Himself came last. The only remaining link to Alphonse Capone was folded up in a black coat and flat cap. In the small space between the two, a thick round cigar chugged a steady stream of white smoke.
Johnny and Chili stopped about ten feet from us and flared to either side. DeLuca dropped the cigar to the ground and stepped on it with the toe of his shoe.
“Hate those things.” He looked out at Rita from under the brim of his cap and stretched a smile across his face. “Vincent DeLuca.”
I felt Rita’s skin crawl right off her bones and run down Blackhawk. But the reporter hung tough and offered her hand.
“Rita Alvarez.”
DeLuca pressed lips the color of slate to the back of Rita’s hand. “Kelly says we have something to talk about. For me, it’s a chance to meet my favorite reporter in the city. The best, right, Chili?”
Chili Davis was keeping the burn on me, his finger on the trigger of the. 40-cal he had in his pocket.
“He doesn’t say much.” DeLuca laughed and looked at Johnny Apple, who laughed. “You and Chili, Kelly. What are we going to do?”
“I told you. It wasn’t anything personal.”
DeLuca nodded and gestured. Chili came forward, and the old man tucked an arm in his. “I explained this to Chili. Now it’s over.”
Chili extended a hand. I didn’t believe any of it but shook anyway. DeLuca seemed happy. “Good. Now we can talk.”
“It’s about a Korean named Jae Lee,” I said.
Black eyes flattened to blacker slits in the afternoon gray.
“He was peddling dope on the West Side,” I said. “I’m thinking you were acting as his muscle. Maybe running the whole operation through him.”
A gust of wind rumbled across the lot. Johnny Apple’s voice rumbled with it. “What makes you think that?”
“Lee never could have held down that territory without someone like the Outfit as backup. When Rita started sniffing around the Korean, you got worried she was on to your operation. Why else put a tail on her?”
Johnny looked at Rita. Rita looked at me. DeLuca stared at the crushed remains of the cigar at his feet.
“What do you want?” Apple said.
“The Korean’s dead. But I think you know that. The last shipment of drugs he was supposed to take is also gone. I’m thinking you know that as well.”
“Who killed the Korean?” Apple said.
“You mean who took your dope? I don’t know the answer to that.”
“We’re ignoring Ms. Alvarez.” It was DeLuca, checking back into the conversation with a smile meant to lubricate.
“Rita’s not doing a story on your drug operation,” I said. “At least she wasn’t as of this morning.”
“She was talking to Lee,” Apple said.
“The Korean was running a side business.”
I glanced over at Rita, who stepped up.
“Mr. Lee was acting as a middleman,” she said. “He would get no-bid contracts for medical supplies through a contact in City Hall and funnel them to a number of small companies. Lee delivered the supplies through his own trucking company and took a cut on both ends.”
“And why do we care about this?” Apple said.
I ignored Johnny this time and waited on his boss.
“We care,” DeLuca said, “because there is something larger at play. Something that Mr. Kelly believes is more important than anything we’ve discussed so far. Something we need to know about.”
Vinny DeLuca was old but hadn’t lost a step. Which was a good thing to know.
“We have information,” I said, “that ties the Korean and his trucking company into what’s going on over on the West Side.”
Johnny Apple’s hand went under his coat, and he looked up in the sky, as if choppers were about to descend on all of us. DeLuca put a light touch on his bodyguard’s arm.
“Chili, go take a walk.” DeLuca spoke without looking behind him. Chili turned and walked back to the car. “Go ahead, Mr. Kelly.”
I told him about Danielson. About the note with Lee’s address on it, and Silver Line Trucking. I left out the mayor. DeLuca waited.
“I was in the Korean’s cellar,” I said, “before the fences went up. Found a few thousand body bags inside.” I nodded toward Rita. “If there’s a connection to the pathogen release, Rita’s gonna run the story.”
“And, in the process, implicate us as working with some sort of terrorists?” DeLuca raised an eyebrow.
I could feel Johnny move again, drifting a little wider, getting some shooting room, no doubt.
“Perhaps not directly… ”
“But it would be inevitable,” DeLuca said.
“Unless she took steps to keep you out of it, probably.”
Now we had gotten to it. The old man seemed almost relieved. “What’s your proposition, Kelly?”
“You tell us what you know about the Korean. We keep the drug angle, and your involvement, out of this entire thing.”
“What makes you think I know anything about Mr. Lee? And especially his side business?”
“Because you know everything about everyone you do business with. And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have some information.”
DeLuca seemed to ponder that, until a second thought struck him.
“How about this? We shoot you both. Could have you at the bottom of the river within the hour and be home for a nice bowl of minestrone.”
I waved my hand once over my head. A car horn beeped from the salt yards behind me.
“Rodriguez?” DeLuca said.
I nodded.
“Tell him to come in. It’s getting cold out here.” The old man bundled his coat close around him, walked back to his car, and climbed inside. The Cadillac pulled away, toward the corrugated shed at the very back of the lot.
CHAPTER 47
We reconvened just inside the front door. Chili hit a switch, and a single fixture dropped a blue bowl of light onto a table with five chairs.
“Sit down,” DeLuca said.
I took a seat beside Rita. Rodriguez sat across from us.
“This is where we keep excess merchandise from our various business interests.” DeLuca gestured to the stacks of crates and boxes piled up in the shadows. “All completely legit, Detective.”
Rodriguez didn’t respond. A heavy rifle with a scope was resting on the table between his arms. I could hear movement around us. Chili ducked back in with an espresso in a brown cup and saucer. DeLuca took a sip and rubbed his lips together.
“Our arrangement with the Korean,” the old man said.
“What about it?” I said.
“We need to be made whole.”
“I didn’t take your dope, Vinny.”
He held up a hand, as if to quiet a petulant child. “I was talking to the detective.”
“What is it you think I can do?” Rodriguez said.
“You provided the Korean with his product in the first place. It’s simply a matter of replacing what was lost.”
I watched a small vein pulse in Rodriguez’s temple and felt Rita’s cold heartbeat in the seat next to me.
“How long have you known?” the detective said.
DeLuca picked up his coffee cup, thought better of it, and put the cup down with a quiet clink. “Three months, give or take. We knew the Korean was burned but figured it might take a while to play out.”
“And meanwhile there was still business to be done,” I said.
“Always business to be done. Now, are you ready to hear my proposal?”
“I don’t care about your drug business, Vinny. And I don’t think Detective Rodriguez has any interest in replacing your lost product.”
DeLuca held out his hand. “Let me see your address.”
I pushed it across the table. DeLuca rubbed it flat.
“We had two men watching the Korean’s store that day. They went inside just before you got there, Kelly. Lee was dead. As you know, the dope was already gone. My men saw the
body bags. Left them where they were and took off.” DeLuca pushed the address back toward my side of the table. “Now, we want to do our part.”
“And what would your part be?”
“You think I like these raghead cocksuckers attacking this city?” A sip of espresso. “I don’t.”
“You sound like our mayor.”
“Maybe I am.” DeLuca liked that and took another sip.
“If you want to help, get me a lead on who Lee was selling the bags to,” I said.
“Not that easy.”
“What do you want?”
The old man rubbed one ancient hand over the other. “Let’s make it clean between us. You help me. I give you a picture of the man you’re looking for.”
I sat up. “A picture?”
DeLuca nodded.
“What’s it gonna cost?” Rodriguez said.
“Another shipment out of the police lockup. Johnny will tell you how much. Delivered into the quarantine zone. We can’t get in there until fuck knows when. And no one has any product.”
“Business goes on,” I said.
“Addicts gotta have their fix.” DeLuca tapped Rodriguez on the forearm. “You get the product. Deliver it to the West Side. And… ” DeLuca held up a misshapen digit. “Give us a one-year grace period to sell in K Town. No more undercover stings. No more busts.”
“Can’t do it,” Rodriguez said.
“Sure you can, Detective. First of all, we’re only gonna sell to niggers and addicts, two groups of people your bosses wish were fucking dead anyway. Second, you’ve been looking the other way across half the city as it is. Like I said, no schoolkids, no rich suburban fucks getting their blow off the corner. None of that shit. Just feeding dope into the sewer.”
“How do we know your information is any good?” I said.
“You don’t like what we have, we don’t do business together.” DeLuca drained his cup and stretched. “I’m gonna go outside and take a walk. You call your bosses. Let me know if I can help make Kelly here a hero.”
Footsteps followed him back into the darkness. A door opened somewhere, a rectangle of light flashing for a moment, and then we were alone. Rodriguez swore softly under his breath.
“Can’t do this, Kelly.”
“How many dead so far on the West Side, Vince?”
“They haven’t given us a number.”
“I was down at Cook County Hospital. They got ’em stacked up in the hallways. Bringing in refrigerated vans to store all the bodies until they can burn ’em.”
Rodriguez glanced at his girlfriend, who was smoking a cigarette and staring at the light drifting overhead.
I dug out my cell and slid it across the table. “I’ll take the drugs in.”
“And then we all look the other way for a year?” Rodriguez said.
Rita leaned in. “DeLuca’s right. Gangs have had carte blanche to sell down there forever. So what’s the difference?”
“The difference is I’m a cop, Rita.”
“Your brothers in blue are the ones providing the dope, for Chrissakes.” She stood, her chair scraping violently along the cement floor. “These are lives we’re talking about, Vince. Thousands of people, maybe, piled up dead. And you’re gonna sit by and watch? For what? The honor of the badge? Please. Swallow your pride and help Michael if you can.”
Rita walked off. Rodriguez and I watched her lit cigarette pace back and forth in the darkness.
“You’re a real pain in my ass, Kelly.”
“She’s right and you know it.”
Rodriguez sighed. “Motherfucker.” Then he picked up my cell and dialed.
CHAPTER 48
We were back around the table, me, Rita, and Vinny DeLuca, drinking coffee and trying not to look at one another. Rodriguez had been on and off the phone for an hour, first with his boss, then the mayor, explaining why the city needed to become a dope dealer. It wasn’t a pretty conversation. It wasn’t supposed to be. But it worked.
“I got you a final shipment,” Rodriguez said, returning to the table, “and we look the other way for six months. But the cops involved go down. And the pipeline into our evidence room is finished.”
“So we’re left to find a new supplier?” DeLuca said with a grimace.
“Only way this happens.”
The crime boss tugged at his lower lip and tried hard not to chuckle. Up until now, they’d paid bent cops for their dope. Now the city was going to give it to them for free. And protect them. Nice deal if you could get it.
“Who will bring the product into the quarantine zone?” DeLuca said.
“I will,” I said. “I’ve been down there once. Can get in and out without a problem.”
“You’re not afraid of this fucking virus or whatever it is?”
“All due respect, that’s not your problem. I’ll get the stuff wherever it needs to be. Now if we have a deal, I’d like to see what we just bought.”
DeLuca curled a finger. Johnny Apple came forward and slid into an empty chair.
“My boys got to the Korean’s shop around three on the day Lee got shot,” Apple said. “Waiting for the cops to show up with the stash.”
“But they’d already made the drop,” I said.
“The Korean misinformed us about the timing,” Apple said with a wince and threw a photo on the table. “An hour or two before Kelly showed, this guy came out of the Korean’s alley.”
I looked at the picture. The man was tall, wearing a long leather coat. He had a black duffel bag with gold trim slung over his shoulder.
“My boys didn’t know whether he’d been in the store,” Apple said. “And didn’t know the Korean was already dead.”
I pointed at the bag in the photo. “You think that’s your shipment?”
“What the fuck do you think?” DeLuca said, and I feared for whoever had made the decision to let the man in the picture walk.
“And you don’t know him?” I said.
“You think we’d be talking to you if we did?”
I slid the photo over to Rodriguez.
“That’s our bag of dope,” the detective said.
“What about the guy?”
Rodriguez shook his head.
“Rita?”
She took a look. “Never saw him.”
I tapped the smudge of a face on the photo. “So this guy pops up out of nowhere. Walks into the Korean’s store. And hijacks your product.”
Johnny Apple nodded, leaving unsaid that two of his men had sat across the street and watched it happen.
“We still don’t know for sure this guy’s involved with the body bags,” Rita said.
“There’s more.” Johnny pulled out two more photos-blowups of the same man walking out of the West Side alley.
“This one here,” Johnny said. “When we blew it up, we saw something hanging from the guy’s coat pocket.”
“Looks like a piece of leather,” Rita said.
“It’s the binding from a gas mask,” I said. “What’s in the other picture?”
“His jacket slipped open right as he stepped off the curb,” Johnny said and pointed. “You can see the outline of a rifle he’s got tucked under there. Looks like it’s hanging from a strap, maybe.”
The three of us pored over the photos. Vinny DeLuca put it together for us.
“The man was prepared when he went into Lee’s store. He had a mask with him, and a rifle.”
“So he knew there’d been a release,” I said.
“Hours before it was announced to the public,” Rita said.
DeLuca nodded. “Paid in full. Now let’s talk about my shipment.”
CHAPTER 49
I slumped behind the desk in my office and watched the streetlights change on Broadway. Rodriguez and Rita sat across from me. The detective pushed back in his chair and looked up at a bronze plaque on the wall. It contained a line of ancient Greek:
“What the hell is that?” Rodriguez said.
“Quote from Heraclitus,”
I said. “ ‘Everything changes, nothing remains the same.’ ”
“He’s got that right. This morning I was just a cop. Now you got me pushing dope for the Outfit.”
“Let it go,” Rita said. “At least we’ve got a lead.”
Rodriguez picked up the photo DeLuca had given us. “And how are we gonna ID this guy?”
“Homeland?” Rita said.
Rodriguez shook his head. “I cut a deal with the mayor. Not the feds. We tell them nothing about DeLuca. Or the drugs we’re gonna give him.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “We have other pieces to work.”
The detective and his girlfriend crossed their arms in tandem and fell silent, waiting, apparently, for my magical pieces to fall into place. I tapped on my computer and pulled up an e-mail. I’d already read it three times. Now I typed out a few lines in response and closed the window. There was a footfall on the stairs outside. The door to my office squeaked open, and a small shadow crept across the threshold. A small shadow, wearing a small sling.
“Hey.”
“Molly.” I came around the desk and gave her an awkward hug. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“They wanted me to overnight at the hospital, but I needed to get out of there.”
“I bet.”
I pulled up another chair and settled her in. “Molly Carrolton, this is Rita Alvarez from the Daily Herald. Detective Vince Rodriguez. Molly’s one of the scientists who’s been tracking the pathogen.”
Vince and Rita shook hands with Molly. I slipped back behind my desk.
“What happened?” Rita said.
“I was shot at this morning. Grazed my arm.”
“Let me guess,” Rodriguez said. “You were with Kelly?”
“Molly was shot at as we rode through a hot zone,” I said.
“What were you riding in?” Rita said.
“An L train.” I pulled out a plastic Baggie and pushed it toward Rodriguez. “I dug out the slug from the wall of the car. Was hoping you could run it against the one we recovered in the Korean’s cellar?”
Rodriguez held the Baggie by his fingertips. “You want to know if the guy in our photo here was also hunting Molly?”
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