At The City's Edge

by Marcus Sakey

  There was a knock at the door.

  The sound jerked him from his trance. In the two months he'd lived here, he couldn't recall anyone knocking. He was halfway to the door before he realized he still had the Beretta in one hand.

  What was he, the freaking Unabomber? Moping around alone and cleaning a gun?

  The knock came again.

  "Just a minute." He looked for a place to stash it. Furniture hadn't been a top priority. He grimaced, then locked the safety and tucked the gun in his pants like a Tarantino gangster. At the door, he peered through the peephole. Nothing but the neighboring door.

  Then he heard something that stopped his heart.

  "Uncle Jason?"

  CHAPTER 6

  Business As Usual

  The dead boy wouldn't shut up.

  So far, Officer Elena Cruz's day had been lousy, and she didn't have a sense it was likely to improve. She'd spent a good chunk of the night trying to tune out the thumping music of the club downstairs. By the time her radio kicked on with the latest casualty figures from Iraq, news of a bombing in a mosque, and the President's monotone promise to stay the course, she'd managed barely three hours of sleep. Mint Nicorette tasted better than the regular stuff, but couldn't compare to that first drag off that first cigarette.

  And now the dead boy.

  Talkers drove Cruz crazy. In the movies, victims whispered a crucial clue, gasped out a name. Then they coughed two dots of blood and politely rolled back their eyes.

  Her years on the street didn't match. Instead, mostly the talkers wanted to tell you how much they loved they mama. Twenty minutes ago, she wouldn't have heard anything about his mother. She'd have gotten cold eyes and hard posture. A glance fixed on her crotch, maybe a lick of his lips.

  To transform him into a good civilian and dutiful son, all you had to do was kill him.

  Of course, he didn't realize he was dead. But Cruz knew better. After five years in a South Side beat car, another three kicking in doors on the tactical team, and eighteen months with Gang Intelligence, she'd gotten pretty good at reading the faces of the paramedics. This had been called in as a shooting, but she gave it ten minutes to graduate to a proper homicide.

  "Can you hear me?" She leaned over the boy. Judging by the zits pocking his face, he was about seventeen. She repeated the question in Spanish, and his eyes focused. "¿Como te llama?"

  "Teo." His voice was faint.

  Not Six-Pack, or Choco, or T-Dog, or whatever his street name was. Now that it was too late, his name was Teo. She'd've laughed if it were funny. "Teo, I'm here to help." She put a little extra accent into her Spanish, let him know they were of the same blood. "Who did this?"

  He stared back. "Where's my mother?"

  "She'll meet you at the hospital. Right now, I need you to tell me what happened."

  He shook his head and coughed. A lot more than two drops of blood spattered his lips, the copper smell strong.

  "Officer." The paramedic was young, his hands fast on the gurney straps. "We've got to roll."

  She nodded and stepped back, took in the scene.

  A typical Crenwood corner. Rows of sagging two-flats dotted with brick bungalows, metal security gates covering the front doors. The sign for the elementary school on the corner read "Believe and achiev!" People gathered on the stoops and porches, enjoying the show. Business as usual in the 'Wood.

  "You know what I'm thinking? Suicide." Sergeant Tom Galway ran his hands through his neat salt-and-pepper hair. "I'm guessing our boy had been pondering the inequities generated by geopolitical gamesmanship, got so depressed he went and shot himself in the back. Four times."

  She rolled her eyes at her partner. "Geopolitical gamesmanship?"

  "Heard it on NPR this morning." He looked over her shoulder. "Uh-oh."

  "What?" She glanced, saw the detective in charge of the scene walking toward them. "Shit."

  "Go easy, partner." Galway put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't be starting anything."

  "Me?"

  Galway shot her a look that said, yeah, you. Then he straightened and smiled.

  The detective was a veteran with a gut and too much aftershave. He stepped around a pool of Teo's watery vomit, folded his arms, and looked at her coldly. "Aren't you supposed to be driving a database?"

  She decided to take it in good humor, pretend he was being playful. "I wanted to get some air. What's the story?"

  He shrugged. "Victim was walking with his girl, kid rounds the corner, opens up. Weapon's a nine-millimeter. Nineteen shell casings, clustered, with four hits."

  "Four for nineteen?" Galway shook his head. "Lousy shooting."

  Cruz ignored him. "Nineteen casings from one weapon? Somebody's got an Uzi."

  "Or an MP-5, or a MAC-11, or Christ knows what else." The detective dug in his ear with one finger. "Remember the good old days when kids killed each other with knives and baseball bats?"

  "The girl have anything to say?"

  "Nah."

  "Neighbors?"

  "I've got uniforms knocking on doors. But you know," he made the hand signal for jerking off. "Nobody-"

  "-saw nothing." Cruz finished the mantra. Old story. If Teo had gotten popped in Lincoln Park, they would have had twenty-five people lining up to share every detail. But down here, everybody had vision problems. "You mind if I look around?"

  "You mind blowing me?"

  Her eyes went wide, and she felt her pulse kick in her chest. "Excuse me?"

  "I said," the detective curled one lip, "go back to playing with your computer, and leave case work to people who earned their jobs without spreading their legs."

  Fire flowed up her neck, and her fingers bit into her palm. Unthinking, she started forward, cocking one hand back, ready to lay this tubby chauvinist flat on his ass.

  Galway moved fast, stepping between them and grabbing her shoulders. "Easy, Elena. Easy!" Over Galway's shoulder, the detective winked. She bucked against her partner, knowing he was right but not caring, just wanting to deck the guy so badly she could taste it. But Galway's grip on her arms was steel. "You're already in the shit." He hustled her back, met her eyes. "Hitting him isn't worth losing your job over."

  He was right, and she knew it, but that didn't make her like it more. Cruz shook her arms free, then spun on one heel. Behind her she heard the detective laughing, but just squeezed her fingers into her palms until her arms trembled. Galway followed her.

  "Goddamn boys club bullshit," she said, stomping toward the car. "One mistake, one, and ten years don't mean anything. Like I'm some secretary who got promoted."

  Galway sighed. "You don't make it easier on yourself."

  "Whatever." She patted her pocket for her smokes, remembered she'd quit. Cursed and tore open a piece of gum, flicked the wrapper to the curb. "He's an asshole."

  "That comparison," Galway said dryly, "is unkind to your average asshole."

  She snorted and dug for her keys.

  "Listen," he said, "don't let it bother you. It'll pass."

  "Easy for you to say." She glanced down the block to where a ghetto-roller vibrated with bass. "It's been a year already."

  Galway shrugged, smiled at her. "It'll pass when somebody else gets caught doing something stupid."

  He was right, as usual. Cruz took a deep breath, then shook her head and laughed through her nose. "Tell them to screw up quickly, would you?"

  "You got it, babe. Need be, I'll do it myself." Galway took a napkin from his suit pocket and mopped the sweat on his forehead. He folded the tissue, then squinted up at the sun. "You saw Teo's ink?"

  She nodded. "Latin Saints." The set had been feuding with the Gangster Disciples for a long time now, with bodies dropping on both sides.

  "You know who didn't?"

  It took her a minute, but when she got it, she smiled. "A certain overweight detective."

  "Yep. A day late and a dollar short. Close the case out from under him, it'll hurt more than your right hook."

 
Her smiled broadened. "I feel like chatting with the Disciples. You want to come?"

  "This one is all you. I got a date." Galway patted his stomach. "Pompeii, bowtie pasta with garlic." He made a pistol of his right hand and shot her.

  The department's Ford smelled of cigarettes. She rolled the windows open and jammed the AC on, hot breath blasting in her face. What she should do was go back to the station and put in another couple hours of data crunching. This was only a gang-on-gang shooting, and closing it wouldn't matter enough to anybody to get her out of her chickenshit assignment. But revenge was its own reward.

  She turned up her police radio as she pulled away from the curb. There was something comforting about the steady tones. It felt like the voice of Chicago itself, like the city was speaking to her. Cruz sometimes left it on in the background at home, when she was reading or making dinner.

  Right now, all Chicago had to say seemed routine: a domestic call where a woman was threatening her husband with a broken bottle; a noise complaint from Oak View Terrace; an accident at Halsted and Sixty-fourth.

  Then, just as she was about to turn it back down, another item came on. The voice didn't change, spoke in the same measured voice as always.

  But before it had finished, she'd spun the Crown Vic in a squealing turn and jammed on the gas.

  January 22, 1993

  Eddie Murphy is killing him.

  On the screen, the comedian is talking about grandmothers, how they're always cold, always asking what time it is. This may be the funniest thing Jason has ever heard. He's only met his grandmother once since he was old enough to remember, on a trip to Spokane, two weeks of Mom and Dad fighting in the car. But he can picture her crabbed up in a shawl, telling him he's nasty, then asking what time it is.

  There is sick fire in his belly.

  Michael nudges him, passes the near-empty bottle, red label with black domed buildings, somewhere in Russia. Jason wonders if the vodka actually comes from Russia. Wonders if there really even is a place called Russia, if there's anywhere but fucking Crenwood. Crenwood and Spokane. This strikes him funny too.

  He twists off the red plastic cap and drinks. The liquid is warm and thick, and scours his throat. Acid curdles in his stomach. He fights a grimace, fakes appreciative noises. Turns to hand the bottle back to his brother, feeling a strange lightness inside.

  Turning, he explodes.

  Fire pours out of him, bile spilling up through his nose, a spray of wet heat across Michael's chest and lap. It spatters and soaks and drips. The sick is bloody with the fruit soda they used to chase the Popov, and as he looks at it, Jason thinks of the old expression, puking your guts out, and then the world tilts to black.

  He wakes in bed, in a beam of sweaty sun.

  At first there is only the throb and ache of the room, but then memory hits, and shame runs through him like warm water. His dirty clothes are gone, his mouth is clean. Somehow he doesn't smell like vomit.

  Michael.

  Jason groans. Hating the humiliation he knows will come, hating himself for failing this test of manhood. Hating that his brother witnessed it, saw him for a baby. Knowing that he will never hear the end of it, that every friend will laugh, every girl will giggle.

  But he's wrong.

  Michael never says a word.

  CHAPTER 7

  Clear As Broken Glass

  Traffic on the Kennedy was steady, so Jason fumbled his phone out and tried all of Michael's numbers again. The same thing – voice mail, voice mail, technical difficulties. He cursed under his breath, then shut the phone. Beside him, Billy stared out the window.

  "Kiddo?" Jason tried for a gentle, avuncular voice, the kind that belonged to someone who hadn't woken with a hangover and a woman whose last name he didn't know. "You feeling any better?"

  The only response was Billy's fingers tightening on the armrest.

  Twenty minutes ago, when Jason had yanked open his apartment door, he'd found his nephew trembling, clothing filthy and torn. A small leaf hung orange in the tousled mess of his hair, and it made him look like a corpse, some broken thing washed up on the banks of a desolate river. The boy hadn't said a word since, not as Jason took in the enormous pupils and shaking hands that meant his nephew was in shock, not as he'd run his hands over Billy's thin limbs to check for wounds, not even as Jason had gathered the boy into a bear hug and told him everything would be all right.

  It was nothing, Jason told himself for the hundredth time. Some sort of kid stuff, some miscommunication or accident. Maybe Billy had been with a friend and they'd gotten in a fight. Or maybe he'd somehow gotten lost. Chicago would seem an enormous and scary place to an eight-year-old alone. Hell, sometimes it seemed that way to him.

  "I met with the cops."

  "You mean you informed on a gang?"

  Jason heard Michael's words again, clear as broken glass, but pushed the thought aside. Michael was fine. He had to be. Everything had to be.

  He turned onto Damen, driving though déjà vu. Not twenty-four hours ago he'd ridden this same route, past the same closed shops and narrow crooked houses, the same boys on the corner daring him with their eyes. Cracked pavement and exhaust haze, broken glass firing glints of too-bright sun. Damen Avenue, just like yesterday.

  Then he reached his brother's block, and realized that it was not at all like yesterday, that everything was not fine.

  Everything was a thousand miles from fine.

  Over there was the extensions place, Lauretta's, the African queen on the sign slightly darkened. Lauretta who babysat Billy from time to time, who liked Jason because both her boys were Army, too. Then, on the other side, the little storefront diner, one of the front windows spider-webbed so that you couldn't read the specials, something about two eggs and ham on the bone. Michael's bar was supposed to sit between them.

  But somehow it had been exchanged for a reeking ruin.

  Timbers twisted and scorched into bubbles of ash lay amidst bricks licked black by flaming tongues. Fire had eaten everything, left behind only a charred carcass. A twisted gothic cathedral decorated with spires of cinders and rubble. Firemen moved through the debris like acolytes of flame.

  Some part of Jason expected to hear foreign tongues, the alien wailing of the women. He'd lost count of how many burnt-out buildings he'd seen, of the missions to secure-and-contain, of triaging tiny broken bodies and calling for the medics. For a moment he found himself back in it, boots on the ground in the desert's wrathful heat. Sulfur in his nostrils and sweat in his eyes. That was the world to which this kind of destruction belonged. Half a world away amidst people who spoke a different language, worshipped a different god. That was where buildings burned out, where survivors were left to gape at the ruins of what had been real.

  Not here. Not his brother.

  And on the heels of that thought, another. Billy.

  Idiot!

  He jerked to the curb, screeching to a halt in front of Lauretta's shop. Scrabbled at his seat belt, then unbuckled his nephew. "Don't look." He pulled the boy out of his seat, dragged him into an awkward embrace. "You don't have to." Billy was light as rags, warm and shuddering rags. His breath came heavy and wet, spit and snot and tears soaking the shoulder of Jason's T-shirt. They sat in the rattle of the air conditioning, Jason holding his nephew, stroking his hair. Telling the boy not to look even as he himself stared.

  The tattered heap of dense charcoal running down the center must have been the bar, where yesterday he'd shared a beer with his brother. The ash sparkled, and it took him a moment to realize it was shattered glassware. And there, in the back, he could make out the brick wall, now half demolished, that marked the storeroom. Somewhere back there was the trap-hatch that led to the basement, from the days of bootlegging, when the place used to be a speakeasy. He remembered sitting in that basement after a day's work hauling shit out of it, Mikey pulling out a bottle of Black Label and toasting-

  The rap on the window threw him into combat mode. He spun with on
e arm up, the other tightening protectively around his nephew.

  A woman, big, in a sundress of turquoise and bright orange. Lauretta, owner of the salon and part-time babysitter. She was squinting, her face drawn with concern. He shook his head to clear the memories, his own traces of clinical shock. Understanding could wait. Now he had to act. He rolled down the window.

  "You all right, honey?"

  His head felt light, like it might float away. "What happened?"

  She gestured at Billy, and then shook her head. "Why'n't you come inside?" She gave him a sad smile. "Get William here a Coke."

  He nodded. Sunlight splashed like molten iron as he stepped out, hoisting Billy with him, careful to keep his nephew's face buried in his shoulder. Inside the shop, barber's chairs ran along a mirrored wall. On the other side there were tubs that looked like you might put your feet in them. A customer relaxed while her stylist wove extensions into her hair.

  Lauretta led him through a curtain to a narrow room where a couch faced a television, the sound on mute. Jason lowered the boy, Billy's grip on his neck tightening at first and then loosening as Lauretta came alongside. Billy sat upright, the muscles of his body rigid, his eyes darting. When they settled on Lauretta, he seemed to relax.

  "There you are, baby." She changed the channel to the Cartoon Network, opened a minifridge and came up with a can of soda. "You just watch the cartoons, okay?"

  A sudden look of terror swept across his face, but she spoke immediately, her voice honey. "Don't you worry. We'll be right here." Jason followed Lauretta to the curtain, marveling at her ease, how in control she was. He was Billy's uncle, supposedly a guy who could take care of him, but she was the one who knew what the boy needed. Jason wanted to thank her, but what he said was, "What happened?"

  "I don't know," she said, her voice low. "Po-lice wouldn't tell me much."