The Unspoken

by Smith, Ian K.

  I dialed Burke.

  “The ’89 Chevy,” he said as soon as he picked up. “We’re already on it. The other two didn’t check out. The truck was some old guy scrounging for junk. He’s lived on Halsted for fifty years. The minivan was a church lady who had gotten lost and was trying to turn around. She was heading over to Good Hope MB over on Seventy-First for some missionary meeting.”

  “And the Chevy?” I asked.

  “Registered to a guy with an address in Chatham.”

  “Have they picked him up yet?”

  “Nobody’s home. We’re combing the neighborhood.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Juwan Elrick Davis. They call him JuJu. Where the fuck they get these names, I don’t know. Twenty-seven years old. Lives with his girlfriend and her four-year-old son. Two priors. Small stuff. Weed and misdemeanor battery. No time served. No gang affiliation. Finished a couple of years at Simeon, where he played basketball. Was kicked off the team for disciplinary reasons. Never went back to school.”

  “Any connection to Chopper?”

  “None we can tell so far, but we’re still digging.”

  “The timing is perfect,” I said, feeling lucky. “He comes out of South Wallace almost an hour and a half after the ME had Chopper dying. Opportunity is there, but now we need the motive.”

  “We’re looking all over the city,” Burke said. “I’ve put almost a hundred men on it. We need to get him into custody before Ice finds him.”

  No sooner had I hung up than my phone rang.

  “Impeccable timing,” I said to Carolina.

  “You were thinking about how much you missed me?”

  “And various other thoughts.”

  “All talk and no action.”

  “Until it becomes all action and no talking.”

  “I have that info on the license plate,” she said. “It’s registered under a business. Lakeview Holdings, LLC. Their address is some fancy law firm on Michigan Ave. Ten names in the masthead. One of them is the managing member of Lakeview Holdings.”

  “Which means they’re burying the real owner’s name.”

  “Precisely,” she said. “Now I have to exhume the body. I’ve been following the paperwork for the last couple of hours. So far, I’ve gone through five LLCs registered in five different states, but the same partner is listed as the managing member. I have six more companies to unwind.”

  “Longer the rod, bigger the fish.”

  “Didn’t know you fished.”

  “I don’t. Just sounded good.”

  “You always find a way to make me smile. Don’t worry, it’s gonna take a little more time, but I’ll get the real name.”

  “Working like this, I’m gonna have to start paying you.”

  “A lot more than lunch on Michigan Avenue.”

  “You keep forgetting about the value of the company,” I said. “Remember, that’s priceless.”

  27

  I SAT OUTSIDE the makeshift church an hour ahead of the service starting time. I wanted to make sure I saw Stanton enter the building and that there was no deviation from his normal routine. Success in operations like this heavily depended on predictability and consistency. A short old man scuffling with a small limp and wearing a Chicago White Sox cap was the first to arrive. He pulled out a wad of keys, fumbled for a few seconds, then unlocked the door and entered the building. Darkness had just fallen, and the neighborhood was settling in for the night.

  Half an hour later, a young woman pushing a stroller with one hand and holding a toddler in the other walked up and negotiated the door before entering. Minutes later they started arriving in clusters of two and three. I recognized the old woman I had sat next to a couple of weeks ago. The boy who had assisted Stanton in the service walked up from the south side of the street and opened the door. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen. He wore a pair of white earbuds and bobbed his head slightly. He was wide at the shoulders, with long arms. This was the first time I had noticed the gold earring in his right ear. He waved at another teenager walking in his direction from the north. They ducked through the unmarked door together.

  Minutes later, a small blue Toyota pulled up. Stanton quickly jumped out of the back seat, talking on the phone. He stood outside for a minute; then when he finished his conversation, he opened the door and entered the building. Now that I had confirmation, I started my van and pulled out to Ashland, then swung a left on the next street, then another left into the alley. I wanted the van facing east so I could see anyone walking across the alley.

  I drove slowly past the metal dumpster resting against the side wall of the church. The building across the alley had a small side door with a light over it that was turned off. There weren’t any cameras covering the alley, but to be certain, I had already hit the switch that lifted the back license plate frame of the van, rotating it up one slot to reveal an Indiana license plate I had taken from a scrapyard less than a year ago. I was positioned so that Stanton would have to walk by me when he entered the alley. The darkness in the alley wouldn’t let him see inside the van.

  It was seven o’clock. I turned on the radio to the classical offerings of WFMT and waited.

  THE FIRST PARISHIONER crossed the alley at 8:14 p.m. The service was letting out. Stanton was probably shaking hands and making plans to see everyone next week. Little did he know it would be the last time he saw them.

  I unlocked the van’s interior cage door, which led into the back cargo bay, then unlocked the back doors and stood behind the rear of the van, out of view from anyone crossing or entering the alley. I tapped a few buttons on my phone and turned on the camera in the front window so I could see the entrance to the alley. The video lit up the display. I sat and waited.

  At 8:29 p.m. he came into view. He was alone with the garbage bag. He looked up for a second, a little surprised to see the van, but he kept coming anyway. He walked by and headed for the dumpster fifteen feet behind me. When he was a few feet past, I stepped around the van and swung the hard rubber nightstick, striking him across his upper back with enough force to knock him to the ground.

  He dropped his cell phone and let out a yelp of agony that was more from the surprise than the immediate pain of the blow. I quickly threw a burlap bag over his head, lifted him up, and pushed him in the back of the van. I grabbed his phone, closed the doors, restrained his wrists, then sat him up. I walked through the interior cage door, jumped behind the wheel, and backed down the alley, away from the building and onto Ashland.

  I drove west a few blocks to avoid any of the people still walking home from the service, then pulled the car over, jumped out, and smashed the phone with my foot. I picked up the pieces and threw them in a nearby trash can to make sure there would be no way to digitally track where I was taking him. I pulled away from the curb, then looped around east toward the lake and our remote destination in southeast Chicago, where the US Steel plant had been abandoned some twenty-five years ago. Over four hundred acres of waterfront property once known as South Works sat vacant and unproductive, a cruel reminder of the neighborhood’s illustrious past and cataclysmic demise. Several years ago, I had purchased a small, unremarkable house on a forgotten street just along the southwest edge of the vast property.

  I had grown tired of the unfair justice where evil, unrepentant monsters whose sole intentions were to wreak havoc and cause harm got off with barely a slap on the wrist. A legal technicality here, a favor from a high-placed connection there, and these cruel, coldhearted bastards were left free to inflict even more damage than they had already done. It wasn’t fair to the victims or their families, yet no one did anything about it. I had tried ignoring the impulse to do something, but I couldn’t suppress the thoughts. So I’d decided to try my best to do right by the victims.

  When I’d bought the place, I decided I wouldn’t touch the exterior, because it looked so ordinary and unremarkable, perfect for what I planned on doing inside. So I took my time—almost two
years—to refurbish the interior so that it met my needs. This would be my first real test.

  I turned on the cameras in the cargo bay. Stanton was sitting up against the side of the truck, thrashing futilely as he tried to free himself of the bag and wrist restraints. It was 8:35 p.m. Everything had gone as planned.

  28

  I SAT IN MY office, feet on my filing cabinet, staring out the window at my million-dollar view of Lake Michigan. A few clouds barely interrupted the wide stretch of blue sky, and the sun released all its might, bumping the temperature into the low eighties. Runners and cyclists jammed the paths in Grant Park, and a group of what looked like college students scratched together a game in the volleyball pit.

  I had lots of pieces to the puzzle, but I still couldn’t make them fit. I was trying to be optimistic, but Chopper’s death made it a strong possibility that he and Butterfly had already reunited in the afterlife.

  I picked up the phone on my desk—my second line, which had a blocked number. I dialed the emergency contact number I had swiped from Regina’s computer at Calderone & Calderone. It rang three times; then voice mail kicked in. An automated voice instructed me to leave a message. No clue as to whom the number belonged to. I hung up instead. It was time to go see my old man.

  THE XS TENNIS VILLAGE was an enormous new construction of glass and metal, rising like a beacon of hope in a part of the city’s Third Ward that had long been forgotten. Built by a fearless young tennis coach who insisted that this traditionally country-club sport could be appreciated as much on the South Side as it was up north, he ignored all the naysayers, raised millions of dollars, and erected the biggest tennis facility in all the Midwest. It not only revived the ward but attracted a diverse clientele from all over the city who otherwise would have never ventured south of the Loop. Gold Coast millionaires played next to kids who once lived in Robert Taylor Homes, a dangerous housing project that occupied the very land where the tennis center now stood.

  Dr. Wendell Cayne and his cohorts held a weekly Thursday doubles match at the facility. When I arrived, he was sitting upstairs in the lounge with two ice packs wrapped around his knees, drinking a purple smoothie. He hadn’t showered yet.

  “You look like you just went twelve rounds,” I said, pulling up a chair.

  “Then I look better than I feel,” he said. “Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Getting old is shit.”

  “Is that technical medical terminology for your two bum knees?”

  “As technical as it gets for a psychiatrist describing an orthopedic diagnosis.”

  We looked out the huge window that opened onto the long stretch of courts full of an assortment of pairings and balls in various stages of flight. He didn’t have to say anything; I knew what he was thinking. Had I stuck with it long enough, I could’ve made it, maybe even won a couple of Grand Slams. My name was by no means a random selection. He idolized Arthur Ashe, the skinny, big-Afro-wearing player who was the first and only black man to win the singles championship at Wimbledon, the US Open, and Australian Open. He’d dreamed that I would be the second. After countless hours of private lessons and long road trips to weekend tournaments, I just never developed the passion and dedication required to compete at that level. Girls and cars were a lot more fun than mastering the technique of a kick serve. We never fully discussed it, but I knew he had never gotten over the disappointment. Every time I looked at him, I could still see residual traces of sadness in the corners of his eyes.

  “And just to think, no one believed this would work here on the South Side,” he said. “Look at it now. Middle of the morning and not one court available.”

  “If you build it, they will come,” I said.

  “Great movie,” he said, quickly catching my reference to Field of Dreams. “I still watch it once a year.” He took a long swallow of his smoothie. “Your mother was not into sports, as we both know, but she loved that movie too.”

  “She might not have been the biggest sports fan, but she never missed one of my tennis matches or basketball games,” I said.

  “Is that a thinly veiled reference to my absences?” he said.

  “I was talking about Mom, not you,” I said. “Must you always find a way to make it about you?”

  “You can’t hold that against me forever,” he said. “I was working my ass off to build my practice. Your private school wasn’t cheap, nor were the trips to Europe and Asia.”

  “Mom worked hard and made money also,” I said. “It wasn’t like she was sitting home all day. I’m just saying she always found a way.”

  My father nodded softly. “Your mother was a great woman,” he said. “There’s no denying that. It’s been almost five years, and not a day goes by I don’t think about her.”

  We sat there for a moment looking at the tennis courts but not paying much attention to the players or what they were doing, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “So, what’s on your mind?” he finally said.

  “I’m twisted up in a case that isn’t making sense yet.”

  I explained to him all that I had learned, leaving out Regina, of course. I didn’t need a lecture on patient-doctor confidentiality. He listened quietly, nodding ever so slightly at certain points in the story. After forty-five years of practice, he was very skilled at listening. When I was done, he said, “There’s a lot going on here.” He was also skilled at stating the obvious.

  “Care to be a little more specific?” I said.

  “What strikes me first is the family,” he said. “The dynamics are out of balance. The mother is the one who hired you, but she is also the one who had the more difficult relationship with the daughter. The father doesn’t think anything is wrong, despite the fact his wife is so certain she’s willing to hire a private investigator.”

  “I was thinking there’s some kind of competition between the mother and daughter,” I said. “Electra complex.”

  My father nodded his approval. “From what you describe, it’s very likely. The daughter has a personality that most resembles her father’s. The mother is resentful of their relationship. Since she can’t control her daughter’s relationship with the father, she exerts excessive control in her relationship with the daughter.”

  “I keep asking myself why this rich girl from the North Shore decides to get caught up with the nephew of Chicago’s biggest gang leader.”

  “The kid graduated with honors from DePaul,” my father said. “He left the street life behind. He told her all about it, and she accepted him for who he was. Nothing original in that.”

  “But let’s say she did know about his past.”

  “She could’ve been making a statement,” my father said. “Despite all the pressure to find love in the country club, she opts instead to do the unthinkable and find her love in the forbidden South Side. For someone growing up with such privilege, it would be the ultimate rebellion.”

  “There’s also a simpler motivation we might be overlooking,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t see Chopper’s color and just liked him for who he was.”

  “Forget the platitudes,” my father said, wiping his face with his towel. “Everyone sees color. I don’t care how liberal or progressive a person claims to be; color is the first thing people see. All this talk about us living in a postracial society because a black man finally made it to the White House is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. My bet is she knew everything about this kid’s past, and that made her even more attracted to him. He represented everything that her world was not.”

  I considered his words as I watched a group of four women, all blonde, all in short white tennis skirts, all hitting the ball with the athleticism of a tortoise. Later in the day they would be on the phone with their girlfriends bragging about how tough of a match they played.

  “Something’s just not right,” I said. “I feel like I have most of the pieces, but they just won’t fit together.”

  “You need to identify your center piece,” my father sai
d. “Her relationship with Chopper might reflect her relationship with her parents. Chopper said how much he loved her, but do you know how much she loved him? Better yet, did she love him at all?”

  “The only person who seems to know about their relationship is her best friend, but she didn’t have much to say.”

  “Do you think her friend knows about the pregnancy?”

  “Best friends usually tell each other something that important.”

  “You need to get more in the minds of the players here,” my father said. “Their motivations are critical. Better understand the relationship dynamics, and you’ll do a better job of making your pieces fit together.”

  29

  JUJU DAVIS HAD BEEN located at another girlfriend’s home in Grand Crossing, a similarly tough neighborhood just north of Chatham. When the tactical unit had breached the small apartment, they’d found him stretched out on the sofa, eating deep dish and playing a video game. The girlfriend was taking a shower before her afternoon shift at Walmart. He had been apprehended without incident and brought down to the Second District at Fifty-First and Wentworth. I stood with Burke as two of his men tag-teamed the interrogation. JuJu wore a black tracksuit with crisp white sneakers. His hair had been neatly braided tight to his scalp. He was a large man with wide shoulders and a massive head. The back of both of his hands had been tatted. He sat nonchalantly across from officers Novack and Adkins.