“Olijede,” I said into it. “You want to tell me where Laurie is now, or do I put a hole in another one of your goons?”
“Mr. Shade, I see you are not following my instructions,” he said. “This could have dire consequences for your lady friend.”
“You touch her and you’re dead,” I said. George motioned for me to cover the mouthpiece and he brought his radio up to his lips.
“We locate that limo yet?” he said.
“Got a couple of them on the upper level, Sarge,” a voice came back.
“Well, run ’em, dammit,” George screamed. “Lothar Industries. See if any of ’em come back to Lothar Industries.”
I brought the Beretta down hard on the top of the guy’s head. A huge cut opened up and the blood followed. He collapsed to the asphalt. I thought about rubbing his face in the shattered glass.
“I’m waiting, Olijede,” I said into the cell phone. I began walking in a diagonal direction toward Terminal Three. It was at least a football field away.
“Ron,” George said in a whisper as he trotted up beside me.
I covered the mouthpiece again.
“This ain’t going according to plan,” he said. “You were supposed to let him get control of the dope.”
“Look, Olijede,” I said into the phone again. “Tell me where and I’ll bring you the shit myself. Your guy can drive off in the Taurus as soon as I have Laurie.”
“Mr. Shade,” he said. “Please put my driver back on.” I glanced back at the driver. The plainclothes narco boys were already slipping on the bracelets. One of them was removing a gun from the guy’s waistband. George shrugged.
“All right, wait a minute.” I suddenly heard the sound of a plane’s takeoff drowning out Olijede. Looking around, I spied a jet ascending from the northwest, leaving huge white vapor trails against the darkening sky. I pointed emphatically to George, who spoke quickly into his radio. Running back to the now-handcuffed driver, I screwed the pistol into his ear and held the phone down by my leg. The tone of the conversation had led me to believe even more so that Olijede was in the airport somewhere, but not close enough to see us.
“Not one word,” I whispered, bumping the Beretta against his ear for good measure. “Understand?”
He nodded. The blood was cascading down his face and mixing with the thinner streams of sweat.
I held the cell phone up close to his face, and leaned in like a lover so I could hear it too. George twisted his lips into a ferocious-looking snarl and rubbed the barrel of his revolver against the driver’s groin. The man seemed to turn an extra shade of gray.
“Yeah, boss,” he said.
“Herman, are you all right?” I heard Olijede’s voice say over the phone.
Herman gulped. “Yeah, boss.”
“Very well,” Olijede said. “Remove the suitcases from the trunk of the Taurus and place them in the rear of your vehicle.”
“Okay, boss,” Herman said.
I held the phone down again.
“The son of a bitch is too damn smart to handle the dope himself,” I said. “He’s just going to drive off.”
George raised his radio again. “What’s taking so long on finding that damn limo?”
A static-laden reply came over saying something about Terminal Three. The boys from Narcotics were busily placing the suitcases into the trunk of the LeSabre. I leaned in close to my boy Herman again and whispered softly.
“Tell him you’re done, or my friend here will blow your balls off.”
George grinned malevolently.
“It’s done, boss,” Herman said into the phone.
“Good, now instruct Mr. Shade to get into the passenger seat. When he does, you will drive out of the lot and back to the perimeter road again.”
Herman said okay.
We tossed him into the back floor area, and George got in after him, leaning down like a protective parent. I got into the driver’s seat as the black Impala moved out of my way. The uniformed officers who had been blocking the aisle we were in immediately held up the stream of cars to let us by. The guard raised the gate in front of us and I went through.
As I pulled onto the perimeter road, I spoke into the cell phone again.
“When do I see Laurie?” I asked.
“Very, very soon,” Olijede said.
I figured that he’d be waiting to put a bullet in both of us as soon as he determined the coast was clear. I circled around the angular curve and saw the limousine up ahead, idling by the curb in the livery section. A marked police unit began to creep up alongside of me, then zoomed across. The limo lurched away from the curb a few seconds later, sideswiping a yellow cab and careening out into the main traffic lanes. I floored it and shot after them. The marked unit pulled alongside the limo and tried to angle in front of it, but the bigger car veered left and smashed into the squad. Metal crunched against metal and then both vehicles straightened out.
“What the hell you doing?” George yelled.
“It’s blown,” I said. “He’s running.”
“Stop that damn limo!” George yelled into his radio. “We got a hostage inside it.”
The marked squad steered directly into the left front fender of the limousine, which careened into the side of a departing taxi. I was going too fast to stop and crashed into the left rear. The airbag exploded in my face in a cloud of foul-smelling dust. Scrambling to open the door, it took me three tries. As I crawled out, I saw the rear door of the limo open and a lean-looking black guy jumped out, pulling Laurie by her long brown hair. It had to be Olijede. His right hand held a wicked-looking automatic.
I reached for the Beretta and hit the pavement on my belly. Olijede pointed the automatic at the police car and fired several rounds into the rear windshield. Cars were screeching behind us, and people who had been lining the edge of the sidewalk began to scream and run. Olijede tried to drag Laurie with him, but she twisted and turned in his grasp, her long legs kicking at the asphalt. He pointed the pistol at the top of her head.
“No!” I screamed.
He looked up at me and hesitated, smiling maniacally, and seemed about to pull the trigger when his head jerked back in a crimson mist. I looked up and saw George holding his Smith & Wesson in both hands, a wisp of smoke trailing upward from the barrel.
Olijede’s lips twisted into a scowl as he began a slow-motion pirouette, his legs turning to rubber as he curled forward, falling over Laurie’s supine figure. The two uniformed officers from the marked unit ran forward with guns drawn. Seconds later they were pulling out a white guy from the driver’s door. I scrambled to my feet and sprinted to Laurie. She had a bloody lip that looked like she’d need stitches. But other than that, and the tears streaming down her cheeks, she seemed all right. George came sauntering up, his trusty semi auto dangling loosely down by his leg.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
I nodded, pressing her to me.
He barked more orders into his radio, the only part of which I heard was the request for an ambulance and a supervisor.
“Officerinvolved shooting,” I heard someone else saying into a police radio.
I looked up at George.
“Nice shot, Kemosabe,” I said.
He nodded.
The sky over the top of the terminal was turning a velvety gray, but remnants of scarlet still edged over the superstructure. George holstered his weapon, glanced at his weapon, glanced at his watch, then shook his head.
“You mighta won that fight,” he said. “And I had a hundred bucks bet on it, too.”
I just held Laurie close and felt her arms around me.
“I won the one that counted,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows and said, “You know, maybe you’re finally starting to grow up after all.”
CHAPTER 35
Probably the less said about the fight, the better. Suffice it to say that amidst all the dead bodies and crashed cars, they weren’t about to let me go. And the way I’d felt I probabl
y wouldn’t have been able to lift my legs through the ropes anyway. So George managed to send someone with lights-and-sirens to the Aragon to break the news to Chappie. Although he managed to get Raul to sub for me as a last-minute replacement, it was immediately changed to a twelve-round heavyweight nontitle fight, which was a damn shame. Raul managed to hold his own through the first five rounds, sticking and moving like I was supposed to have done. Then Day got tired, just like we’d figured, and Raul began to peck him to death. Day spent the final two rounds on sodden legs, getting slugged and slugging back. In the end it was ruled a draw only because Raul had missed his required number of kicks in one round. And that was kind. One of the judges must have been blind, or drunk. Or from Detroit.
Elijah was nothing but gracious about what a great fighter Raul was. He even hinted that there could be a rematch. He could afford to be gracious. The belt stayed around his waist. And all I could think about was that I knew I could have won that damn fight, and how I’d let Chappie down. Then again, what choice did I have? He was okay with it, or at least he said he was.
Laurie checked out of the Emergency Room, after getting a bunch of stitches on the inside of her mouth and an icepack for the bumps on the top of her head. Mostly she was just pissed off that she didn’t get to see me win the championship, because she knew how hard I’d worked for it. So I told her she could come down for the next one. She ended up staying at my place for another week, letting me nurse and baby her back to health while she relished every moment of it.
And I sort of liked it, too, but it was all tinged with déjà vu. The same way you feel when you’re enjoying an old movie that you’d seen before, and you know it isn’t going to have a happy ending. Sort of like Casablanca.
On our last day together winter seemed to release its icy grasp a bit, and even hinted at the possibility of an early spring. But I knew it was not to be. So that night I took her downtown for dinner and a play. I was still too sore to go dancing. We had a great time, and somehow, as we lay in each other’s arms afterward, we managed to put the whole thing in perspective.
“You know I have to go back to Michigan tomorrow,” she said.
“Yeah, I was figuring that semester break was just about over.”
“I’ll stay if you want me to, Ron.” I could feel her wet tears splashing down on my shoulder as she spoke. “You know, I came down here thinking that you were the person from the past who’d sort of ruined my cousin’s life. And then you end up saving mine. You’re such a great guy…So thoughtful and nice…And I really did fall in love with you.”
It wasn’t that I wasn’t in love with her. It was just that I knew there was just too much “past” between us. Too much extra baggage.
“What about law school?” I said. “All the hard work you’ve done. And all the plans you have?”
“They don’t matter so much anymore.”
I heard Bogey’s voice echoing in my mind: Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday…
“I think they do,” I said.
I thought about that whimsical saying I’d seen printed on a poster one time about letting something go if you loved it. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was. But I kept the trite saying to myself. Instead, I reached back for something more significant.
“Well,” I said, “we’ll always have Paris.”
When she left the next morning it was overcast, and a misty sleet was stinging our faces. We kissed and held each other, neither of us seeming to want to be the first to let go. But we both knew we had to. After another few minutes of tearful good-byes, and promises to call and write that I knew would probably not be kept, she got in her little car and drove off.
She’d given me Paula’s Firebird in lieu of payment, and had agreed to use the remainder of the recovered money to pay for school. To do something good with her cousin’s “legacy.”
I stood there in the rain watching her until she turned at the end of the block, and disappeared from my life.
Forever? I wondered.
Then I did what I always do in situations like this. I changed into my sweats and went for a long, slow run. Only this time I didn’t see Elijah Day at the top of every hill. I saw Laurie waving good-bye. I kept thinking about everything that had happened this past month…And about what might have been…And what would never be. But I knew it was for the best. I left my regrets behind me as I eked out my finishing sprint feeling almost like a winner. But then again, this run wasn’t about winning or losing. It was about putting to rest old ghosts.
George called me later and asked me to work security at the hotel from six to midnight. As usual, he told me that he was in a real bind.
“You’re always in a real bind,” I said.
“Hey,” he said. “You owe me big time anyway.”
It was true. Not only had he come through in the crunch for me and helped to save Laurie, but he’d also subsequently tipped off INS to Smershkevich’s shenanigans and set in motion the ignoble Russian’s deportation back to the motherland.
“Yeah, I guess I do, don’t I?” I said. “You really saved my bacon all right.”
“What the hell you talking about?” His low chuckle resonated over the phone line. “I’m referring to all that money I coulda won betting that Elijah Day was gonna knock you out.”
“Ha ha,” I said, enunciating each word.
His voice got serious for a second. “Laurie leave?”
“Yeah.” Then, after a few beats of silence, I added, “She wanted me to thank you for her. She said she’ll always think of us as her two Windy City Knights.”
I heard his low chuckle again.
“See, I told you that name had potential. Maybe you should start calling yourself that when you fight. It has a ring to it.”
“Maybe I will. You know how to pick ’em, all right,” I said.
* * *
For my first appearance back at the hotel, the place, I ironically noted, where this whole damn thing had started, I did my best to keep a low profile. The wraparound Oakley sunglasses inside didn’t help any. Finally, tired of all the peculiar looks, I took them off, displaying my still-battered face. The swelling had all disappeared, but the stubborn purple bruises made me look like a guy who’d come in second in a collision with a freight train.
Marsha was her usual acerbic self, smirking as she looked at me, and saying, “Nice mascara, Ron. But it looks like it’s running.”
At least Kathy was more sympathetic.
“Oh my God, Ron, what happened to your face?”
“Remember that fight I was training for?”
“Yes. Is that what happened?”
“No,” I said. “I never got there, but I took on three guys in a makeshift meat locker.”
“So…Did you win?”
I nodded my head. “And I’m still a contenda. You shoulda seen da odda guys,” I said, trying a poor, at best, imitation of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront.
She smiled, but it was a wary smile. “Oh?”
“In other words, I proved I wasn’t just another bum from the neighborhood.”
Sue, the bartender, gave me my standard club soda, and I sat in a booth off to the side of Kathy’s piano.
“Well, I do have a surprise for you,” she said, taking out some sheet music and setting it on the rack. Before I could ask her what it was, she began pressing the keys and singing “As Time Goes By.”
It brought back a lot of memories. Maybe too many.
I listened as her voice floated hypnotically over the melody. She’d obviously done her own arrangement, and her version was slow and sexy. Much different from the movie, but somehow, just as moving. When she was finished there was a smattering of applause from the rest of the bar patrons, whom I’d hardly noticed before then.
“So, what do you think?” she asked. “I went out and bought the music after you asked me to play it before, and I’ve been practicing all week. I wanted to surprise you.”
�
��Well, you sure did that,” I said. As I picked up my drink and brought it to my lips, I couldn’t help thinking about Laurie…and Paula…. I silently wondered if the world would really always welcome lovers?
Yeah, I figured. I guess it would.
Kathy was setting up another song. I tipped my glass toward her as she smiled at me over the top of the piano. I smiled back, and said, in my best Bogey imitation, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
CRITICS PRAISE MICHAEL A. BLACK!
RANDOM VICTIM
“A noteworthy read. Black’s unapologetically gritty—and surprisingly intimate—portrayal of life behind the badge is utterly believable…. Also, his subtle use of irreverent Wambaughesque humor makes this a page-turner of the highest order.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“Black has created a believable police story that doesn’t rely on gimmicks of a supercop who can do what he wants with no repercussions. Black’s writing is so naturalistic for its genre, never going for the cheap out. Once the climax reveals all, you truly will be stunned.”
—Bookgasm
“Black has woven an intricately detailed story of murder, betrayal and corruption that doesn’t stop until the last page. This is an energetic, fast-paced read that I highly recommend.”
—Fresh Fiction
A KILLING FROST
“[Black], a long-time Chicago area police officer, brings the same inside knowledge of police investigations and politics readers get from Joseph Wambaugh.”
—Sara Paretsky
“[An] intriguing first mystery.…Essential for fans of hard-boiled detective fiction.”
—Library Journal
“Black’s novel rings with the authenticity of…a full-time Chicago-area policeman. Strong character development and ability to build suspense will hook readers’ interest—and leave them eager for the next installment in what promises to be an engaging series.”
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