I noticed the light switch out of the corner of my eye. For the first time since arriving I felt able to think clearly, to plan for action.
Felitti tightened his lips. “You’re everything I’m glad my daughters aren’t. I just can’t see what attracted a man like Yarborough to a—a dyke like you.”
It was such a feeble insult and he looked so steamed up saying it that I couldn’t help laughing.
“Yeah, laugh,” Jason said. “You’ll do it out of the other side of your mouth in a minute. Why’d you have to come around here, anyway?”
“Mitch Kruger. He was an old friend of a good friend of mine. And he ended up dead in the canal. If everything you were doing with the pension fund and the bonds was so open, why did Chamfers get so bent out of shape when Mitch Kruger showed up last month demanding a piece of the pie in order to keep his mouth shut?”
“I told you Eddie Mohr would be a weak link,” Milt said to Peter. “He claimed he never said anything to any of the boys that would make them think he got his money from the company. But I always had my doubts.”
“And what about Eddie Mohr and Chicago Settlement?” I persisted. “Why on earth was he giving money to that outfit?”
“That was Dick’s idea,” Jason said. “I told him it was a mistake, but he said they’d take a lot of the bonds, only we had to encourage people who’d benefited from the deal to contribute.”
“And you’ve got to admit that the guy preened at getting his picture taken with a lot of downtown money,” Chamfers said.
“I see.” I smiled. “My … uh … partner couldn’t figure it out—he said Eddie was a Knights of Columbus man all the way.”
“Your partner?” Peter demanded. “Since when do you have a partner?”
“Since when are my business affairs any concern of yours?” I pulled down on the light switch and fell to the floor.
“Simon!” they bellowed.
I could hear Simon on the other side try the knob, swear, and put his shoulder into the door. Someone came up behind me, trying to get at the switch. I grabbed him at the knees and pulled hard. He came crashing over at the same time that Simon kicked the door open. I squirmed out from under the body I’d tackled. Staying on my hands and knees, I made it past Simon and out the door.
Simon’s pal was rushing in behind him. He grabbed at me as I went past, but missed. I ran down the hall, trying to get back to the entrance. Someone fired at me. I started moving from side to side as I ran, but I was too exposed a target. When they fired again I turned down the T-intersection to the loading bays.
The same subdued industry I’d interrupted last week was taking place on the work floor. A couple of men overhead were steadying a load on a gantry while another couple stood at the open back of a trailer to receive it.
I sprinted past them out onto the bay and jumped to the ground. I couldn’t hear anything over the truck engines, to know whether the Hulk was close at hand or not, and I didn’t stop to look. I could feel the gravel under the thin soles of my Tigers, could feel my toes wet with sweat or blood. It was still raining. I didn’t waste energy wiping water from my eyes, just kept running until I reached the Impala.
“Don’t flood now,” I gasped at it, turning the key while I slammed the door shut. The engine caught and I reversed with a great squeal of rubber. A bullet tore through one of the back windows. I shoved the car into drive without braking. The gears ground, but Luke’s magic fingers on the transmission kept it running smoothly and we leaped forward.
I careened down the drive toward Thirty-first Place. I was almost at the intersection when I saw the lights of one of the semis bearing down on me from behind. I turned right, sharply, so sharply that the car skidded on the wet road. I spun around in a circle, my arms cold with fear, chanting to myself my father’s lessons for managing a skid. I straightened out without flipping over, but the truck was now right behind me, almost touching the back of the Impala. I accelerated hard, but he was bearing down on me too fast.
We were running on an access road to the expressway, next to the stilts of the exit ramp to Damen, where pylons lowered the road notch by notch. I could just make out a fence through the rain.
Another semi was coming toward us, its lights flashing, its horn blaring. At the last second I pulled off the road into the prairie grass. I had the door open before I left the road. Just before the Impala hit the cyclone fence I jumped free and rolled onto the grass.
There was a terrible scream of metal on metal as the truck behind me drove through the Impala, knocking it from its path. I scrambled up the cyclone fence, did a belly flop across its pointed top that raked open my shirt and my stomach, and landed on the cement floor beyond.
I made myself get up and start moving again, but red pain was searing my lungs and I was starting to black out. I stumbled over a hubcap and fell down. Lying on my back I watched the semi plow through the fence, heading straight toward me, its headlights pinning me.
I staggered upright. My right foot caught in a discarded tire and I started to fall back to the concrete. I seemed to be dropping in free-fall: I was landing slowly enough to watch the tractor rush toward me.
Just as I hit the pavement sparks erupted from the cab top. A cannon exploded, making my head vibrate against the concrete. The engine ruptured the cab’s grille and a geyser of antifreeze sprayed the night. As I wrenched my ankle free of the tire and dove away I heard a heart-shattering scream. A starburst the color of blood decorated the truck’s windshield.
I lay behind a pylon, panting. The exit ramp notched down too low here for a truck to clear, but Simon had been so intent on killing me that he hadn’t noticed. The top of the truck had caught the edge of the ramp.
I looked up at the cracked concrete. In the dim night air I could just make out pieces of exposed rebars. Traffic roared overhead. It seemed so queer that people were rushing to and fro above me, utterly oblivious of the violence down here. The world should have paused a moment to catch its breath, make some acknowledgment. The expressway itself should have shuddered. But the pylons towered over me, unmoved.
51
Just Deserts—or Whatever—for the Guilty
I ended up in my own bed that night, although for a while it didn’t look as though I’d get there. The trucker who’d been heading toward me had called the cops on his CB once he’d extricated himself from his cab. He had slammed into the side of Simon’s trailer as it jackknifed across the road. His own cab had flipped over, but he’d been wearing a seat belt and mercifully walked away from the accident with minor bruises. By later accounts he’d been threatening to sue everyone involved until he saw Simon’s pulpy head.
I’d stayed on the pavement under the Stevenson until the cops came looking for me—not me specifically, of course, but the driver of the Impala. I’d been too exhausted by then to move, or to care much what happened next. Shivering in the back of the squad car, I tried giving a coherent story about the evening’s events.
The patrolmen gave me a clearer picture of what had happened to Simon. His momentum had been so great that when he rammed the expressway roof it drove the back tires into the ground, exploding them. That explained the cannon shot, which was still ringing in my head. The same force expelled the engine from its blocks, propelling it through the radiator. The cab perched rakishly on its hind wheels while firefighters extricated Simon’s remains from the windshield.
After we’d talked, the patrolmen radioed their base and sent someone over to pick up the Felitti boys and Chamfers. The three of them had been waiting in Chamfers’s office, presumably for word from the Hulk that I’d gone to my lesser reward.
We’d all ridden over to the Fourth Area together, Chamfers insisting that I was a notorious break-in artist whom they’d surprised in the act. “I’m very grieved over Simon Lezak’s death. He was trying to help out, to chase her from the premises when we surprised her—”
“And he got carried away by his zeal and ran over the Impala,” I butted in.
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“I don’t think we’ll ever have a clear picture of what happened under the expressway tonight.” Chamfers addressed himself to Detective Angela Willoughby, who seemed to be in charge of the interrogation. “Truckers don’t carry the little black boxes you get on a 747, so we don’t have Simon’s last thoughts.”
“Hatred and glee would sum them up pretty well; I could see the boy’s face in my rearview mirror just before I left the road,” I said. “Did you get a statement from the oncoming trucker? He could probably confirm that Simon was doing his best to run me over.”
Willoughby looked at me with flat gray eyes, but didn’t say anything. The uniformed man taking notes dutifully wrote down my question and poised his pen over his notebook for our next outburst.
I tried one more time. “Were they still loading Paragon Steel materials onto trucks when your officers showed up? The controller at Paragon might have a word or two to say about that. And I doubt if he’d connect me with Diamond Head’s theft ring in any way.”
Chamfers and Peter Felitti joined in a chorus of outrage. Who was I—a sneak thief—to question their business operations? When Dick showed up—he was the Felitti brothers’ counsel, after all—I began to think I was going to be arrested while the upright citizens went home to bed.
I was certainly the one who looked like a miscreant. Besides the tears in my jacket, the knees in my jeans had broken through when I slid across the pavement in them. My shoes were in tatters, my hair matted to my skull, and I didn’t even want to know what my face looked like. Justice may be blind, but she does favor a clean, neat appearance.
The Felittis had called Dick away from some party or other, but he’d stopped at home to change into an austere navy suit. Angela Willoughby was clearly impressed, both by his blond good looks and his imposingly wealthy demeanor: she allowed him to huddle in a corner with his clients.
When he came away he talked sorrowfully to Angela about the evening’s disaster. A subordinate had gone overboard in his loyalty to his employers. It was tragic that Simon Lezak had died in action, but fortunate that I’d survived.
I bared my teeth at the last sentence. “Glad you think so, Dick. Your daddy-in-law explain to you how old Simon happened to go overboard? How he jumped me to get me to the plant?”
“Misguided zeal,” Dick murmured. “They knew you’d broken into the plant before—they didn’t know how far you’d go in an investigation.”
I jumped up, or tried to—my muscles responded with a slow crawl—and grabbed his arm. “Dick. We need to talk. They’re not telling you the truth. You’re going to be blindsided.”
He gave me the superior smile that used to infuriate me fifteen years ago. “Later, Vic. I need to get my clients home, and I think you’d be glad to be there yourself.”
It was close to midnight by then. Willoughby was just agreeing that the Felittis and Chamfers could leave with Dick, when Conrad Rawlings showed up. I’d told Willoughby at the beginning of the evening that he and Terry Finchley were both involved in the case, but didn’t realize she’d actually sent someone to notify him. As it turned out, she hadn’t: he’d picked up word from someone at his precinct who’d heard it earlier on the police band.
Rawlings looked around the room. “Ms. W. I thought I told you I was going to be peeved if you went off to tackle thugs on your own without telling me. And I don’t even get the story from you in person. Some stranger has to tell me about it.”
I put my hands up to pat my filthy curls. “Detective Willoughby—Sergeant Rawlings. I think you met Dick Yarborough a couple of years ago, Sergeant. These other guys are Peter and Jason Felitti and Milt Chamfers. They’re going home. The detective here is sorry she had to bother such swell suburbanites.
“The reason I didn’t call you to tell you in person was that I was too embarrassed: I got jumped. Went to Forty-first and Kedzie to pick up my car, and the Felitti brothers’ pet thug, Simon, was lying in wait for me.”
Dick looked at me with bright, hard eyes. “Vic, we don’t need to hear that story again. I’m taking my clients home. I can only say I warned you to mind your own business.”
“The thing is,” I continued, speaking to Rawlings, “the boys here are so pumped up, they’ve forgotten about forensic evidence.”
Dick stopped on his way out of the room.
“Fingerprints, Richard. Neither the Hulk—sorry, Simon the Valiant—nor his sidekick wore gloves. They jumped me at the corner of Forty-first and Kedzie when I was picking up the Impala. Even though the car is a mess, it should be possible to find their prints on the inside. The Hulk sat in the backseat with a gun at my head. The sidekick sat in the passenger seat with another gun stuck in my ribs. That’s how we ended up at Diamond Head. They forced me to drive there. Anyway, you should find their prints inside the car.”
“You impound that Impala, Detective?” Conrad demanded.
“It’s been towed, Sergeant,” Willoughby said stiffly.
“You get on your little mike and tell them it’s evidence in a murder case. Not to mention aggravated assault. I want that thing at the lab before the sun comes up, Detective. I’ve been working this case all week now and I’m going to be pretty frustrated if I lose it because we compacted the evidence.”
Her expression would have melted steel, but she spoke into her mike. Dick had turned pale during the discussion and had started talking to his father-in-law in a savage undervoice. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but it was clearly dawning on Dick that his relatives were landing him on a griddle. He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, so far was it removed from his usual cockiness, and hustled his clients from the room.
While Willoughby busied herself with summoning underlings, Conrad gripped my shoulders and demanded a detailed account of my evening. I’d given him a brief synopsis by the time Willoughby finished issuing orders to get the Impala from the police pound to the lab.
Conrad turned back to her. “You get a doctor to see this suspect, Detective?” Conrad had demanded.
Willoughby lost some of the icy poise that had made her formidable during four hours of questioning. “Her life isn’t in danger. I was trying to make sure we didn’t have serious felony charges to bring against her.”
“Take it from me: we don’t. I’m driving her to a doctor. You got a problem with that, I’ll give you my watch commander’s phone number.”
Willoughby was too professional to get into a fight with another detective in front of a suspect. I would have been pissed in her place, too, but under the circumstances I didn’t have much empathy to spare for her.
“I really don’t need a hospital, Sergeant,” I said as we left the station. “I just want to get home and get to sleep.”
“Ms. W., I have seldom seen anyone who looked more in need of major surgery. Of course, it could just be your elegant wardrobe. But unless you want a high-speed chase along the South Side on foot, you don’t have any choice in the matter, on account of you don’t have a car and I’m driving.”
He took me to Mt. Sinai, but not even his muscle could get me to a doctor right away—there were eight gunshot wounds and three knife injuries ahead of me. The charge nurse had stood up to tougher pressure than Conrad could muster.
While we waited I asked Rawlings to phone Mr. Contreras, who would be pacing the floor by now—if not taking the law into his own hands. Around three, after I’d fallen asleep on the narrow vinyl chair, I was finally taken into one of the treatment cubicles. Conrad watched anxiously while the harried intern cleaned my abrasions, gave me a tetanus shot, and stitched together the deepest of the cuts in my abdomen. I also had a couple of burns on my back from the antifreeze. In my general misery I hadn’t noticed them.
“She going to be okay?” Conrad asked.
The intern looked up in surprise. “She’s fine—this is all superficial. If you want to arrest her, Sergeant, she can certainly handle jail with these wounds.”
“I don’t think we need to do that.” Rawlings shepherde
d me from the room with a packet of pain pills and a prescription for antibiotics. “Still, Ms. W., if you go off on another junket like tonight’s without letting me know—I’m not so sure. I might stick you into County for a month to sober you up.”
52
Tying Knots
I slept the clock around and woke to find Mr. Contreras in my living room. Even though Conrad had phoned him from Mt. Sinai last night, the old man had kept vigil in the lobby until we finally showed up. It was a little after four then. I went to bed at once, and had no notion of whether Rawlings stayed or not.
Mr. Contreras, who’d kept a set of keys, had let himself in a little after two. “Just wanted to see with my own eyes that you was okay, doll. You feel like telling me what went on last night? I thought you was just getting the Impala.”
“That’s what I thought too. Didn’t Conrad clue you in?” I told him about the Hulk jumping me, and his hideous death under the Stevenson. At the end of the recital, after Mr. Contreras had gone over events enough to allay the worst of his worries, I said I thought our troubles were over.
“The only thing to worry about now is subpoenas, and they’ll be hitting us thick and fast. But you can relax your watchdogging. And give me back my keys, please.”
“So you can give them to Conrad?” His tone was jeering, but there was real pain in his face.
“You’re the only guy who’s ever had the keys to my place. I don’t go handing them around randomly.”
He refused to let me lighten the conversation. “Yeah, but … seemed like he was holding you awful close last night. This morning. And he didn’t leave here until noon.”
“I know you don’t like it when I date anyone.” I kept my voice gentle. “I’m sorry about that—sorry because I love you, you know, and I hate to hurt you.”
He knotted his hands together. “It’s just … Face it, doll: he’s black. African, if you like that better. They’d burn both of you in your bed back in my old neighborhood.”
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