by Dan O'Shea
“Where’d Corsco get the picture?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
Hardin zinged a rock into the fat man’s shoulder, just on principle. “When?”
“Fuck,” the fat man said. A huge bubble of snot hung down from his nose, the blood from his head now covering the left side of his face, soaking into his shirt. “Yesterday, right after lunch, OK?”
Hardin knew he should kill the guy. Hell, he’d killed plenty of guys. But something about plugging the fat man while he sat on his ass bawling in the middle of a ruin sat funny with him. Besides, other than Corsco’s name, Hardin still didn’t know shit. Leave the fat man around, and if he saw him again, maybe he’d know more. The fat man would be hard to miss.
“Give me your wallet,” Hardin said.
“Ah, man,” said the fat man. He shifted up on his side, fishing the wallet out of his back pocket, and tossed it to Hardin.
Hardin flipped it open. “Garbanzo? Really?”
The fat man shrugged. “Why you think they call me Beans?”
“I was thinking cause you fart all the time.”
“Hey,” the fat man said, all indignant suddenly. “I got a condition, OK?”
“Sure,” said Hardin, sticking the wallet in his hip pocket.
“Can I have the wallet back?” Garbanzo said. “I mean, you can keep the money and stuff. I got a picture of my mom in there. I don’t got a lot of pictures of her.”
Hardin flipped the wallet back open to a picture in one of those plastic sleeves. Fat woman with an Italian afro of gray hair, speed bags of chicken-skin fat hanging down off her arms. Hardin took the cash and cards out of the wallet and tossed it back to the fat man.
Hardin whipped one last rock at the fat man, right off his kneecap. “I see you again, you’re dead,” said Hardin. He took the keys from his pocket, got in the Grand Marquis and pulled away, the fat man in the rear view mirror still sitting on his ass in the gravel, not looking like he was in any hurry to get up.
OK, he thought. I needed a gun, now I’ve got two. Not a bad morning, aside from the whole mob-wanting-me-dead thing.
Beans Garbanzo hurt all over. He’d also shit himself. The gash on his head had stopped gushing and was just seeping now, but the side of his head was swollen up like he was one of them Special Olympics kids. His leg hurt bad, and his chest hurt when he breathed. It was going to be a long walk back to South Shore, and who the hell knew how long once he got there before he could find a phone. Fucking Snakes. He’d told him not to listen to this guy about the diamonds, and now look at this mess. He’d call his sister, he figured. She could drive in from Palos. Then he could get out some feelers, see how much shit he was in.
Up ahead, a gray Malibu pulled in off of South Shore and headed toward him. The car turned right about ten yards in front of him, blocking his path. The driver’s window slid down. Olive-skinned guy, hair slicked back neat, dark suit and tie. What the fuck? Did Corsco have somebody out on him already?
The man smiled. “Hello,” he said.
“Yeah, hi,” said Garbanzo.
“What is your business with Hardin?”
“Who the fuck are you, and what are you talking about?”
The man smiled again.” You and your dead companion abducted Nick Hardin from the Grant Park garage and drove him here. Sometime during that trip, he killed your friend and disarmed you. He then knocked you to the ground and threw stones at you until you told him what he wanted to know. Whatever trouble you may be in, and with whomever that trouble may be, you are already in it. I simply want to know what you’ve already told Hardin. And then I will be on my way.”
This actually made sense to Garbanzo. “Yeah, what the fuck. Tony Corsco sent us – Snakes DeGetano and me – to kill that Hardin fuck.”
“And who is Tony Corsco?” the smiling man asked.
“Jesus, second guy today hasn’t heard of Tony. Who the fuck are you people? Tony Corsco runs the goddamn mob.”
“I see. And what was his complaint with Mr Hardin?”
“Look, buddy, he don’t explain shit like that to me and Snake. He tells us kill some guy, then we kill him.”
“Thank you, you’ve been most helpful,” the smiling man said. Then he raised the .22 from his lap and shot Garbanzo three times through the forehead so quickly that Garbanzo hadn’t even twitched before the third round hit him.
Husam al Din drove back north up Lake Shore Drive. So the American mafia, too, had an interest in Hardin. With Stein dead, could Hardin be trying to sell them the diamonds? Had the mafia tried to steal them instead?
Al Din could not know. If not the diamonds, then some other business. But he did know this: guided by intel provided by Javadi from some asset with access to Chicago’s surveillance system, al Din had pulled into the garage just in time to see Hardin abducted by two armed professional criminals. They had searched him; Hardin had no weapon. Al Din had followed them south, and, by the time they arrived at the vacant land near the lake, one of the criminals was dead, Hardin was armed, and the other criminal was not. This Hardin was something more than an errand boy for television news people. It was fortuitous that al Din had learned this as a witness and not as an object lesson. He would have to approach this Hardin with care.
CHAPTER 15
When they were done with Telling, Lynch and Bernstein went back to the precinct, started going through red light camera shots from the intersection near the shelter. The problem was the camera only took a shot when someone ran the light, so they had to put all the shots in order, make a timeline, and see if they could pick out any likely cars. Lynch had the tech guy send up shots from the same time of day for a week before the shooting as well. Some of the cars popped up more than once. Had to be locals. They could rule them out.
Starting an hour or so before the game, each shot showed cars cruising the street, hoping to save the $35 it cost to park at the stadium. About forty minutes to tip-off, Bernstein got a clean shot of a Lexus backing into a spot and ran that plate. It was registered to a Harry Weber in Lisle.
“Christ,” Lynch said. “You park a car worth forty grand on that street, trying to save a few bucks?”
“No explaining people,” said Bernstein.
They flipped through the post-game shots, but the Lexus was gone about half an hour before the shooting at the shelter. Five minutes before game time, a black Escalade that had been parked one spot up from the shelter was gone, replaced by a medium gray sedan with a low roofline. There was an old Suburban in front of it, so they couldn’t make out much on the vehicle, just part of the roof and the top corner of the windshield on the driver’s side. Again, they flipped to the post-game shots. Somebody ran a light about ten minutes before the shooting and the car was still there. Next violation was twenty minutes later, and the car was gone.
“Looks like a Malibu,” said Bernstein. “One of the new ones.”
“Yeah,” said Lynch. “What’s that white spot on the windshield? Some kind of sticker?”
Lynch called the IT guy who had pulled the photos, gave him the ID number on the shot. The IT guy blew it up on his screen. He couldn’t get a lot of resolution, but he told Lynch it looked like one of the barcode stickers some of the rental car companies put on the windshields of their stock. Lynch asked him to run through any photos they had around the stadium a half-mile in every direction for the ten minutes before and the ten minutes after the first and last shots of the car, and get him the plate number of every gray Malibu – bonus points if it had the white sticker. Guy said he would, but it was going to take a day or so.
Lynch was about to grab some coffee when the desk sergeant called up from downstairs.
“Got an Ashley Urra here to see you. Says you talked to her out at the UC on the Stein thing?”
“OK,” said Lynch. “Send her up.”
Urra was less made up, her hair in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a Blackhawks jersey that was too big on her. It hung down off one shoulder, showing the s
trap to a running bra. Still perky. She sat in the chair next to Lynch’s desk. Bernstein rolled his chair around.
“So, Ms Urra. What can I do for you?”
“It’s about that man from Abe’s box – the one I thought I remembered? I saw him again today.”
Lynch sat up in his chair. “Where?”
“On TV. He was on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah, but on a clip they ran.”
“What?”
“You know Shamus Fenn is in town, right, shooting that film? Well, he was on Oprah, her Oscar special thing? They were talking about the child abuse stuff with him? You remember, that came out a few years ago? And they showed a clip from that big charity party they had in Africa from back then? When he got in a fight with that guy?”
Lynch had a vague recollection – some stupid drunk celebrity shit. “Yeah, OK, I remember that.”
“The guy from the box? He was the one who got in the fight with Seamus Fenn. That’s where I’d seen him. I mean I was in high school, but that video was all over the place back then.”
Jesus, thought Lynch. I got a dead zillionaire, a dead one-armed refugee, and now some mystery guest at an African charity party who got in a punch up with a movie star – and both him and the movie star are in town?
“The other guy,” Lynch asked, “they mention his name?”
“I wrote it down. Nick Hardin. They said his name was Nick Hardin.”
CHAPTER 16
Hardin knew he had to move, had to get out of town, get some space. He also needed to get off the grid. Somebody had gotten a line on him somehow, so he had to figure the Nigel Fox ID was shot. Hardin had found Nigel dead in his apartment three months back, the booze finally catching up with him. And Nigel’s passport and ID were just sitting there on his table. Date on the passport made Nigel fifty-four – Hardin would have figured he was sixty-five at least, but that’s what pickling your liver will do for you. Height and weight were about the same. He knew a guy who could swap the pictures out, and with Hardin’s gray hair, he could be a young fifty-four. Always nice to have a spare set of papers, and he didn’t figure Nigel would mind.
Nigel had gotten him this far, but from here out, Hardin was on his own.
Hardin drove the Marquis back up to the Loop. Found a metered spot on Columbus, behind the Art Institute. He dumped the Mercury there, walked to the garage, drove his rental back to O’Hare and turned it in, grabbed the L back downtown, then jumped on the Burlington commuter rail out to Aurora. Going home.
Hardin wasn’t Hardin when he joined the Legion. He was Mike Griffin. He was home on leave at the end of his second hitch in the Marines, ready to re-up, on the road to being a lifer. It was a few weeks before Christmas. He’d hooked up with his best friend from high school, Esteban Sandoval, and they were heading out to celebrate Esteban’s kid sister’s twenty-first birthday. Hardin had always been close to Juanita in a big brother kind of way. He knew she chafed a little at the whole macho Mexican culture thing, the limited expectations. She used to talk to him sometimes, and she’d written him pretty steadily while he was in the Corps. The last time he’d seen her was her high school graduation, three years back, it kind of hitting him out of the blue what a looker she was turning into, and her giving him a hug when he left that felt like something other than just goodbye. And she’d opened up a lot in her letters since then. Him too, really, going back and forth about some things he’d never gotten into with anybody else.
And now here she was, walking out with Esteban, and damn. He didn’t know what it was exactly, that line where someone’s a kid on one side of it and she’s a woman on the other. But she’d crossed it.
Griffin had plenty of dough saved from the Corps, there not being much to spend it on over in Sandland, so he was playing big shot. Dinner at Red Lobster out at the mall, and then the old Toyota dealership on New York Street that some guy’d made into a dance club. Juanita was turning some heads. Fuck that, she was turning all of them. And Griffin was falling for her. The first slow dance came on, Esteban clinched up with a girl he’d been working on since they arrived. Griffin stepped back, letting Juanita take the lead, to see if she wanted to stay out for the dance or sit it out. She took his hand, pulled him to her, and he held her as you held a woman. He felt the way she fit against him, and he wanted to say something, felt like he should say something. But she felt graceful and true in his arms and any words he thought to say seemed awkward and false. So he just held her and swayed to the music, his hand moving slowly up and down on her bare back, her backless dress open almost to her waist, hoping that the feeling of his hand on her skin was saying whatever he could not. Then he felt her lips brush against his neck as she stretched up for a minute on her toes, her mouth now right next to his ear, and she said, “I know. Me too.”
Halfway through the night, on the way to the men’s room, he told Esteban. “I think I’m getting a little thing for your sister, man. Maybe a big thing.”
Esteban grinned, slapped him on the shoulder. “Fuck, man, you just figuring that out? You two, you been a thing for a while. Better you than most of the scum in the neighborhood, dude. You gonna be a gentleman, right?”
“Part of the Marine code, hombre.”
They danced, they drank – it was the best night Griffin had had in a long time. Best night he’d had, period.
At closing time, Griffin, Esteban, and Juanita were walking out to the car. Halfway across the lot, a stretch Caddy cut them off. Tiny Hernandez and two of his goons got out. Griffin knew Hernandez ran the Latin Kings on the east side of Aurora. He was also the younger brother of Jamie Hernandez, who was a major dealer. Tiny looked like a human cement block – six feet tall, six feet thick, a flat, feral face on a stump neck.
“I been watching you, mamacita,” he said to Juanita. “You like the finest thing ever been in that dump. I’m gonna take you out, show you where the real players hang.”
“I’m not anybody’s mamacita,” Juanita said.
“Thanks for the offer, sport,” said Griffin. “But I don’t think she wants to go.”
“You got shit in your ears? I didn’t ask. Puta like that, she don’t know what she wants. Not till I give it to her.” Hernandez’s goons got a chuckle out of that.
Griffin caught the look from Esteban – no way was his sister getting in that car. And nothing good was going to come of waiting for the other side to make a move. Esteban yelled for Juanita to get inside, put his shoulder down and drove into the goon on the right – catching him in the gut, driving him back against the Caddy, hard. Griffin feinted toward Tiny, knowing the other goon would rush to help. Then he planted, turned and put the stiffened fingers of his right hand into the guy’s throat. Felt something crumple, guy’s trachea if he’d done it right. The way the guy went down, Griffin figured he was on his way to dead.
Griffin turned back to see Hernandez with his hand in his coat, a nine coming out. Griffin closed, locking both hands on the pistol, turning it down and in. Hernandez pulled the trigger, blowing a hole through the inside of his own thigh.
Griffin twisted the gun out of Hernandez’s hand as he went down. He turned to check on Esteban. The first goon had soaked up the slam against the car, and Esteban must have got in a shot to his face, because the goon’s nose was running blood. But the goon had forty pounds on Esteban. The goon got a knee up into Esteban’s groin, shoved him back, and pulled a gun.
Griffin shot him through the side of the head.
Hernandez was on the ground, cussing, blood arcing out of his thigh.
“You gonna die, you fuck. You know who I am? You gonna fucking die.”
“You first, sport,” said Griffin. “That’s your femoral artery emptying out there. Unless you’re up on your first aid, you got maybe two minutes before you bleed out.”
Hernandez looked down at the blood jetting out into the parking lot for a moment. Then he looked back up to Griffin. “Jesus, you gotta help me. I mean, this shit? We let it go, right? Shit happens. But you gotta help
me.”
“No,” Griffin said, turning back toward the club where Juanita was waiting. “I don’t.”
Griffin had done all the killing, so he took the heat with the cops – said Esteban and Juanita had been inside, he’d gone out to get the car, Hernandez and his goons had said something about taking the girl, Griffin said they weren’t, and the shit hit the fan. The DA didn’t file any charges. The Aurora cops knew Hernandez, checked on Griffin’s military record, and they backed Griffin right down the line. But a week later, some dumb-ass kid, maybe sixteen, made a try for Griffin with a knife while Griffin was in the checkout line at Walgreens. He broke the kid’s arm and only had to twist it a little to discover word was out. Jamie Hernandez wanted Griffin’s head on a wall, and he’d pay top dollar to whoever delivered it. Even the Marines would be no good – Griffin had seen enough gang signs carved into enough latrines to know better.
Esteban and Juanita drove him to O’Hare the day he left for France.
“I owe you my life,” Esteban told him as they shook hands. “Anytime, anywhere, you need me, you call.”
Griffin nodded.
Juanita stepped up. “When the time is right, I’m here,” she said. She held Griffin’s face in her hands, and she kissed him, gently, but for a long time.
Hardin had been dreaming about that kiss for years.
Not always good dreams. Six months into his Legion hitch, Hardin felt clear enough to reach out to some of his Aurora contacts, just to touch base. Found out that Hernandez had killed Esteban a few months before. Which meant Juanita might be on his list, too. Made a call into the Aurora cops, but they told him Juanita had blown town, no sign Hernandez was looking for her. Just somebody at the club had told Hernandez that Esteban had been in the parking lot that night, been part of the scrape.