The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  He sees us approach and he runs out of the vehicle. He’s headed toward the doors of the high rise. He’s also got his Nine out. I can see the pistol as his hands flap at his sides while he’s in full stride.

  We’re out of the Taurus and after him. I’ve got the Bulldog in my right hand. The nine milimeter is still cradled in my shoulder holster. And I remember I’ve got the piece with the hollow points in my right hand.

  “Stop!” Doc yells.

  It’s at this moment that we see a woman with an infant in her arms emerge from the entrance of the project. Chaka sees her just as Doc and I do.

  He slams the pistol against the forehead of the woman, and she goes down onto her back with the baby miraculously still in hand. The child’s resting on her chest.

  Then Chaka bends over and rips the infant from the unconscious woman’s grip.

  “Go away, motherfuckers! I shoot this kid ‘less you go the fuck away!”

  “You know we’re not going anywhere, cheesedick,” I tell him.

  I can see his face by the light poking out the windows of the lobby of the apartment complex behind him.

  We’ve got our weapons aimed at his melon. I’m trying to visualize a single shot from the Bulldog that would take him down with the baby still under his arm, but he’s got his automatic aimed at the blanket that holds the little guy. It doesn’t take much of a squeeze to let loose with a round. Then I get this toddler executed and Chaka kills another child who never got a chance to hit adolescence and beyond. Every time I get this prick in my sights, he has a way out. I really want to pull the trigger, and I’m wondering if Doc is about to try and squeeze one off before I do.

  A figure appears in the double glass doors behind the gangbanger. I can’t see him clearly at first, but then I recognize him. Doc doesn’t move, but I know he’s picked Aaron Mitchell up just like I have. Mitchell must be moving very quietly and slowly because Chaka never turns to see who’s coming up behind him.

  I begin to speak so he’ll keep his attention on us.

  “You murder a kid, they’ll give you the chair or the gas chamber. I can’t remember how we handle it in this state lately, but it’s a very unpleaant way to go. You might just get life for Andres. You can cop the plea that he wasn’t intentional, at least, but if you do this baby, cheesedick, nobody but nobody’ll save your ass from the hangman. They’ll execute you, you little shit.”

  The door behind Chaka opens so slowly that you really can’t seem to see it push out toward the back of the gangbanger with the toddler under his arm. For some reason the child isn’t crying, and its silence frightens me. He or she might be unconscious or badly hurt. There’s no telling from where we stand, about thirty feet from Julius Johnson.

  The entrance door is now a quarter opened, but Chaka is still paying no mind to what’s coming up behind him.

  Mitchell is out the door in a blur, and then I see the bayonet gleam in the glow of the illumination from the windows of the lobby. He’s behind the boy before Chaka can even begin to turn. Mitchell moves like a leopard, smooth and in a blink of the eye. The bayonet slashes the gangbanger’s throat before Julius has time to see who it was who just cut him. He drops the baby on top of the child’s fallen mother and he slowly lifts the Nine with his right hand as his left hand struggles to hold back the flood that erupts from his neck. I feel the pressure on my trigger increase, and I’ve squeezed off a round before Chaka can get the barrel high enough to aim it at Mitchell’s face.

  The boom of the Bulldog shatters the cold night air. The pistol pops up after the recoil, and then I watch as fragments of Julius Johnson’s skull and swatches of red and gray brain matter fly against the lobby windows behind him. The slug shoves him backwards, but it’s no graceful pirouette that he’s doing. He’s been yanked by an invisible hook, and then he flops down unceremoniously.

  I didn’t hear the round that Doc pumped into his chest, but I can see the hole it made when I see the gouge in the left hand side of his banger jacket.

  I turn to Aaron Mitchell.

  “I ought to arrest you,” I tell the old man.

  “What the fuck for?”

  “Now that’s a good question, Jimmy,” Doc says as he holsters his weapon. He’s using a Nine these days, like me.

  “For almost goddam near getting yourself and this child killed.”

  Now the infant is howling. It still lies on its mother’s breast, but she seems to be coming around. I hear her moaning softly.

  My partner goes inside and tells Pete to get the medics and the M.E. and everyone else out to the scene of a homicide.

  “What a fucking mess you made of him,” Mitchell declares. It doesn’t sound like an accusation, however.

  “Fucking brains all over the yard... Whatchyou got in that motherfucker? You carryin’ a motherfuckin’ piece of artillery?”

  Now I see his teeth. He’s smiling. Then he bends over Chaka and wipes the blade on his leather coat.

  “Red look black in the dark,” he explains. “Might as well give the little cocksucker back what belong to him.”

  He wipes the blade clean on the kid’s coat.

  “Don’t do it anymore, all right? The technicians’ll go nuts trying to figure out how he got all smeared up.”

  “Well, Lieutenant, we’ll have the explanation for ‘em, won’t we.”

  “I take it you’ve done this kind of thing before. Maybe in that ‘po-lice action’ in Korea?”

  He smiles, but he doesn’t answer.

  I help the child’s mother up as Mitchell takes hold of the baby. We see in the light now that the kid’s a boy. He’s wrapped in a blue blanket, so we make a guess.

  I have to hold the momma up until the paramedics can aid her. She’s going to need stitches in the forehead, so I use my handkerchief to try and stanch off the blood flow. It’s a pretty deep cut, but it isn’t bleeding as badly as most facial wounds seem to. I’ve got my arm beneath her left armpit and she’s leaning heavily against me.

  “My baby... Arthur. Where’s my baby?”

  “He’s right over there. He’s fine. Mr. Mitchell’ll take care of him until you feel a little better. I’ll ride with you and your son to the hospital. You’re both going to be all right, now.”

  She begins to weep in what I’m sure is a mixture of pain and relief. And fear. Red seems to be the color of fear on this block. I’m going to ask the Captain to keep me away from Cabrini Green for no less than a year. I’ve spent enough time around here the last twelve months.

  I squeeze the woman’s shoulders as I press my handkerchief against her cut.

  “You don’t want to lie down, hon. Not now. The medics’ll be here in a couple. Just hang onto me.”

  Mitchell’s rocking the boy in his arms.

  “I’m gonna take the little fellow inside where it’s warm.”

  I nod to him, but I don’t want to take the mother in there. It seems to me that the cold air will somehow help her bleeding to halt. At least the winter air should aid her in recovering her senses.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  I see that she’s just a kid. Maybe not even twenty.

  “Ev ... Evelyn Matthews.”

  “How old are you, honey?”

  “I’m... I’m seventeen.”

  “You got anyone you want me to call? Anybody you want me to have see you at the hospital?”

  I know the answer before she comes up with it.

  “Naw. There ain’t no one to call.”

  “You’re all by yourself out here.”

  “I... I’m tryin’ to go back to school. I want to be... a beautician. You know. A hairdresser. I been goin’ to school—”

  She slumps against me. I don’t know if she’s all the way out, but she’s close to it. That bop on the head was hard enough to cause a concussion or worse. And I can’t tell how much blood she’s lost out here in the semi-dark.

  The ambulance finally shows, and I call out to them to hustle their asses a little. I
know how they feel about calls out here, so I don’t give them any more grief than I already have. The two black paramedics relieve me of my charge, seventeen year old Evelyn Matthews. Evelyn Matthews who came within a centimeter of becoming another notch in Julius Johnson’s career on the Green. Evelyn Matthews, single mother who almost watched herself and her son become two more footnotes in that guy Martinson’s angry column. And she and her little boy would’ve been two more notations on our board in Homicide.

  Mitchell emerges with Arthur Matthews, and the Korean vet walks over to the ambulance and then boards the vehicle after I tell the medics he’s going for the ride with us to County Hospital.

  While they’re working on the mother in the ambulance, I turn to the splattered body on the ground in front of the windows of Cabrini Green. At least he picked an appropriate place to get himself shot. I wish we could leave his body out here for a couple of weeks. Somebody of his kind might get the message. But I doubt it. Bobby Louis Wells has a fleet of these bastards to do his dirty work.

  I just took Celia’s life’s work away from her and I wonder if she’ll emerge now and give peace a chance, as the song used to go.

  Not likely. I wonder if we’ll ever find her. People do faze out. They submerge and nobody ever hears from them again.

  But not Celia Dacy. She won’t be satisfied with Julius, here all over the yard. She’ll want a replay with Rashaan Abu Riad. She’ll want to see his innards and gray matter scattered over somebody’s lawn.

  She explained it clearly to her sister Jean. Celia doesn’t want to live anymore. She’s like one of those Japanese kamikazes. She doesn’t care that the next flight out is her last.

  The medics slam the door at the back of the ambulance where Evelyn and Arthur and Aaron Mitchell and I and the other medic all sit. Evelyn’s lying flat on her fanny, actually, and Aaron’s holding onto the child. He’s apparently warmed to the job because he’s cooing to the infant, and we all hear the pleasant sucking sounds the boy’s making as he tries to wear out one of his thumbs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The heat is on Bobby Louis Wells, even though it is still March and there is very little warmth on the streets. It has been cold and rotten. Especially since there is no sign of Celia Dacy.

  The heat has been getting closer and closer to my favorite gangbanger, as I say, but the flame has a federal stamp on it. They’re looking at him and at his records for all those grants he’s been receiving to help clean up the hood. Even the feds can’t be fooled forever. Not when people like Martinson of the Tribune air all of Bobby’s dirty laundry. Martinson’s been listing the case histories of all the killings at Cabrini and at some of the other projects in Chicago, and a recurring name that keeps popping up in all that verbiage about the slaughter going on in the inner city is Rashaan Abu Riad.

  Bobby Wells is a graduate of the St. Charles Reformatory. He also did time in Joliet. How, you ask, does an asswipe like Bobby Wells get himself government grants? Oh please. No one can be naive enough to think our legislators are prejudiced when it comes to receiving wads of green in exchange for favors. The Old Machine that this city endured during the Fifties and Sixties is not entirely obsolete. We put up with conniving aldermen and crooked mayors and on the take policemen just like most everywhere else, but Chicago was the home of Alphonse Capone and Frank The Enforcer Nitti and a whole shitload of animals just like them. How can anyone be dumb enough to sit and scratch their noggins over the existence of people like Bobby Louis Wells? It’s equal opportunity for thugs in this town. That’s how far democracy goes.

  But feces does on occasion meet the blades of the fan, and sometimes these clowns like Bobby overstep their boundaries. So when Narco connects Bobby’s drug business to sweet little white kids in the burbs, guess what stinky substance starts flying through the air.

  Bobby got too big for his britches when he tried to put the hit on a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. A journalist who touched the hearts of a lot of residents of this area with his story about Andres and Celia and about Keesha and Karen Nathan. And he’s been writing about Evelyn Matthews this past week. He described how a seventeen year old orphan tried to raise a twenty-week-old boy in the projects and how Chaka tried to interrupt Evelyn’s shot at making the American Dream come true. The radio talk shows are loaded with pissed off listeners, many of whom are white, believe it or don’t. The tv shows in the afternoon are devoting segments to inner city murders. It’s on everyone’s lips in the city, it seems like.

  I’ve never been connected with a more emotionally charged case. As I said, most of the stiffs we investigate are no brainers. People kill people for the most lame reasons. Crimes of passion, hate crimes, crimes about revenge. But this Andres Dacy thing has brought all the poison to a head. The boil is about ready to burst, and Bobby Louis Wells is the head, the crown, of that infected pustule. Even his political buddies are beating feet. They’re shying away from him like they would from AIDS. His business is down 30% in the hood, Narco people tell me. They’re buying their shit from the gang in the next hood over, but they’re not trafficking with Rashaan Abu Riad. Bobby’s bad news, people on the street are telling each other. Bobby’s hotter than heat.

  *

  “Jimmy?”

  It’s Celia. I spring up to a seated position.

  “Where are you?”

  She laughs softly.

  “Jimmy. I just called to say I’m sorry I missed you when you came back to the apartment. I want you to know that I know that you found that knife. I know that you know what I did. That’s why I had to take off. That’s why I can’t ever come back.”

  “Celia. Tell me where the hell you are!”

  “No, Jimmy. I’ve got something I’ve got to do.”

  “You can’t get to him, Celia! Don’t be stupid!”

  “He can’t go on breathing, Jimmy. Not after what he did to my boy.”

  “You let me handle him. He’s coming down all by himself. Jesus, haven’t you read the news—”

  “They won’t bring him down. He’s too smart, Jimmy P. You know what I’m saying. You been after him how many years?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The feds’ll get him if I don’t. They’ve got all that money and all those people and they’ll take him.”

  “I can’t wait, baby. I lost Andres and I lost you and I can’t wait. I don’t want you to hate me. That’s why I called. I’ve killed people, but I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “I can get you a lawyer. You can get some help. You’re not through living yet, Celia.”

  “Yes I am, Jimmy. I’m all tired out. I’ve only got one thing left to do and then I can lie down. I got to make it one more step and then I’m done.”

  “Stop it! Stop this shit! You’re not done with anything. I can help you. You can have a life if you’ll—”

  “I can’t have a life with you, Jimmy P. First it was our colors, and now it’s what I did. It’s over and you know it’s over. I love you, Jimmy Parisi. I’ll always love you, Lieutenant.”

  The line goes dead. I don’t do the usual yakking at a dead receiver after I’ve been hung up on. I just cradle the thing and sit there. First it’s shock and then it’s anger.

  I get up and ran toward the shower. I take a ten minute wash, I eat breakfast, tell Eleanor I’ll be late, get dressed and armed, and then I take off for the Loop.

  *

  “She’s got to be somewhere between the near north and the southside. I know that sounds like a lot of territory and it is, but I want us to concentrate on the Green area and the area that she had the apartment in on the southside and the neighborhood close to her mother’s. I think she’ll crash somewhere she’s familiar with.”

  Doc nods. He knows I’m furious, so he becomes quiet. But he can’t stay mute for long.

  “You need to remove yourself from this one, Jimmy. Let Tactical handle it. You don’t want to put yourself in another situation like the one you had when you started up with Celia. I know it’s no
ne of my fucking business when it comes to your personal life, but this shit is over the line. You might have to hurt her to stop her. You ever considered that?”

  I don’t have a reply for him.

  “I’ve got to be the one to take her off the street, Doc. I’ve been in this with her all the way and I’ve got to finish it.”

  He flops back against the cushion in my leather chair here in my office.

  “Try this. Where would Bobby Wells be most open to attack? Where would he be most vulnerable to a whack?”

  “Out in public.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy. I think so, too. So we keep an eye on Riad’s public appearance schedule. Anything that might be in the papers or announced in the media. She’ll try to sock him in a crowd. She can’t do him when he’s alone with his goons. Celia’s smart. She wouldn’t try to waste a move.”

  “She wouldn’t. No. She’d go for him with a maximum effort.”

  So we find out Bobby’s itinerary for the next few weeks. We’re surprised by the cooperation we get from his people when we call for the information, but he’s getting so much heat from the FBI and two or three other agencies, including the IRS, that he seems to be happy we’re showing concern for him. I’d like to explain to the bitch that I’m not doing any of this for him, but I let Doc do the talking on the phone.

  *

  Tactical and Homicide come up with no sightings. She’s probably moving only at night if she’s moving at all. It could be that she’s staying with Jean, that her sister lied to us about Celia’s location, so we put a stake on the sister and the mother and the ex-husband, too, now that we finally located him on the southwest side.

  I work sixteen hour shifts searching for Celia and trying to clean up the homicides I have listed on our caseload slate. We clear off three no brainers this week, but we’ve still got seven unsolved cases on the board.

  The Captain has been very light on me with this Celia Dacy situation, but he’s let me know in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want her doing her thing one more time on Abu Riad. I tell him preventing that scenario is my life’s work, and he leaves me alone after that explanation.