The surviving Serb couldn’t ID Branko. And Branko’s fiscals showed no money trail; whatever upfront cash he’d paid Zerbjka hadn’t come out of a bank account.
Cops armed with search warrants had tossed Zerbjka’s house, car and place of business—Zerbjka was landlord of a former tavern that housed a Serb social club, The Partizan Sporting Association. The cops found some naughty assault weapons, but not the prize: Branko’s cash. If Branko’s fingerprints were on the money, Mark could’ve hauled Branko’s ass in.
So Mark’s only move was to toss the Phipps grenade and see if Branko detonated. Mark was betting Branko would rush to inform Lou Mastrizzi that a cop—and a Fed—had dropped in and asked a magic question.
That was a conversation Branko and Mastrizzi wouldn’t have on any phone. Which is why the cops had Branko under surveillance, and the FBI put eyes on Lou. With luck, they’d get photographic evidence of Branko meeting Lou. In any case, it’d be interesting to see what the stress did to that relationship.
• • •
Nick Rarey was so enthused about the broader implications of Branko’s discreet brick-shitting (the Outfit + Chicago Politicians!) that he gave up monitoring Mark, and returned to his own office to monitor the surveillance on Lou, and to help map JB Structural’s maze of deals, hoping to find a trail of contract crumbs that led from City Hall on one side to Outfit-infected contractors and unions on the other.
• • •
Tommy Tesca and Dale Phipps remained invisible. In Tesca’s case the condition was probably permanent; Ed Nardelli’s informants reported that Mastrizzi’s soldiers had stopped looking for Tesca and returned to their regularly scheduled felonies.
• • •
JaneDoe stubbornly remained on Mark’s mind.
JaneDoe and Lila had refused to move to a hotel. JaneDoe spent the night at Lila’s, waiting for the reporters swarming the block to move on. Which the reporters did, after the cops announced they had no idea why the Art Critic abandoned his vehicle there, because none of the block’s residents was an artist.
Mark, who knew JaneDoe wouldn’t go home if the FBI bugs were still in place, phoned Lila, burner to burner. Asked Lila to tell JaneDoe the bugs were gone. And that JaneDoe should remain vigilant, but there were indications the Art Critic had left town.
Lila said, “JaneDoe’s in the shower—I’m gonna go hand her the phone.”
“Don’t—I can’t talk now.”
“Well… Is there anything else—like, you wanna arrange another, more private get-together with her than that last one?”
“Not yet.”
Lila sighed, “Okay,” in a tone that conveyed disappointment in Mark’s poor judgment, and urged him to reconsider, implying JaneDoe was getting unhappier by the minute, and if Mark didn’t put his arms around her soon, he might never, not that Lila was going to meddle by offering advice Mark would be wise to take to heart.
Ninety-Eight | 2012
Branko left his office at 7:43 P.M.. Went home. Not to his house in Kenilworth. To a pied-a-terre he kept in a Streeterville high-rise.
At 12:21 A.M. Branko’s car emerged from the building’s garage.
Branko drove to Bridgeport, parked, and at 12:38 A.M. entered Teddy Flynn’s, a venerable Irish saloon that was sandwiched between the equally venerable Lyden & O’Leary Mortuary on one side and Scanlon Brothers Electrical & Plumbing Supplies on the other.
The first unit following Branko parked across the street. The second and third units parked at either end of the alley behind Teddy Flynn’s, in case Branko tried slipping out the back.
A few minutes later Detective Wendy Hsu strolled into Flynn’s and looked around, as if expecting to meet someone. She didn’t spot Branko, so she took a seat at the bar and ordered a light beer. Took a sip, checked her watch, looked around the room again.
The bartender asked, “You not gettin’ stood up, are you darlin’?”
Hsu admitted, “No, this is my bad. I’m late. Has a beefy hunk of a guy, forty, wavy dark blond hair, brown leather jacket, been in?”
The bartender shook his head.
But a wrinkled white-haired stud one stool down from Hsu said, “I seen him. Chugged a shot and headed for the gents. Been in there a while.”
The bartender scowled at the wrinkled white-haired stud, who chose not to notice the warning. “Don’t worry hon,” the erotic geriatric comforted Hsu, “if he fell in, I’ll stand ya a drink.”
“Maybe when I get back from the lady’s,” she grinned.
Hsu went to the rear of the bar; bathrooms on the left, a staircase leading down to a basement on the right.
Hsu put on a goofy inebriated grin and mistakenly lurched into the men’s room. It was empty. She went to the staircase. A sign above it said PRIVATE. She peered down the stairs—
“No bathrooms down there, darlin’.”
The bartender. Standing right behind her.
“Thanks.” Hsu went into the lady’s room, informed the wire on her wrist that the bartender had made her, and Branko was in the basement.
Hsu finished her beer, slapped down an extra ten, told the bartender to pour the wrinkled white-haired stud a drink, and left.
Forty-eight minutes later Branko emerged from Flynn’s and drove back to Streeterville. Hsu and Montero tailed him. The second unit sat on the front of Flynn’s, the third unit sat on the alley. The bar closed at 3 A.M.. Lou Mastrizzi wasn’t among the exiting customers.
• • •
Next morning Mark phoned Rarey, to check on Lou Mastrizzi’s whereabouts last night. Rarey said Lou left his home at 11:39 P.M., arrived at the Mastrizzi HQ beneath ZeeZeeZ bowling alley in Downer’s Grove at 12:26 A.M., emerged at 2:47 and drove home.
It was physically impossible for Lou Mastrizzi to have been at Teddy Flynn’s while Branko was there.
“So who the fuck did Branko meet?” Husak wondered.
Mark thought it over. “I’ll call Doonie.”
“Bridgeport,” Husak nodded, recognizing the logic.
• • •
Doonie laughed. “The guy who Branko met with never came outta Teddy Flynn’s’ cause the guy never set foot in the joint.”
“Ah crap,” Mark moaned, having an idea what was coming.
“During Prohibition, Flynn’s was a big-time speak called Mabel’s. Basement’s fulla rabbit holes. These hidden doors, connect to the basements of Scanlon’s Plumbing on one side and Lyden’s meat locker on the other. The guy Branko met was in one of those.”
“And we’ll never know which of Lou’s guys it was.”
“None. Least nobody Italian. I’m thinkin’ Irish. ’Cause the type a hardhead Hibernians who own that block are still pissed about Torrio whacking O’Banion in 1924. I’ll see ya at work tomorrow.”
“Doctor cleared you?”
“Not the one I saw today. Got a 9 A.M. tomorrow with Dr. Bobby Ryan.”
• • •
Mark phoned Ed Nardelli. “Gianni and Lou got any close Irish friends?”
“Not that they’d trust with this shit.”
If Doonie’s theoretical Irishman wasn’t a friend of the Mastrizzis, he must be a friend of Branko’s. What Irishman is Branko tight with who has enough clout to handle this shit?
Gangster? Cop? Pol?
Ninety-Nine | 2012
“Might be a gangster or a cop if Branko was looking for protection from the Mastrizzis,” Husak mused. “For protection from us, it’d be a pol or someone who owns a few. But I don’t want you chasing Doonie’s phantom Irishman. Any new ideas for going at Branko?”
“Just an old one,” Mark said. “I’m gonna re-toss Zerbjka’s home and club, see if the guys missed anything—” the burner vibrated in Mark’s coat pocket—he silenced it— “when they searched for Branko’s down payment.”
Husak waited to see if Mark took the call, which Mark would if it were business.
Mark didn’t.
Husak made a shooing gesture. “Go on, call her back.”
Mark gave Husak a small rueful nod, acknowledging yeah, Loo, you’re right, it’s a woman.
• • •
Mark went to the parking lot and called Lila back. Lila picked up in the middle of the third ring—
“Hi, Detective,” JaneDoe said. A warm and threatening purr.
A split-second of shock at the unexpected voice, then the sound of it filled Mark, his whole body.
“Hi.”
“Called at a bad moment just before, didn’t I,” she drawled.
“This is a good moment,” Mark said.
“Shame there have been so few. I’m home. How’s tonight?”
Tonight…? “Yeah. After eleven. Should work.”
“Should?”
“I will do everything I can to make sure it does.”
“But shit happens.”
“Right now, a lot of it.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“And, like it or not,” Mark quietly noted, “sometimes it’s shit I have to deal with right away.”
“Yes I am,” JaneDoe informed him.
• • •
Mark read an interview Kaz and Kimmie did with the wheelman, Vuk Stetenich, prior to searching Zerbjka’s home and business.
Stetenich claimed Zerbjka hadn’t paid him any upfront—Zee was a mean crazy prick you didn’t mess with about shit like that. The other thing Stetenich was adamant about was how Zee’s wife Roza was the last person Zee’d’ve trusted to know where he hid his money. Fucking hated each other, those two.
Mark went to the Partizan Sporting Association.
One Hundred | 2012
The social club was in Eastside, a far southeast district whose steel mills had been a magnet for Balkan immigrants in the early 1900s.
By the early 2000s the mills had emigrated to China. Along the lakefront, the neighborhood was sprouting sleek condo towers and townhomes. Inland, the neighborhood was a throwback cityscape of aging bungalows and low-rise apartments.
The Partizan Sporting Association was housed in what had been a corner tavern, in a 1930s two-story brick four-flat.
The club was near-empty. Nobody was watching the video of Partizan soccer triumphs silently flowing across two huge flatscreens. There were a couple of tables of old guys playing cards and nursing beers. There were a couple of late-teen guys trying to look hard enough to be in a crew like Zerbjka’s, soon as they tore themselves away from the arcade shooter game. The bartender was sixty, fat and texting. Mark handed him the search warrant.
“Again?” the bartender wearily marveled.
“Again,” Mark sympathized.
The bartender gestured for Mark to go, do what you will, and resumed texting.
Mark, aided by a trio of unis, worked from the roof down. Nothing up there but a satellite dish decorated with pigeon graffiti.
The second floor was a small apartment that had been converted to an office. There was a safe hidden inside a lower cabinet in the kitchen; the first searchers had found a few grand in it, none bearing Branko’s prints.
In the floor under Zerbjka’s office chair there was a hiding space where Kaz and Kimmie had found two machine pistols. Mark’s and the unis’ re-inspection of the walls, floors, ceilings, furniture and fixtures proved Kaz and Kimmie hadn’t missed a thing.
Mark let the unis search the tavern on the ground floor. He didn’t see Zerbjka hiding his money in a public space.
Mark went to the basement. Metal beer kegs. Broken barstools. Cartons of glassware, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, bulbs, paint cans, Partizan T-shirts. A padlocked closet, which Mark opened with a key provided by the bartender. Nothing inside but cases of booze.
On the opposite wall, the one facing the alley, was the furnace. The concrete floor around it was stained black. On the wall behind the furnace there was a bricked-in square where a coal chute used to be; the building was as old as it looked—
Like from Prohibition. When this place must have been a speak.
Mark went to the wall that separated the tavern basement from the basement of the adjoining apartments. That wall was lined with historic dead appliances. A 1960s brute of a restaurant refrigerator. A 1970s earth-tone brown washing machine and matching dryer.
Mark inspected inside each relic. Nothing. He tried to move the refrigerator but it barely budged; wasn’t an object under which you’d hide something you might want to get at in a hurry, by yourself.
The washing machine was lighter. Mark tipped it forward, looked underneath and saw a steel plate set into the concrete floor. He moved the washer aside.
There was a handle in the steel plate. Mark swung the plate up. Beneath it crumbling brick steps led down to what had been a tunnel to the next basement. Hurray for civic traditions.
The entrance to the tunnel was bricked up. There was a three-foot-square dirt floor in front of the bricked-up tunnel. Most of the dirt floor was covered by a filthy old sheet of masonite.
Mark lifted the ancient masonite.
Found a very modern floor safe.
One Hundred-One | 2012
The Department’s #1 Ace Expert Champion Safe-Cracking TV Star put down his drill, grasped the safe’s handle, shot Mark an aristocratically confident look and tugged. The handle turned, the bolts snicked back, the TV Star opened the safe, pressed a button on his watch and informed Mark, “One minute fifty-three seconds.”
“Shame it took you ninety-seven minutes fourteen-point-six seconds to get here,” Mark muttered, peering into the safe. He pulled out a Trader Joe’s reusable shopping bag. It was filled with bundles of reusable hundred dollar bills.
Mark handed the money to a rookie TV Star. Told her, “Lights and siren all the way to the lab. Walk in the door and start processing.”
“Yessir.”
The rookie TV Star hustled up the basement stairs. Mark was right behind, pulling out his cell and contacting the surveillance unit.
Jim Montero answered. They were tailing Branko, who was heading west on the 88. They just passed Downer’s Grove.
Shit; Branko was outside Chicago’s jurisdiction. Mark told Montero to let him know soon as Branko got where he was going.
Mark got in his car, called Husak, told him about the cash and that he was going to catch up with the surveillance, so if the lab got a fingerprint hit Mark would be there to collect Branko. Or at least witness it—off Chicago turf, Mark would have to watch the FBI cuff Branko.
Mark hit the siren and called Rarey as he drove.
“Awesome!” Rarey shouted, and hung up.
• • •
Mark was charging up the Tri-State towards the 88 when Montero called to say Branko had exited the 88 and was heading south on State 56.
“Where the hell is that?” Mark asked.
“Little bit past Aurora.”
“Jesus, where’s he going?”
“Let you know soon as he stops.”
Fuck. The dashboard clock said 7:56. And Mark was headed out past where God left his roller skates. Fuck.
Mark killed the siren and party lights, slowed to sixty-five, took out his burner and called JaneDoe.
She didn’t pick up until the fifth ring. Said a quiet, wary, “Hi.”
“Hi… Listen, I—”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“It’s—”
She hung up.
Mark’s regular phone rang.
Montero: “The eagle has landed. Wanna guess where?”
“No.”
“He’s going to Rambo-Land.”
One Hundred-Two | 2012
It was located in a hollow but was easy to find in the dark, its presence announced by the hard glow of stadium lights banging against the rural night sky.
But it wasn’t a ballpark. It was a bulletpark. Had a couple of fixed-target shooting ranges, plus a 3-D feature attraction: The Prairie Storm Tactical Shooting Course, a walk-through firing range Built To Special Forces Specs. It was a Third Worldish village with automated Muslimi
sh targets popping up from windows, doorways, rooftops, boulders, a wrecked Humvee and—Coppola homage—erupting from the middle of a pond.
There was no way two unmarked cars containing plainclothes cops could surreptitiously park in the lot and eyeball the place.
Wendy Hsu got into the back seat of the second car, which parked a quarter-mile up the road. Jim Montero drove into Prairie Storm alone, plunked down a VISA and bought himself the right to play in the fantasy SEAL league. He was next in line behind Branko.
Montero went to the waiting area and sat a few chairs away from Branko, who was staring at the floor.
Montero said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Branko grunted.
“P226,” Montero commented, referring to the weapon strapped to Branko’s leg. “Nice piece.”
“Thanks… Listen, nothing personal, I uh, need to focus.”
Montero made a no problem gesture, and got interested in a copy of Law Enforcement Weapons magazine. Most of it was devoted to military-grade mass slaughter machines, of less interest to the average law enforcer than to the average survivalist who needed to prevent the black helicopters from fluoridating his freedom.
Branko’s name was called. He headed out to the course.
Montero’s phone rang. It was Hsu.
Montero said, “Hi Hon,” as if greeting his wife and not the lesbian with whom he spent the majority of his waking hours and trusted with his life.
“Sorry sweetie, but Bergman and the FBI are here, and Bergman just got confirmation Branko’s prints are all over the cash. We’re coming to collect him, so you don’t get to play with your gun tonight.”
Damn.
• • •
Mark and Rarey introduced themselves to the owner, T. W. Mueller, who escorted them to the observation tower where a range master had a view of the tactical course.
Branko looked jittery out there, movements jerky and shots going wide as he reacted to each surprise.
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