Calumet City (24 page)

Upstairs, I call Mercy Hospital while Tracy searches for dry clothes that fit me. According to a nurse Chief Jesse remains critical. She isn’t encouraging or a fountain of detail, but he’s alive. And FBI or not, I’m going by today.

"Going by" will be trouble, like Sonny said, now that the First Deputy Superintendent, James Colin Braith, is the acting boss. He lacks Chief Jesse’s affection for me, or TAC officers in general, often commenting that we are not now, and never have been, his idea of the police. He won’t know about my Intelligence Unit mission for Chief Jesse and the reports I haven’t filed, but as soon as the first deputy’s head clears he’ll be calling. I won’t have answers, but that won’t stop him from calling.

   Tracy and I don’t say much on the way uptown. We take my car, me in a pair of Tracy’s Levi’s, a New Zealand All Blacks sweatshirt, and a rain jacket that could make my house payment but doesn’t hide my Smith. From Lincoln Park to the ghetto without traffic the drive takes twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes, but once here, everything changes, the air, the rhythm, your heart rate—even mine after seventeen years.

Halsted’s full of paper and cardboard debris. The rain quits when we park, the chill doesn’t. People wander out, tentative on God’s plans, but out and looking. It’s weekend lunchtime in shit city and we’re just below Eighty-second Street—two white girls on foot who aren’t whoring for a street crew. We don’t stand out any more than a pile of hundred-dollar bills. Tracy’s nervous and should be, moving between the hooded jackets, silent, hard eyes and an occasional "Hey, Patti; what up, Pep."

She asks about "Pep."

I explain that "Pepper" is my street name—Angie Dickinson was Pepper in a ’70s cop show. A Blackstone Ranger tagged me with it a decade ago; I’m the only cop in 6 with a street name other than Denny Banahan’s "Zorro." Some of the bosses didn’t see Pepper as funny; within a month the street name bought me my first IAD appointment.

Two Gangster Disciples eye us from the east side of Halsted. Tracy hasn’t left my side since the first GD brushed her much harder than acceptable. When he recognized me he quit, but showed no fear and gave no ground. He and I both know I’m out of line; he doesn’t know why, or if I’m doing it on purpose—trolling for felons—he just knows I’m alone right this instant. Alone gives him an edge if he wants it.

Tracy semi-whispers, "Did you see his eyes?" She waits until he’s ten feet behind us, checks him over her shoulder, adding, "This could get old after a day or two."

Just ahead of us the GD’s nine partners are blocking her section of sidewalk. I jerk her to my other side and hard-eye the men. Weakness down here is considered an invitation. Their stance is a street challenge. Since you can’t run or call the milkman, there’s only one speed; it becomes instinct, not unlike theirs, and I square up already yelling:

"Is this fuck with Pepper day? Did I miss the flyer?"

Five of the nine street mumble to save their dicks. One I don’t know (do I?) looks like he might take it further. I
do not
want this, but his hand’s moving to his back. We’ve gone from street challenge to full threat. How it often happens. Your mind’s on something else, you’re not ghetto ready, and then you or your partner is dead. I draw, aim, and a GD ducks quick to his left.

"
Back the fuck up, Jim
. We ain’t gonna wrestle."

"Yeah. Yeah. Bitch shot Robert and Carlos."

Three down the line I hear, "Gone shoot us too, ain’t you? Pep like to pop."

The one eyeing me keeps doing it. Still can’t see his hand. Any one of his nine partners can shoot me and I’d never see the gun. Ten against one. "Put your
motherfucking
hands on the wall.
NOW
."

He does. I street-glare the others, then toss my cuffs to the one on his left. "Cuff him. Tight."

"Aw, bitch, I ain’t gotta—"

"Wanna go too?
Cuff the motherfucker
."

He does. I shove the prisoner into the wall, lean a hand into the middle of his back, and aim my Smith at his partners. They move ten feet.
"Get the fuck back."
They slow-stroll forty more. Nothing about this is good. I whisper to Tracy, "Call 911, get us the cavalry." My prisoner twists when he hears we’re alone, not doing decoy. I lurch back so he can’t head butt me.

"Face the motherfucking wall."

He checks his homeys, then my Smith now in his face and me behind it. I sidestep to block him from one exit. Something’s wrong here. He’s ready to charge or bolt. Now he looks familiar.

"Face the fucking wall."

Tracy steps into my vision, trying to find a place to stand that’s less threatening than all the places there are to stand. Her phone’s out and by her face. My prisoner eyes her and I twist him back, slammed face-first into the wall. "Do-Not-Move." I jam the Smith into the back of his neck. "It’s cocked. Move and you die."

He doesn’t and I start to pat him. I don’t want to; I want to watch his partners. God smiles from the southbound lane of Halsted, a blue-and-white stops fast. I finish patting by the time the driver is out. It’s one of Kit Carson’s giant "bodyguards," pistol drawn. He eyes the nine GDs forty feet away, then smiles at me. "As I live and breathe, the hardest-working cop in show business returns. How you doin’, P?"

"Got this
bad
motherfucker here." I jerk my GD around; he has no ID, but smells like cordite. Kit’s bodyguard stops smiling. He faces the other GDs so they can see his weapon, then leans into the prisoner. "You from Englewood, asshole? How come you over here?"

The prisoner mumbles and checks his homeys again.

Kit’s bodyguard tells his collar mike to send backup, then tells me: "That there is possibly Wardell Scurr. There’s a rumor Wardell’s in 6 looking for someone in par-tic-u-lar."

Wardell doesn’t blink or seem to know who he’s looking for, if anyone. His partners start disappearing quickly.
Not good
. I scan the street for a gunship drive-by.

"Lucky for you, P, this felon’s big news." Kit’s bodyguard threads one hand through Wardell’s cuffs and changes the subject, sort of. "Lieutenant Carson says you in deep shit, Officer."

"Yeah, well, he’d say that."

Two marked cars squeal to a stop and a Crown Vic loops them both. A uniform sergeant bails, hard-eyeing Tracy as he passes, passes me without speaking, and stops only when his chest hits Wardell’s.

"You looking for me, nigger?" The sergeant is about to go all-the-way off. I’ve seen this before, usually after funerals.
"Me?"

Wardell and the sergeant are the same size and Wardell glares back at him, eyeball to eyeball.

"Uncuff him. Me and Wardell the motherfucking nigger assassin gonna throw down." The sergeant shoves Wardell hard into the wall. "Give him a gun.
Hey,
" the sergeant yells at the other GDs, "one you nigger pimps give him a gun. I’m gonna kill your bitch right here."

I step between them and the sergeant shoves me four feet. I come back low and up between them again. "
Sarge, Sarge,
hey man, c’mon." He grabs me again and I grab two handfuls of his shirt so he can’t throw me. "Please. Sarge. Chill, c’mon."

"Wardell, you pimp motherfucker," The sergeant’s spit splatters my forehead. "You dying, nigger. Know that. To-DAY is your fucking day."

Squad cars squeal-stop all over Halsted; two TAC cars join them. Uniforms climb all over their sergeant, pulling him back and me with them. I catch a glimpse of Tracy trying to be a reporter and not die. The sergeant lets go. I fall. Sonny Barrett in a new snap-brim cap and Cisco’s cologne grabs me. He’s clean shaven, strong enough to hold my 130 pounds one-handed, and says, "Remember this banger? From Art’s?"

That’s it. I see Wardell in the booth, plain as day, and turning toward me.

Sonny pulls me to his side, staring bullets at Wardell. "They shot Bristol." Bristol is the sergeant’s younger brother, a rookie patrolman in 7. "Wardell killed him four hours ago."

   The arrest is over but Halsted Street still vibrates, uneasy with the cease-fire.

Tracy’s on her cell phone; she’s uneasy too. Sonny Barrett and I share his dented fender, both facing the street sans our usual banter. Cars pass and the people stare. Three blocks south the pickets are shouting in front of 6. After a long silence Sonny spits in Tracy’s general direction and says it again, because I just blinked the first time.

"Wardell Scurr is Robert’s cousin, the GD we smoked on Monday."

I heard Sonny the first time. I’m thinking about Bristol’s wife and his parents, his kids if he had any; I’m thinking about the circle that never stops—about Ruth Ann on her porch when she hears her family has killed a cop, thinking about how it always seems to come down to them and us. I’m thinking that the way this is going, it’s gonna be a bad week to be white, black, or blue in this city.

"GDs had both funerals yesterday. Big turnout over at Oak-woods. Fucking Alderman Gibbons was there, you believe that? For fucking street gangsters. Gave a sermon; you can guess who was the devil."

I look up at a very tired, angry man, frustrated to his limits with problems he can’t solve but trying to hide it. I haven’t thought of him this way before—the trying-to-hide-it part—and once again find that strange. The snap-brim cap, shave, and cologne are stranger still.

"What’d he say?"

"TV shit. How it’s the mayor’s fault." He pauses and stares at Tracy’s presence in the ghetto, then turns, back to me. "Chief Jesse may have been onto something, there."

Tracy begins to walk our way and I wave her off.

Sonny notices and hits me with a list: "
A,
you don’t work down here anymore and half the suits in this district are trying to put you in prison;
B,
you got the Pink Panther with you;
C,
you do a street stop on a cop killer with no backup. So other than losing your fucking mind, what’s new?"

I debate two strange, conflicting feelings and decide to go with the safest one. "I need you to know something, okay?"

Sonny checks my jeans and sweatshirt, then my face. It’s what he usually does while he waits for a confession or LT orders he thinks are stupid.

"I’m, ah, not as good as you maybe thought and I’m not as bad as you’re gonna think."

Sonny shakes his head and loses the snap-brim cap into his hands; an affectation he hasn’t mastered yet. "Chicks love riddles, don’t they."

It’s an honest statement, and coming from him it could be a compliment. His usual opinions on women are far less flattering. The comment, new cap, and cologne still make me wonder, but I don’t ask. I want to, not sure why, but I want to.

"Any calls from Idaho Joe?"

"Nah." Sonny looks at a Chevy looking at us. "Gotta figure that means your bad guys already know what they need to know." When he looks back he makes sure I get it—that my ass is tight in their sights, whoever they are.

"Anything out on me from Evanston?"

Sonny exhales through his teeth. "What the fuck did you do in Evanston?"

"Went by…a place…that knows about me. And my son." Deep breath. "An adoption agency that might know how to find him. We had an argument; maybe the agency called the cops." I grimace and glance at Halsted returning to ghetto normal. "Actually, they did call the cops. Know my name too."

"Nice. Anybody…injured?"

Headshake. "If paper was coming, you’d already have it."

Sonny spits. "Don’t be so sure. Like I said yesterday, everybody you know is radioactive. No tellin’ what they ain’t telling me, us, the crew."

Tracy comes to us without being invited, hand extended and hair moving. "Hi, Tracy Moens."

"Sonny Barrett." His baritone raises her eyebrows and she checks her hand when she gets it back. His star says sergeant and she reads it, then his size, then his face.

"You’re Patti’s boss?"

"Was."

"I’d like to ask a few questions about today, so if you don’t—"

"I do mind." Sonny pushes off the fender, turns his back on the best-looking woman ever to speak to him, and says to me, "Remember, P, Kit Carson’s sleeping in your locker." He pauses, checks Tracy behind him, and says, "Too much coincidence—us running Farrakhan and Gibbons on the QT, then this. I’m bettin’ Wardell Scurr wasn’t in 6 for Bristol’s brother. I’m bettin’ he was here for you, like he was in Art’s for you."

"Why me? Shit, I didn’t shoot his people."

"Your warrant. You put it together; you’re the one on the six o’clock news."

"Aw, man…"

"Something’s following you, P." Sonny stares like he’s trying to read me. "It’s mixed up, fucked up, and gettin’ closer. You need to tell me what it is. Now."

"I told you what I can."

Sonny’s eyes narrow while he waits. His face and neck add red. "You about to piss me off, lady, one of the few fucking friends you still got."

I stare until he turns on his heel. Tracy and I watch him leave, then it’s just me and her. And Halsted Street. And the ghetto. She tries for butch that’s real on the rugby pitch but not here. "Wouldn’t say he’s cute, but there is that
je ne sais quoi
. You and him…?"

My eyes roll.

"I called in a story on the arrest. They said the patrolman, Bristol…"

"Posner. Bristol Posner was a person."

"…Posner was shot five times at a stoplight. Never saw it coming. I’d like to get whatever personal—"

"
He was a fucking person, Tracy
. A fucking human being, not a story. I knew him. Watched him buy coffee for ragmen and homeless crack whores. A person, okay?"

My hands are trembling; my tolerance for this shit has dissolved in the last six days. I am, and I’m quite certain of this, losing my memory of the old me, the girl who almost was. Reflected in Tracy’s face I see the new me, the deranged, driven, win-this-at-all-costs me.

Tracy says, "Look, Patti, I—"

"We’re down here to run Roland’s footprints.
Do not
fuck with those cops for bracing Wardell Scurr. Cut them one fucking break, okay? They, you, me, and these people," my hand sweeps at the street, "don’t need more gasoline right now."