“I’m sorry if I upset you. I’m sure you know what’s worth fighting for.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good handle on that.” I pull on my boots and I’m out the door.
* * *
Once I’m on the road I decide to take the expressway and meet the Rock Island line eight miles south at Thirty-fifth Street.
On the way I call in the pizza, and then I dial Andy.
“I just talked to Sloane Pearson,” he says, foregoing hello.
“Can you meet me?” I ask, hoping to dodge the lecture.
“Where?”
“The Metra at Thirty-fifth Street. I got a tip on Marble, he’ll be there.”
“No way in hell, Gina. If Pearson gets legs on this case, Iverson will have your ass—and mine, too—if you so much as send St. Claire a get-well card.”
“Pearson can’t make this a case. Marble’s been in Tinley Park since yesterday. That means he couldn’t have assaulted St. Claire.”
“Then why are you still after him?”
“Because I’m feeling helpful. What did Pearson say? When she called?”
“Gina, I can’t.”
“Damn it,” I say, to the brake lights just past the circle. Lots of them. When a blue-and-white passes on the shoulder, I find my way toward the exit; I’ll snake the side streets.
“I know you’re frustrated,” Andy says.
“Then why won’t you just tell me what she said?” I cut over to Canal and head south and it seems like a fine idea until I come upon another jam—this one, White Sox fans; I’m probably the only person who isn’t trying to get to the ballpark.
“Gina—” Andy starts, right as I lay on the horn; I wish I had my own blue light to convince these people I’ve got somewhere to be. Fuck it: I drive in the oncoming lane, turn left at Twenty-third Street, drive around a DO NOT ENTER sign onto what’s not a road, shoot under the expressway and over some gravel and up on a curb.
“What was that?” Andy asks. “Did you just hit something? Or someone?”
“I took a shortcut.” I’m headed south again, on State Street, the other side of baseball traffic. “It’s not like I’m asking you to do something illegal. I just want to know what Pearson told you.”
“Jesus. Will you slow down?”
I do. “I did. So tell me.”
“Okay, G. Apparently, St. Claire took a near-fatal dose of medication. Either the wrong meds, or the wrong combination of meds. She passed out and fell and broke her ankle. Somehow she regained consciousness and managed to call 911.”
“That’s not a sex crime. Why’d Pearson get the call?”
“The doctors saw evidence of sexual abuse, and said Robin Leone showed up with a pretty detailed ear perker about finding Marble forcing himself on St. Claire. Apparently Leone intervened and kicked Marble out of the house.”
“It’s bullshit. Marble wasn’t there.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Okay, well, I gotta tell you that calling bullshit isn’t quite as strong an argument as the eyewitness account from the woman who stopped the attack.”
“It wasn’t Marble.”
“Pearson is waiting on the doctors to let her talk St. Claire into a rape kit. That will prove it was or wasn’t.”
“What about Robin? If she can call the cops on Kay’s behalf, why can’t she step in and make decisions?”
“Yeah, there’s a problem there. St. Claire has Marble listed as her proxy.”
“The hospital can’t override that apparent mistake?”
“Nope.”
“Well. You tell Pearson I’ll find Marble. Then he can agree to the tests.”
“I think I’m not going to answer my phone anymore. I think I’m going to open a beer and get in the hot tub and soak until I’m stupid.”
“At least I’ll know where to find you,” I say and then I say, “Shit!” and hang up, because when I turn at Thirty-fifth I see the train parked over the viaduct. I park in a tow zone and I should get my Ruger out of the trunk but I need every second, so I run up the steps and I yell “Police!” wielding my phone like a weapon at the army of baseball fans deboarding the train. I fight the crowd but when I get within reach of the train doors they press together and seal shut and the conductor isn’t waiting another moment. He must not see my star held up over my head, little and lost amidst the swarm of black and white.
And just like that, I missed the fucking train.
I skip down the steps and back to the car and I head for the next stop.
It’s no French Connection, okay? It’s me cutting over to LaSalle and getting caught at Thirty-first Street and watching the fucking caboose bump around on its way to the next stop. It’s me waving goodbye from the wrong side of the tracks. It’s me kicking myself for picking the Thirty-fifth Street station, and for not following baseball.
And then it’s me realizing the next stop is the end of the Rock Island line.
I get on 94 and there’s no traffic. I can beat the train. I peel around the curve at Twenty-sixth and take the ramp to Congress and I’m there—I’m here, and by my clock, I’ve got three minutes before the train arrives.
I make an illegal U-turn and park against the one way at LaSalle by the old post office, half on the sidewalk. I turn on my hazards, and this time I get my gun.
The station sits under the Chicago Stock Exchange. This time of day, the markets are closed, so the street is mostly empty, though a thin crowd of smokers stands outside the Option Room, an after-work tavern with inflated cocktail prices that seem reasonable against the cost of a couple bumps of coke. I know this because Tom has a pair of trader friends who always made me glad Tom wasn’t one. They spent plenty of cash on all kinds of options.
I duck into the station and head toward the arriving train; I hear the engine huff and chug on its slowed approach.
And then I’m detoured by a BUILDING A NEW CHICAGO sign that blocks the usual pedestrian route to the platform. Orange arrows direct me down the only path anybody can take and it spans the length of what seems like two trains. Unfortunately, it lets out on the temporary “in-service” elevated portion of the platform. A line of passengers waits here—waits, yes, because the train doors are closed. Arriving passengers are currently exiting the other side. Where all the conductors must be. Where Johnny Marble must be.
Sonofa.
I look for a way around the train: on the construction platform below I see barricades, electrical equipment, hazard signs, and no good or safe or quick way around.
The only way to the other side is outside. Back the way I came.
Or forward, and through.
“Police,” I announce, showing my star. Most people step aside. One, a blue-shirt trader-type, doesn’t budge; instead he makes a booze-brave comment to his friend about my nice tail. I think they’re both surprised when I say, “You should see my smile.” I don’t. They move.
At the front of the line I reach up and bang on the train door’s window.
“Police!” I yell this time, though my voice is swallowed up by the big engine’s idle. I may as well be trying to get the train’s attention.
It takes a minute before a conductor appears, and I’m certain he’d have appeared at that very minute anyway, by his watch, time to board. When he sees my star his expression doesn’t change a bit and I don’t think he tries to move any faster as he puts the big archaic-looking key in the door release and then the door sighs and opens, a slow yawn, and I’m sure Johnny Marble is already street side.
And then, just before I step up to board, my phone alerts:
Ventra Card activity notification
ID number M 7091442414
LaSalle Blue Line station
6:49 pm
Streetside, he was. And now he’s gone underground.
I tuck my star and look down as I backtrack through the crowd I just pushed aside. I feel like a jerk, especially when I reach the boozed trader face-to-fac
e and I do offer a kind-of smile and he looks down at me and says, “Sorry, honey, your smile doesn’t make up for your mouth.”
His friend laughs. I move on, nice tail between my legs.
On my way to the street, I re-read the alert. I don’t know where I’ll go; the L doesn’t work like the Metra or the CTA. Once through the turnstile, there’s no way to determine a traveler’s direction, let alone the destination. There’s no sense in going to the Blue Line stop; by the time I get there, Marble could be anywhere. He could switch lines, change trains, change his mind, or sit on his butt and ride all the way to O’Hare.
I won’t know where he is until he uses his card again.
I double back to where I parked and find a squad blocking both my car and the outside outbound lane on Congress. A uniform with a young face stands between the vehicles. He’s handsome. And he’s writing me a ticket, just to ice the cake.
His nameplate says ANZALONE. He sees me and he says, “You can’t park here.”
“I’m about to be not parked here anymore.” I show him my keys and my star.
“You still can’t park here.”
“I know that,” I say, and I don’t care how good-looking he is because, “you’re going to be sorry when you have to tell your boss you disrupted traffic and wrote me for a parking violation while the suspect I’m trailing walked right past you and hopped the blue line. A suspect who assaulted his own mother. And a young girl. And me.”
He stops writing. “Serious? Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
“You look pissed.”
“That’s because the suspect is still at large. On the blue line. Headed away from here.”
“You aren’t going to find him on the L by yourself.”
I must look more pissed, because he says—
“I don’t mean you-you. I mean the theoretical you.”
“Neither one of us will, now.”
“Where’s your backup?”
“Standing here writing me a ticket.”
“Me?”
“Listen. I have an informant. I just have to wait for it. For him. For him to tell me the suspect’s getting off the train.” I call up Marble’s booking photo on my phone and show it to him. “He came up from Tinley Park so I think he’s headed north, or maybe west. His mother lives in Ukrainian Village.”
“Johnny Marble,” Anzalone says, off the photo.
“I want him off the street,” I say. “I don’t care who takes the collar.”
A light clicks on somewhere above Anzalone’s head. He puts his ticket book away and takes out his own phone. “What’s your number?”
I tell him, he calls, we’re connected. “I’m Dario,” he says.
I put ANZALONE in my phone. “I’m Simonetti.”
“Should I follow you, Simonetti?”
“I don’t know where we’re going yet.”
“I do,” he says. “Come on.”
* * *
Anzalone uses his cherry lights as an excuse to ride the Kennedy’s shoulder during rush hour. I trail him. He gets off at Lake Street and soon we’re parked at the six-way outside the Grand L stop, where the Blue Line makes its escape from the Loop.
It’s a smart idea: just outside the rush, and we can shoot north or west or northwest easily.
Anzalone gets out of the squad and lights a smoke.
I park behind him and we take up watch together, monitoring the stairs to the trains underground. After a bunch of passengers come up and disperse, none of them Marble, Anzalone asks, “How are you tracking this guy again? You have an informant where?”
I don’t want to tell him anything that could have repercussions, so I say, “I don’t want to tell you anything that could have repercussions.”
“Like your last case.”
So Anzalone did some detective work on the ride over. The ‘last case’ he’s talking about is the last one everyone talked about—the one where I was supposedly forced to leave the evidence tech team because I was “sleeping with a witness.” Like most rumors, it’s 10 percent true: I did leave evidence tech, and I did eventually sleep with Tom, the witness. The rest of the truth was that I had been diagnosed with MS, I thought everybody on my team was catching on, and I put in for a transfer. My last case with the team was the one next door to the Cloverleaf. Tom didn’t know me and so had no reason to think there was anything wrong with me. And then when he did get to know me, and there was something wrong with me … well, that’s where we are now.
I’m actually not sure which version of the story is worse.
“Listen,” I say to Anzalone. “It doesn’t matter how I find Marble. This can be your collar. Your story.”
He looks off, down the street. “I don’t usually tell a story. I usually tell the truth.”
“That’s probably why you’re still writing parking tickets in the Loop.”
“There’s no harm in trying to be a good guy.”
“No passing the sergeant’s test, either.”
He takes the last drag of his smoke. “I guess you have to be tough.”
“You mean the theoretical you?”
“No,” he says, flicking the butt to the curb. “Just you.”
I don’t want to answer so I take out my phone, the way the theoretical we avoid small talk these days, and scroll through Marble’s information again.
Then, “Hello. How ya doing. Hi.”
I look up and Anzalone’s turned around, elbows on the rail, being officer friendly to another procession of passengers who come up the steps and head for cabs and buses and Richard’s and Emmit’s, the pubs across the six-way. Most of the women return the hello. None of the men are Marble.
Which makes sense when my phone buzzes again.
The alert:
Ventra Card activity notification
ID number M 7091442414
CTA #2059 Division & Ashland Westbound
7:12 pm
I show Anzalone my phone. “He’s on the bus.”
“Let’s go out to Western, come back on Division. We’ll meet him head-on.”
“That bus won’t take more than ten minutes. I don’t know if we’ll make it.”
“We will.” Anazalone makes for the squad and I follow him west, lights and sirens, the late sun glaring at me.
* * *
We’re on approach just as the bus rolls to a stop at Leavitt. Anzalone doesn’t hesitate—he pulls into the oncoming lane and parks in front of the bus, ass-out, so there’s no way around. I pull in next to him and park against the one-way; I assume he won’t write me a ticket this time.
I jump out of my car and meet Anzalone at his trunk. We don’t talk about who’ll do what, we just do. He gets the visibility vests; I take the traffic cones. I set the cones out to make a lane for westbound traffic while Anzalone clears the doors and boards the bus to talk to the driver.
I walk around the bus. It’s about half full and mostly Hispanic—exactly the demographic in another six stops or so—six stops, my neighborhood.
If Johnny Marble is still on this bus, I have to wonder if he’s on his way to visit Mom. He could be on his way to me.
Around the back of the bus, I realize my hands are shaking. I don’t feel them. I don’t feel my feet, either. But this is not MS. This is adrenaline.
I edge around the rear doors and pull my Ruger. I shouldn’t, but I do. There’s a Hispanic woman standing inside holding a child’s hand—I can see the top of the little girl’s head, her ponytail. The woman looks irritated, and pulls on the stop request cord; she must not understand what’s happening.
Then she sees me. Then she sees my gun. Then she backs up, shields the girl. Turns. Falls. Scrambles.
There’s a domino effect: passengers around her who have focused their attention on the officer at the front of the bus are now startled, and follow her lead—a bum rush toward the front.
I hear the driver on the bus speakers: “Remain seated, people. We got a situation up here.”
The announcement doesn’t inspire confidence. Other people get up. Most people get up.
Johnny Marble does not.
He’s sitting in the middle handicapped seat opposite the rear doors; there’s nobody sitting on either side of him, and there probably never was. Save for the beard that’s grown in clumps, he looks the same: he’s even wearing his purple jacket—so he’s been home again—and he’s looking down at the black plastic bag clutched in his hands. It’s almost as though he’s deaf: he doesn’t move at all, and his detached expression doesn’t change.
He looks like a psychopath.
I step back. I yell to Anzalone: “I’ve got a visual!”
Marble doesn’t react. Just keeps looking at his bag. I feel like it could blow up.
I run to the front of the bus. I tell Anzalone, “He’s there. He’s just sitting there. Acting like there’s no problem.”
“Okay, okay,” Anzalone says to me and to everybody, and from this angle he looks taller, and older, and official. He takes the driver’s microphone and says, “I need everybody to sit down. There’s been a mistake. So please just sit down, and I’m going to come through and make sure everybody’s okay, and then I’m going to leave, and then you can all be on your way.” Anzalone hands back the mic and comes down the steps to ask me, confidentially, “Can you do this?”
“Hell, yes,” I say. This is it.
“Where is he?”
“Handicapped seat opposite the rear doors. Purple jacket. He’s holding a bag. A black plastic bag. I can’t—I can’t tell what’s inside.” Panic makes me stutter. “I think it could be my service weapon.”
Anzalone’s eyes skip from mine to the Ruger, fear striking. “He’s got your gun?”
“But we’ve got him. We can seal up the bus, call backup.”
“No way. If he’s armed, we have to get him now. You stay with the driver. I’ll walk Marble off at the rear. Once I do, tell the driver to close the doors and hold tight.”
I almost say thank you, but that’d be like admitting I’m scared. So instead I say, “I’m with you.”
Anzalone climbs back on board. I follow him and take position at the front, Ruger ready. I nod to the driver and watch the passengers watch Anzalone, who sidesteps his way back, hand poised at his holster.
The Lies We Tell Page 15