A Bad Night's Sleep (21 page)

Before it rang, a key sounded in the door lock and I hung up.

Finley stepped in, gun drawn. His face was a shade too pale and he bent like his belly was tender where I’d kneed him. He looked like he wanted to shoot me. He said, “Your phone.”

I handed it to him.

“Thank you,” he said and turned to the door.

“Sorry about the stomach,” I said.

He said nothing to that. He went out and locked the door behind him.

I paced the room. Five steps long, four steps wide. Six steps from corner to corner. I put in a mile or two, back and forth and around.

Then I went to the wall that I shared with the room where Finley had put Monroe. I put my ear to the wall.

Silence.

I knocked on the wall.

More silence.

I called softly, “Hey!” Anyone standing near the door to the room would hear me but I called anyway. “Monroe!”

After a few seconds, Monroe’s voice answered through the wall, “What?”

“If you’re locked in a room in this building with just a chair, how do you get out?” I said.

“Is this a fucking riddle?”

“You know this building better than I do. How do you get out?”

“You don’t, you stupid fuck.”

“I’m getting out,” I said.

He said nothing to that.

“Monroe?” I called.

Silence.

I went back to pacing.

When I got tired of pacing, I sat in the chair.

When I got tired of sitting in the chair, I stood, picked up the chair, swung it as hard as I could, and released it. It flew across the room and hit the wall by the door. Two of the chair legs punched through the drywall.

A moment later, a key unlocked the door and Finley stepped inside again. He still held the gun. Color had mostly returned to his face and he was standing straighter than before. He looked at me. He looked at the chair sticking out of the wall. He went to the chair and yanked it. Pieces of drywall fell to the carpet and the chair came free. One of the legs had poked through the outside wall and light shined through from the hallway.

Finley shook his head like he was disgusted with me, carried the chair out of the room, and locked the door.

I paced some more, then stretched out on the floor and looked at the crack on the ceiling. If Finley would give me sandpaper, some brushes, and a can of paint, I could fix it.

I closed my eyes, opened them again.

The crack still reached across the ceiling. I was still locked in the room.

I stayed like that for a long time. It felt like days and weeks. I sometimes looked at my watch. It said 5:58. Then it said 6:10. Later it said 6:40.

That meant Lucinda was probably in the building, climbing the stairs.

Then my watch said 6:50. That meant Johnson and his crew probably had Lucinda in their hands or would soon. There wasn’t a thing I could do to help her.

At 6:55 a key rattled in the lock.

I stood and moved to the door, ready to fight my way out—to do anything I needed to do to get to Lucinda.

The door swung open.

Finley wasn’t there with his gun. The gang leader Rafael stood in the doorway. He grinned and said, “
Hola
.”

I looked at him, confused. “What are you—?”

He stepped into the room. “
He
called,” he said, sticking a thumb over his shoulder.

Raj stepped in behind him.

I shook my head, confused. “What are you doing?”

He looked nervous. “Trying to save your ass—and my own.”

“Are you with Monroe, or Johnson and Finley?”

“I’m with myself,” he said and stepped back into the hall. Rafael and I followed.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Raj looked down the hall toward the stairs to The Spa Club. “There’s not time.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

He looked furious. “Don’t be an asshole. Finley told me he’d figured out Monroe was making a power play and told me to come along when he nailed him. If I hadn’t, he’d have locked me up with you. He’ll be right back—you’ve got to get out of here.”

I shook my head. “I need to check the stairwell. My partner’s supposed to be there.”

“It’s too late. You’ve got to leave.”

“Not without Lucinda.”

“Jesus! I’ll check for her myself,” he said and yelled at Rafael, “Get him the hell out of here.”

That would need to be good enough. Rafael and I headed for the exit door.

As we reached it, a voice came from the other end of the hall. “Hey!”

It was Finley. He held his pistol so he could shoot us in the back.

“Keep going,” Raj yelled at me and Rafael. He stepped toward Finley. “It’s all right, Peter—”

“Stop!” Finley yelled.

Rafael and I kept going.

Finley fired his gun. A deafening blast filled the hall and a bullet slammed into the steel plating on the exit door. I reached for the door handle, pushed, and looked over my shoulder. In the hazy light, Raj was running toward Finley. He ran the way people run toward a bad accident. Not that they can do anything to stop what already has happened or the blood that will pour. Not that they really know why they’re running. Finley watched him come, his pistol level, his lips tight, his jaw square.

Finley shot again. The blast ripped through the hallway.

Raj flew backward. He landed on his back, his eyes wide, his chest bloody.

Rafael shoved me through the door.

I tried to stop. “Get Raj!”

Rafael kept pushing. “He’s dead!”

Raj was dead. Of course he was. You don’t take a bullet in the chest from a .40-caliber Glock and live. You don’t stare at a hallway ceiling with wide unblinking eyes if you’re still feeling pain.

“Shit!” I yelled. Another shot from Finley’s gun slammed into the closing door.

We were in a gray lobby by a service elevator. Two Mexican kids held the elevator door open. They were sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing black T-shirts and low-rider jeans. One of them had on a black baseball cap with a silver star on it. He grinned at Rafael and me with a gold-capped front tooth. “What’s up?” he said, like we were meeting on a street corner.

The kids moved aside to let us into the elevator and one punched the button for the ground floor. Finley burst into the lobby as the elevator doors closed.

TWENTY-SIX

WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS
opened again, Rafael’s friends stepped out, looked left and right, and signaled for us to follow. We ran across the lobby and out the front door. A gray BMW sedan and a jacked-up Chevy Silverado pickup stood at the curb, engines running.

Rafael’s friends climbed into the pickup.

Rafael knocked fists with the valet. “
Gracias
,” he said.

“Far as I know, you’re not here,” the doorman said. “I didn’t see you coming and I don’t see you going.”

“’Course you don’t,” said Rafael, and he slipped a roll of bills into the doorman’s hand.

I said nothing. Pointing out the video camera that fed everything we were doing to the Spa Club monitor room seemed like bad manners.

We got into the BMW and the doorman waved at me. “Have a good night, Mr. Kozmarski—and drive safely.”

The kid at the wheel of the pickup punched the accelerator. The tires spun and screeched and the truck leapt forward. It shot down the driveway, tilted onto the street, and disappeared to the south.

“Fucking clowns,” Rafael said. He shifted into Drive and we rode down the driveway and pulled into the street.

We went south to Oak Street, across to Lake Shore Drive, and south again. The evening traffic had thinned and Rafael weaved steadily around slower cars. To the east, a green light glowed on a breakwater wall a quarter mile off the beach. After the green light, there was nothing but darkness.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“My part of town. Johnson can’t get you there.”

I considered that. “Thanks, but I’ll do it alone. You can drop me downtown.”

“You got a car?” he said.

“No,” I admitted.

“A gun?”

“No.”

“Cops are looking for you at your office and your house. Johnson’s crew is definitely hunting for you. What’re you going to do with no car, no gun, and no place to sleep?”

I thought about that for awhile. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go to your part of town.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Right,” he said. Then he stepped on the accelerator.

“What’s the rush?”

He tipped his chin toward the backseat. “Like I said—look behind us.”

I did. A white SUV sped after us, changing lanes when we did, closing the gap. Through the glare and shadow of its front window I saw two men. The one in the passenger seat looked like Finley. I wasn’t sure about the driver. He could’ve been the guy who took my pistol from me in Monroe’s office.

“Can this thing go any faster?” I said.

Rafael laughed and sped up. We shot toward the downtown lights, the SUV behind us. The tall, black-windowed apartments in Lake Point Tower loomed on the left. On the other side, our headlights flashed on a big American flag tied to the side of a construction crane. It rose in the air on the cold breeze and fell like a giant hand waving good-bye.

“How did you get into The Spa Club?” I said.

Rafael checked the rearview mirror again and said, “Raj called. He said you were in trouble. Said it was getting too deep and he wanted out. Said if I didn’t come get you, Johnson might decide to make you go away for good. You know, any time I can fuck up Johnson’s plans I’m going to do it. Anyway, Raj is an okay guy—or was. That was ugly, what that man did to him.”

“Peter Finley.”

“Whoever. I mean, with friends like him—”

I glanced at Rafael. The light from outside glinted in his eyes. None of the tattooed words on his bicep said
KILL
but the inked blades and guns meant it just the same. “What do you know about friends?” I said.

He checked the mirror, then looked at me. “What? I came and got you and I don’t hardly know your ass. I didn’t see your other friends coming for you.”

No, I’d left a friend behind. If Lucinda had managed to get to the fourteenth-floor stairwell, they had her now and I was riding away from her at eighty miles an hour. “Do you have a cell phone?” I said.

He looked at me like I was a caveman. “I got three. You need one?”

I said I did. He handed me a phone and I punched Lucinda’s number into it.

It rang three times and a man’s voice answered—Johnson’s.

“Let me talk to Lucinda, Earl,” I said.

He yelled into the phone, “Get back here—”

I hung up on him.

Rafael glared at me and said, “Gimme.” I put the phone in his hand, and he rolled down his window and chucked it out. “You gave my phone number to Earl Johnson,” he said and shook his head.

We crossed the river, went around a bend, and flew along the harbor. In front of us, a stoplight turned yellow, then red. Rafael hit the accelerator and we went into the intersection. I looked over my shoulder. The SUV followed us through, missing a crossing car by inches.

“
Muy loco
,” Rafael said like he admired the driver. He pulled out a second cell phone, tapped the keypad, and talked to someone in Spanish. He added in English, or mostly, “
Sí
, Eighteenth and Throop Street,” then laughed and hung up.

I kept my eyes on the SUV. Finley leaned out of the passenger window. He had a weapon in his hand. He leveled it so it pointed at the back window of Rafael’s BMW.

“Do you have a gun?” I said.

Rafael sounded annoyed. “You think I would bring a weapon to a club owned by cops? You got to be kidding.”

Finley shot, and the bullet thunked into metal behind us.

“Under the seat!” Rafael said.

I reached under the seat and pulled out a sawed-off Remington shotgun. Single shot.

“Loaded?” I said.

He nodded. “But only one shell.”

I looked at him like he must be kidding. He wasn’t. “What kind of thug are you with only one round?”

“A thug who’s got one more round than you, right?” he said.

I unrolled my window and leaned out, pointed the shotgun at Finley.

He didn’t know I had only one shot. He disappeared into the SUV.

I slid into the BMW.

The next stoplight was green. We flew through the intersection and along Grant Park.

Finley’s hand, holding his pistol, jutted out of the SUV window again. He fired the gun, missed, and fired again.

“Shoot the asshole!” Rafael said.

I leaned out the window again, aimed the shotgun at Finley.

He squeezed off another two shots.

I waited for the pain that would seep into me if he hit me. None came.

I looked down the sawed-off barrel until its tip lined up with Finley’s head.

“Shoot him!” Rafael yelled.

I couldn’t pull the trigger. I’d already shot one cop too many. Another cop—even Finley, who was gunning for me—was too much.

I lowered the gun a few inches, aimed at the front tire. If I blew it out, the SUV would stop and we would leave Finley behind. That seemed better than killing him.

I pulled the trigger.

The kick of the shotgun threw me back but I kept my eyes on the SUV. The right headlight went dark. The white paint on the front hood was flecked with black. But the SUV kept coming. The tire was still good.

I slipped into the car again, and Rafael looked in the rearview mirror. He made a sound that was half laugh and half howl. “You missed! You have a fucking shotgun! How can you miss?”

I had nothing to say so I said nothing.

“Jesus!” he said. “You don’t get no second chances.” He accelerated through the next intersection, glanced in the mirror, and added, “They’re coming.”

I looked. The SUV had closed to three car lengths. Finley’s arm stuck out of the window with his gun.

“Pretend to shoot again,” Rafael said.

It seemed like as good an idea as anything else, so I turned and stuck the shotgun out the window. Finley’s arm disappeared and the SUV dropped back a couple of car lengths.

“Here goes—” Rafael said, and, before I could ask, he whipped into the turn lane at Roosevelt Road and slid around the corner.