High Chicago jg-1

by Howard Shrier

  "I get the feeling I'm supposed to ask you who his partner was."

  "'Cause you're one smart cookie."

  "And if that's what I'm supposed to ask, then I know the answer."

  "Let's hear it."

  "Francis Curry."

  "Give the man a silver dollar. You got those up in Canada?"

  "We have loonies."

  "So do we. And some of them, unfortunately, carry a badge."

  "What about the third man?" I asked. "Any unsolved killings match up from that time?"

  "A couple," he said. "Ronald Atkins, white male, thirty-six, five-eleven. Found bobbing along in the river, not far from the Ohio Street bridge. No suspects, no arrests. The other was Chuck Belkin, forty years old, six-foot-one, found shot to death in the Humboldt Park area. No arrests, but a theory that he was buying or selling drugs and stepped on some Latin King toes."

  "That's him," I said.

  "What makes you so-"

  "Birk said something to me about dumping me on gang turf, make it look like I'd wandered into the wrong neighbourhood. What's Belkin's background?"

  "He was unemployed at the time of his demise."

  "Any police or security work in his past?"

  "No."

  "Carpet cleaning?"

  "Dude, we didn't have his CV on hand. All our guy had on him was he was an army veteran, served in Desert Storm."

  Ex-military. After my first meeting at Birk's office, Francis Curry had told me he was "ex a lot of things."

  I was betting military was one of them. — Jenn called at ten o'clock. I'd never been so glad to hear her voice.

  "Is Ryan with you?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  "What's that mean?"

  "We left at five and we're making good time. Still in Michigan but close to the Indiana state line."

  "You can't say what you want to say?"

  "Nope."

  "He's not your average bear."

  "No," she said. "Not at all."

  "You talking about me?" I heard Ryan say. "Hey, all I did was put my hand on your leg when we were crossing the border."

  "It wasn't my leg," Jenn said. "It was my thigh. My upper thigh."

  "I was trying to be convincing," he said. "You know what the border is like now. We're a couple on holiday, I figure we're supposed to be lovey-dovey."

  "A little too lovey there, dovey."

  "Put him on the phone," I said.

  There was a pause and then Ryan came on. "Do yourself a favour," I told him. "Don't touch her tits. Last guy who did that is still trying to find his balls."

  "And hello to you too."

  "Thanks for coming."

  "You know me," he said. "I still like a party."

  "Did you bring your, uh, camera case?"

  "Of course. I mean, I assume that's why we couldn't fly."

  "You assume correctly."

  "Hey, you okay?" Ryan said. "You sound a little dopey."

  "I had some codeine for breakfast."

  "What happened?"

  "I'm a little banged up."

  "How banged up?"

  "I'm turning all the colours of the rainbow."

  "This Birk again?"

  "Yeah."

  "Don't worry," he said. "We'll tune him up good."

  "That's why I invited you." I stood a long while at the window looking out at the city, grey now and overcast, the wind up, the waves churning and foaming on the shore of the lake. People on the street below were holding onto their hats, clutching their coats around themselves. At twelve o'clock, I took two more codeine and leafed through the sports section. I don't know when I fell asleep but it was two when I woke up, thirsty and hungry enough to order a club sandwich. When it came, I ate half of it. Could only look at the other half. Wanted to soak my aching muscles in another hot bath but had no desire to share the tub with a dead assassin. Lay back on the bed. Clenched and unclenched my hands, felt the raw skin pull against the gauze wraps. Got up and paced, bad knee and all, until there was a knock on the door.

  "Yes?"

  "It's us," Jenn said.

  I removed the chair and undid all the locks, opened the door and there they finally were. Jenn looked at my hands, the welt on my arm, and threw her arms around me and held me. I felt like crying into her shirt the way Marilyn Cantor had. "Look at you," she said. "You're a mess."

  "And you're only seeing the outside."

  Ryan said, "Hey," and set his camera case down and got out his cigarettes. "Please tell me this is a smoking floor. Your partner here wouldn't let me smoke in my own fucking car. Hell, she barely let me speak."

  Jenn rolled her eyes. "Only because so much of what you say is in Neanderthal," she said.

  "Don't start that again," Ryan growled. "Christ, I say one little thing and she's all over me."

  "One little thing?"

  "All I said was that if I wasn't married-"

  "Like that makes a difference," Jenn said.

  "— that I would love to help you switching teams."

  "Like that would do it."

  "It was a compliment," Ryan insisted.

  "From another century!"

  "A way of saying you're a looker. Plenty of dy-sorry, plenty of gay women, I could give a shit, with their crewcuts and legs like Bulgarian wrestlers. But you're fucking beautiful, man."

  "How can anyone resist him?" Jenn said. "How'd you get your wife to marry you? You club her and drag her to your cave by the hair?"

  "There you go again with the caveman shit. I'm plenty modern, okay? I help my wife with our kid, with dishes, with laundry-"

  "You help her with it, meaning it's still her responsibility."

  "Twelve hours of this," he said to me. "She's lucky the guns were in the trunk."

  "See? Threats of violence," Jenn said. "You don't agree with a woman, just shoot her."

  "Finally," he grinned. "Something we can agree on." Then to me: "This the can here? I got to take a leak. I been holding it in since fucking Skokie."

  "You might not want to go in there," I said.

  "I'll hold my breath."

  "It's not that. I had, uh, company this morning."

  Ryan went into the bathroom. I heard the shower curtain swish along its rail, plastic rings clacking together. "Holy shit!" he said.

  Jenn searched my face for a clue as to what was in there. I shrugged. "You might as well look," I said. "So you know where things are going."

  She walked slowly into the bathroom. Said, "Holy shit," too, and came out looking pale. Ryan, on the other hand, went straight to the phone book provided by the hotel and flipped through the Yellow Pages section.

  "What are you looking for?" I asked.

  "Sporting goods," he said.

  CHAPTER 44

  "If he comes back with a chainsaw," Jenn said, "I'm out of here."

  "The only thing you can predict about Dante Ryan is that he's unpredictable. Listen, I'm sorry if the drive down was a pain."

  "Don't be," she said. "It was a hoot."

  "You're kidding."

  "Apart from the smoking, the leg-groping and the team-switching bullshit, he's a lot more fun than PC guys who trip over themselves trying to be more sensitive than thou around a gay woman. But don't tell him that."

  "My lips are sealed."

  "While he's gone," Jenn said, "did you want to get yourself X-rayed?"

  "No. What's done is done. I have some codeine. And a lot of ill will toward Simon Birk. That ought to get me through the day."

  "Let's see your hands."

  We sat opposite each other on the edges of the double beds and she slowly unwrapped the gauze.

  "Uck," she said.

  "Spoken like a true professional."

  My palms were angry and raw, as if they'd been flayed. My left hand shook when I tried to extend the fingers that had been hit by a bolt. Jenn picked up the phone and punched in a number, waited, then said, "Hi, babe."

  As a nurse practitioner, Sierra Lyons had more advanced tra
ining and credentials than Nola Johnson. Jenn told her about me, listened, asked a few questions, listened some more, made a kissy noise into the phone and hung up.

  "What did she say?"

  "That you should get X-rays."

  "What else?"

  Jenn reached into her purse. "And take these as needed." She took out a sample pack of OxyContin. Made Tylenol 3s look like pikers. The clouds parted, rays of sunshine streamed through, a chorus of angels sang. And I hadn't even taken one yet.

  "Sierra said to leave your hands unwrapped for now. Let the air get to them."

  "Remind me to take you both to dinner when we get home."

  "X-rays might be cheaper," she said. She popped out two pills for me and got me some water. "Before you get kooky, you want to tell me your war plan?"

  "You're assuming I have one."

  "My bad."

  "What I have right now is more a vision than a plan."

  "Go on."

  "The vision is Simon Birk on his knees, begging to tell us everything. What happened to Glenn and Sterling. What happened to Maya Cantor. What happened to his wife."

  "Does the vision tell you how we get him there?"

  "No. But if past experience is worth anything, Ryan will have something to do with it." We both had to laugh when he got back. He carried a goalie stick in one hand; the other was pulling a massive nylon bag on a wheeled frame, the kind goalies use to lug their oversized equipment. He wore a Chicago Blackhawks sweater with the name Kane and the number 88 on the back and sleeves. A Hawks cap covered his dark hair.

  "Anyone sees me with this," he said, "they'll tell the cops Patrick Kane did it."

  "And he seemed like such a nice kid," I said.

  "How long has she been in the tub?" he asked.

  "Eight, nine hours by now."

  "Shit. She's going to be close to maximum stiffness," he said. "You might want to turn on the TV."

  He went into the bathroom with the hockey bag. Was in there for close to half an hour, grunting and groaning like a man with dysentery. If only that had been the case: what was really going on in there was more painful to think about. Jenn kept thumbing up the volume on the remote. We could still hear the sounds of Ryan's exertion. At one point we heard a bone break. We both jumped off the beds. More volume on the TV, until someone pounded on the wall in the next room.

  Then Ryan called, "A little help here?"

  I held out my hands, glistening with ointment, for Jenn to see. She gulped and turned pale, even by her Estonian standards, and walked to the bathroom as if a hangman awaited her.

  I lowered the volume. The pounding in the next room stopped. Then I heard both of them grunting. A zipper being closed in fits and starts. And finally Ryan's voice saying, "Got it."

  The water ran, then Jenn came out drying her face with a towel. Ryan followed her, pulling the bag, singing, "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be goalies."

  I told him he was a sick individual. He didn't argue the point. He just sighed and said, "I'm here less than an hour and already I got a body to dispose of. Fucking stereotyped or what?" Jenn packed all of my things into my suitcase for me then left the room with Ryan's gun case. Five minutes later, Ryan left, carrying the hockey sticks and pulling the equipment bag behind him, whistling the old theme song to Hockey Night in Canada. I waited another five minutes then went down to the lobby to check out. No way we were staying in the Hilton another night, not after the attack of the homicidal housekeeper.

  "Was everything all right?" the concierge asked.

  "Fine," I said.

  "Would you like to fill out an evaluation card?" he asked. "It will help us tailor our services to better suit your needs in the future."

  "My experience was unforgettable," I said. "Let's just leave it at that." Ryan dropped us at a Holiday Inn Express just north of the Loop and went off to lose the woman's corpse. "Lucky for me they got a lake and a river and a whole lot of buildings going up. I should be back in a couple of hours."

  I booked two rooms. When we were settled in, all gear stowed, I called Avi Stern's office on my cellphone. He answered yes to my first three questions: he was free this evening; he owned a mini-recorder, which he used to dictate letters for transcription; and he wanted to see justice done in the matter of Simon Birk.

  The only negative response came when I asked if he owned a gun or had any experience in handling one.

  "What are you getting me into?" he moaned.

  I told him we'd keep him posted as the plan unfolded, and that we'd do our best to keep him from being arrested, shot or disbarred.

  If he found comfort in that, he kept it to himself. I called Nola Johnson, thanked her for the help she'd provided the night before, and asked for Gabriel Cross's home number. His wife answered and said he was still at work. I gave her my name and asked her to pass along a message if he called in: to leave when his shift was over and not hang around on any beams tonight.

  "He still does that, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "You'd think he spends enough time up there as it is."

  "I guess."

  "Wish he'd take me up there sometime," she said. "I never get out of the city." Unable to grip a pencil, I traced an outline of the Birkshire Millennium Skyline site for Jenn with my finger. I had her mark the entrance and the trailer that would house any security at night. I showed her the side of the building where the hoist went up, what the unfinished floor at the top was like. I provided notes about the lighting, the wind, the footing.

  Ryan came back about two hours later. The shins of his pants were dusty. He went straight into the bathroom and spent five minutes washing up.

  When he got out he said, "Anyone going to ask me where I dumped her? No? Good. Saves me the trouble of telling you it's none of your business."

  He opened his metal case and showed us the guns he had brought, including his personal favourite, a Glock 20, and the Beretta we'd confiscated from the thug in our office.

  "If we have to shoot anyone, I suggest we use the Beretta. If the ownership can be traced to anyone, it'll be to the scumbag who lost it. Anyone lets an unarmed guy take away his gun deserves whatever he gets."

  We went over the plan a few times, then ordered in food. No one drank any alcohol. I abstained from any further medication.

  After that, it was just a matter of waiting for darkness to fall.

  CHAPTER 45

  Avi Stern arrived in a tan trench coat and a grey loden hat. "Who's he supposed to be?" Ryan muttered. "Sherlock fucking Clouseau?"

  I made the introductions. Avi's hand was clammy with sweat when I shook it. His brow and upper lip looked shiny too.

  "You okay?" I asked him.

  "I'm trying not to think about it," he said. "I mean, I never went into the army like you did. My idea of excitement is going somewhere new for lunch."

  "You'll be fine," I said. "Got your recorder?"

  He pulled a small chrome item from his coat pocket.

  "Fresh batteries?"

  "Oh," he said.

  "Never mind. We'll stop on the way. How much time on the cassette?"

  "What cassette? This one's digital. Sixty-six hours of memory."

  "If we can keep Birk talking that long," I said, "we'll definitely have what we need."

  "Why am I even here? Why don't one of you just take the recorder?"

  "You're an officer of the court. You're going to observe and record everything that is said and you can swear that it's authentic."

  "Nothing he says will be admissible if it's made under duress."

  "Duress? Who said anything about duress?"

  "You've got guns," Avi said. "You've got him," indicating Ryan.

  "How do you know I'm the duress inducer?" Ryan said. "You haven't seen Jenn here in action."

  "All I'm saying is, I can record Birk like you asked, and as an officer of the court, I can swear it's him on the tape. But he could confess till the memory card's full. It won't matter if there's a gun on him."<
br />
  "Let's see what we get out of him," I said. "Then we'll worry about getting it into court." We took Ryan's car. Avi didn't want his anywhere near the place and I didn't blame him. On the way to the Millennium Skyline, we stopped at a convenience store and got fresh batteries for Avi's recorder. We also got him a bottle of water. "I don't think my throat has been this dry since we climbed Masada," he said.

  We parked on Randolph, a short walk or fast run from the site. We divvied up the guns: a Glock for Ryan, the Beretta for me, a Baby Eagle with a polymer frame for Jenn.

  "It's lightweight," Ryan said when he gave it to her. "Not that I mean anything sexist by that."

  "You better not," she said. "You're already in my bad books for the thigh grab."

  "Has more to do with your shooting experience, or lack of it. It's twenty-seven ounces but shoots like a much bigger gun."

  "No matter what you talk about, Ryan, it still sounds like dick talk to me."

  I swear I thought I saw him blush. "How come you can talk to me like that," he asked, "but anything I say to you I get shit for?"

  "It's a woman's world, Ryan," she said. "We're just letting you live in it."

  "One fucking generation," he complained. "That's all it took. Like the Cold War-boom, suddenly it's over and everyone's asking what the fuck happened. Wasn't thirty, forty years ago, a man knew his place and a woman knew hers. The old-timers didn't hear about it every time they put their hand on a woman's leg, unless it was someone else's woman."

  "Kids," I said. "We have a criminal trespass to plan here."

  "I'm a dead man," Avi said miserably.

  We got out of the car and formed a tight huddle alongside the hoarding, moving along to the entrance where the trailer was. "Whatever we do from here," Ryan said, "we do it fast and quiet. Decisive. You're not sure what to do, look to me. Don't pull your gun unless you have to. It'll cut down the chances of shooting one of us. There's already a round in the chamber, so you won't have to rack the slide. Just keep the safeties on till I say otherwise. We good?"