Was I in too deep? Out of my depth? Maybe I was, but I was going to play it out to the end and, if I made it, maybe I could start in on some penance for past deeds. Bitter thoughts about myself bubbled up. How was I better than JB? Weren’t we much the same? I tried to tell myself that the old Benny was like that, but Benjamin wasn’t.
Carla’s laugh made me look up. But it wasn’t her. It was just a girl laughing at her friend’s joke. My ears playing tricks brought me to thinking about Carla. Knowing she was an assassin again, knowing I couldn’t be with her, but also knowing that she was not that far away and remembering her face, her ears, her hands, was putting a strain on my moorings. I beat my fists against my knees until they hurt. If I had wanted to look like a homeless mental patient, I couldn’t have done a better job.
I stood and shoved my hands in my pockets, resolved to go find Hero Fish. Something hard scratched my hand. It was the memstick I’d pulled from Arno’s chair. I’d dropped it into my pocket during the search and forgot to add it to the pile I’d hidden in the gargoyle. I stood and looked at it.
It was unlabeled and the write-tab had been broken off. The library would have readers and at that moment, I didn’t want to get Carbide any more involved by leaving ghost images of the stick’s contents on his PAL.
I strode south to Incongruous and east to the library. Walking up the library steps, I laughed. I was convinced that the information I needed was on that stick, and I was passing under the library’s gargoyles to read it. I’ve always felt that the fundamental humor of Providence is irony.
But of course, the library wasn’t open on weekends. Beandogs! I went over to Mythagain and walked north to a small cafe that had PALs, but they wouldn’t let me in. The guy actually kicked me. Providence being ironic again. I tried another cafe, producing pretty much the same result, although I got in the door before the staff escorted me out. I even showed them a ten, showed that I could pay, but it didn’t matter.
Hattie had told me, but I hadn’t understood. Once you put on the appearance of being homeless, people treated you like a windblown piece of old newspaper. They ignored you unless you disturbed them, then they stepped on you or kicked you aside.
The automat across the street from the cat house had no front employees to throw me out. They also had no PALs. I went there anyway, paid for a cup of chocolate tea from the machine and sat down by the window. Maybe Hero worked on Saturdays. I hoped he worked the same hours. I could go in and ask, but that seemed like a bad idea.
I’d almost given up waiting when he walked out of the police station. He was with the woman detective who had helped Hero take me in to Kumar the first time. I figured she wasn’t dirty because Kumar could pay her to go out and bring in the likes of me. Her lack of nice clothes and Kumar’s use of her to go arrest me at three in the morning as though she had nothing better to do implied she was a good cop, not that that was a terrifically good reference, but it was all I had.
I walked across the street toward them. They stopped talking and watched me approach. When I was close enough, I said, “Hello, Hero. Nice day for catching crooks.”
“Benny. I was wondering if I’d see you again.”
The woman detective looked at Hero. “So this is the guy?”
“Yes,” said Hero.
She looked at me. Stared at me actually. Studied me. Finally she said, “Let’s go inside.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll meet you in twenty minutes where I met Hero last time.” I walked away wondering what I was going to tell them.
The bar where I’d met Hero before was called The Bin, but The Pit might have been a better name. It was full of police this time. They glared at me as I walked brazenly past and sat down with Hero and his detective. They went back to drinking then, probably thinking I was a snitch, which, I realized, I was.
I sat down and Hero formally introduced me to Detective Laverick. She asked me what I had for her.
Not being sure of her, I wanted to talk a little before I revealed too much. I ordered a beer then asked, “Do you give a bonus to your police support when you make a big arrest?”
“What’s that got to do with it? You looking for a cut of some arrest? There has to be an arrest first. Unless you have something directly useful in an investigation, you get nothing. I might arrange to give you a few bills if you lead me to something big.”
“It’s not me I asked about, is it?” I looked at Hero. “What’s he get out of it?”
Hero perked up. “She’s always been fair to us, Benny. Come on. Don’t waste our time.”
“I need access to a PAL. A private one.”
Laverick grunted. “We had those at the station. What are we doing here?”
“No,” I said. “It has to be a private one.”
Hero said, “I have one at my apartment.”
“Is it secure from ghosting?”
“Yes.” Hero didn’t give any explanations or any references to college degrees to back up his stated ability to set up sophisticated software on his PAL. I took his statement at face value for that reason.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Laverick put her hand flat on the table with a smack. “Wait a minute. Why are we doing this? You’ve given me nothing to make me believe you’re doing anything more than wasting my time. I’ve got better things to do. If you want to take Hero out fishing, fine. But until he says it’s worth the trip, I’m going home.” She cast Hero a long disgusted look. Hero looked hurt, and I wondered what went on between them. “OK, fine,” she sighed. “We’ll go to Hero’s apartment, it’s not that far, but if it’s a waste of my time, I’m going to have him beat your ears off.”
I smiled, wondering what was on the stick. I hoped it wasn’t video of Arno and Denise at the beach.
Chapter 36
Hero lived in a dirty yellow brick building over on Shooter Street. His apartment was on the first floor, near the front door and next to the vator, but he did have a lot of space. He had free-weights and some auto-resistance gear and not much else. The place was clean as a cop’s gun.
I handed Hero the stick. “Let’s take a look at what’s on this,” I said. I added a little bravado, hopeful that, if the stick did contain video of Arno and Denise on the beach, I could escape a beating by acting surprised and inventing something I’d expected to see there.
Hero inserted it and waited for it to be scanned. I held my breath. Laverick went to use the bathroom. She didn’t expect much.
Hero watched his screen. “It’s certified video. Never been touched. The only kind you can use in court.”
Laverick came out of the bathroom just as the video started.
We all shrank from the screen when the first image came up. The camera was placed high and in a corner of a small, low room. The room had soundproofing on the walls and ceiling of the same type as Chen’s office, gray foam that seemed to suck all the light from the single bulb hanging in the center of the ceiling. To the left was a wall of horizontal metal bars standing away from the wall, like stacked curtain rods about a hand’s width apart. Against the far wall were racks of whips and paddles, chains and cuffs. A sofa stood out perpendicular from the right wall like audience seating. In the middle of the otherwise bare room, a woman was bent over a four-legged wire rack, her feet tied to the front legs of the rack, and her hands tied to the rear legs. Her back was striped with red welts. Her butt was covered with purple bruises.
A door under the camera opened, and the girl stirred and moaned. She lifted her head slightly, as far as she was able. Around her head, we could see a rope that was used as a gag.
Two men entered. We couldn’t identify them because their backs were toward us. They were laughing at something on the other side of the door. I heard party sounds in the other room that disappeared when the door closed. The men were carrying brown bottles.
The taller of the two took off his pants and raped the woman while she was still strapped down. As he grunted his way to satisfaction, h
e said she was still a nice tight fit. The other man sat on the sofa and drank and watched. When the rapist finished, he turned around to pick up his bottle.
Hero pushed his chair away from the screen, almost pushing it over as though he were trying to escape the picture. “Shit!” he said. “That’s that judge. That’s Kimbanski.”
I’d stepped back too and was peering nervously over Hero’s shoulder.
On the video the other man stood to take his turn at the girl, but turned back to say something to Kimbanski. He had a tattoo on his belly that said, “Wand of Wonder,” with an arrow pointing down. I didn’t hear what he said because Laverick drew a startled intake of breath. “That’s Jackson Yoder,” she whispered loudly. “He’s had some surgery, but that tattoo gives him away. God, I thought he was dead. I knew he was dead. Kumar killed him last year. No, two years ago. He resisted arrest and Kumar killed him.”
I couldn’t watch. I went over by the sink. Laverick and Hero continued to make comments about the sadistic meanness of the two men. I tried to tune out them and the video, but the cracking sound of torture punched its way through. I stared at the sink and breathed slowly.
When Hero said they were letting the girl up from the wire rack, I forced myself to go back and look even though I had the dreadful feeling I knew who it was. Jackson Yoder and Judge Kimbanski stood her up and turned her around to guide her out the door. Yoder complained about the blood getting on him. They had to support her, one on each side. Her eyes were taped shut and a red ball had been stuffed in her mouth and her face was swollen and discolored, but I still recognized Sukey’s girlfriend.
Nausea welled up from my stomach and I felt dizzy from the realization that Arno had had Sukey install that surveillance gear. Sukey was Arno’s Elf. I had to believe that Sukey had seen the disk. My mind touched on Carla, and I would have thrown up if I’d eaten anything at all that day. Instead, my stomach heaved and cramped. I slumped down heavily on the floor.
I didn’t know if Arno had planned things to happen that way, knowing who Kimbanski and Yoder had kidnapped for sexual slavery, or if it was just fortuitous circumstance for him. Either way, he achieved Kimbanski’s death and had been happy thinking he could get his money back from me for the murder.
Sukey couldn’t let it pass, could he? He’d gotten to Kimbanski before I could.
Kimbanski and Arno and Sukey were all dead, but Jackson Yoder, whoever that was, still lived, and that seemed very unfair.
Images kept coming unbidden into my head, Carla and Sukey’s girlfriend changing places. It made me dizzy. I felt myself turning into that monster I’d worried about so often in the last week. I couldn’t help but believe that “B” had to be Jackson Yoder’s middle initial, and I wanted to kill him.
Laverick crossed the room and sat on Hero’s auto-resistance machine. She looked drawn and worried.
Hero sat in his chair and stared at the blank screen. “That poor woman,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “That was Sukey Mack’s girlfriend. She didn’t die.” I didn’t know quite what I meant by the last part. I hadn’t heard much about how she fared after that mess, only that she’d been dropped off and lived. “Sukey was a surveillance expert. He must have seen that video when he collected the information from the remote.”
Laverick went over to the kitchen sink and splashed water on her face. “Jackson Yoder is alive.”
She wasn’t talking to anyone, really. She was repeating a litany to herself in an effort to believe what she’d seen. To reinforce the dramatic truth.
“Hero, is that stick genuine?” she asked quietly.
“Hold on, I’ll run the verifier, but I think so.”
We waited about a half minute. “Yes, it’s genuine, including the date stamp. It’s properly certified and encoded. The totals match.”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes. I stood up and started pacing. “What was Jackson Yoder’s middle name?”
“Balner.” Laverick watched me walk back and forth.
“Did he ever go by JB?”
Laverick thought about that. “I don’t know. Hero, look it up.”
Hero worked a few minutes while I continued pacing. I wanted to kill Jackson Yoder, promise to myself or not. Was I feeling what anyone would in my situation? Or was I a murderer who wanted just one more murder? Would there always be one more?
Hero said, “Here it is.”
Laverick and I went over and looked over his shoulders. He’d brought up Yoder’s police history, something I shouldn’t have been allowed to see, but Laverick didn’t seem to mind me looking. It had pictures of him and under his name it showed JB as an AKA.
The front page had a list of possible crimes, which included his apparently indiscriminate killing of street people. His picture was prominently displayed. I’d seen him Under The River previously, just around. I couldn’t remember any specific time or place.
I asked Hero to find the Death News report of Kumar’s killing of Yoder. I figured they would have pictures.
An expert at searching, he found it quickly. We waited while some advertisements flashed around the screen—mature singles, Caribbean vacations, and illegal surveillance gear you could buy direct from Venezuela.
As I suspected, Death News featured a close-up of the fleshy remains. Supposedly, Kumar had shot Yoder at the train station and Yoder had fallen in front of an oncoming train. The body could have been Yoder’s, but we knew it wasn’t. The article included a small picture of Kumar and a note that as primary detective on the case and “arresting officer” he would get five thousand added to his paycheck that month.
“Yoder’s in the Warren Under The River,” I said. “He’s a Gnome”
Laverick clenched her fists. She wanted to hit something. “I hate that place. They can run down there like rats down a hole and stay there forever and we can’t do a thing about it. In two hours with five hundred police we’d net a hundred of Chicago’s most wanted, and we can’t do a damn thing.”
“Why not,” I asked. “Why not get your five hundred cops and do it right?”
Laverick laughed bitterly. “Yeah, like the city council or the Mayor are going to let us do that. They would have to admit that there are street people living down there, like everyone doesn’t already know. They’d have to admit that they don’t have anywhere else to put them. The police would have to evict them. It’s like knocking down a wasp’s nest. The wasps just find somewhere else to go and the new place might be a lot more of an eyesore.“
She started rhythmically beating her hands against her hips. “I heard Champlein say it’s cheaper to keep the most wanted down there than to put them in jail or do the psychological testing required to do forgets. The fact is the people who could do something are all scared to be the one to give the order. And anyway, there are so many back doors, and someone would tip them off, and on and on. Excuses.”
“OK,” I said. And I almost added, “I’ll kill him for you,” but instead, I said, “I’ll bring him out for you.”
Laverick studied me. She wasn’t sure I was able to do any such thing.
Hero said, “How can we help?”
“If I bring him out, will his conviction stick?”
Laverick responded explosively. “Ha! It’ll stick like white on rice, Benny. He was already convicted before Kumar supposedly killed him, even though he wasn’t at the trial. Because of the crimes he was convicted of, no one seemed to mind a cop killing him. By the time the courts are through with Yoder, he’ll have forgotten his own mother.”
That hurt. I still couldn’t remember my mother’s name, and Laverick’s comment made me wonder if I’d been convicted of a slew of things many years before and was wiped clean. It seemed more and more likely. If there were such a forget in my past, it hadn’t made me a better member of society, unless killer was better than what I had been before.
“Hero,” I said, “I might need your help when I’m inside. I’ll send mail signed Gusset with more information
when I know exactly how I’m going to extract him from the Warren.”
Hero smiled a grim, determined smile and wrote down his computer address. Laverick said she was in too, if I needed anything.
It was time I met J. B. Yoder.
Chapter 37
Laverick wouldn’t let me have the stick back. She said it was too valuable to lose. I let the implication drop.
Hero made a copy for me before I left, however. The new memstick wouldn’t pass a verifier check, but I could use it as trump should I need it. I wrote down Hero’s phone address and told them I’d be in touch, but to give me at least a couple of days. I left them in Hero’s apartment. They were quietly staring at the floor.
My walk back to Carbide’s was full of unwanted images and the moans and slashes of torture. I couldn’t rid myself of them in the usual way of picturing Carla and smiling at her. That had exactly the wrong effect.
And thinking about Carla just brought up my biggest worry: that Carla was by JB’s side. That she was his hired killer now, and based on our last interaction at her apartment, she would not be too concerned if I was her target. What would I do if it was her or me to die? I knew the answer to that. It would be me.
As I passed the river, it started to rain. By the time I reached Carbide’s apartment, my shoes were sloshing, and I was soaked, but I didn’t really care. I was playing out a conversation with JB. The one where I had all the cards. But that was all daydreaming because however good my cards were, I still had to get him to the table.
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