Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “And then?”

  “And then it’s his play. We bring him in or we put him down.”

  “And that’s where maybe we can play ball,” said Ferguson.

  “Play ball how?”

  “Let’s just say the put him down part sounds good. The bring him in part? Not so much.”

  “Surely a guy who’d break into a cop’s apartment and hold him at gunpoint isn’t suggesting that we subvert a citizen’s constitutional guarantees? You guys have heard of due process, right?”

  “Got our own version. Look, it’s your town, and you’re good. You’ve gotten way closer to this than I would have guessed, and you’ve gotten there fast. Fact is, if you bring him in, you’re gonna have to put a hole in him first. No way in hell he just gives up. So it’s ninety to ten the thing goes our way anyhow. I’m just asking you to give up the ten percent so that we can pool our resources and get this thing over with. He’s not going to stop, you know.”

  “Didn’t figure he would,” said Lynch.

  “So how many people you ready to write off just so you can make sure you color inside the lines?”

  “We could save a lot of time by just popping every gangbanger we have on file, too. Or maybe just round em up and stick em on a train and take em out somewhere and gas em. Maybe you’d like to help with that.”

  Ferguson frowned, shook his head. “Great, two minutes into our little chat and you’re already playing the Nazi card. Look, nobody likes this thing, but it got away from us. This guy you’re looking for, he’s a friend of mine, OK? Or I’m as close to a friend as he’s got. I don’t know what his deal is right now, but whatever it is, it means killing a lot of folks who don’t have it coming. He’s our Frankenstein’s monster. We made him. I’m asking for some help taking him off the board before he runs up the body count. And I’m asking that we keep things quiet. He starts telling tales, it’s going to be bad for the whole fucking country. You got no idea how many stiffs have his fingerprints on them. And these are some high-profile stiffs going back a long way. I don’t know how much attention you pay to the news, Lynch, but this ain’t Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood anymore, if it ever was. There’re a couple million yahoos out there who’d like to pop a nuke off here and then piss on the rubble. We have to play a little rough, then we do. If you’re waiting for me to apologize, then pack a lunch.”

  Lynch clapped a couple of times, quietly. Golf gallery clapping.

  “Wow. Nice speech. You got a neocon hymnal you memorize shit out of?”

  Ferguson shrugged. “Got some lines I can riff on. Never know what’s gonna work with somebody.”

  “OK, so your shooter. You’re saying instead of you just giving us what you’ve got, letting us do our job, you want me to make sure we execute the son of a bitch for you?”

  “What am I supposed to do, Lynch? Walk down to the station and introduce myself to your boss? I’m dead, remember? The people I work for aren’t on anybody’s org chart.”

  “Cut the bullshit. You got channels. Use them.”

  “Meaning get somebody legit to front the info for us? Not going to happen. You don’t get it, Lynch. Not existing is our whole deal. We don’t just need this guy off the streets, we need him out of history. He was never born.”

  Lynch held Ferguson’s eyes a long moment. “Fuck it. I don’t see this going anywhere. So what’s your end game here? I don’t sign up, you gonna pop me? If so, get to it. If not, get out.”

  “Not gonna pop you, Lynch. Least not yet. Maybe we’ll chat again later.”

  “OK,” said Lynch.

  “Another thing. You’ve started poking around in a couple other deals, one up in Wisconsin, another one downstate. Just so you know, that mess downstate? That wasn’t my call. But I’m running the show now, and I’m going to keep it as clean as I can.”

  “Breaking in and holding a gun on a cop, this is what you call clean?”

  Ferguson got up, slipped the .22 inside his jacket. “I can’t remember the last time I pulled a gun on somebody and didn’t shoot them. You’re already way ahead of the game.”

  CHAPTER 39 – CHICAGO

  Next day, early. Lynch couldn’t sleep, turning the whole mess over in his mind, trying to get a handle on it, getting nowhere. He decided to drive over to his mom’s place, finally deal with the garage. The sun was getting up, going to be warm, big clouds floating, the birds back, those yellow flowers his mom had put in along the back of the house bursting out. Daffodils? Jonquils? Lynch couldn’t remember.

  He backed his mom’s old Taurus out, pulled the lawn mower out and left it on the side of the drive. Maybe mow the lawn in a couple hours, gets late enough he’s not going to wake anybody up. Some old lawn chairs, not worth keeping. Those he took to the curb. An ice chest, one of the old metal ones, still good. He’d take that home with him.

  The bike he’d bought his mom probably ten years ago was leaning against the two-by-fours his dad had nailed into the framing to make a ladder up to the little loft he’d built. Pulled that out of the way. Grabbed a two-by-four. Thirty-six years since he’d been up that ladder. Hadn’t put his hand there in thirty-six years.

  Lynch pulled his way up, could feel the stitches in the leg tugging a little, then stuck his head up over the edge of the loft, looked around.

  Roll of leftover trim pieces from when he and his old man had done the upstairs, the quarter round for the floor and the chair rail, tied neatly with twine like his dad always did. Lynch making a note to look through the house, find any spots that were dinged up. He could use these, swap the bad parts out. A box from that old tile store that used to be on Devon on the stretch south of California heading down toward Western, all Indo-Pak groceries now, falafel joints. Place his old man had bought the tile for the upstairs bathroom, the tile Lynch had put down the day his father was killed. Three decades of dust on the box.

  Lynch took the box down the ladder, set it on the hood of his mom’s car, and opened it.

  An old manila envelope sat on top of a couple left-over tiles, the paper stiff with age, the envelope sealed. Lynch opened his pocket knife and slit the top. ME’s report – an older form. It was from the Hurley case back in ’71. Autopsy reports on Hurley Jr and Stefanski. He’d read them before, pulled the paper years ago right after he got on the force. But why would his father have a copy, and why would he hide it in the garage? Lynch scanned down the report. Everything matched up with what he remembered. Then an addendum, the serological info on the semen found in Hurley jumping out at him. Semen? That had never come out. That wasn’t in the ME’s report he’d seen.

  Behind the report were several pages of loose leaf paper covered with his dad’s precise Palmer-method hand. Notes on the Hurley case, all dated, all written in the three days before his father’s death. Marslovak, Riordan and the Red Squad, Zeke Fisher. Lynch felt flushed, and he slumped against the car. My God, all the names were the same. More than three decades later, and all the same names. Lynch read more – the Feds, the AMN Commando, his father’s theory for a murder-suicide and cover up, Riley.

  Lynch thought back to that last night, the last time he’d seen his father. Something happening outside, tires squealing, barking, his dad going out the back, his mom coming down, bringing Collie into his room, keeping them in there. His dad back in the house, on the phone, Lynch not able to hear it all but knowing his dad was pissed.

  The sound of his dad upstairs, closet and drawers opening, quiet for a while, then the old man coming down into Lynch’s room.

  “Listen, guys, I’ve got some bad news,” the old man said. “Somebody was tearing down the alley. Missy must’ve got loose out back, and she got hit.”

  Collie sounding shaky. “Is she going to be OK?”

  “No, honey. I’m sorry, but she’s dead.” Collie was crying now, her head buried in her mom’s chest, Lynch seeing his mom look at the old man and the old man look back, Lynch not knowing what was up, but knowing that what the old man said, that wasn’t it.

&
nbsp; “Now you guys get back to bed. It’s really late. Stay out of the alley. Couple of officers will be by to check on some things, see if we can’t find out who did this. I have to go out for a while. Something’s come up I have to take care of. You two be good for your mother now.”

  Lynch remembered watching his father straighten up. His mom putting Collie down on the bed then standing. His dad hugging her and her hugging back and there being more to it than usual. Collie scrambling across the bed, latching onto Lynch. His mom finally letting go of the old man, running her hand down his face.

  “You be careful,” she said, which she never said. The old man just nodding. The old man bent down and picked something up off the floor – the tile box from upstairs. Lynch figuring his father was taking the box out to the garage on his way, feeling good for a minute because that meant the old man figured the floor was done, he wasn’t going to sneak back in and fix something he thought wasn’t done well enough.

  Remembered the old man walking out, the door on the garage going up, the car pulling out after a little while, the car stopping, the garage door going down, then the old man pulling away down the alley.

  It was a while before Collie stopped crying and his mom got her back to her bed. His mom stuck her head into his doorway on her way back upstairs, just looking but expecting Lynch to be asleep.

  “Mom,” Lynch said.

  “Johnny, it’s late,” she answered.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s just your daddy’s case, honey. He had to leave. You know that happens sometimes.”

  “OK.” Lynch letting it go, knowing he wasn’t going to get the whole answer.

  His mom closed his door, and he heard her walk up the stairs. A couple minutes later, Collie nudged the door open and crawled into Lynch’s bed. She was still there a few hours later, when Lynch heard the doorbell, heard the hushed voices, heard his mother scream.

  Lynch remembered, later that day, that guy Riley showing up, making a big fuss about what a hero his old man was, about how he’d solved the case. Riley telling his mom over and over again that she had no worries, that the mayor would never forget what her husband had done, that, if there was anything he could do, she should call him, any time, day or night. And asking, by the way, did your husband have any papers around, anything that might have something to do with the case? His mom telling him they’d be in the desk in the bedroom if he did. This Riley guy asking did she mind if he took a look, and his mom saying OK. The Riley guy upstairs, going through every drawer, Lynch sneaking up the stairs and just sticking his head up to watch. Riley pulled one file out of the big drawer on the bottom, flipped through it, nodded, and took that one with him back down the stairs.

  “He just had a couple things,” he told Lynch’s mother. “Isn’t really supposed to have this at home, but I know they all do it. I’ll just get it back down to the station.”

  His mom nodding.

  “You need any help right now, any cash, anything?”

  His mom shaking her head.

  “OK. But you call. Anything you need, you call.”

  His mom just nodding.

  Riley looking down at Lynch. “You should be proud.”

  Lynch sticking out his chin a little. “I am.”

  “You gonna be a cop like your old man?”

  “Yes,” said Lynch.

  He remembered Riley smiling at him and nodding, then heading toward the door. Lynch pretty sure that his mom didn’t like the guy, knowing that he didn’t.

  Lynch sat at his mother’s kitchen table, going through his dad’s old case notes, checking off the names.

  The day his old man was murdered, that morning, EJ Marslovak had come to see him at the station. He’d told the old man what he’d seen a few days before Hurley and Stefanski were murdered – he’d seen the two of them going at it in a Streets and San trailer down near Taylor Street during the UIC campus construction. Marslovak saying no one had seen him. He’d just stopped at the trailer to check some plans, but had seen the two of them through the window and backed off, waiting to see Hurley leave before he went back up.

  The whole Marslovak angle starting to make sense now. EJ must have gone to someone else after Lynch’s dad was shot. Word got filtered up, and Riley or somebody got him to keep his mouth shut, probably convinced him that Hurley’s personal life wasn’t germane, convinced him to keep it quiet, and then started with the favors, trying to ensure his silence.

  Marslovak was dead a few years now. Then his widow is shot through the heart by some government super-spook.

  Bob Riordan. Head of the old Red Squad. At the scene thirty-six years ago when Lynch’s old man was murdered. Riordan was dead years ago now – ’85 maybe, ’86? And now his kid, Tommy, just your basic political hack, he gets it through the heart, same shooter.

  This Zeke Fisher working on things with Riley, and old hand from the sound of it, not a kid even then. But Fisher was the name Cunningham had thrown out, the guy he’d ID’d as the shooter. File that under what the fuck for now.

  Some of the other names in the file he’d have to check on. The two Feds, Harris and MacDonald? Almost certainly be retired now. Might be able to track them down. Riley? Lynch knew he was long dead, have to see if there were any kids, somebody who might have memories.

  Lynch pulled out his cell, went to hit speed dial for Starshak’s office, then thought better of it, scrolled down, found Starshak’s cell.

  “Lose the office number?” Starshak answered.

  “We gotta talk. Not at the office.”

  A pause. “Not gonna like this, am I?”

  “Bring the files from 1971 - my Dad’s murder, anything else on that AMN group.”

  “So that would be a no,” Starshak said.

  CHAPTER 40 – WASHINGTON, DC

  Weaver still couldn’t believe this. The Judge giving him that old soldiers just fade away bullshit? Throwing him a bone with the pension, like it was about the fucking money? Like a guy in Weaver’s gig wouldn’t have enough socked away to live any way he damned well pleased for as long as he wanted? Ferguson punking him out. Chen imprinting on her new master like a baby goose. Jesus. What the hell did the judge think? Weaver was just gonna roll over, gonna show his ass?

  Of course, the Judge didn’t know about Weaver’s hole card. Always the big mistake in this line of work. You’re privy to so many secrets you forget maybe there’s something you don’t know.

  Skeffington Young liked to walk, Weaver knew, liked to get out of the West Wing, take a little stroll, usually during lunch. Skeff was almost thirty years younger than Weaver, an up-and-comer, one of the Yale lackeys Hastings Clarke surrounded himself with. He’d just been bumped up to assistant national security advisor.

  Weaver waited, sitting on a bench in Lafayette Park. Saw Young heading up Pennsylvania. Weaver took an angle, cut him off.

  “Hey, Skeff.”

  Young turned with a start. “Jesus, Weaver. You scared me.”

  “I’m a scary guy, Skeff. Listen, you need to get a message to the boss. I need to talk with him.”

  “Weaver, I’ve heard from the Judge. It does sound like you got a bit of a raw deal, but, really, if you think the president is going to intervene–”

  “I’m not looking for the president to change the Judge’s mind for me, Skeff. I’m looking to save the president’s ass. Some shit went down a long time ago. Chicago shit. It’s about to come back and swallow old Hastings whole. I can help, but I need to talk with him.”

  “Really, Weaver, if I tried to set up a personal meeting with the president on such a shallow pretext–”

  Weaver reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope, handed it to Young. Young opened it, slid out the photo. Black and white shot of Stefanski lying dead on the floor, half naked, gunshot to the chest. Photo taken before Zeke Fisher’s boys had gone to work with the axe. A little lever Fisher’d held on to. A rough draft of history.

  “What the hell is this, We
aver?”

  “Just show it to the boss, Skeff. Tell him I gave it to you. Tell him we have to talk. And remember whose star you’ve got your wagon hitched to. Boss doesn’t play ball, he isn’t going down in flames, he’s going supernova. This thing blows, you’ll go up with him. Nobody who’s ever touched him will be able to get far enough away.”

  It took until the next evening, Weaver watching a CNN blurb on the Riordan shooting, getting itchy, knowing Ferguson would already be on the ground in Chicago. Knowing that if Ferguson cleared this before Weaver got back in the game, then Weaver was fucked. But the phone rang, and now Weaver was sitting in the president’s private study, upstairs at the White House, the picture of Stefanski on the desk.

  “I assume there are more,” said Clarke.

  “Of course.”

  “Doesn’t prove I was there. Doesn’t prove I knew.”

  “You wanna play it that way, then I suppose no. We’ve got the addendum to the original ME’s report, proves your David was taking love suppositories from Stefanski. We got the photos, proves the cover up. Then, of course, we’ve got the four dead black guys and the dead cop, which makes it a cover up plus five murders. And we got you as the primary beneficiary of the entire exercise. In the strictest legal sense does this put dick in the wringer? I’d guess not. Not sure on statute of limitations issues. I think the clock on murder runs forever, but I don’t think they can get you for that. Don’t know about the conspiracy stuff, or the aiding and abetting stuff. Or even that they can prove you knew. So, does this mean you’re going to the joint? I was a betting man, I’d bet no. But that’s not the real problem, is it? It comes out your whole career was built on killing some guys, including a cop, well, getting a hummer from an intern gonna look like small ball.”

  Clarke sat looking at the photo. “All these years, I’ve waited for this to come back. I didn’t run, you know, for president – not the first couple times it would have made sense. Afraid of this, afraid someone was holding out, waiting.”