The Chicago Way mk-1

by Michael Harvey

  “Well, I better head home,” she said.

  “Big day?”

  “I tape an interview with Rodriguez in the morning. They arrest Bennett Davis and we get our exclusive tomorrow night. Your name is still out of all this, right?”

  I nodded.

  “By the way,” she said, “have you told your client about any of this?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Her face is going to be out there sooner or later, you know.”

  “That’s what you figure?”

  “It won’t come from my station. But absolutely, she’ll eventually be out there.”

  I got up to go. Diane got up with me.

  “I’ll see Elaine tomorrow and catch her up,” I said. “I also told Rodriguez I’d meet him at your newsroom after the interview. Tie up a few loose ends.”

  “Sounds great. We should wrap around noon.”

  She leaned in and kissed me. Red lips, long, strong, and hungry. Like she meant it. Or at least wanted to.

  “Thanks for the story,” she whispered. “You saved me and I won’t forget it.”

  Then she turned and walked out of the diner. I went home and opened up a copy of the Agamemnon, found the line where Clytemnestra lures her husband into the bath and waits as he is knifed to death.

  I spoke the line aloud, rolling the syllables across my tongue as Aeschylus had intended. I wondered just how many Clytemnestras lurked in my life, where were the knives, and most important, who would wind up dead in whose tub.

  CHAPTER 56

  The next morning I woke up fast. I ran five miles along the lakefront, showered, dressed, and grabbed some coffee at Intelligentsia. By eleven I was headed downtown and on my cell.

  “Yeah.”

  Detective Masters was his usual effusive self.

  “Vince Rodriguez is going to be on the news tonight,” I said. “Here’s what you need to know.”

  I told him about Grime, Pollard, and Bennett Davis. I have always fancied myself something of a connoisseur when it came to the exotic curse. Masters, however, fashioned a string of expletives that would make a deaf man blush.

  “You done?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So Vince does his thing today. He arrests Davis and lays out the Grime angle. Tomorrow belongs to you.”

  Then I told him about Kansas, how it fit together. It took a while. When I finished, there was nothing.

  “Masters,” I said. “You there?”

  “When can I move?”

  “I’m walking into Channel 6 right now. I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

  My crossword girl was not at the front desk. Just as well. Not the best day for her. I met Rodriguez in a small office just off the main set. He had a cup of coffee and was trying to avoid talking to one of Diane’s many producers.

  “Give us a second,” he said.

  The producer looked daggers at me but left the room.

  “Bennett Davis just called,” Vince said. “He’s going to turn himself in. Wants to make a deal. One o’clock. Down at headquarters.”

  “Did he give you any of the details?”

  “No, but he will. After a while, you can tell. This one has got no fight left. Besides, we got preliminary DNA back on the cigar.”

  “A match?”

  Rodriguez nodded and continued.

  “Looks like it. Davis also had a message for you. Said The Godfather plays a lot easier than real life. Said to tell you he just didn’t have the stomach for it.”

  I thought about the reality of swallowing a bullet. Couldn’t think of anything much worse. Then I thought about a life of hard time. For a former prosecutor. In a big-time lockup.

  “He won’t last long in prison, will he?”

  Rodriguez shrugged.

  “He’ll be gang-raped first thing. Then it depends on what he can do for them on the inside. Or if he can pay. If I had to bet, I’d say he doesn’t make it.”

  Diane stuck her head in the door. She looked tight around the eyes.

  “Vince,” I said. “Can you give us a minute here?”

  “Sure,” Rodriguez replied. “I have to head out anyway.”

  He turned to Diane.

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but Bennett Davis is turning himself in downtown. Within the hour.”

  “We need to get a crew on it,” Diane said. Rodriguez shook his head.

  “Can’t do it. Davis is coming in alone. I already agreed to no press. Tell you what. Once we have him in custody, I’ll ask if he wants to talk to you. Maybe you get lucky again.”

  “Thanks,” Diane said, and the detective left.

  “You got plenty,” I said. “More than plenty.”

  Diane moved closer, slid her arms around my shoulders, and laid her head flat against my chest.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “I just get greedy. Want it all.”

  “I know.”

  “How you doing, baby? Seemed a little strange last night.”

  “A lot on my mind.”

  I pulled the yearbooks from Sedan out of a gym bag I’d brought with me and put them on the desk beside us.

  “Sam Becker says hello.”

  She looked at the yearbooks and then up at me. I could see a small pulse beat in the hollow of her throat.

  “So now you know,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I’m sure Sam did.”

  “He told me what he knew. I figure there’s more.”

  She walked across the room and closed the door. Then she sat down in front of the yearbooks, drew her palms together, and held her hands to her lips. For a moment she said nothing. She opened up to her sister’s high school picture, then her own. Traced each with her finger. I had done the same thing a day earlier and not gotten any of the answers I wanted either.

  “ ‘Know thyself.’ Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “No. Not at all. I think I do love you, Kelly.”

  “Please.”

  “I almost told you last night. Almost told you everything.”

  Now there was a shiver in her voice, and that spooked me more than anything.

  “Almost,” I said. “I’m thinking you got lots of almosts for people. A lifetime full of them. Ultimately, however, there is just you. Nothing else.”

  The smile she turned out was a lonely thing, one that asked for no quarter and offered precious little in the way of regret.

  “I love my sisters, Kelly. I love both of them.”

  I thought about Diane and her two sisters. Thought about their father and the day each girl turned twelve. Pieces of me ached for Diane. Maybe even a little for myself. Those were the pieces I had to ignore.

  “How did it start?” I said.

  “You know it all. It’s right here.”

  She closed the yearbooks and pushed them back my way.

  “It was June fourteenth, three years after Elaine was murdered. I was out of college, working as a reporter in Flint, Michigan. You remember I told you about Flint.”

  She tried to touch my hand but I stayed put. Diane shrugged and kept talking.

  “Mary Beth called from San Francisco, told me she had killed a man. Then she told me why. I flew out there. There really wasn’t much to do. Mary Beth had stalked him, met him at a bar, and gone back to a hotel room. She had shot him, made it look like a robbery, and walked away.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. She was giddy about the whole thing.”

  “That was the first? The EMT?”

  Diane nodded.

  “Yes. She showed me her list of names.”

  “All the people who dropped the ball on Elaine’s case?”

  “Yes. All the people who didn’t do their job. All the people who could give a fuck about our sister cut up and left for dead by some animal.”

  “And you covered for her?”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  Diane raised her chi
n and looked at me. Maybe she was practicing for a jury. I couldn’t be sure.

  “Don’t judge me, Kelly. Don’t you fucking dare. Not after Nicole.”

  In three words, I glimpsed the final threads of her deceit. Woven through the fabric of so many lives. In a moment, I saw it all and wanted none of it.

  “You targeted me from the beginning,” I said. “You knew about me and Nicole, and you targeted me.”

  “Your finest hour, Kelly. That man raped your friend and you took him down. At fourteen years old, that took some guts.”

  “You figured I might be an easy touch for some vigilante justice,” I said. “You sent me the street file. Not Mulberry. You and Mary Beth.”

  “Gibbons told Mary Beth you were the best detective he ever saw work. Gibbons was right. You were perfect, Kelly.”

  “Yeah. Perfect. Easy to manipulate, probably blackmail if it ever came to that. After Mary Beth killed Gibbons, I’d be the guy to help you find Elaine’s rapist.”

  “Gibbons was the hook,” Diane conceded. “Mary Beth wanted to kill him straight out, like the others. I knew we needed him. To get to you. So Mary Beth approached him as Elaine. He had only seen our sister once, when she was half-dead, and bought it straightaway. After that we just waited. Once Gibbons got you involved, Mary Beth gave him what he deserved.”

  I nodded and thought about my old partner. He’d fall for the damsel in distress. Ten times out of ten.

  “And my prints at Gibbons’ murder?”

  “I slipped into your office a week before Mary Beth shot Gibbons. The door was open, Kelly. Not a good idea.”

  “You took a slug from the jar on my desk.”

  “I took a handful. Mary Beth dropped a casing at the scene. Just enough to get you tied in to the case a little deeper. Call it a backup plan.”

  “And that night on the strip,” I said. “You put Mary Beth out there.”

  “I called her after you dropped me off. Told her Pollard was probably our guy. She wanted to do some homework. Hunt him a little bit, I guess you’d say.”

  Diane held her hands out, chin up.

  “Bottom line, Kelly, it all worked. You took us to Pollard. If I could have shot him myself, I would have. Hell, for a while I thought Rodriguez was going to do it. As it is, you should feel damn good.”

  For Diane Lindsay, life was as simple as that. Death, even easier.

  “And now?” I said. “Where is she?”

  Diane’s face stiffened into the look of a true believer. I got a bad feeling and wondered if I should have moved on Mary Beth sooner.

  “She’s going to be arrested,” I said. “The gun matches up. The timeline will match up. It’s done. Masters already has the warrant. Where is she?”

  Diane shifted her gaze, looked out the window as she spoke.

  “She has one more to do.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her around.

  “Who?”

  Diane closed her eyes and smiled.

  “You know who’s left, Kelly. Don’t ruin it by pretending you don’t.”

  On some level she might have even been right. Another thing I didn’t need to think about. I flipped open my phone and punched in Rodriguez.

  “Grab Davis,” I said. “Now.”

  CHAPTER 57

  The police took Diane Lindsay out of Channel 6 News in cuffs. Like wolves who eat their young, Diane’s camera crew and producers hovered around every moment of the arrest, capturing their former colleague’s humiliation for the late show. Maybe they’d get a raise.

  I didn’t get a final word with Diane like they do in the movies. Didn’t really want one. Whatever there had been between us was gone. Left for dead in an ugly tangle, somewhere on the road from Kansas to Chicago. Instead, I got in my car and headed toward the Loop.

  “Did she tell you where they were going?”

  It was Rodriguez on the phone. He had crashed Davis’ office after my call and found nothing. The assistant DA had somehow slipped out of the County Building.

  “She told me nothing,” I said. “Except Mary Beth was going to take him.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t shoot him on the spot.”

  “Yeah.”

  I was driving south on Michigan Avenue, crossed over the river, and into the Loop.

  “I’m two minutes out,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “We’re cordoning off three blocks all around and searching County, floor by floor.”

  “I’ll be right there. Tell your guys to let me through.”

  I hung up and cruised south past Randolph. I was about to turn right when I caught a flash of blond walking up the steps into Millennium Park. I knew that flash of blond, and I especially knew the soon-to-be-dead attorney walking close beside her.

  I double-parked in front of the Cultural Center. A meter maid was yelling at me a half-block away. Then I pulled my gun, and she started yelling louder. I thought that was a good thing and crossed over Michigan into Millennium.

  As I got to the top of the steps I saw Mary Beth. She was weaving her way through a sparse midday crowd, around the outdoor skating rink, and up toward a sculpture Chicagoans call the “Bean.” Its official name is Cloudgate, but it looks like a big aluminum bean and reflects everything around it in a 360-degree, sort of fish-eye effect. As I approached, a man and woman came out one side of the Bean. He wore overalls, a Carhartt jacket, and Packers hat. She wore a Green Bay jacket open to a sweatshirt that said FUCK WITH ME AND YOU FUCK THE WHOLE TRAILER PARK.

  I waited until the Packer fans had safely made their way to a hot dog stand. Then I walked into the Bean, gun stuffed into my pocket. Mary Beth and Davis were standing to one side. I stood opposite them. In between us was the kindergarten class, twenty-five strong, from Presentation Grammar School. Mary Beth caught my eye in the reflection from the roof of the Bean. The fish-eye effect made it hard to judge exactly how far away she was. It seemed like miles. I was beginning to work my way through the kids when a hand tugged at my sleeve.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  It was a woman, early thirties. Presentation’s kindergarten teacher, no doubt.

  “Could you take a picture for us?”

  I shoved the gun deeper into my pocket, smiled, and grabbed the camera. Mary Beth pushed Bennett Davis toward the outer edge of the Bean. I noticed a dark smear of blood where Davis had leaned up against the aluminum. Then they were gone. I snapped the picture and moved after them.

  Mary Beth headed past a yellow-slickered security guard riding one of those Segway people movers and looking awfully important. Then she ducked left into the Pritzker Pavilion, the Millennium’s outdoor music venue. I followed her to the deserted stage and stopped about ten feet away. Mary Beth dumped Bennett Davis against a riser and stepped back.

  “So you figured it all out, Mr. Detective. Bravo.”

  Mary Beth was talking to me but kept her eyes and gun trained on Davis. He had been shot once in the side and looked over at me, scared. He mouthed some words but nothing came out. I had my gun out now and drew down.

  “Drop the gun, Mary Beth. This is over.”

  “Not yet, sir. Not just yet.”

  Davis crouched against the riser, covered the side of his head, and tried to make himself smaller. At a range of five feet, it wasn’t working.

  “Diane’s in custody, Mary Beth. Whatever you get, she gets. If nothing else, do your sister a favor and drop the gun.”

  “Already killed five, Kelly. How much better is it going to get for Diane?”

  “I don’t know. But you pull the trigger here and it’s a death case.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Mary Beth lowered her weapon an inch or so and looked over. As she was looking at me, she fired once into Davis’ chest.

  “Oops,” she said.

  Bennett Davis crumpled to the ground. I moved forward. Davis was still alive, wheezing blood through his mouth. I reached for Mary Beth’s gun. She fired aga
in just as I got to her. The second shot did its job.

  Mary Beth collapsed at a right angle to Davis. The round took off most of the back of her head. Her face, however, was still perfect. Lips full, mouth parted, and just a hint of a smile. Just like Frankie Pentangeli in The Godfather Part II, Mary Beth had done what she thought was the right thing. Too bad there was no family left to look after.

  I closed my former client’s eyes just as a hand clawed at my ankle. It was Davis. From the sound of things he had been shot in a lung and was drowning in his own blood. Not a pleasant way to go. His hand gripped my calf, and he raised his head to make eye contact. In his case, a final sort of eye contact. I thought of a Saturday morning and Nicole, under the Chicago El tracks. I removed his hand and walked out from under the pavilion. I wasn’t sure exactly what Bennett Davis deserved, but this was probably as good as it was going to get.

  I found my way over to the concession stand, stepped inside, and ordered a red-hot drug through the garden. The Packer fans stood nearby, eating a double order of cheese fries. Each.

  “So is Favre all done?” I said.

  They smiled and started in. I listened and nodded. In the distance I could hear sirens. That would be Rodriguez, followed probably by Masters. They’d get here soon enough.

  CHAPTER 58

  It was the day before Thanksgiving. The city was quiet. The holiday season beckoned.

  I picked up Rodriguez downtown. We headed west on Madison. It had been more than a week since we last spoke. He had a lot to take care of. I had even more to avoid.

  “Getting any better?” I said.

  The media storm was finally settling. Dateline and 60 Minutes had taken their shots, done their profiles. As had The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, and the BBC.

  Most of the coverage centered on Grime, Pollard, and Bennett Davis. Some of it focused on two sisters from Kansas and a third they needed to avenge. Time magazine ran a piece on the hidden costs of sexual assault. I actually read that one.