Lies in High Places

by Dana Killion

  “So they’re certain this is another gang situation?” All the news coverage had pointed in that direction, but I had to ask.

  “That’s the word. Shooter was on the overpass at Garfield Boulevard, near the Red Line L stop. It’s a regular open-air drug market. Guys on the force call it ‘the Pharmacy.’”

  Drugs, would be the obvious motivator underlying a gang territory conflict, but these shootings had been described as initiation rites. This was the first I was hearing anything about the Pharmacy or a territory dispute. Was it a new situation, or was CPD keeping quiet for some reason? I scribbled a few notes to myself.

  “What’s Janek’s story? I understand he’s heading up the investigation.”

  “Smart, tough, all-around good cop.” Jacqui was fiercely loyal to the police force, and I wasn’t surprised by her praise. She would never disparage an officer, but she would call it like she saw it if loyalties were compromised.

  “I hear there were some bribery allegations a while back. You think there’s anything to that?”

  “Janek? No way! I know they had to investigate him, but this guy plays it straight. He didn’t deserve getting raked over like that. That damage is hard to erase.”

  I could hear the sorrow in her voice. In a world where reputation was everything, cops weren’t known for their skills at forgive-and-forget. If Janek was the lone holdout in a group happy to take the money, I imagined he had a tally sheet of his own.

  “Janek did have a lieutenant who I’m convinced was dirty, Matt Dubicki,” she added, pausing for a moment, deciding how much to say. “The way he was spending money, something had to be coming in on the side, if you know what I mean. A cop’s salary doesn’t get you a two-million-dollar restored Greystone in Hyde Park or 30K a year to send your kids to Chicago Lab School. They could never pin anything on him. He had some story about an investment that paid big, but in my mind, that just means he was a little slicker than the investigators. Or he had help hiding it.”

  “Is Dubicki still with the force?”

  “No. He bolted as soon as soon as Internal Affairs stopped overturning rocks. Wachowski would have booted him anyway. He came in as superintendent about a month later and started tossing the deadwood. Dubicki was probably afraid that one day his backup wouldn’t show. Now he’s heading up security for some commercial real estate developer, making a couple hundred grand a year. Talk about making lemonade.”

  I ended the call wondering how much money it took to buy a cop these days.

  6

  “That was a waste of an afternoon,” I grumbled to myself, slumping into my desk chair and kicking off my shoes. I’d spent the past few hours pounding the pavement and working the phones trying to overturn the rocks hiding Rendell’s private bank account. My efforts had yielded nothing but sore feet, closed doors, hang ups, and dead ends. Even the disgruntled former staffer, who had presented me with evidence of the secret account and her suspicions just three weeks ago, seemed to be avoiding me. I wasn’t even close to proving anything untoward. Instead, I was starting to feel like the chump in someone else’s revenge story.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose to ease the pounding behind my eyes. It was nearly six and the office had cleared out for the day, aside from the usual stragglers. Borkowski was still hunched over his desk, his head buried in a stack of files. I didn’t know if it was dedication or he simply had no personal life, but the man never seemed to leave the office before 8:00 p.m. The office scuttlebutt had it that Borkowski lost a son tragically, but I’d heard no mention of a wife or partner. Maybe that explained his charming disposition.

  I glanced briefly at a few notes Brynn had left for me while listening to the local evening news replay footage from Friday’s shooting, I lifted my head toward the TV hanging in the corner of my office, drawn to the image of the overpass, my conversation with Jacqui fresh in my mind. A second later, Karl Janek’s angular face filled the frame as a clip from this afternoon played. Gang dispute. CPD is devoting every resource. Blah, blah, blah. Then why wasn’t anyone in custody? And why wasn’t Borkowski down in Englewood needling Janek for answers?

  Grabbing the files Brynn had pulled together on Mayor Rendell’s early political career, I shoved them in my tote for a little bedtime reading. My body complained about the length of the day, but unless I wanted Erik pounding on my door at midnight, I needed to stop in his office and find out what the four phone messages he’d left this afternoon were all about before I went to meet Cai for a drink. As I headed down the hall, Borkowski lifted his head from his computer and scowled as I passed.

  Erik was on the phone when I paused in the doorway. He motioned me in and pointed to the chair. I ignored his offer, hoping to make this a quick visit. Leaning back in his chair, his loafered feet rested casually on the edge of his Herman Miller desk, the sleeves of his linen shirt were rolled up and his wavy blond hair looked tousled as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Images of a happier past looked down at me from the photos dotting the bookcase wall behind him. A trip to Florence three years ago. An afternoon on the boat. Christmas with my father. I turned away, needing to tamp down any and all warm and fuzzies. When the hell was this roller coaster going to end?

  “John, let’s talk next week.” He wrapped up the call and came around the desk, stopping close enough that I could smell the lemongrass soap he had used this morning.

  “Baby, are you okay? I called several times.”

  The term of endearment annoyed me, but I let it pass, needing to modulate my emotions. Another tiff with Erik would only complicate my dinner plans and my mood.

  “I’m fine. I was pressing my leads on the mayor story, not that it got me anywhere. What’s up?”

  “I was worried. You’ve been out all afternoon. When I didn’t hear back, I had visions of you passed out somewhere. I cautioned you this morning about pushing yourself so hard. A head injury isn’t something to mess with. Let me take you home.”

  He placed a hand on my shoulder and I stiffened at the touch. Too much had happened over the last few days for me to have any emotional stability. I didn’t trust myself not to collapse against him in defeat.

  I also wanted to slap myself for giving a toehold to self-doubt. Suck it up. This was just his macho male protector role coming out. Sorry, Erik, you’ve been fired from that job.

  “Look, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but I’m okay. Don’t magnify this injury into something more serious than it is. I’m perfectly capable of doing my job and knowing when I’ve pushed too hard. Was there another reason you called?”

  “You should be resting. Get your things.”

  The man was infuriating. Speaking to me like I was a child who needed to be told when to put on her mittens was not going to be part of our divorce.

  “Erik, you have to stop this. This isn’t the relationship we have anymore.”

  His face softened as he stepped closer, stroking his fingers along the curve of my cheek.

  “It could be. We could still have that.” He leaned in for a kiss.

  Caught off guard, my breath froze in my throat and I stopped him by placing my hand on his lips. I had always loved his mouth, so sensuous and strong. The urge to run my finger along that lush curve overwhelmed me. Memories flooded in. Memories of tenderness and passion and love. Memories igniting a hunger that I hadn’t felt in such a long time.

  His hand moved to the back of my neck, the other around my waist. He pulled me in until no space remained between us. His lips brushed my forehead, nuzzled my hair, and I melted. In that instant, I forgot all the pain and anger, and felt nothing but how well our bodies fit together.

  “Baby, I miss you so much,” he said, as his hand slowly ran down the curve of my backside.

  “Erik?”

  A voice at the door pulled me out of my lustful reverie. I jumped away from Erik like a teenager caught coping a feel.

  “Sorry to interrupt your, um, meeting? I need this expense authorization signed befo
re you leave tonight.”

  Shit! Borkowski. Another thirty seconds and he would have walked in on something far more embarrassing. What the hell was I doing?

  “No problem. I was just leaving,” I said, bewildered and frustrated, but grateful for Borkowski’s interruption.

  “Can you wait ten minutes?” Erik implored me, desire still in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I, ah…, no, I have dinner plans,” I said, my voice shaky, thrown off by my response to Erik. I spun for the door, desperate to get some distance.

  “Andrea…”

  “No, Erik, I have to go.”

  I turned—afraid to meet Erik’s gaze, afraid to let him see the weakness in my eyes—and sprinted down the four flights of stairs rather than wait for the elevator, ignoring the muscle spasms in my side. My thoughts were spiraling. Confusion, lust, anger with myself were all rolled up into a whirling ball of emotions I couldn’t process.

  “Can I get you something to drink while you wait?” asked a young man with a lumberjack beard and plaid flannel shirt.

  He appeared seconds after I’d been seated at a table on the sidewalk patio at Nico Osteria where Cai and I were meeting for dinner. The cab ride from the office to the restaurant had released a little of the tension, but I was still trying to process my response to Erik.

  What the hell was going on? Was I so sex-deprived that I had responded to Erik out of pure animal instinct? That at least was a more palatable thought. I had been scarred so deeply that the reminder I still had feelings for him was too painful to contemplate.

  “Vodka martini, rocks, olives,” I said to my server, who scurried off, apparently recognizing that I needed booze now. Good man.

  I was halfway through my drink when Cai slid into the seat across from me. She threw her navy silk jacket onto the back of the chair and pulled her long hair loose from the clip she always wore at work.

  “Going hardcore tonight, I see. A martini? What’s the occasion?”

  “Just trying to forget my day. Join me.”

  I motioned to my new bearded friend.

  “Let me have a Dewar’s, neat,” Cai said.

  One of our many shared traits was that neither of us had ever been into “girl” drinks—nothing fruity, no chocolate ‘tini’s. We liked our booze unmasked.

  Her drink delivered, Cai raised her glass and took a nice swig. “To forgetting. Ah, that’s better. Now hurry up and tell me about your awful day so I can tell you about how wonderful mine was.”

  I hesitated, not because I was uncomfortable, but because I was struggling to understand my response. It would be easier to put the encounter with Erik out of my mind and pretend it hadn’t happened. I took a deep inhale of the geraniums trailing over the edge of the planter next to me and reveled in the languorous rhythm of the city around me before Cai brought me back.

  “Come on, spill it already, or do we need to get another martini into you before you can talk about it?”

  I laughed and took another sip, letting the warmth of the summer evening on my bare arms relax me. Cai lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head and shot me a look.

  “Okay, okay! I had a… ah…a ‘moment’ with Erik just before I came over here that I would have been better off without.”

  “A ‘moment’? What the hell does that mean?”

  I knew I was stalling. Going into the gory details meant admitting that I was still confused about my feelings for Erik. And I didn’t like being confused. Particularly about this.

  “He’s not being a dick over your financial settlement, is he? I know you didn’t want my S.O.B. divorce-attorney friend to represent you, but just say the word and Nelson will crush his ass. Erik will be trading that fancy sailboat of his in for a kayak after Nelson gets done with him.”

  The boat was Erik’s obsession. A competitive sailor since college, he had treated himself to the boat of his dreams six years ago after selling EMco. I had no interest in his boat and no interest in bleeding him dry as the woman scorned, but, if I were inclined, nothing would push his buttons more than a bulldog attorney coming after his baby.

  “No, no, nothing like that. We were in his office, he made a move on me, and I was right there with him in all of five seconds.”

  Cai’s hand froze as she lifted her glass to her mouth, and she stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “My god, put that drink down. You obviously hurt your head more than you realized in the car accident. What could you have possibly been thinking?” she said, shuddering.

  Cai knew, more than anyone, how deeply Erik had hurt me. She’d held me as I sobbed. Handed me tissues when my face was red and bloated. Listened to me rail at 2:00 a.m. when sleep was elusive.

  “I know. I’m too traumatized to analyze it right now. Nothing happened, really, but I don’t know where that came from. One minute we were talking, and seconds later his hands were on my ass and I wasn’t pushing him away. I don’t have an explanation.” I shook my head and reached for my martini. “To top it off, Borkowski walked in on us mid-grope,” I said, disgusted with myself for giving him more ammunition.

  Cai burst out with a laugh that came straight from her gut. I couldn’t help but join in. The options were either to laugh or cry.

  “Look, sweetie, your neglected lady parts just need some attention, nothing more. Go out and get laid. Problem solved. Erik will be neutered.”

  I raised my eyebrows, pretending to take her seriously.

  “Metaphorically speaking,” she said, smiling. “Unless you want me to pull out the Ginsu knife. I can play out that Asian chick stereotype.” Cai flipped her hair over her shoulder, then fingered the butter knife next to her plate.

  “I thought Asian chick stereotypes revolved around submission.”

  “Or the female assassin who can kill a man with her thighs.”

  “You got the best of both parents: delicate Vietnamese exterior strikes back with balls of steel.”

  “Exactly right. Based on most of the men I meet, one of us has to have a pair.” She scanned the bar, dismissing the lot on sight. Two women at the neighboring table sniggered in agreement.

  “For someone trying to push me out of the self-imposed celibacy nest, you’re not exactly painting an inspiring picture.”

  “Honey, I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been in the market, but I’m suggesting a good fuck, not a relationship. He just has to be good with his hands, if you know what I mean.”

  “I have a vague memory…”

  We laughed, the tension of my moment with Erik gone, and ordered another round of drinks.

  Cai had a talent for cutting through the clutter and distilling any situation into its most basic elements. Normally, I could hold my own in that regard. Years of legal training had drilled simplicity and order into my approach to the world, but my feelings for Erik were still too raw, more of a sliding scale than an on-off button.

  “Enough about my sex life or lack thereof. Distract me with the juicy details of your life. You had a trial start today, didn’t you?”

  “I did, and if I do say so myself, my opening argument was brilliant. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client was not embezzling eight million dollars. He was investing that money in a new venture on behalf of his employer. Perhaps his supervisor was experiencing one of his many moments of alcohol-induced amnesia at the time he authorized the funds.’”

  I chuckled. “Let me guess, that new venture was something that your client personally profited from, also on his employer’s behalf?”

  “It’s not a crime to make a profit.”

  “Creative strategy,” I said, admiring her chutzpah.

  Cai was born to be an attorney. By the time a jury finished listening to her version of events, they had trouble imagining any other possible truth. She could switch on either her soft or tough sides for maximum impact, based on the objective at hand.

  “I thought so. Speaking of profits, do you see who I see?” Cai said, her eyes fixed across the street, an amused
smile on her face.

  I turned and followed her gaze.

  “Who are you looking at? There are dozens of people on the street.”

  Nico Osteria was at the intersection of Bellevue, Rush, and State streets, a virtual restaurant row for moneyed Gold Coast locals and tourists alike. And on a beautiful July evening, the area was teeming with people at the outdoor cafes, enjoying a gelato in Mariano Park, or walking the few short blocks to Oak Street’s designer boutiques.

  “Across the street at Gibsons. The three middle-aged white guys at a table on the far right corner of the patio.”

  “Yeah, I see them.”

  “See the big guy, white hair, with the ridiculous poufy comb-over facing us? That’s Nelson Ramirez. He owns Rami Concrete. They handle every large-scale construction project in the Chicago area. He was just released from prison.”

  Rami Concrete was known throughout the area for its graffiti-painted trucks and aggressive advertising. The trial had consumed major airtime on local news stations because Ramirez was well-connected politically. Rami Concrete took in millions of dollars in revenue from city contracts every year—at least it had prior to its owner becoming a convicted felon.

  “Yeah, I remember. He’s the guy who got nabbed for manipulating environmental impact studies.”

  “The very same. He was paying an engineer to ‘rewrite’ bad news so he wouldn’t lose contracts. Eventually he got caught when some toxic sludge started bubbling up in a Dollar General parking lot. Spent the last eighteen months in federal prison in Terre Haute.” She turned her attention back to her Dewar’s, then leaned across the table toward me.

  “His legal team was cocky and arrogant from the start,” she said softly. “They tried a kitchen-sink strategy, muddying the waters with a technical data dump, hoping it would become too complicated for the jury to follow. The strategy backfired, and the case unraveled.” Cai’s eyes lit up in delight as she leaned back in her chair. “That was a fun one to watch.”