Kids in oversize coats and baggy jeans hung their shingles on every corner, touting rock and blow to customers in cars, hustling orders and giving directions to pickup points for product. Their bosses, maybe a year older, sat on stoops and huddled in doorways-keeping track of inventory, counting cash, and watching their corners. Another level up, captains drove SUVs, whispered into cell phones, and cruised the territory. It went on that way for a good thirty blocks-a business that generated tens of millions of dollars a year, launched more than a few political careers, and probably helped to finance the half-empty condo developments rising up a mile or so due east.
Such is the circle of life on the West Side. NPR loved talking about it from a distance, which was where NPR did its best work. I didn’t have that luxury. So I slipped my gun from my holster and put it on the seat beside me. Six blocks later, I found the address I was looking for. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t a Korean grocery store. I got out of my car and read the handwritten sign stuck in the front window.
PARK PLACE FINE FOODS OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, UNTIL IT GETS DARK JAE LEE, PROPRIETOR
It was just past six. The day was almost gone, and the place looked deserted. There were iron bars set in concrete over the front windows, a sliding steel gate covering the door, and probably a couple of Dobermans inside guarding the twenty-two dollars and whatever else Jae Lee kept in his till. I walked down an alley that ran alongside the building. Lee was out of either money or common sense, because the side door to his place was covered by nothing more than thin steel mesh. I peeked inside and saw a display of Bacardi rum next to a lottery machine.
At the back of the alley sat a lopsided truck with the words SILVER LINE TRUCKING printed on the side. I took another look up and down the alley. Nothing but cracked blacktop and blank brick walls. I walked around the truck. The rear door was unlocked, so I rolled it up. The inside was empty.
I sat down on the curb and pulled out the piece of paper Rita Alvarez had given me. On it was Lee’s name, the address, and the words “Silver Line Trucking.” It was all I could get out of the reporter, and it didn’t seem like half enough. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and went back to the store for another look through the glass. This time I noticed a foot sticking out from behind a counter. I took out my gun and put a shoulder to the door.
The man I guessed to be Jae Lee lay on his stomach, with at least two bullets in the back of his head. Out of habit, I squatted and felt for a pulse. The skin was still warm. Lee hadn’t been dead long.
The store was tiny to the point of claustrophobic, especially with a dead body in it. There was an interior door to the right, partially open, and a light beyond. I eased the door open a little farther with my foot and stared down a flight of stairs. That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone.
“What you doin’, five-oh?”
Whoever he was, he moved like smoke, a presence more felt than seen in electric light from the alley. The gun was a big one, but he carried it easily, casually, finger comfortable around the trigger, muzzle tickling my ear.
A second shadow slipped in from the street. His body was stripped to bone and muscle, his skull, shaven. All in all, he looked like a black ball-peen hammer.
“Where’s your badge?” the shooter said.
I couldn’t see his face yet, but could hear my death in his voice. I figured I had twenty seconds before anticipation became fact.
“No badge,” I said.
The shooter eased into a shaft of light. His eyes traveled to the dead man on the floor.
“You pop the Korean?”
I shook my head. “Check my gun.”
The shooter nodded to his pal, who took my gun and pack.
“You a cop,” the shooter said.
“Used to be a cop.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kelly. Michael Kelly.”
“Ray Ray.” The second man had dug around the Korean’s body and come up with a package of dope. Looked like a kilo bag. The man named Ray Ray took it in one hand and tested its weight.
“What you know about that, Michael Kelly?”
“Nothing.”
Ray Ray’s eyes floated over to the basement door, still ajar. “Why you here?”
“Got nothing to do with a bag of dope.”
Ray Ray pressed the gun to my temple. I could feel the other behind me and knew this might be the killing moment. Then Ray Ray motioned to the open door.
“Let’s go downstairs.”
CHAPTER 17
They sat me in a chair in the middle of the room. Ray Ray sat across from me. Three more had joined us. All kids. The first was heavy lidded, with a long mane of dreadlocks held together by a green rubber band and decorated with white beads. Another was tall, thin, and tentative. The third was the youngest. He was wrapped in a Sox hoodie and carried a gun half the length of his leg tucked into his belt.
“Marcus.” Ray Ray turned his head, and the kid in the hoodie came down off the stairs.
“You want to shoot him for me?”
The piece looked like a howitzer in Marcus’s hand. He wrapped a skinny brown finger around the trigger. I could read the DNA of a killer in his smile.
“How old is he?” I said.
“Thirteen.”
I let the baker’s dozen hang in the air between us. Ray Ray studied my face.
“He’ll do it,” the gang leader said.
“I believe you.”
Ray Ray touched the kid at the shoulder. He melted away.
“You got two minutes,” Ray Ray said. “Tell me what you doin’ here.”
I nodded to a door Ray Ray’s crew had discovered at the very back of the basement. “Does that lead to another room?”
Ray Ray shook his head. “Tunnel. Probably hooked up with the Korean’s safe houses.”
“So Lee was bringing in your dope?”
“You got one minute.”
The cellar was filled with flat brown boxes, stacked to the ceiling and shoved against a wall. I gestured to one of them. “What’s in the boxes?”
There was movement behind me, but I kept my eyes on Ray Ray.
“I’m guessing Lee was getting his product from a cop,” I said.
The lift of an eyebrow told me I’d bought myself another minute.
“How you figure that?” Ray Ray said.
“The kilo you found upstairs. Still had a scrap of orange on it. Evidence sticker used by Chicago PD. Someone lifts it out of the locker. Brings it to Lee. He sells it to you.”
Ray Ray nodded. “Probably something like that.”
“And today the Korean was getting cut out. Except someone beat you to it.”
“Maybe you?”
I shook my head. “You know I used to be a cop. Not sure how, but you know. So you figure I came down here to hijack the dope. Maybe steal it back for the cops who sold it to you in the first place.”
“My man over there.” Ray Ray motioned with my gun to the lean one with the shaved scalp. He held an iron shovel in his hands. “Jace getting ready to dig a hole in that tunnel. Dig it special for you.”
“Why would I shoot a man, steal his shipment of cocaine, then wait for you guys to show up?”
“People do stupid shit every day.”
“If you thought I took the dope, I’d already be dead.”
There was a low groan as a furnace kicked on somewhere.
“How do you know me, Ray?”
He thought about that, then waved a hand. Jace went into the tunnel and began to dig. Ray Ray nodded toward the stairs. The other three drifted up until they disappeared. We were alone.
“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Ray Ray said, studying a long, winding crack in Lee’s basement floor. “I was just a kid. Seen you at the Lots.”
“I drove by there on the way in. Someone’s turned them into condos.”
“I’m talkin’ ’bout back in the day.”
I knew what Ray Ray was talking about. I’d gotten the tip in April of ’
98, just as the weather was starting to soften. I showed up with a forensic team and some shovels. We taped off the Lots and began to dig. I uncovered the first body under a pile of black and green plastic bags. I didn’t know her, but her lips were peeled back to the gum line and turned up in a permanent rictus. We dug some more and found a second body, then a third. There were nine in all-women, some strangled, most beaten to death with what the coroner guessed was either a sharp-bladed shovel or an ax.
“Hot for April that year,” Ray Ray said, his voice approaching the past with the respect it deserved. “First time I really smelled dead people.” A pause. “Lot of reporters. Watched you talk to ’em.”
We met the press every afternoon at three in a parking lot owned by a funeral home. I picked three o’clock because it was the warmest time of the day, the funeral lot because it was downwind from the dig. Ten minutes into the Q and A, the TV guys would wrap things up, hauling their cameras into the shade and watching from a distance that smelled a lot better. The print reporters were tougher. A couple would usually stick it out, but that was okay. No one gave a shit about print. It’s the pictures cops worry about.
“You were good, Kelly. Treated the thing with respect.”
I remembered that first day most of all. We had pulled out two bodies and tried to cordon off the area with a couple of squad cars. First the locals came, rubbernecking. Then the media. Pretty soon there were Mexicans, some on foot, others on bikes, selling corn dogs and soda out of blue and red coolers. Everyone crowded close, eager for a peek, treating the carnage like an early summer street festival. Back then, that sort of thing bothered me.
“You telling me that’s why I’m alive?” I said.
“My moms was one of the bodies they dug out of there. So yeah, I guess it is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. She was nothing but a crack ho.” Ray Ray got up from his chair and walked. Ten feet one direction. Ten feet back. “She was one you never identified.” He stopped by my shoulder so I could feel the weight.
“There were three of them,” I said.
“That’s right.” Walking again. Boots cracking on the hard floor. “Three hookers no one put a name to. But I knew it was my moms. She been off the street a week and a half. Besides, I got a look at her dress when they pulled her up.”
Somewhere, the shoveling stopped.
“You shouldn’t have seen that,” I said.
Ray Ray crouched, face level with mine, voice carrying the stain of a child’s memory. “Don’t tell me what I shouldn’t have seen.” Up and walking some more. “Not sure where they buried her. But I know the man that killed her.”
I had worked the case the entire summer and into the fall. Never got a solid lead.
“Name in the hood was Creeper. Paid five dollars for a blow job and cracked ’em in the back of the head while they was bobbin’. Don’t know how he got ’em into the dump without anyone seeing.” Ray Ray snapped his fingers. “I always figured he took ’em in the bedsheets.”
“You sure it was him?”
The gang leader sat down again. “Tracked him to his house one night. Fucking teardown shack maybe two miles from here. Waited until he was gone, then I busted in. Found four more girls in the cellar. Dead a long motherfucking time. So I waited for him to come home. Tied him to a chair and skinned his face with a kitchen knife. Then I stabbed him in the throat and buried him with the girls. Lit the place up and left. Firemen never figured a goddamn thing. Fourteen years old and my cherry was popped. But good.”
“I could’ve taken care of it,” I said.
“You would’ve skinned him for me?”
“No.”
“All right, then. People like to take care of their own shit. You Irish, right?”
I nodded.
“IRA do the same thing. Belfast. Falls Road. Police their own. Keep the fucking English cops out.”
Ray Ray thought he saw what he wanted in my face and grinned. “You look surprised. Dumb gangbanger nigger talking ’bout something he should know nuthin’ about. But that’s the rest of the story, ain’t it?
“Fours took me in after I killed Creeper. Gave me a family. Money. Respect. Then they found out I was smart.”
Ray Ray tilted back in his chair, relaxed now that the part about his mom was out of the way. “Not just a little smart, either. BA in economics, with honors. Two years ago, MBA from Kellogg.”
“Fours paid for your education?”
“Every dime.”
“And now you run their business-selling rock where you grew up. To kids.”
“You don’t like that?”
“Do you?”
“Fours been putting young ’uns through college for years. Shit, I’m paying for three niggers out of my own pocket right now. Tell ’em when they go in. Don’t flunk out. Don’t fuck up. And if you don’t want to go into the business when you graduate, we cool.”
“How many come back?”
Ray Ray waggled a hand back and forth. “Fifty-fifty. Some born to it. Some not.”
“And you can tell?”
“Usually.”
“Like Marcus, maybe?”
“Boy feelin’ nothing inside. So, yeah, he good.”
“A year or two, he’s gonna be taking your job.”
Ray Ray thought that was funny as all hell and checked the thick silver watch on his wrist. “My moms bought you an hour. Too bad she ain’t got enough in the till to buy your life.”
I heard a soft thumping. The shoveling had started up again.
“You’re gonna kill me no matter what I tell you?”
“Probably.”
“Take me upstairs. I’ll show you why I’m here. Then decide.”
The gang leader stared at his boots. Then he stood up and motioned toward the stairs. I went up first, my new friend just behind.
CHAPTER 18
Ray Ray put me on the floor, up against a display of Red Bull. The boy called Marcus sat across from me in a grocery store aisle, eating Pringles from a can. For the moment, I couldn’t see anyone else.
Ray Ray squatted down on his heels. “Tell me what I need to know, and we’ll make it quick.”
I looked over at the Korean, lying three feet to my right. Wax eyes stared back.
“Your friend, Mr. Lee, had a side business. I think those boxes downstairs had something to do with it.”
“I know all about Lee’s side business.” Ray Ray stood up. Marcus moved his gun from his side to his lap.
“If you know Lee’s business, you know he was cutting deals with someone downtown,” I said. “My friend’s a newspaper reporter. Asked me to come down here and talk to Lee. See what I could find out.”
Ray Ray moved close again. “Newspaper reporter, huh?”
“That’s right. A newspaper reporter.”
“And that’s what you got?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Ray Ray shook his head. “Too bad. Cecil.”
The kid with dreadlocks came off a back wall.
“Give me three minutes,” Ray Ray said, “then fade this motherfucker. Jace dug the hole downstairs. Marcus and James, you help.”
Ray Ray handed my gun to Cecil and left without a look back. Jace followed. The three who remained crowded close. Each of them staring at a dead man. And not seeing a thing.
“Stand up,” Cecil said. I did.
“Where you want it?”
I watched his hands on the gun. Itchy, eager.
“Wait,” Marcus said.
Cecil turned. “Fuck you, bitch.” Back to me. “Gonna give you a head shot, boy.”
“You ever kill anyone?” I said.
“Fuck you.” Cecil pressed the gun to my chest, but still needed to work up to it. I looked behind him. Maybe Cecil read his death in my eyes. Maybe he just needed a little more time. Whatever the reason, he turned. And that’s when Marcus shot Cecil in the face.
Cecil knocked a few cans of Ajax off the shelve
s as he fell. Marcus stepped forward, his gun leveled at my belt.
“James, pick up the piece.”
The tall kid grabbed my gun off the floor and jumped away from Cecil like he was radioactive.
“Shoot him in the chest,” Marcus said without taking his eyes off me. James stood in the aisle, paralyzed. Marcus stepped back and reached out. James handed him the piece. Marcus popped Cecil twice more and kicked the body. Then he threw my gun on the floor at my feet.
“Still gonna have to kill you,” Marcus said.
“Why?”
“Why kill you?”
I nodded toward Cecil. “Why him?”
“Promise I made to myself. Besides, it’s gonna be you that did the shooting. Me and James just gonna be heroes. But first, we goin’ down and grab those boxes.”
“You killed Lee.”
“Me and Lee in business together. Ray Ray was gonna put Lee out of the business. I came down to get my share this afternoon. Before Ray Ray got his.”
“The boxes?”
“That’s right.”
“What happened?”
Marcus shrugged. “Tall man comes in with a rifle. Shoots up the cellar. I got out through the tunnel.”
“Who?”
“You know.”
“I don’t.”
“Fucker as white as you.”
“He took the dope?”
“Once I pop you, maybe it’s gonna be you that took the dope. Either way, I be all square.”
Marcus raised his gun. I noticed the fine hair on his forearm, white light rippling in from the street and haloing around his head. My eyes swept back across the store. My mind opened wide and drank. Boxes of Cheerios and bottles of Drano. A thin layer of dust on a can of peas. Fat bottles of beer stacked in a cooler beside curved bottles of wine. Floorboards, warped by years of damp heat, alive with cockroaches scurrying around drops and puddles of blood. Bodies stretched and dull, gold shell casings.
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