Trigger City

by Sean Chercover

  I didn’t have to knock. If Darnell hadn’t recognized me on his video monitor when I rang the bell outside, he wouldn’t have buzzed me in. He didn’t have to worry about an upstairs tenant buzzing a stranger in—he owned the building and the two floors above were unoccupied. I opened the apartment door and was greeted by the sweet smell of reefer and the heavy bass notes of hip-hop. I crossed the threshold into the darkened living room.

  Blue bulbs in wall sconces provided some mood lighting and African masks threw ominous shadows against the wall. On another wall, Malcolm X raised his fist in a Black Power salute. A red lava lamp sat on a glass table in the corner.

  But most of the light in the room came from the large screen of an Apple computer. A knight in full armor hopped around the screen, swinging his sword at an angry green dragon while dodging the dragon’s fiery breath.

  “One minute,” said Darnell Livingstone without turning away from the battle. He sat in a new wheelchair, clutching a game controller and stabbing at it with his thumbs. The back of the chair sported a sharp white “C” and a pattern of white skulls on a black background. The wheels had three thick curved spokes of bright chrome, each spoke forming a shiny question mark.

  Darnell lost the use of his legs back when he was with the Gangster Disciples, a top Chicago street gang with about thirty thousand members in maybe thirty states. Ten years ago, the Disciples successfully fought back an incursion by the Black P Stones, but during the war a bullet took out Darnell’s spinal column, just above the waist. He was sixteen years old.

  After three months in the hospital, Darnell quit the Disciples and went into business for himself. Because he’d given his legs to the cause, they let him. And they charged him a much lower street tax than they collected from the other independent operators in their territories.

  I’d met Darnell when a criminal defense attorney hired me to dig up some reasonable doubt for a client charged with unlawful use of a weapon. Darnell was the defendant. He’d been busted for carrying a switchblade and he was guilty of it, but we got him an acquittal. Darnell told me to call him if I ever needed anything he could supply.

  And a month ago, perhaps against my better judgment, I called.

  The brave knight on the computer screen miscalculated, hopped in the wrong direction, and was consumed by the dragon’s fire. Darnell flipped on a desk lamp and let out a baritone chuckle. He pivoted the chair around to face me. “That same motherfucker gets me every time. Level 4 is a bitch.”

  I offered my hand and he launched into a complicated soul-brother handshake. I followed along, gave up after the fifth maneuver, and said, “Jesus Christ, doesn’t anybody just shake hands anymore?”

  “Not on this block, Jimbo. Take a seat.” I sat on a black leather chair and Darnell wheeled down a hallway and returned with a couple bottles of High Life and handed me one. He picked a half-smoked joint out of the ashtray and sparked it up. The flame threw light on his forearm, which bore an old tattoo. A heart with wings and horns and a tail, a six-pointed crown above, and a pitchfork on each side.

  It made me think of Blake Sten’s Hawk River tattoo. You expect members of a street gang to ink themselves with gang symbols, but how many IBM employees tattoo the corporate logo on their bodies? What does such a permanent and personal statement say about the corporate culture? Made me think that Hawk River had a lot in common with the Gangster Disciples.

  I said, “Music’s a little loud.”

  Darnell picked up a remote control and pressed a button and the music came down to a tolerable level. He said, “Saul Williams. You ever hear him?”

  “No.”

  “Man’s got something to say.” He held the joint out to me.

  “I’m good, thanks.” I took a pull off the beer bottle and lit a cigarette, just to be smoking something. “Looks like Xzibit pimped your ride.”

  “No doubt. Got four-wheel independent suspension and all the motherfuckin’ options. Called the Shockblade, cost me almost five grand. Worth it, too.”

  “Business must be good.”

  Darnell smiled. “Speaking of, how many you need?”

  “Sixty should do me.”

  “That’s what you said last time, but here you are again.”

  “I’ll get another scrip from my doctor in a few weeks,” I said.

  “All right.” He left the room again and I drank my beer and listened to Saul Williams. Darnell was right; the man had a great deal to say.

  I thought about what I was doing here and how it would cost me my detective’s license if I got caught. It was a risk I was willing to take. This was my second buy from Darnell, but it probably wouldn’t be my last.

  Darnell Livingstone came back with a pill bottle and traded it to me for $300. I swallowed the last of my beer, thanked him, and left.

  “Be seein’ you, Jimbo,” he said as I closed the door behind me. The words landed on me like an accusation.

  I drove home to my own apartment for a change. I’d been living at Joan Richmond’s condo in recent days, returning home only to do laundry and exercise and pick up fresh clothes. I felt more at home in Joan’s place than in my own apartment, but I had to admit that the proximity might have contributed to that loss of objectivity Terry warned me about.

  It was time to spend a few nights at home, nightmares or not.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  My Para-Ordnance was snug in its Kramer holster but the horsehide was not on my hip. I held it out in front of me, away from my body. Held it butt forward with the barrel facing my chest, placed it on the counter. I’d had another flashback episode at 4:00 A.M. and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after, so I was a bit fuzzy this morning and compensated with a pot of strong black coffee. As a result I was now both fuzzy and jittery and didn’t want to take any chances. A quick reveal of your gun is never a winning plan when facing armed guards with shoot-to-kill authority.

  The guards in the security hut seemed to appreciate my careful approach and managed not to shoot me. The younger one even smiled and the older one called me sir. I gave him my ID and told him that I had an appointment with Special Agent Holborn. He checked my name on a list and called up to the main building. I emptied all the metal from my pockets and took off my diving watch and sunglasses and put everything in a little plastic tray. Took off my jacket, shoes, and belt and put them on the X-ray conveyor and walked through the metal detector. The younger guard held an electronic wand at the ready but the metal detector didn’t beep so all he got to do is stand there and smile at me some more. The older guard put my gun in a locker and gave me a claim check and returned my ID and asked me if I needed a shoehorn.

  They seemed friendly enough.

  A third armed guard arrived and escorted me from the security hut to the main building. Along the way, we passed an American flag and a City of Chicago flag and the FBI’s own flag, just in case we became confused about our exact location. We passed through glass doors and entered the bright lobby of the new FBI Chicago Division Headquarters, where some more American flags and a big FBI seal left nothing to chance. A fourth armed security guard stood just inside the doors.

  “How ya doin’?” I said.

  “Please check in at reception, sir.”

  The guard who’d escorted me from the security hut took his position by the interior door and stood at parade rest. I approached the reception counter, where a young woman sat behind thick bulletproof glass. She had lots of curly hair and a full figure and a face that you’d expect to see in an ad for some beauty soap that boasts of its purity. I didn’t know her name but I’d checked in with her a few times before and we nodded mutual recognition to each other. I put my driver’s license on the counter, slid it under the glass.

  “Two tickets for the 7:30 showing of The Maltese Falcon, please,” I said.

  She gave me a bigger smile than I’d earned. “Welcome back, Shamus.”

  I played along, “How’s tricks, G-Girl?”

  “That’s ‘G-Woman.’�
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  “I’ll remember for next time.”

  She winked at me and said, “See that you do,” then dropped the flirtation and checked my driver’s license and nodded toward the seating area. “Special Agent Holborn will be down to see you.” She slid my license back under the glass.

  A couple minutes later the inner office doors opened and Special Agent Holborn walked my way. He wore black wingtips and a dark blue suit.

  There are dark blue suits and then there are dark blue suits, and his was decidedly not off-the-rack. But Holborn wasn’t on the take; he just spent a larger portion of his income on clothing than do most FBI agents. A lifelong bachelor with no kids, he could afford to look good.

  I stood and held out my hand. Holborn took my hand and said, “Don’t get up,” and guided me back down on the couch and sat beside me. “What’s up?”

  “Maybe we should talk in your office,” I said, “for privacy.” Truth was, I felt slighted that he hadn’t invited me in.

  “I’m busy, Ray. You want my attention, tell me something.”

  I considered what would best get his attention. I said, “Is Jia Lun a spy for China’s MSS?”

  “I said tell me something. That was a question.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I said. “Don’t you want to know why I’m asking it?” I smiled at him and waited. When the silence became heavy, I added, “That was another question, by the way.”

  Holborn shot me a look. “I really don’t have time for this.” He glanced at his watch, sighed, stood up. “All right, come with me.”

  We passed through the inner doors and walked down a long hallway, past a granite display with photos honoring FBI agents who had fallen in the line of duty, and arrived at a bank of elevators. Holborn called the elevator and we got in and he punched a button and the doors closed and the elevator began to rise.

  “Visitors are not normally allowed past the first floor,” said Holborn. That was as close to an apology as I was going to get and I decided to acknowledge it.

  “Well, thanks for seeing me,” I said.

  It seemed to me that Holborn still spent far too much of his energy keeping me in my place. But even if I didn’t tremble at the sight of his badge, I’d always played ball when it counted and I’d even gift-wrapped the largest public corruption case of his career for him.

  At least that’s how I saw it—he might tell it differently. He’d probably say that I’d repeatedly held out information and broken more laws than there are commandments and shared evidence with the press that should’ve gone straight to the feds.

  And we’d both be telling the truth.

  I’d brought him another slam dunk just a couple of months ago when a woman tried to hire me to kill her abusive husband. That case had ended badly for me—and worse for the woman—but it was another gift-wrapped feather for Holborn’s career cap. So I thought I’d done more than enough to merit a little respect.

  We got off the elevator and walked down a narrow hallway. Framed photos of all the Chicago Division’s honchos covered the wall, including the nation’s first female special agent in charge. The current SAC was a handsome guy who looked like a movie star. Maybe George Clooney would play him on the big screen. Fifteen years ago, Treat Williams.

  Holborn opened a door and led me into a long boardroom, closed the door behind us. We sat in two of the thousand leather chairs that surrounded an impressive table, its wood-inlay surface polished to a high shine. There was a six-foot flat-panel LCD screen on the end wall. Yet another American flag stood on one side of the screen. On the other side, a metal easel holding a giant pad of paper. The top sheet was blank.

  I counted the chairs. There were twenty-two.

  “Big room…we having company?” I said.

  “My office, as you so generously called it, is a cubicle.”

  “Didn’t mean anything by it,” I said.

  “Tell me what you heard about Jia Lun, and what you think it has to do with us.”

  So I told my story, including the scrubbing of Hawk River from the Joan Richmond murder file, but leaving out my conversation with Mike Angelo as I had with Terry. I also left out Tim Dellitt and Ernie Banks, but I told him Blake Sten’s story about Steven Zhang and Jia Lun and the FBI. Holborn took notes as I talked.

  “And since you brought me up here,” I concluded, “I assume that Jia Lun is in fact a Chinese agent.”

  “He is,” said Holborn. “But that’s an open secret, widely known throughout the intel community. So this Blake Sten of yours may or may not be selling you a line.”

  “Did he bring Zhang to you guys?”

  “How would I know?” Holborn blew out a long breath. “You really don’t have a clue how we work around here, do you?”

  “You’ve never been the talkative one in our relationship, Agent Holborn.”

  “Watch it,” he said with a glare that would make a lesser detective flinch.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Then I realized how he’d taken it. “Christ,” I said, “do you hear a gay joke in everything I say?”

  Holborn watched me closely for a second, nodded away the misunderstanding. “All right,” he said. “You remember Hanssen?”

  “Sure.”

  It was a famous story. The son of a Chicago cop, Robert Hanssen studied dentistry at Northwestern, but switched to an MBA. After graduation he went to work as an investigator in the CPD Internal Affairs Division, which probably didn’t thrill his dad a whole lot. In 1976, Hanssen left CPD and joined the FBI. Within three years, he was assigned to Soviet counterintelligence. And unbeknownst to everyone, he became a spy for the Soviet Union.

  Over the next two decades, Hanssen rose through the FBI ranks and did a lot of damage to the country. At one point, he was even tasked with finding the Soviet mole within the FBI. They actually put the mole in charge of the investigation that was supposed to catch the mole. He went straight for a few years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, then started selling secrets to the new Russian secret police, the FSB.

  He wasn’t found out until 2001. When they finally arrested him, he didn’t howl or cry or protest his innocence.

  He just said: “What took you so long?”

  The Robert Hanssen story is right out of a John le Carré novel and it would take me an hour to scratch the surface. It is one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of the FBI.

  Also the Bureau’s biggest black eye, post-Hoover. At least, that we know about.

  Holborn said, “In the wake of Hanssen, new operating procedures were implemented. The policy is called SCIFS, which stands for…Secret, Compartmentalized, Information…” He stopped and thought, smiled at himself. “Huh, can’t remember the rest. Secret Compartmentalized Information…F…S.” He shrugged. “Nope. It’s not there. Anyway, what it means is, now we work on a need-to-know basis.”

  “That’s gotta leave you guys pretty hamstrung.”

  “It’s an imperfect world,” said Holborn. “Anyway, we all work terrorism because that’s the Bureau’s main focus since 9/11, but otherwise it’s strictly need to know. I don’t work under the China desk, so I don’t need to know.”

  “But I’ve just given you a need,” I said. “If Hawk River engineered Joan Richmond’s death to keep her from testifying to Congress…I’d think the FBI might take an interest in that. Or am I missing something.”

  “Sure we would,” Holborn said, “but all you’ve offered is wild speculation. Looks to me like you’re trying to get the Bureau to do your fishing for you.”

  He wasn’t completely wrong. “How about this…I’ll keep working it from my angle and see where it leads. And if it leads somewhere, I’ll bring it to you. But in the meantime you could talk to your China guys, explain your need to know, find out if Sten was telling the truth.” I reached inside my jacket and withdrew copies of the Steven Zhang and Blake Sten photos, put them on the shiny table.

  Holborn picked up the photo of Blake Sten and his ey
ebrows danced. He didn’t mention the burn scar or the weightlifter’s neck. He didn’t have to. “And if this Sten character was lying about bringing it to us, then what?”

  “The photo of Zhang and Jia Lun could’ve been Photoshopped, but it didn’t look like it. So let’s assume for the moment that Zhang met with a Chinese MSS case officer. If Sten didn’t bring it to the FBI, maybe he used it as leverage against Zhang…”

  “Blackmailed him into killing the Richmond woman.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Maybe. I don’t know enough yet. Knowing if Sten brought it to you guys would be a big help.”

  Holborn gestured to the photos. “I can keep these?”

  “Be my guest.”

  He put the photos between the pages of his notebook and stood up. We walked in silence to the elevators and rode down to the ground floor and walked out to the lobby.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll ask. But I won’t tell you what I learn.”

  “Agent Holborn…”

  “Go do your private detecting, Ray. If you turn up something concrete, bring it back and perhaps we’ll share information. Perhaps. But be warned—if you hold out on me, I’ll put you out of business. I’m not getting played by you again.”

  “Hey, I had to stay alive,” I reminded him. “And besides, you came out of it looking pretty good.”

  “Hardly the point,” said Holborn.

  “If I learn anything, you’ll be the first to hear about it,” I said. “You gotta know, I have no intention of taking on these guys alone.”

  And I meant it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I pulled out of the FBI visitor parking lot and headed east on Roosevelt. A tan Crown Victoria turned in behind me, coming off Hoyne. Two white guys wearing suits and sunglasses. They settled into traffic three cars back. I could’ve circled the block to determine if they were following me, but I didn’t want to overreact. My nerves were still raw from lack of sleep and caffeine overdose.