"What do you charge?"
"Expenses, of course. And they'll be several thousand dollars at least. Could be more. We work with a talented man who does research and he's not cheap. But he's very good and worth it. I won't hesitate to spend money if I think it'll help. And I won't ask your permission. As for my fee, let's wait a day or two on that. Let me see what's out there. You get Muhammad as part of the deal, by the way. We're a twofer."
"I thought you'd want to see Jack, so I've arranged for that. They'll bring him to you this morning."
"Good. And I'll want to see Ben Brill."
"Today?"
"I'm not sure. Today or tomorrow. Just give him my name and tell him I'll be by."
"Okay."
We swapped cell phone numbers and I got up to leave.
"Take the Land Cruiser," Muhammad said.
"I'd rather cab it. Thanks."
"You won't find one here. Probably have to go over to LaSalle and maybe a few blocks south."
"And, boy, do I need the fresh air and exercise."
Rita took my hand in both of hers and locked her bottomless blues on me. "Serena's right, Harry. He didn't do this. I don't care how much money you spend or who you piss off or how much trouble you cause. Just get me my life back."
***
Old Town is handy to the restaurant and most everything else to the north all the way up to Wrigley. The Cook County Jail, however, is south, way south, near Cicero.
I played lucky on the cab and unlucky on the fresh air and exercise. I wasn't more than twenty feet down the sidewalk when a green cab appeared in my peripheral vision.
I told the driver where I was going and said, "It's off the Stevenson at..." when he interrupted me to say, "I know where it is, man. I know how to get in it, and I know how to get out of it."
"Yeah? How do you get out of it?"
"Serve your time or beat the rap."
As jails go, it's a lot more than the image the word usually brings to mind. Most penitentiaries are smaller. On their web site, which I was viewing as I rode, they say it's the "Cook County Department of Corrections AKA Cook County Jail." It's the "largest single-site county pre-detention facility in the United States. Primarily holding pre-trial offenders, the Department admitted 86,110 detainees in 2006 and averaged a daily population of approximately 9,000."
I could overlook the clumsy gerund as bureaucracy-speak, but is "pre-trial offender" an optimistic opinion or a presumption of guilt? Also, it seems like it ought to say "pre-detention or pre-release facility," but maybe everybody they lock up is guilty. Ed Meese always thought so. I took a "virtual tour," a slide show of cells and wall-mounted steel bunks and toilets and long corridors and steel doors and ugly buildings and I remembered, and heard in my head, all the sounds associated with all of it.
A good while back I spent forty months in the Federal Correctional Institution in the Los Angeles Harbor that they call Terminal Island. It had an average daily population of slightly less than 1,000 and it seemed pretty damned big to me. The Cook County Jail was ten times TI.
Rita told me Jack was housed in the Cermak Health Services Facility until his recuperation from the gunshot was complete. Then he'd probably be transferred to one of the two maximum security facilities--Division 10 and Division 11--and held there until his trial. Cermak is Division 8.
"You know which building is the Cermak Health Services Facility?" I asked the driver.
"Yeah. The hospital. I been there. That where you want to go?"
"Yeah."
"How long you gonna be? I'll come back for you."
"Great. Give me an hour. I appreciate it."
"Me, too. Not too many fares out that way. I'll have some coffee, read the paper."
I waited for Jack in a small room with glass walls that would let us talk in private while they watched him. I stood as he was led in. He wore leg irons and a connecting chain. His right arm was in a harness holding it close to his chest so I reached for his left and said, "I'm Harry Pines. I used to wait on you at Serena's."
"I remember. What a role reversal." He smiled at the irony. We sat in metal chairs on opposite sides of a metal table. He was about five-ten and looked in decent shape. Nice face, open and trusting. Good brown eyes. Thick curly hair, brown with red tints, a little gray around the ears. Orange jailhouse coveralls.
"Rita hired me."
"I know. She says Muhammad says you won't dog it."
"That's right. I won't. Tell me about it. I've done some research on the woman. Start with how you met her."
He sighed. "A Bears game. Late in October. They played the Packers at Lambeau. I filed my column and went to a post-game party. I felt like I deserved a little party because it was a damn good column and I nailed it quick. I heard it was gonna be a pretty hot party. The governors of both states, the owners of both clubs, both coaches, players and heavy people. Lots of beautiful women.
"I got myself a drink and strolled around, checking things out and this great looking woman walks right up to me with a big smile. I thought she surely must be looking at somebody just behind me, so I turned around to see who the lucky guy was and she said, 'Jack Netherland. Your picture doesn't do you justice.' First time I've ever heard that. Most people ask me how much I paid the retoucher. Have you seen pictures of her?"
"Yes."
"Then you know."
"Yes."
"We talked for...I don't know...a few minutes. She had an electrifying effect on me. Just one of those women who looks at a man like all the secrets of the universe are right here in our hands. The world is ours. I asked if she was a movie star. She said if she was a movie star I wouldn't have to ask if she was a movie star, would I? Fucking with me. So, where is he, I said. Who? The guy lucky enough to bring you here and dumb enough to let you wander off. 'Oh, he's around here someplace,' she said. 'Acting important.' Is it an act, I said, or is he important. She gave me a sly smile and said, 'Both. It's an act and he's really important.' And then she said she had to go but it was just great meeting me and she knew we'd meet again. And off she went. I didn't get her name.
"I've been happily married to a very beautiful woman for sixteen years, but I haven't led a sheltered life. I've been around. Met some movie stars, in fact. But this woman, that moment, was unforgettable."
"And you didn't see her with a man? Or with anybody?"
"No. She sort of melted into the crowd. A guy I know came up and started talking to me and...she was gone." He paused. "The next week...You know what the Breeders' Cup is?"
"I'm a big fan."
"Yeah? Then you know they had it here last month. At Arlington."
"I was in town for it." That weekend Muhammad and Serena put together a twenty-first birthday party for their son, Randy, that included the Breeders' Cup on Saturday and a Redskins-Bears game Sunday at Soldiers Field. Valerie flew in from New York to join the festivities and...it was good.
Jack said, "Another party. After the Classic. I walked in and stood still for a minute, you know, like you do when you want to check things out. Scanned the room slowly from one end to the other and, bang, there she was, looking right at me with that smile, like she'd been waiting for me to see her seeing me. I fucked with her...Geez, I must sound like an adolescent, for Christ's sake, going on about this woman."
"I want to hear the whole thing, Jack. I don't understand women any more than the next guy but I understand what they can do. I want all the detail. Don't leave anything out."
He sighed. "Okay. I was saying I fucked with her by turning around like I had the first time we met to see the guy she surely must be looking at, it couldn't've been me. And when I looked back, she was pointing her finger at me like, baby, it's you. And just curled it and summoned me and I went to her with what must have been the moron smile of the century on my face.
"We rapped some more. It wasn't like we were hitting on each other. It was like we'd gone beyond that without ever going to it. It was like we were...I don't know...two mischievo
us kids in a treehouse, only full grown kids and there's a bed in there and we know we're going to get in it when we get good and ready and it's going to be beyond the experience of mere mortals.
"'Is he here?' I asked her. And she just smiled like what if he is and who gives a shit. And all of a sudden, there's like this evacuation. The room half empties, including all the power. She looks over my shoulder and nods and kisses me on the cheek and says, 'I'll call you. I really will.' And disappears. Still don't know her name.
"But I couldn't get her out of my head. Rita must have thought what the hell's going on when I got home that night. I was completely preoccupied with dreams of wild sex with another woman whose name I don't know and may never see again. It's not an if thing, either. I was committed to it. Nothing could have turned me. Were you ever that nuts about the wrong woman?"
"Yes. Knowing it's the wrong one is the best part of it."
"Thanks. Hearing that helps some." He gathered himself. "So Monday late I'm at my desk and the phone rings and she says, 'It's Erica.' 'Hello, Erica,' I said. 'No,' she said, 'I mean that's my name. Erica.' 'Hello, Erica,' I said...You sure you want to hear this?"
"The truth? It's a pleasure listening to you talk, describe things. I'm sorry to say I'm sort of enjoying this."
"'I know a quiet little bar where we could have a drink if you can get away,' she says. Well, you can imagine how fast I got there. She has, had, this erotic way of moving, standing or sitting, sort of in constant slow motion, fluid, like she's feeling herself inside her clothes and knowing the effect she's having on you. I had a couple of drinks, maybe three, and my head is just swimming with gin and desire. She leaned across the table and said, 'Let's go to my place. It's not far. And afterwards, I want to tell you something about my important friend. Show you something, too. You'll love it. You will.' 'What part of it will I love?' I said. She said, 'All of it, Jack. You're going to love all of it.'
"We started after each other in the cab, hands everywhere, smothering each other. At her place, I threw a twenty to the driver for an eight dollar fare so I wouldn't have to wait for change and we stumbled through the lobby of her building, got in the elevator and damn near undressed in there. Upstairs, she unlocks the door and we go in and just stagger out of our clothes, tossing them aside while we're stumbling to her bedroom. I was in full frenzy. Then we're in bed and I looked at her beneath me and she was incredibly beautiful and I entered her and I thought I was going to die and it would be just fine if I did and I blacked out."
He paused. I looked at him.
"Blacked out? What does that mean?"
"Well, just that. Now, I know I got hit in the head, but when it happened I just went from awake to unconscious in a blink. When I came to...I don't have any idea how long I was out...I'm bleeding from my chest, my shoulder, and she's lying there beneath me covered in my blood and I knew immediately she was dead. Her arm, her right arm, is splayed out to the side over the edge of the bed and there's a gun on the floor below her hand. I reached for the phone beside her bed and dialed 9-1-1 and...well, on the tape I heard later, I said, mumbled, 'I've been shot. A woman's dead. Come quick.' And passed out again. I left the phone off the hook, thank God, or I guess they wouldn't have known where we were. Next thing I know the room's full of cops and EMTs and...now, I'm here."
"Do you remember her throwing the deadbolt when she closed the door?"
"I don't even remember her closing the door. Seems like maybe she just slammed it and we started ripping our clothes off, but I don't remember. Not literally."
"At the bar, when you settled in, did she talk about herself? You know, that get-acquainted kind of thing?"
"Only mysteriously. Vaguely. I remember she said she was from downstate. Came to Chicago to model. Had a great job once, doing promotions, for StarChains. Like she was holding back on the details or they just didn't matter, and the truth is, they didn't. Not to me. Any question I asked her was just to close the deal. I wasn't interested in the answers. Some reporter, huh?"
"Did she mention the name of any other person?"
"Only Rita's. She said she knew I was happily married, knew her name was Rita, and I didn't have to worry about...about her wanting to cause me that kind of trouble. I've replayed all of it in my head a hundred times. What else have I got to do in here? And I can't give you anything to work on. Couldn't give Ben Brill anything either. The fact is, Harry, I don't even know that I didn't kill her. Other than why would I?"
"Well, you might have killed her if she pulled a gun and shot you."
"I suppose. But why would she pull a gun? And how'd I get that knot on my head?"
"Where was that knot?"
"Right here, behind my ear. On this bone." He reached awkwardly with his left hand around the back of his head and tapped himself behind his right ear.
"They're going to say if there was a knot, she hit you with the gun. But I don't see how she could hit you on that side of your head if she was right-handed."
"And that's not the case. When I blacked out, she was fucking me crazy, her head back, her eyes closed, just moaning. At the moment when I blacked out, there was no gun in her hand and all her intentions were...just sex."
"Why you, Jack? You thought about that?"
A small, rueful smile appeared. "Yeah. When it was happening, of course, I thought it was because I was the hottest thing she'd ever seen. Funny how easy it is to believe your own bullshit, isn't it? But that doesn't add up. I'm not revolting, but I'm not that guy. No, it's because I'm Jack Netherland, the newspaper guy. It's the newspaper thing and what she was going to show me about her boyfriend. That's why me. I know it. Remember, I said she said she didn't want to cause me any trouble with Rita? I remember it exactly. She said, 'You don't have to worry about me causing you that kind of trouble.' Hit 'that' kind of hard. I think that came from her subconscious because she was planning to tell me something about her boyfriend and she knew trouble might come from that. If that makes any sense and I think it does."
"I understand you passed the polygraph."
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I? I'm innocent. Rita had a hell of time getting Ben Brill to insist on my taking it. He told her I'd fail it and make things worse, or if somehow I passed, they wouldn't believe it anyhow. But she insisted and Brill finally went along."
"Tell me about Brill. Your impressions."
He sighed. "Big time guy by any objective standards. Thing is, after spending my life as a reporter trying to be objective, I don't have much faith in the concept. Objective standards can easily become a way of avoiding thinking about a thing. He says my goose is cooked. Case is air-tight. Not a leg to stand on. So, he wants to plead it. He says if they get me in court, fucking around on my wife, dead drunk, and have to haul out their expensive ammo to take me down, they'll take me way down. He says I'll get the death penalty."
"Must be a real comfort having a guy like that in your corner."
"Yeah. Except I can't be sure he's not right. But for now, maybe all the way, I'm not going there. I didn't kill her and I'll make my stand on that."
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