by Dan O'Shea
“Rodney,” said Lynch.
“Damn, boy, you finally a player? Look at you, ol’ gumshoe Lynch at the Connemara Ball. And with this fine specimen here.” Williams draping his arm around Johnson’s shoulder. “Ramjet’s just one nickname, my lovely. You get tired of your little-league date, you want to learn some of my private talents, you just look me up.”
Johnson shrugged off Williams’ arm. “I already know your other nickname, AA.”
A little crowd had gathered, watching the show. Williams throwing his hands up, pretending good humor.
“Whoa, baby, you want to get personal, let’s do that in private.”
Lynch took Johnson’s hand, walked past Williams. “Always good to see you again, Rodney.” Then he leaned in, quieter voice in Williams’ ear. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
The Emerald Pagoda was the same visual feast that Lynch remembered from his childhood, only more so because of the crowd and the ball.
“This place is amazing,” said Johnson.
“Thank you, Ms Johnson.” Paddy Wang sneaking up from the right, Mayor Hurley with him. “Detective Lynch, Elizabeth Johnson, the mayor asked that I introduce you personally.”
Hurley was thick through the shoulders and chest, too much booze in the face, looking a decade older than his thirty-eight years. Green tux jacket, green tie over black pants.
“Detective, I can’t tell you how pleased I am finally to meet you. Your family, your father, they are real heroes to me. Every year, Paddy tells me he’s gonna get you to show up, and every year I’m disappointed.”
Lynch shook Hurley’s hand. “Mayor, nice to meet you. My father was a hero. I’m just a cop. Glad to finally get to the party, though. Quite a show. This is Elizabeth Johnson. She’s a reporter with the Trib.”
Wang interjected, “Don’t worry, your honor. Ms Johnson understands that the ball is off the record, start to finish.”
“Ms Johnson.” Hurley shaking her hand now. “All reporters looked like you, I’d change my opinion of the press.”
“Thank you, your honor.”
Wang started to usher Hurley away, flesh to press, but put his hand out to Lynch.
“Thank you, young Lynch, for coming. You have made my night a success.”
Lynch shook the hand, felt a small square of paper pressed into his palm. Opened it after Wang had walked away.
Stefanski had a daughter. Born March 13, 1964.
“Love note?” Johnson asked.
Lynch stuffed the paper in his pocket. “Something like that. We’ll talk later.”
Lynch knew he could trust Johnson, knew he should level with her, but wanted it straight in his head first. This thing with Stefanski was another free radical. Before he handed anything off, he wanted to be sure she knew where to look. And who to look out for. He took her elbow, turned her toward the dance floor.
“Care to dance?”
Johnson smiled. “I’d love to. But I thought tough guys didn’t dance.”
“Usually we don’t. But it’s common knowledge that dancing is just ritualized sex. Gets chicks hot.”
Weaver was working his way through a couple of inches of scotch digesting a bad day. The Palmer House thing, that was a clusterfuck, but the Mossad guys had come pre-packaged with paper that set them up as Al-Qaeda types if the shit hit the fan, so he had a net over that. Problem was it left Ferguson and Chen on the field looking to get even. Swell.
Other problem was this Lynch fuck. Paravola was still tied into the Chicago PD systems, tracking the sniper investigation. Looked like Lynch was starting to sniff around his old man’s murder, might be making the wrong connections.
CHAPTER 47 – CHICAGO
Next morning, Lynch walking into the office, dragging some. The Connemara Ball was everything he’d heard. After three when he and Johnson left, the party was still going on as far as Lynch knew.
Starshak stuck his head out of his office door. “Lynch, need to see you.”
Lynch walked in. Starshak’s face was tight, his jaw clenched.
“You don’t look happy,” said Lynch.
“I’m not. We’re off the Hurley case. Word from up top. You’re too close to it they say, what with this stuff from ’71 now. And with your mom’s death, they’re afraid you won’t be focused. Bullshit like that.”
“You surprised?”
“This clusterfuck? Wish I was. Feds are running it now. They’ve set up a taskforce. Desk tells me they badged their way in here in the middle of the night, took all our files.”
“You know this is fucked.”
“I know.”
“The stuff I found in the garage, any of that in our official files yet?”
Starshak shook his head. “Taking my time on that.”
“You tell the Feds about it?”
“Wasn’t here, nobody to talk to.”
Lynch pursed his lips, looked around the squad room.
“That strike you as a little strange? No hand-off meeting?”
“How it strikes me is maybe they’ve already decided how this turns out. Like they figure they don’t talk to anybody, then they don’t have to chase down anything that doesn’t fit their theory.”
Lynch nodded.
“By the way,” Starshak said, “you see the news last night? Shootout at the Palmer House? Brave Feds save Chicago from a terrorist plot?”
“Saw it, yeah.”
“Thoughts?”
“Giving up thinking for Lent. It’s not getting me anywhere. Look I’m gonna take a few days, OK? I got the wake tonight, funeral. Guess I’m not supposed to do any real cop work.”
Long look from Starshak. “Yeah, fine. But behave, OK? And watch your ass.”
Lynch drove out to Rusty’s.
“Can’t say I’m surprised to see you Johnny. Hear it’s been a rough morning.”
“Had better.”
“Good to see you at the ball last night.”
“Yeah. You left early.”
“Getting old, my boy. Connemara Ball takes a year off your life, you do it right. Makes me about a hundred and forty.”
“I can see that. Little tired myself this morning. Listen, I got a question for you.”
“Thought you might. About Stefanski’s kid.”
“So you know about the note.”
“Wang gave me a heads up. Said something about tectonic shifts, paradigms, usual Wang smoke and mirrors.”
Rusty stepped out of the doorway, let Lynch in, walked him back to the kitchen, bottle of Jameson’s open on the counter, glass half full next to it.
“Little hair of the dog,” Rusty said. “Breakfast. You want any?”
Lynch shook his head. “Just what you got on Stefanski.”
Rusty grunted, sat down on a stool at the counter.
“Stefanski, back in the day, used to go through a couple secretaries a year. Either they put out and he got bored with them, or they didn’t and he replaced them. But there was this Italian chick, Tina Delatanno. This is mid ’63. Before when Kennedy got shot. Word was Stefanski knocked her up. That had happened before. Stosh knew this doc, and usually that’s how it got taken care of. But this Tina, she wasn’t having that. She stuck around till she was showing a little bit and Stefanski canned her. So anyway, it figures there’s a little Stosh or Stoshette running around somewhere.”
“Stoshette. Wang said daughter. And Delatanno had the kid on March 13, 1964?”
“Don’t know how Wang got the date. Be about right, though.”
Rusty took a sip, grimaced a little as it went down, Lynch wondering what was up with the short answers, what happened to the Rusty who usually wouldn’t shut up.
“You wanna save me a step here, Rusty? I know you can run this down.”
Rusty raised his head, strange look on his face.
“Give me a minute.” Rusty walked into the next room. Lynch could hear him on the phone, couldn’t quite make out the conversation.
Rusty walked back into the room. “
Gave birth at County. Put the kid up for adoption. What I’m told, she maybe got leaned on a little about how this had to be done on the QT, so the adoption ended up going through some Jewish group, whole different circle there, put a little distance between the kid and Stefanski. Far as I go.”
“Got a name on the kid? Know what became of this Delatanno?”
Rusty just shook his head. Lynch staring him down, Rusty taking another sip of the whiskey, looking at his hands.
“OK,” Lynch said. “Listen. I’m running into some stuff about dad’s murder. You ever hear anything at the time made you think something was off?”
Rusty looked up slowly, his eyes red, wet, looking old and frightened. Shook his head again.
“Like I said, Johnny, far as I go.”
Lynch looked at him, knew he knew. Not everything, probably, just something. Or at least that there was something, Lynch wondering what it’s like spending half your life sitting on your own brother’s murder, thinking he should be pissed but just feeling sad, sad and tired.
“OK,” Lynch held Rusty’s eyes. The old man looked away, Lynch needed a drink all of a sudden. Picked up Rusty’s glass, downed it, set it down. Rusty looked back up.
“I probably won’t be stopping by for a while,” Lynch said, saw the old man’s face sag like Lynch had put a knife in him.
“I…” the old man paused, his eyes wet now. “See you tonight, though, if I’m welcome.” Lynch’s mother’s wake.
Lynch just gave a short nod, turned and headed for the door.
The old man called to his back, “Johnny, watch your ass. You don’t know these guys like I do.”
Lynch didn’t turn to face him.
CHAPTER 48 – CHICAGO
Back at his building Lynch ran into McGinty, McGinty holding out a piece of paper.
“You piss in somebody’s coffee, Lynch?”
Lynch looked at the sheet. A Notice of Violation from the city building department. So it was going to be like that.
“I’ll straighten it out,” Lynch said, and headed up the stairs.
When he opened his door, he saw Ferguson sitting in the same chair as last time, holding the same gun on him. Tiny Asian woman standing in his kitchen, a laptop open on the counter in front of her.
“Should I just get you a key?” Lynch asked. “Save you some time?”
“Wouldn’t save me that much time,” said Ferguson. “You’ve got a shitty lock.”
“Matter if I got a better one?”
“Not really.”
“So who’s your friend?”
“Friend might be pushing it. She’s a sociopath that works for me. Say hi to Lynch, Chen.”
Chen nodded.
Lynch nodded back. “OK, Ferguson, what do you want?”
“Wondering if maybe you’ve had any second thoughts about my last offer.”
“Why? Something changed?”
“You got pulled off the case, for one thing. Can’t be real happy about that.”
“No.”
“Thing is, I got pulled off, too. You might have heard about it. Little thing at the Palmer House?”
Lynch paused a moment at that.
“Guess when your guys pull, they pull a little harder.”
“Think of it as an early retirement offer. I declined.”
Lynch held his coat open, showed Ferguson his gun. “I gotta take this out again, break it down, all that shit? Or can I just sit down?”
“Old friends like us? Just have a seat. You do anything I don’t like, Chen’d kill you before I could anyway.”
Lynch sat on the couch.
“So, your offer,” Lynch said. “Yesterday you were offering the full if unofficial cooperation of the United States intelligence community to augment an official investigation by the Chicago Police Department. Now, I’m off the case. You’re off the case. So now you’re offering what? You and a tiny Chinese sociopath augmenting, basically, just me. I got that right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Guys from the hotel still trying to kill you?”
Ferguson raised his face, his eyes hard.
“Guys from the hotel are dead.”
“Point taken. To rephrase, whoever sent the guys from the hotel still trying to kill you?”
“Seems likely.”
“They gonna send more guys?”
“Probably.”
“And if I’m around, they’ll kill me, too?”
“Could be we kill them.”
“Always nice to have that to fall back on,” Lynch said. “You want to explain to me why I want in on this?”
Ferguson sighed, his voice getting pedantic, like Lynch was a deliberately willful student.
“Because you’re pretty sure that whatever is going on now has something to do with your father’s murder. And you’re pretty sure that if the Hurleys and my bosses have their way, it all goes back under the rug.”
Lynch leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“I thought you wanted it under the rug. Wanted it buried with your shooter. Fisher, right? Ishmael Fisher?”
Ferguson raised his eyebrows. “So you got the name.” Turned to look at Chen. “Told you he was good.” Chen just nodded. Ferguson turned back to Lynch.
“Yeah, under the rug looked pretty good up until they tried to kill me. Now my only shot at living through the week is to bring the whole thing down around their ears.”
Lynch turned to Chen. “That your position too?”
Chen nodded.
“OK,” said Lynch. “How do we do it?”
“Get all the info you can to your reporter friend. Once her editors hear about this, they’ll start having visions of Pulitzers and book deals, and the calls will start. Gonna take them a while to run things down, check facts, but word will percolate, and that will keep the pressure on the other team. Puts them on a tighter clock. Keeps them from spending much time looking for me, for one thing, because they’ll know they gotta close the book on Fisher ASAP. More pressure we put on, the better the chances that somebody makes a mistake. Meanwhile, we find a way to get Fisher and my ex-boss and all his boys in the same place at the same time.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Lynch said. “Theory we’ve got right now is this Fisher is targeting descendants of people tied to all this from 1971.”
Ferguson nodded. “Pretty much the theory we got right now, too.”
“There’s someone most people don’t know about who’d be way up on his list.”
Ferguson raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“You know Stefanski had a kid?” Lynch asked.
“No,” Chen said.
“She can speak?” Lynch asked.
“Doesn’t often,” Ferguson answered. “Tell me about this kid.”
Lynch told Ferguson what he knew about Stefanski, Delatanno, the adoption. As he talked, Chen started clicking away on her laptop.
“But you got no name?” Ferguson asked.
“No.”
“Give me another minute,” Chen said. More clicking.
“Don’t suppose you need my WiFi password?” Lynch asked.
Chen looked up for a moment, the typing paused, shook her head, then looked back down at the keyboard.
“Adoption records will be sealed,” Lynch said. “That’s not going to be on a public server anywhere.”
“Neither is your banking information,” Chen said without pausing. “You currently have $5,412.34 in checking.”
Chen kept banging away, jotting the occasional note. Finally, she looked up.
“Pearl Spritzen. Born March 13 1964. In and out of foster homes, juvenile record, then several arrests through the early Eighties. Drugs and prostitution mostly. Died of AIDS on August 6, 1989. She had a daughter, who was adopted out of Catholic Social Services. Andrea Manning, born November 30, 1980. She lives on the north side at Broadway and Sheridan. She is, apparently, a Catholic. The closest Catholic church is Saint Mary’s. Manning is listed in the current churc
h bulletin as a lector and the director of their religious education program, so we can assume she is devout and therefore attends confession.”
“It’s Holy Week,” Lynch said.
“So?” said Ferguson.
“You’re Catholic and you’re the confession going type, the one day of the year you’re probably going to go is Good Friday. Check the church, Chen. I bet you they’ve got a penance service on Friday.”
More clicking. “11am,” Chen said.
The room went quiet for a minute.
“Target, time and place,” Ferguson said.
“Do we figure Fisher knows?” asked Lynch.
“Every time we figure he doesn’t know something, we get our ass kicked,” said Ferguson.
“And do we figure Weaver knows?”
“We can make sure he does,” said Chen.
“So you’ll have everyone you need in the same place,” Lynch said.
“Right.”
“And then?”
“Then we shoot them.”
Clean up after one bloodbath by arranging a new one? Lynch thought. But he figured he’d keep that to himself. Still had time to find an angle, work this out some other way. In the meantime, he needed Ferguson and Chen on his side. He looked up and saw Chen staring at him like she could read his mind.
“You two want to get out of here maybe?” Lynch said. “I got my mother’s wake tonight, got some personal business to tend to.”
Ferguson just nodded, stood up, slid the .22 into his coat. Chen closed the laptop and the two of them walked to the door.
“We are sorry about your loss,” she said reflexively as she passed him, the words coming out of her like they were preprogrammed and somebody’d hit the right button. The bullshit official phrase of condolence. Lynch thought back on all the times he’d said that, families of victims, friends of victims. Hoped he’d managed a little more sincerity, a little more feeling.