I set down the photos and moved the box from my desk. Something shifted inside it—a tissue bundled into a packet.
I took it out and unwrapped it.
“Jesus!” I said.
It was a man’s wedding band. It had to be her husband’s. Who else’s?
Why would she send it to me? What was I supposed to do with it?
I put it on my desk like someone had accused me of trying to steal it, pushed my chair away, and went back to the window. The lake still gleamed calm and gold. Sun still shined on the insurance building.
I went back to the desk, sat, and picked up the ring. I slipped it over the end of my left ring finger, lowered it to the first knuckle, slid it to the second knuckle.
It fit.
Corrine once had slid a ring like this one onto my finger.
I took off the ring and looked at it for awhile. Then I slid it onto my right ring finger, past the second knuckle until it rested against the thin web of skin that holds the hand together. David Russo’s wife had sent the ring so I wouldn’t forget. It might’ve been the most valuable thing that she still had from her husband, and she’d sent it to the man who’d killed him. The least I could do was wear it.
Someone knocked at the office door. I jumped. For a moment, I had the weird feeling that Russo’s wife had come to visit.
I felt the unfamiliar weight of the ring as I went to the door and opened it.
Rafael, the Latino gang member who’d challenged Earl Johnson last night, was standing in the corridor.
TWENTY
RAFAEL LOOKED HARD AT my face. “What’s wrong with you?”
I tried to look calm. “Nothing. Come in.”
He stepped into the office, carrying a small vinyl bag, and looked around like hidden men might jump him. Maybe checking every room he entered had saved him a time or two. He had a marine haircut, short everywhere but a little shorter on the sides than on top. He had a diamond stud in his right earlobe and another diamond clipped high on his outer ear. He had a raised brown spot on his cheek—a mole or a birthmark, something you could identify his corpse with, sooner or later. Except for the brown spot, he probably was handsome.
He sat in the chair I kept for clients and I went to my desk chair. “What can I do for you?” I said.
He put the vinyl bag on my desk. It clunked when it hit the desktop, metal against metal.
“What’s that? A gun?”
“Don’t be a dickhead. It’s money. First payment.”
“You’ve got coins in there?”
“Some. We kick in what we’ve got.”
“I thought you weren’t going to pay.”
“I won’t pay Johnson. But me and my friends don’t want to commit suicide by cop, especially a fucked-up cop like Johnson. This is stay-alive money, right?”
“You know I’ve got to take it back to Johnson, or else it doesn’t do you any good.”
“So take it to him. But I don’t trust him and I won’t deal with him.”
“Seems like a good call,” I said. “Why do you trust me?”
“I don’t. But I could find you. You’re on the news and you’re in the Yellow Pages. I can do two plus two.”
I thought about that and asked something that had started nagging me. “You think two plus two equals four in Johnson’s scam?”
A corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “You mean, do I think he’s not all he says he is?”
I nodded.
“Hell, yeah.”
“What do you think he’s up to?”
He shrugged. “As long as it don’t get me killed, I don’t give a fuck. Seems like you’re the one who’s got to worry about that.”
He glanced at my hands. I realized I was playing with David Russo’s ring on my finger and I stopped. I said, “Why don’t you trust Johnson?”
He looked up at my eyes, like he was figuring how much to tell me. He said, “We used to deal with Monroe. Monroe’s a fuckhead but we knew what to expect from him, right? Then Johnson shows up and says he’s the man, not Monroe. He says he won’t bother us if we pay him, but I don’t believe it. He wants to bust our balls.”
“Seems like the argument’s personal between you and Johnson,” I said.
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “He blew my friend’s head off. Yeah, it’s fucking personal.”
“Before that. You came into the meeting looking for a fight.”
“See this arm?” He extended his left arm across the desk. It had plenty of muscle on it. “Last summer he broke it.”
“Looks like it’s healed okay. What did you do to make him break it?”
Anger flashed across his face. “Nothing. I mind my own business.”
I shook my head. “You mind your own business like last night when you threw the chair through the window?”
A mischievous smile played on his lips. “He deserved that.”
“So why pay if you think he’s going to keep busting you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe the money slows him down.” Something in his voice sounded almost like hope.
“What’s the business you were minding when he came into your neighborhood?”
“Nothing. Selling reefer. A little meth.”
“Meth is nothing?”
“You ever see the fuckheads that buy it?”
“I see why he broke your arm.”
“You want the money?”
“Not really.” I picked up the bag. “Coins. No one wants you breaking into your piggy banks.”
He sighed. “Do I leave the money?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Leave it.”
He stood and headed to the door, but hesitated and turned back to me. “Two plus two isn’t four with you either, right?”
I considered that. “To tell the truth, I’m not sure what it is.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Me neither.”
When he was gone, I unlocked the file cabinet drawer where I’d stashed the bottle of Jim Beam and the Baggie of coke. Either one would make my day happier. I dropped in the bag of money, closed the drawer, and locked it.
Then I put on my coat and headed for the door.
As I reached for the knob, someone knocked.
Maybe Rafael had changed his mind about the money. Maybe he hadn’t saved enough for subway fare.
I opened the door. Bill Gubman, sitting in his wheelchair, stared up at me.
I invited him in, closed the door, and went back to my desk. My coat stayed on. His visit would be quick if I had any control over it.
His voice was calm, gentle, concerned. “Sooner or later we all step in shit. It’s part of living.”
I had no idea where he was heading, so I said, “Sure.”
“But I’ve never seen anyone else dance in it the way you do.”
I shrugged. “You heard about last night?”
“There were eyewitnesses at the construction site, Joe. One of them, a sixty-four-year-old woman who writes a column in a little paper called the Pleasant Prairie News, recognized you from TV coverage of the Southshore shootings. She said she was certain she saw you. She said you waved at her. Is that true, Joe? Did you wave?”
“I might have.”
“Do you know how much trouble it takes to quiet down the Pleasant Prairie police and their beloved columnist?”
I shrugged. “How much?”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Too much, as it turns out. They’ve put a warrant out for your arrest. The Chicago department will try to execute it.”
“What are the charges?”
“Felony burglary, criminal damage to property, a little of this, and a little of that. You’re looking at ten to twelve years in prison, so you’ll be out in time to enjoy retirement.”
“Are you taking me in?”
“Me? Hell, no. I’m giving you a heads-up.”
“Thanks, I guess. What do you think I should do?”
“You might want to call your lawyer.”
“Of course.”
&nb
sp; “And then you need to make yourself hard to find.”
“You think?”
“You do if you want to stay in this investigation.”
“I never wanted in to begin with.”
“Right now you don’t have a lot of choices. You either can stay out of sight and keep working or you can go to jail.”
“How about putting my tail between my legs and hiding in a faraway corner where no one can find me?”
“That’s a third choice, I guess, but as much as you talk about running away I don’t see you doing it.”
I had nothing to say to that. So I said, “Those FBI guys who saw us at Daley Plaza have been following me. They pulled me into a van yesterday and came by my house this morning. They want me to inform for them.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said I wanted total immunity.”
Bill shook his head. “They’ll never give it to you.”
“That’s what they said.”
Bill smiled a little.
“Why don’t you just pal up with them?” I said. “It would make your investigation easier and your life simpler. Mine too.”
He shook his head. “There’s a key difference between them and us. They want to expose Johnson’s crew and all the ugly ways it ties to the department. They figure that’ll clean up the city. We want to get rid of Johnson and his crew without exposing them. We figure that’ll clean up the city too and also save a lot of heartache. The FBI wants headlines. We don’t.”
“I figure the FBI would call it justice, not headlines.”
“They can call it what they like. If they bring this out in the open, everyone from the superintendent to the cop writing parking tickets suffers.” He looked me in the eyes. “I prefer to do this quietly.”
“You’re taking a lot of risks to bury Johnson.”
“He won’t be the first bad cop the department has buried.”
“That doesn’t make me like it any better.”
He stared at me over the desk for awhile. “Can I count on you?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“I hear you’re drinking again.”
The comment felt like a test but I saw no reason to lie. “A little.”
“That’s a mistake—slippery slope and all that.”
“How about you?” I said. “Can you drink with the pain meds?”
“Strictly prohibited.”
“I don’t suppose you want to get one, then,” I said.
He gave me the smallest smile. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“You know how sad that is?”
He shrugged. “It’s where we are.”
I thought about that and shrugged too. “Sure, let’s go.”
We rode the elevator to the street. Bill had parked a police van in a no-parking zone in front of the building. He pulled out a set of keys attached to a remote unit and hit a button with his thumb. A side door panel slid open. He hit more buttons and an electric wheelchair lift dropped like a drawbridge and lowered to the sidewalk.
“Get in,” he said.
I did, and, after the lift raised him into the van, he got himself behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
“Very impressive,” I said.
He shifted the van hard into Drive. “I hate every moment of it.”
As we pulled into traffic, I glanced toward the sidewalk. A man with a butterfly bandage on his face was staring at me through the windshield.
Raj.
He looked terrified that I’d gotten into a police van with a man some knew as my friend, more knew as the first police officer who’d gotten shot in my company, and every cop in the city knew as the new police liaison to the Chicago Board of Ethics—the man who would be most interested in destroying a group like Johnson’s.
TWENTY-ONE
WE WENT TO THE Deluxe Diner on Harrison, and when we got back Bill dropped me off at my building. The afternoon sky had turned gray and weighed heavy on the city.
“Don’t get picked up,” Bill said.
“I’ll try not to.”
“You know where you’re going to stay?”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Probably not. But check in, okay?”
I said I would.
His eyes got emotional. I’d seen that happen to other hard men who’d taken a bullet or come close to dying. Now and then, they teared up easily. Their voices choked in their throats. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
He pulled from the curb and I watched him go. I didn’t know why but I felt like he’d given me a Judas kiss.
I rode the elevator to my office. The envelope of fake documents that Bill had given me sat in a file drawer. I got it out and put it in a canvas duffel bag. The duffel bag still had plenty of room. I put in the bottle of Jim Beam, the Baggie of coke, and the vinyl sack of money that Rafael had delivered. Then I rode the elevator back to the street and walked to my car.
* * *
A POLICE CRUISER WAS parked in front of my house. Two cops sat chatting in the front seat. They looked like they were on patrol and taking a break but I knew better. They undoubtedly had a copy of my arrest warrant. I drove past, went around the block, and parked in front of a three-flat that backed against my yard. A concrete path ran alongside the building. I took the path and hopped over the fence that separated the properties, then jogged across my yard, climbed the porch steps, and let myself in through the back door.
I left the lights off, went to my bedroom, pulled a suitcase from the closet, and loaded it with clothes and the stuff I kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I made a quick tour of the house and returned with some CDs, a couple of books, and my laptop. They went in on top of the clothes. I left my checkbook behind. Johnson had handed me a pile of cash when we’d sold the copper and transformers that we stole from the Wisconsin worksite. I went to the kitchen and looked around. I felt like taking a drawer and emptying the kitchen knives into my suitcase. I got a glass of water and left the drawer where it was. The Ruger .38 would be enough or it wouldn’t.
Ten minutes after I came in through the back door, I went out again, unsure when I would return, or if.
I drove east on Montrose, cut through an underpass and across Lake Shore Drive, and cruised into the lakefront park. A two-lane road curved around Montrose Harbor to a parking lot. I glided along the road, parked facing the gray water, got out, and walked toward the lake.
Waves swelled and sank as they approached the shore, then lipped up and splashed against the breakwater as if a storm had passed and the city was relaxing into peace. A single seagull floated forty yards off shore, rising and sinking on the waves. The sun was dipping behind the condo towers on the other side of the park. Long shadows from the leafless trees faded and disappeared into thicker, colder shadows.
I stared at the lake, watched the seagull rise and fall like the huge power of the lake was nothing, just a place to sit. When Corrine and I were married, she taught me to do breathing exercises when I came home so wound up that her fingers and lips couldn’t reach me. Now I breathed in and breathed out, timing my breath to match the rise and fall of the seagull.
My body relaxed. My mind eased.
I breathed in and breathed out.
I closed my eyes, tried to let go.
The seagull disappeared and, sharp as daylight, Raj appeared in my mind. He stood on the sidewalk outside my office. He stared at me as I sat in Bill Gubman’s police van. Alarm crossed his face.
“Damn,” I said and opened my eyes. Raj had seen me with Bill. What would he do? If he ran to Johnson or Monroe, I was done. They would hit me hard—from behind, on the side, any way they could take me out for good. And why wouldn’t Raj tell them? Because I’d pulled him off the barbed wire last night? Compared to the twenty-year stretch in prison that he would know Bill Gubman could give him, a couple of minutes in barbed wire was nothing.
But what if Raj didn’t run to Johnson or Monroe?
I would need to move fast. Bill had told me I needed to start spreading the bad rumors thick if I wanted Monroe to move against Johnson. That seemed right. If I got to Monroe before Raj did, I might confuse everyone so much that no one would know who to trust.
I pulled out my cell phone. Bill also had suggested I talk to my lawyer. He’d given me worse advice plenty of times. Larry’s receptionist put my call through to his office, and he answered, “Where the hell are you?”
“At the beach,” I said. “Pretty afternoon. Girls in bikinis. Sand between the toes.”
He said nothing.
“Larry?”
“Are you drinking?”
“I wish.”
“You’re on TV again,” he said. “They say you burglarized a processing plant.”
“True.”
“What the hell are you doing, Joe?”
“I’m trying to figure that out.”
“I wouldn’t always say this but you should turn yourself in. You killed a man and now you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest. A cop looking for a promotion might decide to shoot you and save the time at trial.”
“Turning myself in is your best advice?”
“That or buy a ticket for Brazil.”
“I’ve heard good things about Brazil. Food’s better than in jail.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Thanks, Larry.” He’d given me nothing I could use but I couldn’t blame him for that.
“What are you going to do, Joe?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“Like I said, I’m trying to figure that out.”
“As soon as you do, call me,” he said.
I promised I would and we hung up.
I stood by the lake and watched the seagull until the cold air seeped through my jeans and jacket, then stood awhile longer. My watch said the time was 4:05. The sun would set in about half an hour. Mom had asked me to come for dinner at 7:00. With a warrant out for my arrest and a police cruiser parked in front of my house, going home wasn’t an option. Going to my office was no better. A bar that I knew about cranked the heat and poured a deep enough shot to make it the warmest place on earth. But if I walked in the door I might stay forever. I went to my car, opened the trunk, and got out the bottle of Jim Beam. A long drink warmed my insides and made me shudder. It felt good. It also made me hate myself a little. I put the bottle away, got into the front seat, and started the engine. My Skylark was seventeen years old but the heater worked fine.
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