Penance jl-1

by Dan O'Shea

  Weaver couldn’t believe it, but they just might get clear. One more block. He could hear sirens, but nothing in sight. He hit the button on the door opener and the van shot down the drive into the garage, pulling up next to the rentals. Weaver put the door down behind them.

  Weaver turned to the guys in the back. “Do me a favor. Open the box and shoot the cop. We won’t be needing him.”

  Cunningham heard the first latch on the box flip up. Box would open from his left. He tightened his right fist around the linked cuffs and tensed his torso. As the lid swung up, Cunningham jackknifed up with it, his right arm already swinging the linked cuffs even as he spotted the target. One of the guys who had dressed him.

  The cuffs caught the guy right across the eyes, the heavy buckle ripping into one of them, blood spurting. The man’s head snapped back against the side window of the van, and his hands flew to his eyes, the automatic he had been holding clattering to the floor of the van next to the body box.

  Cunningham was already twisted toward the gun. He reached down, snapped it up off the floor, and swung it back around just as the man on the other side of the box tried to push the lid back down on him. Cunningham squeezed off a round, not aiming, just looking for an edge, the noise in the van deafening. The man behind the box ducked down, losing his leverage on the lid. Cunningham reached up over the lid and shot down at the man twice — hitting him first in the shoulder, then in the head — and the man flopped dead to the floor.

  Cunningham felt the man he had whipped with the cuffs grabbing him now, an arm locking around his neck. He could see the older guy in the passenger seat trying to get a M4 turned around on him, but the muzzle caught in the shoulder belt. Cunningham shot him through the back of the neck and kept the pistol tracking left toward the driver, who had his pistol out and was swinging it toward Cunningham. They fired simultaneously, Cunningham’s round hitting the driver high in the center chest, knocking him back, just as Cunningham felt his right hand jerked away, the pistol knocked loose by the force of a round hitting the edge of the barrel. The pistol bounced off the lid of the box to the floor to Cunningham’s right. He tried to bend, to reach for it, but the man behind him held him back.

  The man he had whipped with the cuffs tightened his right forearm against Cunningham’s throat, had his left hand locked on his right wrist for leverage. With his feet still strapped in the box, Cunningham couldn’t use his legs to move. He jerked his head to the side, trying for a head butt, just catching the edge of the man’s chin. Gave him a feel for where the guy’s face was at least. Cunningham grabbed the man’s forearm with his left hand, levered around it, swinging with his right. The blow caught the man on the side of the head, but there wasn’t enough to it. Cunningham couldn’t get his legs into anything, the arm across his throat closing tighter, tighter, Cunningham beginning to feel the panic as his body ran out of oxygen. He reached back again, fingers extended, felt the other man’s face slick with blood streaming from the ruined left eye. Cunningham’s fingers found the right eye. Cunningham dug in, his middle finger digging in, finding the corner of the eye socket, pushing, pushing, and suddenly something giving, the man screaming now, but still holding on, still the crushing pressure on Cunningham's throat. Cunningham dug harder into the eye socket, felt the finger sliding in, curled it toward him and pulled, some resistance, then it giving, something ripping loose.

  The man broke his grip and slumped back against the window, both hands pressed to his face, something between a sob and a scream coming through his hands. Cunningham shook the ruined eyeball from his fist, grabbed the hair on either side of the man’s head and rammed the head against the side window three times. Four. Five. The man went quiet, his hands falling away from his face, one ruined eye and one empty, bloody socket staring at Cunningham. Then the man slumped sideways to the floor, unconscious.

  Cunningham sat up and undid the buckles holding his ankles. He rolled over the side of the box onto the blinded man, rolled him onto his stomach, jerked his arms behind him. Cunningham grabbed the leather cuffs off the floor of the van, buckled them around the man’s wrists. He made a quick check on the other three, but they were all dead.

  Cunningham was just stepping from the van when the door to the garage went up and two squad cars sped down the ramp. They fanned out right and left of the van, braking, two cops in each unit, all four men jumping out, crouching down behind the squad car doors, guns extended.

  “Freeze and show us your hands,” one shouted.

  Cunningham wasn’t sure what had gone on, but based on the wild-ass ride over and then faint sound of gunfire he’d been able to hear while he was still inside the box, he figured it was a hairball. No point doing anything right now other than assuming the position. He held out his hands, turned to the van, and leaned against the side.

  “Got four in the van,” he said. “Three dead, one cuffed. My name’s Cunningham. I’m a cop.”

  “We’ll see,” said one of the cops, walking up behind him. “Just give me one hand, nice and easy.”

  Cunningham let the cop take his wrist, but he was getting a little tired of being cuffed.

  Lynch rolled past the car and then started running north up the sidewalk toward the pickup, crouching to keep behind the line of cars. When he could see the side of the truck two cars up, he slowed, his gun extended.

  An arm reached out from under the truck, holding a rifle by the top of the barrel. It dropped the rifle in the gutter next to the curb.

  “Chicago police!” Lynch shouted. “Slide out from under the truck. Slowly. Head and arms first.” Lynch looked across the street. No more firing from the Manning condo. No more firing from Ferguson’s position. No more firing that Lynch could hear anywhere.

  Lynch saw a man’s head and arms extend from under the truck, the man easily sliding out, rising to his feet. He was Lynch’s age, shorter, maybe five-eight, compact, his face placid.

  “Show me your hands,” Lynch said.

  The man raised his hands, locked them behind his head.

  “My work is finished, Detective Lynch. I am at your mercy. And I am sure there is much you want to know.”

  Lynch heard a thud. Fisher staggered and groaned. Two more thuds milliseconds apart, and Fisher dropped to the ground.

  Lynch squatted, spun, looking for a shooter, seeing nobody. The shots had to have come from across the street, from near Manning’s condo, but he couldn’t see anyone. He hadn’t heard the shots, just the sounds of the rounds hitting Fisher’s body. He turned back to Fisher. Blood was spreading all along Fisher’s right side and sputtered from his lips as he muttered something. Lynch leaned down to hear. The Act of Contrition.

  “…for having offended thee, and I regret all my sins-” Fisher’s head fell to the side, his eyes open, no more blood bubbling from his mouth.

  Chen was standing next to the car when Ferguson and Jenks got there.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Not sure we got Fisher,” said Ferguson.

  “I got him,” said Chen.

  “That’s swell,” said Jenks. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Lynch was sitting on the curb next to one of the ambulances that were parked in front of Manning’s condo, arm bandaged, drugs kicking in, adrenaline wearing off. Crashing. Crime scene guys all over the place — Fisher’s truck, Manning’s place, down by the church. The fake Manning and the fake priest were under tarps down that way. The press were three deep behind the barricades at either end of the block, the commissioner and a crowd of department brass hanging out in the middle of the street where they knew the TV cameras could pick them up.

  Cunningham walked up and sat down on the curb next to Lynch. “Get shot again? What’s that, twice this week?”

  “Yeah. How you doing? You really rip some guy’s eye out?”

  “Fuckers tase me, drug me, lock me in a damn box, and sit around talking about how they’re gonna waste me and frame me for all this shit. He’s lucky all I got a
hold of was his eyeball.”

  Starshak walked over, still in his raid gear.

  “How you doing, Lynch?”

  Lynch shrugged. “Alive. Way this thing’s gone, that seems pretty good.”

  “How about you, Cunningham?” Starshak asked.

  “Oh, I’m just dandy. Just fucking dandy.”

  “Went about the way you figured, Lynch,” Starshak said. “Most of these guys, once we showed up, they sat it out. Had their orders, and I guess shooting it out with the cops wasn’t one of them. Got six in custody, nobody’s saying nothin’ to nobody. Hear there have already been some interesting calls from DC. Even some guy from the Israeli consulate wanting to take a look at the stiff in Manning’s window.”

  “How’d our side make out?”

  “That Weaver puke did most of the damage. Hit a couple of the guys on my stick on their way up to the door. Nothing serious. Leg wounds. He shot low. Either he was trying to do us a favor or he was trying to miss the body armor. Take your pick. He shot up a squad car couple blocks out, driver took one through the chest. They say he’ll pull through. We got lucky.”

  “I heard Manning’s OK?”

  “Had her trussed up in her bedroom.”

  “So who was in the church?”

  “Decoy I guess. Never did find Ferguson, or any of the rest of your buddies.”

  “I’m OK with that.” Lynch nodded across the street at the tarp over the body by the pick-up truck. “So that’s Fisher?”

  Starshak shrugged. “May never know for sure. Whoever it is saved your ass, taking the priest out — or the fake priest, I should say. Real priest is up in the rectory, neck’s broke. If it’s Fisher, he took three transverse through the right chest. Looks like small caliber.”

  Lynch nodded. Chen. “Whole damn thing is just weird.”

  An EMT walked up, leaned over. “We’re ready to transport you, detective.”

  Lynch nodded.

  “I’ll stop by later, I ever get out of here,” Starshak said.

  “I’ll be fine,” Lynch said. “Probably sleep for a week or so.”

  “Don’t sleep too late. OPS wants everybody downtown in the morning.”

  “They may have to subpoena me to get my ass out of bed.”

  CHAPTER 63 — WASHINGTON, DC

  President Hastings Clarke sat behind the desk in the Oval Office. It was late. He’d come down from the residence after watching the television coverage of the events in Chicago. No mention of him yet, but the inquiries to his press people had increased exponentially from the already fevered pace of the past day. Tomorrow. He’d already been warned. His name would be in it tomorrow.

  He ran his hand over the surface of the desk — a gift to the United States from the Queen of England, constructed from the planks of the HMS Resolute. The Resolute was a British ship on an Arctic research mission that got trapped in the ice. The ship was freed by an American whaler and returned to Great Britain. Queen Victoria ordered the desk made in thanks.

  Clarke loved the desk. He loved the Oval Office. He loved being president. No more sucking up to the Rileys of the world. He had his own Rileys now. Weaver, for example. But his Riley had failed him.

  Clarke opened the desk and took out the one reminder he had from his days with David Hurley. Hurley’s Walther PPK.

  The Walther had been the key piece of evidence in the case against those AMN Commando patsies back in ’71. After the investigation, Hurley asked for the gun. He looked at it now, sitting on the desk. He’d never really understood why he wanted it then or why he’d kept it all these years. He didn’t even believe Americans should own handguns. Until this moment, he didn’t believe that violence solved anything.

  But it was going to solve this.

  The President of the United States raised the pistol to his head. Easier on the knees this way, he thought to himself, and fired.

  CHAPTER 64 — CHICAGO

  Four days later, the day after his mom’s funeral, Lynch stood in his dress blues on the side of a temporary stage on the plaza off Washington Street across from City Hall, just outside the shadow of the Picasso. Blue skies, light breeze, temperature in the seventies.

  There’d been press conferences a couple times a day as details broke. Too much press to keep things indoors. Trucks from all the networks, all the Chicago stations, dozens of affiliates from major markets nationwide had lined the streets all around City Hall ever since the story broke.

  Damage control was in full spin. The official story? The president had tabbed Weaver, a rogue agent upset at his demotion, to prevent the president’s dark secret from destroying his re-election chances. Today, Hurley and his Chicago crew wanted the big local climax — the DA giving an update on the legal situation, the commissioner outlining the successful undercover operation led by Lynch in cooperation with national intelligence liaisons. Then it was Hurley’s turn. He was going to give a speech and give Lynch a medal, the Chicago crowd hoping that, after today, the press would go home, that it would be a Washington story.

  Hurley walked to the podium and paused a long moment.

  “I stand before you today both proud and ashamed. Proud of our police and our city for the profound courage and determination with which they have confronted and overcome remarkable odds and intense opposition to bring this dark chapter in our city’s — in our nation’s — history to light and, finally, to a close. And ashamed, for the first time in my life, of my family. I never knew my father. He died before I was born. Murdered, I had always been told, by agents of intolerance. By people who would not abide his attempts to heal the racial divide in our country. And now I learn that he himself killed to hide the secret of his own sexuality, to hide it from the intense bigotry that my own grandfather — the man who raised me, who raised so much of this city, a man I loved and still love today — did far too much to engender. And we have all learned how those secrets kill, not just thirty years ago but still today. These secrets, these bigotries, kill not just in this recent outbreak of violence but every day — when a child’s dream is deferred, when a community’s soul is torn, when any person cannot become who they ought to be because of who someone else sees them to be. When any child feels that his or her dream, however large or small, may be beyond their grasp because of the color of their skin, or the nature of their faith, or, yes, because of their sexuality. These secrets still kill. Lives and dreams.”

  Hurley paused, looking out over the crowd. Lynch couldn’t believe it, but the son of a bitch actually had tears rolling down his cheeks.

  “In the coming weeks, my administration will be announcing a series of initiatives to help ensure that every dream is nurtured, every child valued, every secret hatred rooted out. But this is not the day for that. Today, I want to recognize another Chicagoan who had to grow up without his father because of my own family’s failings. A man whose personal integrity and courage, I must admit even in the face of the initial reflexive resistance of my administration, is responsible for exposing this last evil. I am proud to bestow the Chicago Police Department’s highest honor on Detective John Lynch.”

  Lynch walked up to the podium, let the commissioner drape the medal over his head. He took a quick look at Johnson. She was sitting in the middle of the front row with the network guys, the national guys out of New York and DC. She was a front-row property now. He raised an eyebrow, asking, and she gave him a quick nod. Everything was set to go.

  Two hours later, Lynch was back in his jeans and a sweater, backing the TR6 out. On the radio, it started.

  “The Chicago Tribune will report in its morning edition that Mayor David Hurley III is implicated in the ongoing cover up involving the recent Confessional Killings and the shootout on the north side four days ago that left seven dead. The Tribune reports the mayor’s involvement is proven in part by a recording captured by Chicago Detective John Lynch, and has released the following excerpt-” The radio started playing part of the conversation between Lynch and Hurley that Lynch had tape
d in Hurley’s office the night before the shootout.

  Lynch had heard enough. Johnson was holding up her end. He switched over to FM, the classic rock station, right into the middle of “Born to be Wild”. Laughed a little at that.

  Cubs home opener today. Usually that meant forty-five degrees and rain, but today the weather was a postulate for the existence of a benevolent God. Johnson’s bosses at the Tribune had given her two tickets to the corporate field boxes, first row behind the Cubs’ on-deck circle. But Johnson was flying back to New York for another TV thing, so Lynch had a ticket to burn.

  He pulled out his cell, called Dickey Regan.

  “Still owe you lunch, Dickey. How about a dog and a beer?”

  “Dog and a beer? You cheap bastard. Jesus, I would have dropped trou for you, you told me you were gonna serve up the president and the mayor.”

  “Nobody wants to look at your pasty white ass, Dickey.”

  “Sure. Johnson’s off to do the New York circuit again. I gotta dust my Pulitzer just to keep my self-esteem up.”

  “Listen, the dog and the beer? That’s in the Trib’s field boxes for the opener. You can even wear your Sun-Times cap, stick it in their eye.”

  Regan laughed. “OK, Lynch. Give me twenty to put my ‘Hurley-gets-his’ column to bed, then pick me up out front.”

  Lynch hung up, dropped the cell on the seat, decided to take a spin around Grant Park while he waited for Regan, wondering would Hurley slip out of this somehow. What he had on tape, it would muddy him up, but it might not take him down. Lynch decided it didn’t matter.

  Done his part, done his best.

  CHAPTER 65 — SAN FRANCISCO

  Ferguson sat in the new InterGov offices, watching CNN. Of course, Ferguson wasn’t Ferguson anymore, and InterGov wasn’t InterGov.

  Nice day in San Francisco, nice view of the Bay from the Embarcadero Center. Emerging Market Investments was the name on the door. That had been the transition plan for a while — get out of the government contracting business. Too many ties someone might run down. Take their seed money, move it into the private equity/hedge fund space. More than enough inside knowledge to make most of the right calls. With a focus on business opportunities in the Middle East, China, India, the Pacific Rim, even Africa, they had built-in cover, could get teams wherever they needed them. And everybody on board was going to get filthy stinking rich.