by Marcus Sakey
It took him ten minutes to get to the mall, and he barely recognized the place once he did. The front glass was broken out onto the concrete. An ambulance and at least a dozen squad cars blocked the street and sidewalks, light bars spinning blue. Sirens wailed from every point of the compass. As he watched, EMTs raced out with a gurney, a tech running alongside to keep pressure on a chest blooming red. Two hundred citizens clustered behind yellow tape, watching the show. A reporter screamed obscenities at a cop trying to hold her back.
Halden left his car on the sidewalk, badged the guys at the door. “Who’s the detective in charge?”
“Detective? You kidding?” The cop shook his head. “Half the brass is here. The security office.”
Inside, the mall had a surreal quality, chairs and benches overturned, glass broken from store windows, pop music playing over the sound system, but instead of shoppers, there were crime techs and tactical officers and photographers. Most of the action seemed to be concentrated a couple floors up, but Halden wanted to find out what had happened before looking at the scene itself.
The mall security office was small, a windowless room with a couple of grainy monitors and too many people huddled around them. He gave up hope of pushing inside when he saw how much his rank would bring down the average. Instead, he wandered until he saw a detective he recognized from a raid the year before, an Uptown meth house. “What’s the story?”
“Some sort of a meet gone wrong,” the man said. “A couple of bodies. Six or eight bad guys. They shot a cop on the way out.”
“He okay?”
The detective shook his head. “Took one to the head.”
Somebody was fucked, then. You didn’t shoot police in Chicago.Halden gestured to the security office. “What’s the big attraction?”
“They pulled a security feed from one of the stores.”
“Anything useful?”
“Yeah. One of them looks like Jack Witkowski.”
“The Shooting Star suspect?” Surprise came first. Then Halden felt his stomach tighten. Yesterday, Tom Reed had said the drug dealer had mentioned Witkowski. Then Reed had gone AWOL. When Halden had finally gotten hold of him, the guy had sounded scared. And behind his voice, there had been the random sounds of a public place, and a persistent beat, like music.
Maybe the same music that was playing over the speakers right now. Shit. Shit, shit, oh shit. The other detective started to walk away, but Halden grabbed his arm. “Wait. Did you see the tape?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else was there?”
“Nobody anybody recognized. The angle is lousy. They’re looking at cameras from other stores now.”
“Could you see anybody else?” He couldn’t keep the panic from his voice. “Anybody at all?”
The detective looked at him strangely. “Yeah. Witkowski, if it was him, he was talking to two people. A man and a woman, looked like taxpayers. Had a bag that they started to show just before everything went crazy. They ended up running.”
Halden let go of the guy’s shoulder. Forced a nod.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He turned away. The other detective stared for a moment, then shrugged and headed for the doors.
Tom and Anna Reed. It had to be. Which meant that since yesterday,he’d had information that might have prevented this from happening. In all the messages he’d left, he’d never said anything about the money because he hadn’t wanted to spook them into running. He’d pretended he was going to set up the drug dealer, when really he just wanted to lure Tom and Anna somewhere. Wanted to grab them himself and make the big arrest. Be a hero, get his name in the paper, jump clear of his lieutenant and the rest of the politicians.
Which made this his fault. At least partly. If he’d told the truth, things might have gone differently. A dead cop might still be alive.
He’d screwed up before, but never like this.
Halden took a deep breath and started toward the security office, trying to figure out how to share what he knew in a way that didn’t make him the scapegoat for the whole mess.
Eight men were crammed inside the tiny room, talking in low voices. Among them the deputy chief of D’s, his boss’s boss. Halden had caught his eye, started to gesture him over, when a thought hit.
Maybe there was still a way to save this. To come out on top, a hero.
Being a detective was about asking the right question. Right now he was focusing on his own mistake. But that wasn’t what Tom and Anna would be thinking about. Their plan had just backfired horribly. So the real question was, what would they do now?
With the question reframed that way, the answer was obvious. After they knew they were safe, they’d remember that they weren’t criminals. Not in the real meaning of the word. So they’d call the police. And not just any cop – they’d call one who knew them, who would understand their circumstances.
They would call him.
Halden spun on his heel, went back down the corridor. It was a dangerous game, sure. But he could pull it off. Go to the bosses not with hat in hand, but with two people from the incident, a bag full of money, and a complete explanation for what had happened and why. Lemonade from lemons. Instead of being a scapegoat, get a promotion and a pay bump and a hell of a lot closer to that cabin up west of Minocqua. And all he had to do was wait. And pray.
“WELL, that didn’t go quite how you planned.” Marshall sounded like he might have been trying for a joke, but didn’t quite hit it, his voice tight and shoulders tense.
Jack said, “We got out, didn’t we?” The handles of the duffel bag were heavy against his palms, the bulk bumping his knee as they walked through the rain. The heft of the thing felt good, right. He’d worked hard for it. He knew it wouldn’t bring Bobby back – he wasn’t a fucking idiot – but it was something.
Sirens screamed toward them, but Jack held himself steady. The car blew past in a spray of water and flashing light, heading east toward the mall three blocks away. After he’d killed the cop, they’d hit the apartments across the parking lot. A simple matter of jimmying a window lock and they were off the street. Marshall had snagged a black tee from the owner’s dresser and balled the shirt of the fake uniform deep in the kitchen trash. Then they strolled out the front door and down the steps like they owned the place, right past a prowler car coming up to blockade the back of the mall.
“We did get out,” Marshall said. “And we do have the money. But I just feel like there was something that didn’t go quite right. What was it?” He paused theatrically, then put a finger up in a eureka gesture. “Oh yeah – you shot a cop.”
“What did you want me to do? Ask nice if he’d let us walk?” The bag was getting heavy, but his other arm throbbed from the reopened cut. The bandage on his left arm was staining a slow scarlet. “Cop’s just a guy in a funny hat.”
“Chicago PD, man, they’re brutal when one of theirs goes down. They’ll never stop looking for us.”
“They’d never have stopped anyway. Besides, it’s done.”
They turned into the drugstore parking lot. The truck was a beater, an old Ford F150 they’d bought off a Western Avenue lot for a grand in cash. They’d left the stolen Honda parked on a pleasant neighborhood street, where it would likely sit for months before anybody noticed it. No sense pulling off a deal and then getting nabbed if the highway patrol happened to punch their plates. He swung the door open with a creak, tossed the money behind the driver’s seat, then leaned over to unlock Marshall’s side. Fired the engine, turning the heat on full blast to battle the chill from his wet clothes. “Just one more thing to do.”
“What’s that?”
“See to my favorite couple.” They’d been a pain in the ass, almost gotten him killed twice. And while he recognized that it didn’t make strict logical sense, some part of him held them responsible for Bobby’s death. It had something to do with Will Tuttle being dead, because the guy he’d looked forward to getting revenge on had shuffled off s
wift and sweet instead of slow and painful. There was a word for the thing he was doing, something he’d seen on daytime TV, one of those psychology words. Projection? Transference? Whatever. Since he couldn’t get Will, he wanted Tom and Anna.
“Huh?” Marshall looked over sharply. “The cops’ll have them.”
“Maybe.” Last he’d seen, they’d been running down a back stairwell. “Maybe they walked out the same door we did.”
“Even if that’s true, we have the money. We don’t need them.”
“They saw us. They can ID us.”
“Come on, man, they’re doing that right now. You really want to be in town once our faces start flashing on TV?” He shook his head. “You shot a cop. Chicago just got way too small for us.”
“But-”
“You do this, you’re on your own.”
The line fell heavy. Jack looked sideways at his partner. Saw the stare, the sincerity. Not like Marshall to back away from a fight. It made Jack pause.
Truth was, the guy had a point. They had the money, and their freedom, and there really wasn’t anything they could do about what Tom and Anna knew, not now. It irked, the idea those two yahoos might walk away unscathed, might not have to pay for stealing from him, for trying to game him. But he’d learn to live with it. Jack sighed. “All right. Forget it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Marshall blew a breath. “Amen.”
Jack put the clutch to the floor and forced the stick into reverse. The truck coughed and shook, but moved. Marshall pulled the pistol from his holster and popped the clip. “You recognize that black dude?” He squinted, counting rounds. “He was with the drug dealer. The night we took down the Star.”
“No shit?”
“I’m pretty sure. Didn’t recognize the other two, though.”
“What the hell were they doing there?”
“Dunno. One more reason to get clear.”
Jack nodded. He hated leaving all this shit undone, all these loose ends, too many of them personal. But they’d won. That would have to be enough.
“Now,” Marshall said, slamming home the clip and holstering the pistol, “let’s see how we did, eh?” He fumbled behind the seat, dragged the duffel bag up to his lap. Jack turned the truck south. They could take Halsted down, pick up the freeway at Lake. Be in Saint Louis by afternoon. From there they could flip for the truck, split the take, shake hands, and part ways. Marshall wanted to go south, to Florida, but Miami was no kind of place for a middle-aged Polack. No, forget Miami, forget Chicago. Forget Tom and Anna Reed, forget the Star and the police and the drug dealer. The time had come to head west and hang up his spurs.
Then he heard a sound from Marshall, a kind of choking inhale. “Jack?” He had the bag in his lap, the top held wide, money bunched up in his fists, hundred-dollar bills green and crumpled, and beneath that, revealed now, the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, and the edge of one beneath that, and beneath that. For a second, Jack just stared, trying to understand what he was seeing, how his money had turned into newsprint.
Then he jammed the gas and spun the wheel, tires squealing, engine roaring up to the red as he popped a U, missing an oncoming car only because the other driver jerked onto the sidewalk. He held his right foot down and worked the clutch to jump from second to fourth.
Motherfucker. Tom and Anna Reed. They wanted to play? Fine. Time to play rough.
“MAYBE WE SHOULD RUN,” Tom said, watching the rain arc off the tires of the cab in front of them.
“Where?
“Anywhere. Get out of town. Now that Jack has killed a cop, the police are going to go crazy finding him. We could just get out of the way, come back once they have.”
“What if they don’t?”
He shrugged, didn’t know what to say.
“Tom?” Her voice husky.
“What is it, baby?”
“I was wrong.”
“When?”
“Before. I said we could still win.” She was drenched and solemn, hair flattened to her cheeks. She shook her head. “But it’s like a fairy tale.”
“Huh?” He looked over, wondered if she was starting to lose it.
“An old one, I mean. Brothers Grimm, that kind of thing.” She rubbed her eyes. “The violent ones, before they were Disney-fied. Rub the lamp, you get three wishes, but none of them go the way you planned. Like, you wish for riches, and your father dies. So you’ve inherited his fortune but lost your dad.”
“The Twilight Zone.”
She nodded. “I remember, when we found the money, thinking it was like a magic lamp. It was going to turn everything around for us, dig us out of the hole we were in, the stupid concerns of our old life. And it was going to give us the thing we most wanted.”
Tom sighed slowly. The world felt heavy, something that could bear down, crush you slow and complete. “Well, I’m definitely not worried about the devaluation of Chicago real estate anymore.” He didn’t know if he was making a joke or not. Didn’t know what he was saying. His head hurt, and his fingers throbbed in his lap.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “When I was a kid, I had this illustrated book of myths. I read them over and over. There was one with this dog, not cute, sort of menacing, with a bird he’s caught in his mouth. And he’s taking it home to eat. But before he gets there, he crosses a river and sees a dog with a bird in his mouth. And he wants that bird too, so he opens his mouth to attack the other dog. Only it was his reflection, of course, and he ends up with nothing. I always felt sorry for him, even though he was kind of a stupid dog.” She shook her head. “Or that Greek one, the kid with the wings that melted?”
“Icarus.”
“Right, Icarus. He and his dad were locked up somewhere, and his dad made the wings with wax and feathers. He told Icarus not to fly too high. But first chance the kid gets…” She whistled through her teeth, skimmed a hand upward. “The illustration was all orange and red and yellow, and just a silhouette shooting upwards, feathers falling away. I always wanted to warn him. But of course you turn the page, and…” She sighed, rubbed her face.
Tom said nothing, just nodded, waited.
“Back at the hotel, I was talking about how fate was funny, how everything came down to a cup of instant coffee. Like the fire in our kitchen was what started everything. But that’s bullshit, isn’t it? You can’t blame life on a cup of coffee.” She shook her head. “Everything I needed to know was in those books. But I kept going. I just… kept going.”
“You weren’t alone.”
“I pushed you, though,” she said, her voice small. “I wanted it more. I always wanted it more. I know you’d love to have a child. But I was the one who pushed. After we tried the shots, the hormones, you were ready to adopt. But I wanted to have one of my own. So I kept pushing, and we got deeper into debt, and you and I, we lost track of each other.”
“Stop,” he said. “None of that matters now.”
She looked over at him, held the gaze for a long time. Finally she said, “You would have been a great father.”
Something in him broke, some tenuous, fragile connection deep in his chest, it just gave. He felt a rush of emotions, too many and mixed to name. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. He knew what she was saying. What it cost her, cost them both.
“It’s time, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.” He flipped on the turn signal, pulled into the lot of a Jewel, and parked.
“The police are going to be tough on us.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “We don’t have much of a story to tell, not with a cop dead.”
“I know,” he said. “But every time we try to get out of this, we only make it worse.”
“Should we tell them about the deal we made with Malachi?”
“We should tell them everything. Every detail.”
“We’ll go to jail.”
“Probably,” he said.
She nodded. Reached over and put a hand on his thigh. “I love you
.”
“I love you too,” he said, and for the first time since this whole thing started, since the moment, Christ, it seemed like years ago, when they’d looked at each other across the pile of money and each realized the other wanted to take it, for the first time since then he felt right. No more running. No more playing angles or choosing convenient truths. No more pretending to be criminals. He leaned across the parking brake, and she met him halfway, the kiss passionate, her hand snaking around his neck to pull him close. The rain pattered on the roof, less urgently than before, and it seemed safe somehow, a childhood sound, a rainy day home from school.
When they finally broke, he stayed near, their eyes inches apart and staring. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head. “Me too.” Then he took his phone from his pocket and dialed.
“THIS IS STUPID, MAN.” His partner rubbed his chin, the stubble grating. “The cops could be here any minute.”
“Why? If Tom and Anna are talking to them, why would they send someone to the house?” Jack sniffed hard, popped his knuckles. “No one’s coming.”
“Even if you’re right, you don’t really think the money is here, do you?” Marshall stood in front of the door. “They probably turned it in already. And if they’re running, it’s going with them.”
“Only one way to be sure.”
“Look-”
“Move.” Jack stared hard. With a sigh, Marshall stepped aside.
He didn’t bother with picks this time. Just wound up and booted the door at the handle. The wood cracked and snapped. A second kick, and the thing flew open, the lock mounting tearing out of the frame, splinters flying. He was through before the door banged against the opposite wall.
Beep.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Marshall said. “The alarm.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. He stepped over to the control box and punched a six-digit string. The beeping died.