mind. My eyes follow Max as he walks to a body sprawled in the grass halfway between the sidewalk and our porch. The glow from the streetlights reflects off a sheen of blood on the torso. With his gun pointed at the head of the prone figure, Max none too gently prods a leg with his foot. When he gets no reaction, he bends down and presses his fingers to the victim’s neck. After rolling the man facedown, he slaps a pair of cuffs on the guy and turns him onto his side facing the house. Max pauses for a long moment with his head hanging low, then straightens up and walks back toward us. His footsteps leave imprints in the dew on the grass. “Fucker’s still alive.”
I tell 911 about the second shooting victim as Papa delivers an old picnic blanket to Zeller and then sits on the top step while Max and Zeller do what they can for Ed.
Zeller’s hands are slick with blood when he gets to his feet and grabs the cell phone out of my hand to speak with the 911 operator. “Where’s that damned ambulance?” he demands as the sound of approaching sirens grows steadily closer. His next words chill me. “Ed’s been shot in the chest. He’s coughing up blood and is struggling like hell to breathe. His heart’s racing a mile a fucking minute. I think we’re losing him. What the hell should we do until
the paramedics arrive?”
Zeller listens with a grim expression, then slaps the bloodied phone back in my hand and squats down to resume working on Ed.
Papa stares up at me. The haunted expression is back in his eyes when he gestures toward the body in the yard. “The man, he come for me. He walk on sidewalk and see us, look only at me when he take gun out of jacket and point it. Ed, he jump in front of me and try to shoot the man. He get shot!”
Papa’s starting to go into shock. I pull him into an embrace and hold his frail shoulders tightly as he begins to sob. Then I take him back inside, settle him in his La-Z-Boy, cover him in a fuzzy blue blanket Mama had used to warm her legs, and pour him a glass of grappa. I make my way back to the porch as the first emergency vehicles arrive. At Max’s direction, the initial team of paramedics hurries to the porch and starts working feverishly on Ed. A second ambulance arrives within the minute. Max directs those paramedics to the second shooting victim. When a uniformed officer shines a powerful flashlight on the casualty in the front yard, I recognize the old man who had walked past the house while Pat and I were waiting for Ben Larose four nights ago. Should I have done something when I noticed him staring at the house? Granted, he hadn’t seemed threatening, but still. What had I said? “He looks like he belongs?” Right.
When a third ambulance arrives, I send its paramedics inside to check on Papa.
“Shit! We’re losing him,” one of the paramedics working on Ed exclaims.
“We need to get him to the hospital,” his partner mutters grimly.
After they wrestle Ed onto the gurney, hustle him out to their waiting ambulance, and race away to the hospital, Zeller slumps onto the top step and watches the second team of paramedics as they work on Ed’s shooter. “Damn it,” he says dejectedly as his eyes meet mine. “I fell asleep at the kitchen table. How could I?”
He’d told me earlier that he started work at six o’clock yesterday morning. I look at him sympathetically. “How long have you been awake now?”
He shrugs and disconsolately murmurs, “No excuse.”
“What the hell were they doing out there?” I ask angrily.
Zeller shrugs. “Beautiful night for a beer on the porch. For some reason, neither one of them seemed to think anything bad was likely to happen.”
“Why? Ed got shot here a few days ago!”
He shakes his head forlornly. “Sometimes we cops get to feeling a little invulnerable. Maybe Ed figured he could handle any risk that popped up.”
“Like I say, he just got shot. How in hell could he think that?”
“He was still on painkillers, Tony. Add a beer or two. Impaired judgment?”
“Damned costly error in judgment,” I mutter.
We’re ordered out of the house while detectives and crime-scene technicians pore over every inch of the porch and yard. A long night lies ahead while we anxiously await word from the hospital.
Chapter Eleven
My nose follows the smell of freshly brewed coffee when I wake up just after seven o’clock in the morning, two hours after I’d fallen into an exhausted sleep on the sofa in Pat’s office. I stifle a yawn and run my hands through my unruly hair as I come downstairs into the kitchen, tug my sweatpants straight, and give Pat a grateful nod as she pours me a cup of coffee.
“Good morning,” she says. Then she points at the kitchen table. “Sit, before you fall down.”
“Morning,” I mumble.
She’s fully dressed and made up, at least as much as Pat is ever made up. As she walks over and slides the coffee in front of me, I wonder if she’s been to bed since we straggled in just after three in the morning. We’d let Brittany sleep through the night in the second-floor guest room that she’s claimed as her own. I’m not sure where Pat stashed my father.
I lift the coffee to my lips. “Thanks.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmurs in Chicago’s approximation of “you’re welcome.” She looks down at me with concern and rests a hand on my shoulder. “How are you?”
Shell-shocked. Confused. Frightened. Pissed at Papa and Ed. I shrug and turn my hands up helplessly, then steer the conversation elsewhere as Pat settles into the chair beside mine.
“Papa?” I ask.
She tilts her head toward the living room. “Crashed on the couch. Still sleeping.”
“Brittany?”
“She’ll be down shortly. I heard her hitting the shower a few minutes ago.” Pat’s eye settles on me. “I haven’t told her what happened.”
I get it. I’m the parent. Still, I’m not looking forward to telling Brittany about the latest gunplay on Liberty Street. It turns out that I don’t have to. My daughter bursts into the kitchen a minute later in tears, throws herself into my arms, and exclaims, “You’re okay!”
I hold her close. “I am. Papa is, too.”
She smells of soap and shampoo, some sort of citrusy scent. She sobs against my chest a moment longer while her damp hair wets my shirt. Then she turns her eyes up to mine. “I just saw the morning news. They said two people were shot?”
“Ed Stankowski and the guy who attacked them.”
Her startled eyes ask the obvious follow-up question.
I guide her onto the chair beside mine before I answer, “Ed’s in the hospital. It’s bad. We’re hoping for the best.”
“Why?” Brittany sobs disconsolately while Pat deposits a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.
There’s really no satisfactory answer to that, so I wrap an arm around my daughter’s shoulders and hug her to me for a long minute.
“I’m so afraid for Papa,” she murmurs into my shoulder before she sits back and gulps down a shot of coffee.
“We all are, honey.”
Pat putters at the counter while we sit silently, then returns with a big bowl of communal fruit. We pick at it. A stack of buttered toast grows cold beside it. Pat finally breaks the oppressive silence in an effort to get our minds off Ed.
“Sandy Irving broke a new story in the Sun-Times this morning about the Milton crash. Windy City has filed a lawsuit against its insurance company for denying their claim to replace the aircraft.”
“What’s that about?” I ask.
“Ben Larose told me yesterday that the NTSB released the plane wreckage to the insurance company a couple of weeks ago. He’s figured all along that pilot error is the most likely outcome of the investigation, so the denied claim didn’t surprise him. His guess is that the insurance company is probably suggesting that Windy City was negligent in putting Megan Walton at the controls of the aircraft.”
My thoughts turn to how this might affect the R & B case and conclude that it should help us.
Pat glances at the clock and turns to Brittany. “Bobby should be here in fifteen minutes, kiddo. Are you ready to go?”
Brittany nods.
“Lunch made?” Pat asks her.
“I’ll buy something at the caf.”
I meet her gaze. “You don’t have to go to school today.”
“Seeing Bobby will help, Dad.”
Ah, yes. The boyfriend. There used to be a time when Daddy was the Soother in Chief. I miss those days. The ringing doorbell interrupts my pity party.
Brittany scoots to the front door and returns a minute later with a somber Jake Plummer in tow. Jake’s rumpled charcoal suit, red eyes, and the stubble on his face suggest he hasn’t been to sleep. Papa, awakened by the doorbell, stumbles along in their wake and veers off to the bathroom.
Fearing bad news, I capture Jake’s eye. “Ed?”
He wearily shakes his head. “He didn’t make it.”
We’re still sitting in stunned silence when Papa wanders back from the bathroom wearing worn pajama bottoms and a fraying sleeveless T-shirt. He’s rubbing sleep out of his eyes when it registers that something is terribly wrong.
“Ed?” he asks with a frightened tremor in his voice.
I break the bad news. It sends a visible jolt of pain through my father, who sags onto a st
ool at the breakfast bar and buries his face in his hands while a wretched groan erupts from the depths of his being. An uncomfortable silence settles over us as Papa struggles to rein in his emotions. When he does, he looks up at Jake. “We go home now?”
The glower Jake turns on him doesn’t contain a trace of empathy. “This is now a homicide investigation, Mr. Valenti. Your house is a crime scene until further notice.”
“Until when, Jake?” I ask. “Later today? Tomorrow?”
He shoots a flinty gaze my way. “Until I decide it isn’t.”
The lawyer in me wants to argue, but Papa beats me to it. “After I shoot O’Reilly, you let Anthony go back next day.”
Jake’s angry eyes lock on Papa’s for a long moment before he turns his attention to me. “As I was saying a moment ago, Ed’s shooting is now an active homicide investigation. We’ll require formal statements from you and Francesco today. Make your way to the station after lunch and ask for me or my partner—Francesco at one o’clock and you at two. Got it?”
“I go back to my home,” Papa insists stubbornly. “They no chase me away!”
Jake steps up to the breakfast bar, braces his hands on the countertop, and leans across until his merciless face is no more than two feet from Papa’s. His voice is pure ice when he growls, “Ed Stankowski was a good friend of mine, Mr. Valenti. I’m not going to conduct another homicide investigation at your damned house just because you want to keep thumping your chest and pronouncing yourself unafraid.”
Papa stares back at him wordlessly.
“Got it?” Jake presses. “Get the fuck out of that house. We’re not looking out for you another goddamned day.”
Papa is shocked by the outburst. So am I, although I quickly realize that I probably shouldn’t be. Jake is right. Papa needs to be elsewhere. But where? I don’t want to put Pat and Brittany at risk by stashing him at Pat’s place. A hotel? That hardly seems secure. Where the hell in the limited options we have available will he be safe?