Penance jl-1

by Dan O'Shea

  CHAPTER 50 — CHICAGO

  Pushing 8pm, the main viewing room at Fitzpatrick’s Funeral Home was only half full. Lynch eyeballing the crowd, looking for faces. Part of the deal, being a cop, there were always asses in the seats. Wakes, weddings, whatever, like the guy or not, you showed up. Just part of having everybody’s back. But they weren’t showing up tonight. So the word was out. Which meant somebody’d put the stink on Lynch, at least for now, and anybody that was worried about it rubbing off was staying away. The violation from the building code people, that was just bullshit, but this stung a little.

  Starshak was there, Bernstein, McCord, Cunningham. A few other cops, guys he went back with, guys he’d gone through doors with, but some who normally would have shown, some of the upstream guys, some of the brass, hell, some of the guys from his own squad, suddenly they had better things to do.

  With the cop numbers down, the crowd was trending old. People from the neighborhood, the ones that were still alive, retired cops who knew his dad, didn’t have to worry about promotions anymore. Some of the political crowd was there, just a few, guys who weren’t quite sure whether pissing off Rusty was worth snubbing Lynch.

  Rusty’d been late, half in the can when he got there. Keeping his distance, sticking to a corner in the back where he could hold court, get his ring kissed.

  Half the crowd was from Milwaukee, friends of his sister’s. Made Lynch a little sad, not so much the numbers as the realization that she had this whole life up there that he’d missed out on. Lynch burying his mom, his sister next to him in the black dress, the only other person in the room who could look at the body lying there with the over-done hair and a couple pounds of make-up and know that the first thing his mom would have said if she could look in a mirror would be “My God, would you look at this, I look like the Whore of Babylon.” His sister there and she’s almost a stranger to him.

  Liz walked in, rushed, hair a little messed. He’d dropped her at her place after the ball — she had to take off for Springfield at dawn, had to cover some special session down at the state capital, some pissing contest over pension funding, the latest game of political chicken between the downstate Republicans and Hurley’s machine. Must have driven up from Springfield as soon as the day’s session ended, and must have broken some traffic laws doing it. Hadn’t gone home first to change, hadn’t worried how she was going to look meeting Lynch’s family for the first time. Been weird, the last few days, what would push Lynch’s buttons. Little choked up at his mom’s place when he’d opened the medicine cabinet, his leg barking at him, looking for the Tylenol, and had seen his mom’s old brush, the one with the Abalone inlay in the back, the one his dad had brought home from the Pacific after Korea. Liz rushing in like this, making the effort, that had him tearing up, too.

  Liz walked straight to him, hugged him, held him. “I’m sorry I’m so late, I came as soon as I could.”

  “It’s OK,” he said. “Lot of people aren’t coming at all. I didn’t expect you to drive all the way back up for this.”

  Liz pulled back, still holding Lynch’s hand, as he introduced her to his sister. “Liz, this is my sister, Collie, and her husband Brad.” They all shook, the usual nice-to-meet-yous and I’m-so-sorrys. Lynch pulled his nephew up, Tommy sort of hanging back. “And this is my nephew, Tommy.”

  “Tom,” the boy said, correcting Lynch, putting his hand out, and Lynch realized the boy was what, thirteen now, as tall as his mother, all that time gone.

  Liz shook his hand.

  “You’re really a reporter?” Tom asked.

  Liz nodded. “I work for the Tribune.”

  “I like to write,” Tom said. “But my teachers say there may not even be newspapers in a few years.”

  “Not like there are now, probably,” Liz said. “Most of it will be online. But we’ll always need writers. Maybe you’d like to come down to the newsroom sometime? See how it works?”

  Tom smiled at her. “That would be cool.”

  Tommy retreated back to the wall, trying to find a space to ride out the wake, Lynch realizing there wasn’t another kid in the room, not one. Tommy caught Lynch’s eye for a second, raised his eyebrows a little, stuck his thumb up, and Lynch realized again that his nephew was thirteen, and that, even not taking any time to pull herself together, Liz was pretty damn hot. Lynch gave his nephew a quick thumbs up back.

  Liz leaned over and whispered in his ear. “I’ll pretend I didn’t see that.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Lynch said “Kid’s a teenager, hormones.”

  Starshak, Bernstein, McCord, and Cunningham had staked out a corner. Lynch went back to join them.

  “Thanks for coming guys, means a lot. I know the word’s gone out.” He turned to Cunningham. “You especially, Darius. We got no history.”

  Cunningham shook Lynch’s hand. “Fuck that shit.”

  “I’m not here for you, Lynch,” said Bernstein. “Just trying to get some intel on this whole Catholic thing so I can report back to the international Jewish conspiracy.” That got a laugh.

  “I just thought there’d be booze,” said Starshak. “Irish wake and no booze?”

  McCord pulled a leather-wrapped flask from his pocket and handed it to Starshak. “Of course there’s booze.”

  Starshak looked Lynch straight in the eye, serious suddenly. “I’m taking names, Lynch. You find out which side people are on, you mark that down.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” said Cunningham.

  Lynch sitting with his sister, maybe an hour left.

  “Lot of cheeseheads here,” he said. “Lot of people made the drive down.”

  “Don’t be too impressed. Half of them probably report to me at work, just racking up brownie points.”

  Lynch smiled. “Save your hard-ass act, Collie. I think they actually like you.”

  Collie shrugged. “Tom’s in love with your girlfriend, by the way. Just thought you should know you have a rival.”

  Lynch had seen Liz sitting with his nephew for quite a while.

  “Yeah, well, you know what? I’m in love with her, too. Tell the kid to back off. Remind him I got a gun.”

  She laughed. “John Lynch in love. My, my. It was nice of Father Hughes to come. He’s the one saying the funeral?”

  “Yeah.” Father Hughes was talking to a few of his mom’s old neighbors, up by the casket.

  “Kind of sad, Mom dies, and you have to recruit a priest from one of your cases.”

  “Yeah,” said Lynch.

  “We should have him say a rosary,” Collie said.

  Lynch turned and looked at her. “Really? You even remember how?”

  She shrugged. “It’s like falling off a bike, I guess. I’ll go talk to him.”

  Collie went up and talked to the priest, and he made the announcement, the staff from the funeral home walking around, handing out plastic rosaries. Lynch passed Bernstein on his way up to join his sister at the kneeler in front of the casket.

  CHAPTER 51 — CHICAGO

  An hour later, everything over, Lynch and Johnson were in the hallway by the front door.

  “Listen, John, I’d come over but I still owe the Trib a thousand words on this pension mess and I’m running on about two hours sleep,” Johnson said.

  “It’s OK,” Lynch said. “I’m kinda washed out myself. We gotta talk though. A lot’s changed. A lot’s changed since yesterday.”

  “I thought so. Last night, Hurley’s acting like he’s got a man crush on you, then I get down to the capital and Harrigan’s giving me a hard time about an interview, telling me I need to be careful about my friends, telling me I keep swapping spit with John Lynch, I’m going to find a lot of doors that won’t open for me. I guess you can be bad for a girl’s career.”

  Harrigan was the speaker of the Illinois house, the top Democratic gun down in Springfield.

  Lynch nodded, thought for a minute about how and what to tell Johnson. Not a trust thing anymore. He knew he could trust her.
Just this whole thing had spun off into an entire new universe for him. A universe where it didn’t matter where you were, who you were, what you’d done, there were guys with guns ready to take you off the board just for a little edge. The old school part of him was saying you don’t throw your woman in the deep end of that pool. But he knew that wasn’t his call. Johnson was a big girl. And this was her game, too. Maybe the biggest story out of this town since, well, ever. She got to decide what pools to jump into all on her own. And he needed the press on this, needed to get some pressure on the other team.

  “The Harrigan thing, here’s the deal. We’re off the case,” Lynch said. “The whole Chicago PD. Feds have bogarted it, which means Clarke is calling the tune, because there’s no way Hurley shows his ass to the Feds on his own.”

  “Clarke as in President of the United States Clarke?”

  Lynch nodded. “And the Feds have got the whole thing hermetically sealed. Got it in cover-up mode. Listen, I got a whole mess of new shit the last couple days, got to catch you up. Not tonight, though. I still got some dots to connect. But breakfast?”

  Johnson nodded. “Sounds like you might be good for a girl’s career after all.”

  “I don’t get you killed, yeah,” Lynch said.

  A commotion came from down at the far end of the hall, somebody staggering out from the viewing room, knocking over one of the floral displays, lurching across the hallway into the men’s room. Rusty.

  He’d kept to his corner all night. Collie’d gone over on her way out with the family, said her goodbyes. She was headed back up to Milwaukee. Holy Thursday tomorrow, so they couldn’t have the funeral until Monday. Catholic rules.

  Rusty’d had a bottle of Jameson’s and a few glasses out on the table next to his chair all night, the ring kissers taking a slug here and there, but Rusty working his way through most of it, and he’d been pretty well lit when he came in.

  One of the guys from the funeral home pushed in to the men’s room behind Rusty, some noises coming out, not happy noises. The guy came out, walked down the hall.

  “Detective,” he said, “we may need some help with your uncle. He’s a little, eh, distraught.”

  “OK,” Lynch said. He hugged Johnson. She pulled back, put a hand to his face for a long moment, something passing between them, something he didn’t have words for, didn’t need words for.

  “Breakfast,” she said.

  Lynch nodded.

  Rusty was sitting on the floor of the men’s room when Lynch walked in, pants half open, a puddle of urine under his legs. He looked up, his eyes red, his face washed in tears.

  “Pissed myself,” he said.

  Rusty was shrunken, hollowed out, shattered.

  Lynch squatted down, got the old man under the arms, pulled him to his feet. Rusty fumbled his pants closed, leaned back against the wall, panting from the small effort, tried to hold Lynch’s eyes, white hair hanging sweaty and stringy over his fleshy face, the huge head shaking back and forth.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “Not then. Didn’t know nothin’. Not for a long time. And I never did know nothin’ for sure. I didn’t know.”

  Part of Lynch wanted to bury a fist in the old man’s gut. Part of him wanted to hug him. Lynch reached up and took Rusty’s chin, steadied his face, looked into his eyes.

  “You didn’t want to know, Rusty.”

  The old man came apart, falling forward, Lynch holding him up while Rusty wept into his shoulder.

  “Pissed myself,” Rusty muttered. “Your mother’s wake and I pissed myself.”

  A kaleidoscope of emotions swirling in Lynch’s head, Lynch not knowing which of them to seize on, which of them to feel. Rusty didn’t know up front. Lynch was sure of that. Probably didn’t even have a clue for a while. And he’d made a promise to Lynch’s dad the day Declan Lynch put on the uniform. Said he’d watch out for the family, it ever came to that. He’d kept that promise, the promise maybe being the reason that, once Rusty knew there might be something, that maybe his masters had had a hand in his brother’s death, that promise being the reason he never looked, never pushed it. Rusty maybe thinking there was the truth, and then there was his brother’s family, and there was no way to serve both of them.

  Now Lynch didn’t know either. Didn’t know what to say, what to think, what to feel. But he knew what his father would do.

  “You’re still family, Rusty,” Lynch said, turning the old man toward the door, getting an arm around him. “Let’s get you home.”

  CHAPTER 52 — CHICAGO

  Next morning, Cunningham stepped out his door, saw a FedEx guy with a huge box on a dolly in the front foyer.

  “Hey, good timing,” the guy said. “I was just getting ready to leave. Tried the buzzer, wasn’t getting anybody. Looking for Jackson? Paperwork says unit one, so I’m guessing that’s you?”

  “I’m unit one, but I’m not Jackson. He’s on four.”

  “Always some damn thing,” the FedEx man said, pointing his little hand-held scanner at Cunningham and pulling the trigger. The darts were similar to a Taser, but stronger. Cunningham hit the floor in a heap, twitching. The FedEx man laid the large container flat on the floor, squatted down, opened the lid and flipped Cunningham inside. Then he pulled a small syringe out of the end of his clipboard, injected Cunningham with the sedative, and buckled the cuffs attached inside the box around Cunningham’s wrists and ankles. He clamped the top of the box shut, tipped the box up on the dolly, and walked it out the door and into his truck.

  CHAPTER 53 — CHICAGO

  Holy Thursday, early morning.

  Lynch saw Johnson drinking coffee in a booth by the window when he got to the McDonald’s on Western just north of Pratt. Her condo was on Lunt, just a bit east. Lynch picked the McDonald’s. It was close to her place and it was public. His phone beeped. He checked it. Text from Paddy Wang. Wang wanted a sit down. He forwarded it to Ferguson along with a time.

  “You’re running late, Lynch,” Johnson said as he walked up. “I’m the one working on no sleep here.”

  “Bus was slow.” Lynch was carrying a nylon messenger bag over his shoulder.

  Johnson paused a count. “Bus?”

  “Hard to follow a guy on a bus.”

  “Things that bad?”

  “Probably worse,” Lynch said. “C’mon, let’s take a walk. Little park near here. It’s kind of nice.”

  “Let me guess. It’s hard to follow somebody in a park, too.”

  Lynch smiled. But he also nodded. They grabbed some crap at the counter, walked up to Indian Boundary Park.

  “What kind of name is Indian Boundary for a park?” Johnson asked.

  “This was the line between the US and Pottawatomie land, some treaty after the War of 1812.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “I dunno. Week and a half maybe. I only know about it because they’ve got a historical marker up by the corner there. Had to check out a body next to it once, back when I was in uniform. Just some drunk, passed out one night, middle of January. Froze to death.” Lynch shrugged the bag off his shoulder held it out to Johnson. “This is for you.”

  Lynch ran down what he knew. The Hurley murder-suicide back in 1971, his father’s murder, the Fishers, father and son, Clarke’s involvement, Ferguson, Chen, how they needed the press to push in this, needed her to push it, all of it.

  “Jesus,” Johnson said. “My god, your father?” She stopped, turned to face him.

  Lynch just nodded.

  “And you never knew?”

  “Still don’t know, not for sure. Not everything.”

  Johnson started to say something, but Lynch held a hand up, cut her off.

  “Listen, part of me didn’t want to give you this. Didn’t want you in this. These people, they’ve got no boundaries. Nobody’s off limits. Nobody. But it’s a big story, important story, and that’s what you do. So it has to be your call. Somebody’s gotta do it, but nothing says that has to be you. I don’t want
it to be you. But that has to be your call.”

  She stopped, turned to face him.

  “You know I’m going to run with it. I have to.”

  “I know.”

  Another pause, then walking in silence again, Johnson talking first.

  “This going to be a problem for us?” she asked.

  Lynch shook his head. “You grew up with cops, you knew the risks, hell, you’ve seen me get shot. You’re still here. What am I supposed to do? Tell you to stay home and bake cookies? You love somebody, nobody says you get a free ride, that you’re gonna like everything. Can you do me a favor though?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get greedy, try for some kind of exclusive on this. Spread it around a little. Make sure your editor’s up to speed, maybe loop somebody in on the TV side. You start poking and these guys think they can stuff the genie back in the bottle with one bullet, they’re gonna take the shot. You get enough people involved, then they’ll know it’s too late for that.”

  Johnson nodded.

  “Too much for me to handle alone anyway. I don’t have DC contacts, I’ll need the help. And trust me, I’m all about not getting shot.”

  They passed the small zoo at the back of the park, most of the cages empty now, budget cuts. A lone goat looked up for a moment, went back to picking at the long grass that grew up along the edge of the fence.

  Johnson nudged the bag that hung from her shoulder now. “What’s all this got to do with the killings now?”

  “This Zeke Fisher? His kid went into the spook business, but he’s gone off the deep end. He’s on some kind of redemption mission.”

  “Killing people’s children? Grandchildren? What kind of sense does that make?”

  “Guy’s a nutjob. Only one it has to make sense to is him.”

  Quiet again for a minute.

  “The children he wants to kill. You could be one of them,” she said.