Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  Angel was still innocent, though she pretended otherwise. But she wouldn’t be for long if she got stuck in the prison system. She needed help. So Marco made two calls. One was to one of the best lawyers in town, a former prosecuting attorney who was so clean his shit didn’t even stink. The other call was to a shyster who acted as an equivalent of a capo bastone, or underboss, to R.M.O. leader Vladimir Gorky. That call cost Marco—how much he didn’t even want to know.

  Both attorneys—upstanding and crooked—essentially said the same thing: Angel Baker was screwed.

  Gossip in the substation’s coffee bar confirmed as much. While the department sold whiskey-flavored coffee, Marco concluded that he needed a shot of the real thing. Not even the chameleon-flavored alcohol marketed as Vivante would do. So he tossed back a quadruple espresso and headed for the nearest exit, glancing at his watch. Six in the morning wasn’t too early, or late, to drink he concluded. Not considering the circumstances. Then it would be time to call in some more chips.

  Marco almost made it out the door. His mistake was taking a shortcut through the eastern corridor, which took him past the psy-ops interview suites.

  “Hey, Marco, is that you?” came a bulldog voice. Captain Mitchell Deloire stuck his head out of one of the suites. “Fancy meeting you here. I need you to come in and interview a suspect before you go.”

  “I’m leaving, Del,” he said, waving off the older man.

  With a round, seemingly neckless head planted on broad shoulders, Deloire looked like a bulldog. But instead of growling, he whined.

  “Come on, Marco, give me a break. I got nobody here from psy-ops and this nut-ball they call the Cyclops says he’s ready to talk. I just need somebody to do a quick psych profile. Then you can wash your hands. He thinks he’s King Richard III. You can brush up on your Shakespeare.”

  Marco stopped and looked back with longing. He’d always had a weakness for delusional personality disorder. “I’d like to help you out, Del, I really would. But I hung up my shrink hat. Now I’m—”

  “Yeah, yeah, a hotshot detective. Maybe he’ll tell you something to help with the Cloisters case. That suspect you brought in with Townsend—Angel Baker—she’s the one who brought down this wacko thespian. Maybe King Richard can tell you something about her that will nail your investigation.”

  News travels fast, was Marco’s first thought. Of course, when the mayor’s son is killed, the details would travel like wildfire throughout the department. His second thought was that Angel had never told him she’d tussled personally with the Cyclops. To know she had risked her life so thoroughly and hadn’t even told him made the low-burning flame of frustration she fed in his gut flare up.

  Angel was a damned stubborn woman. She’d never had any intention of giving up her work for him. That he’d allowed himself to think that she would made him feel like a sap. He didn’t doubt that she wanted him. What he doubted was her ability to reveal her hand. He wasn’t even sure if she could play straight.

  From a psychological viewpoint, she was damnably intriguing and gutsy as hell. He was curious to hear what the Cyclops would have to say about his defeat at Angel’s hands.

  “Okay, Del,” Marco said, massaging his frown away, “but this better be quick.”

  “I heard she was here tonight,” Cy said as soon as he entered the darkened room.

  Marco always turned down the lights when he interviewed a mole who had spent his life underground in Emerald City. It didn’t matter that Cy was blind. He would sense the lack of heat from the ceiling and know it was dark and feel safer.

  “Who was here?” Marco asked casually.

  “Angel Baker.” The stooped and disfigured young man said the name with such loathing that Marco’s arm hair bristled to a stand.

  “If she were here, would that be all right with you, Scott?” he said, glancing down to make sure he said Cyclops’s birth name correctly.

  “Call me Richard,” Cy said. He took a limping step forward.

  According to the files Marco had quickly perused, Cy’s legs had been badly burned in the underground fire that had killed or disfigured most of his family about ten years ago. Cy was born and raised as a mole, one of the many descendants of Chicago’s homeless who had moved into the labyrinthine subway system in 2020 when the CTA abandoned the train tracks in favor of aboveground superconductor lines. Undesirable though the real estate might be, it had been dubbed Emerald City and had largely been left alone by Chicago politicians and law enforcement agencies.

  The moles, who congregated in loose clanlike affiliations, often pirated gas from underground pipelines to light their dreary subway tunnels and stations. Cy’s clan had accidentally set off a gas explosion, and many of his family members were killed. Those who survived had been ravaged with burns and were treated like lepers by other clans.

  Cy’s twisted scars, which covered most of his body, had left him lame and sightless in one eye. His disabilities and the loss of his loved ones had sent him over the edge. Delusional and frustrated by his misfortune, Cy had built an underground prison and hired out his services as a jailer to the various mobs, apparently enjoying his ability to control the fates of others. He called his prison the Globe and was fond of quoting Shakespeare.

  “I’ll call you Richard if you’d like,” Marco said in his neutral therapist’s voice. “But according to your file, your name is Scott Owen. And I understand some call you Cyclops. The headlines refer to you as Cy. Who are you really?”

  “‘I am a villain. Yet I lie: I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter. My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain.’”

  “You’re quoting Shakespeare,” Marco said.

  “Am I? I merely speak the words that come to mind.”

  “Then what is on your mind? Captain Deloire tells me you wanted to talk to someone.”

  He lurched forward and felt for the chair on the opposite side of the table. He slunk down into it and stared at Marco as if he could see. “She blinded me, you know. I had one good eye, and she thrust a stick into it to free that worthless old vagabond mother of hers.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Cy laughed low like a feral hyena. “Don’t be. I’ll make her pay. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Let her know that I will find her if I have to walk through the city streets with a white cane. And when I do find her, I’ll make her pay. Tell her, Detective, that I am a hell-hound that crept from the kennel of my mother’s womb, and I will hunt Angel Baker down and kill her.”

  After spilling his guts over the wrongs done to him by Angel, the Cyclops docilely answered Marco’s basic questions for an initial profile. As two guards took the prisoner away, Lieutenant Townsend entered the suite.

  “Did you learn anything of use about Angel Baker?” Townsend said in his clipped British accent. “Deloire says the mole has information about her.”

  Marco closed the file and handed it to the Q.E.D. director. “It’s all in here. The only thing I learned about Angel Baker is that she has one more enemy to worry about.”

  “If she attacked this so-called Cyclops,” Townsend pressed, “perhaps we can add assault and battery to her case.”

  Marco skewered him with a look of disgust. “The Cyclops is accused of starving people to death in his prison, Townsend. Aren’t you forgetting why he’s here?”

  “I hope you aren’t forgetting why Angel Baker was here.”

  “Let’s keep the two cases separate. Angel Baker confronted the Cyclops in order to free her mother from his underground prison. Is that a crime?”

  “Perhaps we can make it one. Whose side are you on, Marco?”

  “I’m on the side of justice, Townsend. Aren’t you?”

  There was a long pause. Townsend’s gray eyes studied Marco with silent calculation, but no emotion.

  And it was the lack of that simple but crucial spark of humanity that grated at Mar
co’s gut.

  Marco had been heartened when legislators first decided to fund Q.E.D. He’d long thought it was time for legitimate law officers to regain control of the city. In spite of his shadowed past, Marco inherently believed in the law and the need for civility in civilization. But at what price? Did investigators really have to dehumanize themselves in order to catch the bad guys? Weren’t integrity and strength of character enough to face down evil?

  “Your disdain for me, Detective, is obvious,” Townsend said. “But can you at least appreciate my dedication to law and order? Do you know how much I have sacrificed in the name of justice?”

  Your humanity, Marco thought. “Yeah, you went under the knife so you could think like a computer. But I hope you’re going to keep me on the case. You just may need someone who has old-fashioned hunches to help you sort through all of your strategic and logical conclusions. I’m a psychologist. I’m into emotions.”

  Marco walked away, but stopped when Townsend called his name.

  “How is it you were the first on the scene of the crime, Detective? I didn’t get a chance to ask.”

  Marco shrugged. “Fate, I guess. Right time at the right place. I happened to be in the neighborhood.” He grinned charmingly. “Don’t you worry. We’re going to nail her, Townsend. You and me. We’ll get that wicked Angel Baker if it’s the last thing we do.”

  Townsend turned briskly and walked away. He may have lost his emotions, but he still recognized sarcasm when he heard it.

  There was always a point when Marco realized that summer was over. It would take him by surprise, then make him wistful and, finally, restless for change. Sometimes it was the sunlight, that went from brilliant in June to a mellow August gold. Sometimes it was a noticeable crispness in the air. This morning, as he zoomed in his PD aerocar over the bridge to Little Venice, it was the mist that hugged the shoreline, looming in gray and foreboding tufts. The hawk—Chicago’s famously bitter and powerful wind—was getting ready to attack.

  Marco made good time over the bridge and parked in the floating commuter lot that sat a quarter of a mile offshore. From there he’d have to take a turbo-gondola to his mother’s apartment.

  To keep her safe, Marco had moved Natasha Marco Black here to the old neighborhood nearly twenty years ago when he’d broken with the R.M.O. Though she’d raised Marco here until he was five, she’d moved back to her old Russian neighborhood after his father, Luigi Marco, had died. On the north side, she settled down with a nice postal worker named George Black, who passed away five years later. Natasha and George had one son, Danny, Marco’s beloved kid brother.

  As the gondola sliced through Lake Michigan’s choppy, dark water, inching down the Grand Canal, Marco inhaled the cool lake air. He admired the small palazzi as he passed, and the crooked line of multicolored town houses that towered over either side of the waterway.

  Little Venice had been built about seventy-five years ago when Chicago became totally landlocked. When the Italian Mafia had been put out of business by a string of federal lawsuits and competition from other ethnic syndicates, the former Mob bosses turned to legitimate real estate.

  The idea was to build a replica of Venice in the American Midwest. But when the original Venice in Italy sank into the sea beyond repair, many of the sixteenth-century buildings, piazzas and basilicas had been shipped to Chicago. What resulted was a charming, historically significant piece of lake property that was partly residential and partly a tourist attraction. The tourist angle insured that it was safe.

  Marco visited his mother whenever he could, which was not as often as he should, and he steeled himself against her usual admonishments.

  “Marco, Marco, why didn’t you come see me sooner?” she cooed when he entered her small, second-story apartment.

  It was filled with a garish mix of iconography from old Russia, Italy and Vatican City. She’d downloaded photos of the newly consecrated Pope John Paul VI, otherwise known as El Papa Mabuto Ganni, the first Swahili to hold the post. She’d positioned the photo next to a portrait of Rasputin, who’d finally achieved sainthood a decade ago.

  “Marco,” Natasha said, stroking his cheeks with smooth, warm palms. “You don’t look good, my darling boy. What is the matter? You can tell your mama.”

  He gently gripped her frail shoulders and kissed her forehead. She possessed the best—and most trying—qualities of motherhood shared by her inherited Russian culture and her adopted Italian. She was overprotective, doting and superstitious. Her long dark, silver-streaked hair fell out of a bun, occasionally tumbling in front of dark, lined eyes that ominously studied his face as if his worry lines could portend the future.

  “What has happened, Marco?”

  He smiled. “Nothing that I need worry you about. I had some time to kill. It’s too early to make business calls. Do you have a shot of whiskey?”

  Her quarter-moon mouth widened in triumph. “Is the pope Swahili?”

  He took two shots of whiskey in the kitchen. The American-made liquor was her second husband’s only cultural holdover.

  Marco managed to keep the conversation on a light note while he and his mother ate breakfast. When it was time to say farewell, Natasha grabbed his arm just before he could get out the door.

  “Did you get him yet, Marco? Is that why you look so worried today?”

  Marco set his mouth in a grim, tired line. “No.”

  “Tell me you did, son.” Then she added in a whisper, her nails digging into his arm, “Tell me you’ve killed Vladimir Gorky. That bastard killed my Danny.”

  “Yes, Ma,” he said patiently, “I know. I was the one who told you about Gorky setting Danny up on that drug raid.”

  “Then get him! What are you waiting for?” When she started to cry, as she inevitably did at every goodbye, he crushed her petite body in a warm, silencing embrace.

  “Don’t worry, Ma.” He kissed the top of her head. “Justice is always done in the end.”

  When he stepped out onto the street below, he exhaled loudly, then took in a musing breath when he spotted a familiar figure strolling his way.

  “Glad that’s over with, eh, Ricco?” called Sasha, his 25-year-old cousin, who stopped when he was close enough to clap Marco warmly on the back. His gruff smile notwithstanding, Sasha looked like an R.M.O. operative, with bluntly cut black hair, pale skin and dark circles under his eyes. His knee-length black shirt hanging over black jeans added to his mobster mystique.

  “Sash, what are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you. Did the old lady beg you to kill Gorky again?”

  Marco nodded and heaved a sigh as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah.”

  Sasha shook his head. “You have my sympathies. Aunt Natasha is one determined lady. Too bad she had to find out what really happened to Danny.”

  “Yeah.” Marco nodded toward the canal. He had only recently found out himself for sure—Danny had been gunned down in an R.M.O.-related drug deal because he wouldn’t let Gorky buy him off. Danny had tried to make an arrest, but his crooked partner had provided no backup. Danny had been honest. Innocent. Now he was dead. “I’m going back.”

  Sasha’s impassive face relinquished a concerned frown. “Uh, not yet, Ricco. I need to tell you something.” He glanced cautiously over both his bony shoulders, then leaned in close. “I followed you out here from the city so I could deliver a message. You have an appointment tonight at Falling Water on the Lake.”

  Marco’s blood turned cold. “You mean—”

  “Yeah,” Sasha said, this time with sympathy. “Gorky wants to see you. He expects you to be there. And you’d better be.”

  Chapter 6

  Rear Window

  At noon, I woke to the sound of Lin shrieking. I flew upright, disoriented, forgetting I’d fallen asleep on Mike’s futon in the back of the garden.

  “Angel!” came another muted cry from the house.

  “Lin? Hold on!”

  A second later, Mike ran from t
he house to the open doors of his shed, every muscle on his fit body strained with danger. “Baker! Come quick. They try to take Lin away.”

  “Who?” I shot to my feet.

  “Government people. Hurry!”

  Instantly, I surmised what had happened. Someone working at the Department of Children and Family Services had seen my mug shot on television and decided it was time to withdraw my foster-parenting rights.

  I raced after Mike, instinctively negotiating the flower-lined footpath while staring up at the second floor porch, where Lin struggled with a DCFS transporter in an orange jumpsuit. I’d expected this to happen, but not so soon.

  Lin escaped his grasp and tried to race down the wooden stairs. She spotted me and cried out, “Angel! Help me!” Distracted, she tripped and tumbled head over heels the rest of the way down the stairs.

  “Lin!” I cried out, my heart in my throat.

  Mike and I both dashed the distance. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lola beating the transporter on the head with a broom on the porch above. Bald and musclebound, he looked like a bar bouncer, but cowered under Lola’s blows.

  “You keep your hands off her, you scum bucket!” Lola roared like a lioness in winter. “Lin stays here, and that’s final!”

  Mike reached Lin at the bottom of the stairs first and gently rolled her over, checking for broken bones. She saw me and flung her arms upward, as agile as ever. “Don’t let them take me, Angel.”

  I pulled her in my arms and stroked her head. Heavy footsteps stomped on the stairs. The transporter bounded toward us, either chasing Lin or running from Lola, I wasn’t sure which. I scooped up Lin and ran out the back to Mike’s shed, where I gently lowered her on the futon.

  “Stay here, Lin. I’ll be back.”

  She looked up with terror shimmering in her coal black eyes, but she nodded, and I knew she trusted me completely. I smiled encouragingly and ran back toward the porch, but slowed when I saw an ominous tableau. Mike and Lola stood over the prone, still figure of the transporter sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. My heart stopped a moment.