“Maybe if you and the rest of the department gave a shit, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Are you fucking serious? You think I don’t care?”
“If you cared, you’d understand why I’m leaving right now. You wouldn’t be babysitting that journalist all day. You’d go out there yourself, no matter the consequences. No matter if it meant losing your job, you’d do it. Because it’s what needs to be done.”
“Oh, is that what this is? You think you’re leaving here because you care?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Are you sure you’re not just doing this because it feels good to feel like a cop again?”
In a single, time-stilled moment, Tillman bounded forward and pushed Jeremiah. Pure inertia that grew from her feet, out from her hands. She felt a full release, the transfer of energy that exited her palms and sent him sprawling backward, arms in the air, grasping for nothing. He collapsed against the counter, knocking over an empty pizza box and a few stray glasses that shattered on the floor. He lay against the counter, staring at her. Blank, unbending. Neither injured nor insulted. Just fearful. Of her, of himself, of the moment itself, or of the glass shining on the floor at this feet. In each shard, a thousand reflections of himself, of herself, daring either of them to look.
She didn’t know why she’d done it. But it was done.
A thousand things she might like to say to him—a thousand apologies, a thousand damnations, a thousand nothings—but there was never any time for these things. And even if there were, there was no use in dwelling in those histories, each one scattered and sharp.
“There’s eggs in the fridge.” Tillman pointed over her shoulder. “I appreciate the help.”
21 PAUL WROBLEWSKI
MARCUS BACKED HIS CAMRY OUT of the garage an hour after sunrise. A police cruiser was blocking his driveway. Officer Danby—evidently his guard dog for the day—was hesitant to let Marcus leave the house alone.
“Can you at least tell me where you’re going?” Danby asked in a slow and clumsy voice, scratching the back of his bald head. He was the shape of a cargo drum, with the skin complexion of a Handi Wipe. Dime-sized beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks. Even while sitting in his air-conditioned car, he had somehow managed to get sunburned on his face and his neck. As he was speaking to Marcus, he was simultaneously applying a generous dollop of lotion to his forehead. “If my supervisor calls me on the radio while you’re away,” Danby said, slapping the lotion on the back of his neck, “I don’t want to look like I lost you. I think it’ll look bad on me, letting you go without telling me where, especially with the most recent video and all, you know what I mean?”
Officer Danby spoke of the video as though it were a weather event, a storm system you observe from behind a pane of glass. But Marcus didn’t feel at all distanced from it. He’d watched the video just once, though not all the way through. As soon as the gunman had put the pistol to the hostage’s head, Marcus turned off the television. Only to later get a text from Jeremiah confirming what Marcus had already feared: Hostage was Penny. Bedford is safe. His mind immediately wandered to his meeting with Peter the previous day. He recalled Peter’s insistence that the woman from the Englewood apartment, the woman with the red hair, was in danger. Likely the same woman Jeremiah had encountered all those years ago. Miss May. If Marcus could find her, he could advise her to take extra caution, but she might also know something, anything, that could put an end to whatever hell had awoken.
“I’m just going to Livingston Estates, about an hour south of here,” Marcus told Danby. He had brought with him his brown leather shoulder bag, a comfortingly familiar weight. Like a child with a blanket.
“Oh.” Danby smiled. “I know that place. Yeah, my grandmother used to live there until she croaked. God rest her soul. But real nice place they got there, and the food isn’t as bad as you might think. You considering making the transition?”
Marcus was in too much of a hurry to take offense. So instead he smiled, nodded. Officer Danby pulled his cruiser away from the drive, just enough for Marcus to slip through.
As it turned out, Livingston Estates was indeed a “real nice place.” Or at least it looked to Marcus like one. Something lifted directly from the glossed pages of a brochure and gently placed into reality. Nestled in a quiet, isolated reach of the far-south suburbs, Livingston Estates was a large, sprawling complex of limestone apartments spread out like a pinwheel. It boasted a soccer field, a basketball court, and an Olympic-length swimming pool. Like some college campus populated only by emeritus professors.
Through the sliding door entrance, a large check-in desk, behind which stood a young girl donning a hundred-dollar smile, which was most likely practiced in front of her bathroom mirror every morning until perfection. She was pouring a bag of multihued hard candies into a glass bowl. Readying the day ahead.
“Welcome to Livingston Estates,” she chimed like a cuckoo clock. “How can I help you today? Are you interested in a prospective resident tour?”
“No, no thank you. I’m actually looking for an old friend. He lives here, I think. I wonder if you could point me to his apartment?”
“It would be my pleasure.” She smiled widely, a few keystrokes at her computer. “What’s the name?”
“Paul Wroblewski.”
Her evergreen smile flickered like a light bulb in a thunderstorm, and she looked at Marcus as though waiting for him to correct a misspoken name. “Did you say Wroblewski?”
“That’s right. I believe he lives here?”
She eyed him suspiciously.
“Is he,” his voice narrowed, “still here?”
“He’s very much here.” Her smile now fully deflated. The cheeriness in her voice emulsified into a groan. “Sorry, but did you say that you’re friends with him?”
“Well, we sort of worked together many years ago. I don’t know if you could say we’re friends, exactly.”
“Oh, OK.” She nodded, as though this made a great deal more sense. “Let me call a nurse to take you to Mr. Wroblewski’s apartment.”
“There’s no need for that. You can just point me in the direction.”
“Mr. Wroblewski doesn’t—well—he doesn’t respond positively to surprises. You should probably have a nurse escort you.”
The nurse who met him in the lobby was an older woman, starch-white hair kept in a short braid that sat squarely on her neck. As they walked outside, she behaved as though she were actually giving him the prospective resident tour, which maybe she was. She pointed out card tables where old men in fedoras traded chips with their shaking, medicated fingers; women gathered in semicircles in plastic deck chairs, talking over each other or not talking at all. The nurse spoke slowly and cautiously, masking an untraceable and vaguely Spanish accent.
“I have a favor to ask,” the nurse said over her shoulder as they passed the pool. An octogenarian swam the breaststroke. “Maybe since you know him—Mr. Wroblewski—maybe you could ask him to please finish his breakfast. He’s not a very good eater. Likes to voice his discontent, we say around here. But really he is just being a pain in the ass. He likes being a pain in the ass.”
“I really can’t imagine that he’ll listen to me.”
She didn’t seem to care. “He says nasty things about the food. Very nasty. He used to call the kitchen and say those nasty things directly to our chef, but we’ve since blocked his calls. That’s what happens when three chefs quit in the span of four weeks. We block your calls.” But then she quickly added in a flat tone, “I don’t mean to say he’s a bad person, of course.”
“Of course.”
There was a group of men standing at the shuffleboard court against the rising sun behind them. They were gathered in a closed circle, like some pack of sloped birds. As he passed, Marcus heard one of them saying, “If you aren’t interested in learning the rules, Richard, I can’t be interested in learning them for you.”
“Does Mr. Wroblewski ever hang around out here with the
other residents?” Marcus asked, noticing the doubt in his voice.
The nurse turned around to meet his gaze, a sour smile. Marcus took it as a firm no.
They arrived at the final apartment. Beyond was nothing but open field, recently mowed. A cloud of insects hovered against the infinite horizon. The nurse had a key on a bracelet around her wrist, but knocked first.
“Mr. Wroblewski,” she said loudly into the door. She took a cautious step backward, as though serving a search warrant. “Mr. Wroblewski. You have a visitor.”
No answer. Marcus heard the faint sound of a television from behind the door.
“Mr. Wroblewski, I’m opening the door. Did you hear me? I’m opening the door. OK? Here I come.”
She opened the door cautiously, as if it might be rigged to explode. When it was opened a quarter of the way, she poked her head inside.
“Mr. Wroblewski,” she said, louder. “You have a visitor.”
“Good Christ, I heard you the first time,” shouted a hoarse voice from inside. “Who is it, Marcy?”
“My name isn’t Marcy. I’m letting your visitor in now, Mr. Wroblewski.”
“Hope the door hits you on the way out, Marcy.”
She backed out of the door and gave Marcus a look—equal parts pity and told-you-so—before turning back to where they had come from. She disappeared so quickly that Marcus didn’t even get a chance to think of saying thank you.
Paul’s apartment was lit only by the television. The curtains were drawn. The lights were either purposefully kept off or the bulbs had burnt out and not yet been replaced. Hard to say. Newspapers were piled on the floor, on the kitchen table, on the chairs, on the refrigerator. There lingered about the smell of a cat, though Marcus neither heard it nor saw it the whole time he was there.
Paul had never seemed like a cat person. Or really an anything person, for that matter. Singular would be the wrong word to describe him, but it was the only word that came to Marcus’s mind in the moment as he waded through the kitchen and into the small living space where he spotted Paul, who was already studying him with sharp, slitted eyes.
“You’re shitting me,” Paul said, his voice, at least, untouched by the years. The same manicured gruffness, like a studio actor playing a Chicago cop. “Is that Marcus goddamned Waters in the flesh?” He wore a thick green sweater even though the apartment was uncomfortably warm, inexplicably humid. A wool-knit blanket draped over his knees, its original color stained a filthy brown.
“Good to see you, Paul.”
“Shut up with the lies. How did you find me?” A tube ran from a rolling oxygen canister into his nose, clicking in relaxed intervals.
Marcus cleared a space to sit on a floral love seat stained with ancient cigarette burns. “When I interviewed you for the book a few years back, you mentioned then that you were moving here.”
“Right, right, the book.” Paul smiled emptily, and Marcus suspected that he had no recollection as to what Marcus was talking about. Paul could probably recite every Inquisitor headline from the past year or draw a detailed map of the South Side circa 1985—complete with street names, train routes—but when Marcus had last spoken with him, Paul had trouble remembering his grandchildren’s names. Marcus considered it tragic that Paul’s lasting memories were so impersonal and detached, but he wasn’t sure Paul would see that as a tragedy. “You want something to drink? I got old milk that’ll kill you on contact, and then I got some scotch. Be a dear and get the scotch.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. It’s pretty early in the day.”
“The scotch is on top of the fridge. Be useful, would you? Highballs are in the cupboard there by the fridge. And don’t be stingy. Maybe after all these years, you’ve finally learned how to drink like a man. I don’t need you falling over yourself the way I seen you do before. Little yuppie journalist sweating through his shirt, slurring his fancy words.”
Marcus poured Paul a double and himself a half. When he handed Paul his drink, Paul pointed at Marcus’s nearly empty glass. “Some things don’t change.”
Marcus nodded at the tray of food placed next to him on the couch. Undisturbed biscuits and gravy, already coagulated. A layer of iridescent grease coated the entire tray.
“Your nurse told me to tell you to eat your breakfast.”
“And you know why she said that?”
“She doesn’t want you to die?”
“Wrong,” Paul barked, taking a large and slow sip from his tumbler. “It’s actually the exact opposite, Marcus. Moment I swallow one of those fucking hockey pucks they call biscuits, I’m going to meet my maker. And then they collect my next month’s rent and who knows how many other months. It’s a fucking Ponzi scheme in here, Marcus. Swear to God. Every day I have to order food from the Chinese place in town. And I’m getting real sick of eating chicken and broccoli every day, but I have to because I don’t want to die just yet. I haven’t worked out how I’m going to explain a few things to the big man upstairs.” His lips parted to reveal smiling rows of grayed teeth, repeating a joke Marcus had heard him use a dozen times before in all sorts of contexts. “Yeah, see, I’m trying to figure out how to explain a few immaculate conceptions of my own.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Marcus smiled, rubbing the glass of scotch between his palms.
Paul seemed pleased by this response. He breathed heavily out from his mouth and gestured at the television. “Your timing was pretty good. Not a coincidence, I’m sure.”
Marcus turned and saw that Paul was watching the news, where they were currently broadcasting an image of an empty podium with the Chicago Police Department insignia on the front. The top of the screen read: HAPPENING NOW. And beneath that: CHICAGO POLICE CHIEF ADDRESSES QUESTIONS AMID HACK, SECOND EXECUTION VIDEO.
There was a flurry of cameras clicking as Stetson entered the shot holding a folder. He was accompanied by a few lieutenants, colonels, and the mayor, all of whom stood behind him as he sidled up to the podium and looked down at his comments in his folder.
“My God,” Paul moaned. “Old Stetson is probably shitting bricks, but you’d never know it by looking at him. Say what you will about the man, but he doesn’t break.”
It was true. Stetson was good in the front of the camera. Always had been. He made himself the dominant force in whatever room he was broadcasted into. He looked the camera in its solitary eye and assured the citizens of Chicago that their police force and the FBI were actively pursuing the perpetrator of those heinous videos. They would bring justice to him, Stetson said with a confidence that transmitted across the airwaves. “And concerning the hack that occurred yesterday,” Stetson began, “at least one file that we know of was taken from our private servers, though we are actively investigating other information that may have been compromised.”
Marcus shifted uncomfortably in the chair, remembering the letter sent to him. The letter that sent him here.
“Everything we know thus far about who performed this attack we cannot make public at this time,” Stetson continued, “due to the overlap with the ongoing investigation. But what I can say is that we do have reason to believe that the attack was performed by the hacker group known as the Liber-teens, and that their intentions were transparently malicious towards the Chicago Police Department. Last night they released a statement declaring that they performed their hack in order to put an end to the violence we witnessed yesterday. To this, I point to the execution video just recently released. One in which the gunman acknowledges their hack and perpetuates more heinous violence. To those who have expressed empathy or interest towards the Liber-teen cause, I urge you to consider these facts I have laid before you. Moreover, we cannot, at this time, rule out the possibility that those individuals who hacked our servers were not, in some way, involved in the videos we have witnessed. At this time, I’m afraid that I cannot say much more on the matter since it is still an open investigation. I’ll simply close by saying that Chicago does not need more fissures a
mongst its citizens. Now is a time for unity, a show of our collective force and spirit. I assure the citizens of Chicago that your police are working tirelessly on this matter. Thank you.”
He backed away from the microphone and nodded. Cameras flashed, voices rose. He stepped back to the microphone and marched off the platform while reporters lobbed questions at him like grenades.
Paul took a long and savoring drink. “Good Christ,” he said, wiping his lip with a shaking finger. “Thank God for retirement, right? Maybe I should wish I could help with that madness, but I’m glad as all hell I’m sitting here in this dungeon instead. First time in forever I felt that way.”
“Why is that?”
“Because this is a sort of mess we never had to deal with back then. Back in our day, you had good guys over here”—Paul gestured to his left—“and the bad guys over here,” he nodded at his right. “Sounds simple because it was. But nowadays, all the bad guys think they’re good guys and all the good guys are told they’re bad guys. Meanwhile, all the normal folks in between don’t know which way is up and which way is down. I don’t want any part in that bullshit, no thank you. You probably feel the same, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I imagine it would be pretty damn hard these days to write the stories you used to write. Have to tiptoe around every single person’s feelings because no one is a bad guy anymore. God forbid you say something offensive, even about the criminals themselves, because nowadays they’re just ‘misunderstood’ or ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘ill.’ Give me a fucking break.” He gripped the arms of his chair, his long and yellowed fingernails threatening to tear the fabric. “I worked those Chicago streets long enough to know for certain that there are some people who are just plain evil and plain good and that’s that. What a fucking world we live in, where we give up telling the difference.”
The Reign of the Kingfisher Page 20