Calumet City (31 page)

   Tracy’s still staring. There isn’t a reporter prep school for those moments. On the Northside they call them
epiphanies,
the kind of sudden clarity that sets you back on your heels. Epiphanies often explain the previously unexplainable but add new confusion to ruin the moment. And that’s what we have—a whole new set of possibilities. But they don’t feel possible; they feel probable. They have weight. Confusing, but in this muck, and for the first time, I know the mayor’s wife is part of this. A big part.
I know it
.

Chief Jesse is another story. The FBI says he’s part of "blackmail, murder, and continuing police corruption dating back to Calumet City." I just can’t go there. And if that kills me today, then it does. Tracy will see it different; the same killer instinct that will blitzkrieg the mayor’s wife will also bullet-train Tracy to ICU. That I can’t stop. What I can do is get Sonny out of bed on his day off and hear what he’s found on Delmont Chukut and Idaho Joe in Chicago. Then I too will go to work on the lovely and talented Mary Kate O’Banion McQuinn.

Tracy shakes her head, tapping fingernails on the plane’s table. "Mary Kate, Mary Kate…what are you into, girl?" Tracy’s smiling again, then checks her watch and surprises me sideways. "Are you playing?"

"Huh?"

"BASH. At noon. Are you playing?"

Like Julie, Tracy’s devotion to rugby outpaces reason. The same has been said of me, but that was the old me. "Ah…on the off chance your side of the cabin wasn’t pressurized, no, I’m kinda involved in this."

"Here’s my key. Take the boxes to my place. I’ll see you right after."

"You’re kidding, right?" This has to be a move of some kind.

"Tim the pilot will get you a Town Car." Pageant winner smile. "I’ll think about Mary Kate." Tracy pats my hand as she passes in the aisle. "And don’t go to Evanston; it won’t work. We’ll find Delmont Chukut first—he’s our key—pump him this afternoon or tonight, then talk our way into Le Bassinet first thing Monday when they open."

I stare and she stops when I don’t answer.

"Promise, Patti."

Like that would mean shit.

"Promise, Patti." Her hopeful tone ceases. "Or this is going to cave in and kill us both."

She’s probably right and I lie to make her feel better. "Promise."

   The Town Car’s leather is clean and cold. Sonny’s on my cell phone and not happy. He starts the conversation I just initiated, saying, "The Ayatollah’s poking, asking why you stopped Wardell Scurr in the first place."

I do not need Alderman Gibbons and his pickets in my face today and Sonny agrees, saying he doesn’t either. Next, Sonny bitches about the "PI/Pentecostal City" voice mail assignment I left him yesterday. Then he jumps back to Wardell Scurr. "When we booked him, Wardell had a piece of napkin in his sock, had ’10026’ scribbled on it in blue ink."

The five numbers on my license plate are 10026. I flash on the GD at Leon’s RideBrite, his cell phone tight to his mouth even with my pistol pointed at him.

Sonny pauses to let "10026" soak in as if I need the punctuation, then ghetto-speaks:
"About yor man, Delmont mulfuckin’ Chew-cut."

Roland’s boxes bounce next to me in the backseat—the little hands wrapped in manacles. I push them toward the door and check the back of my driver’s head.

Sonny says he’s only semi-happy to make the following report, provided I forget where I heard it. I agree.

"
Delmont Chew-cut
. Upstanding citizen. The Indians threw him off the reservation on a rape complaint that he beat. Was a copper for awhile, till Tucson PD tired of defending him on aggravated battery. Did get an honorable from the Army Rangers, though. He’s been implicated in two murders, has two pages of assaults related to bail enforcement, and if he isn’t in the dope and smuggling business, he should be, given all the time the G has invested."

The highway bumps the phone off my face and I notice the driver’s eyes on me in the mirror.

"So tell me again, P, why are you and Mr. Chew-toy sharing air."

"Can’t talk right now, I’m in a hired car."

"Convenient."

"Wanna talk to the driver?" I push the phone up by the driver’s cheek and ask him to say hello to Sonny. He does and I pull it back.

"Satisfied, asshole?"

"
I’m
an asshole? The guy who’s got his neck on the block and the G up his ass? No, I’m a fucking idiot, Patti. There’s a difference."

Sonny’s got a point. "Sorry. Anything on Idaho Joe and the bar?"

Silence, then, "Stop and call me…the number at Eighty-seventh and Hamilton. Five minutes."

It’s a landline pay phone we use when cell phones don’t cut it. I say, "10-4," and tell the driver pull off the Stevenson. We’re in Cicero and I ask him to stay in the car with the engine running. The Exxon station isn’t busy but the pay phone outside has a half-cover that blocks too much of my vision. I drop two quarters, eye the street—even Cicero is full of SUVs—and punch the number at Eighty-seventh.

On the seventh ring Sonny answers.

"We were talking about the bar and Idaho Joe."

"Could be something. Me and Cisco—he’s out of the hospital and too stupid to stay out of this—me and him braced the bar owner and his license. He’s got a silent partner he shouldn’t have, a dude sergeant over in 7. We explained that the price for continued silence was his license and the sergeant’s star. They both pissed on our shoes like they had steam, then folded and braced their bartender. Bingo, a description."

"’Idaho Joe’ was Mr. Chukut?"

"Nope. Mr.
Chew-cut
is in the six-four range, pushing two-fifty, if he’s still eating right." Sonny goes ghetto for the bartender’s quote, "’Idaho Joe’ he a whiteboy, you know? Arizona-white, maybe twenty-five…and rangy, you know, twitch-eyed like them bikers get.’" Sonny laughs at his impersonation. "Fuckin’ bartender’s as white as you and me and sounds like Ice-T."

"I just came from there."

"Where?"

"Arizona. They’ve got a missing, probably murdered, preacher out there who Delmont Chukut PI’d for. The preacher has a son named Joe who fits your description. Balanter Joseph, last name Allen, A-l-l-e-n. Can you run him?"

Pause. "You know all this ’run him’ shit is gonna come back to us, me. I better have a real good explanation."

Ten feet away the Town Car’s engine stalls. I notice the driver looking at me instead of the scenery. Sonny’s right, this isn’t fair. "Forget it, okay? If I’m still in Intelligence, I can run him. If not, I’ll find another way."

"You’re not."

"Not what?"

"On the job. They suspended you this morning."

My shoulders slump and I lean into the phone cover. This isn’t a surprise, more like the steak dinner arriving on death row, final reinforcement that your fears are real. You’ll be dead shortly. Just like the person or persons you killed to reach this moment.

"They say why?"

"Not to TAC. But then the first deputy don’t care for us much anyway. Our team has another round with IAD on Monday, then me and Cisco sit with the G again."

"Shit, Sonny, I’m so sorry—"

"Trust me, you ain’t the only one."

There’s nothing I can say, nothing that helps him or Cisco or Chief Jesse. "How’s the superintendent?"

I hear Sonny breathing and a truck passing him. "You don’t know?"

I brace for it, but can’t make myself answer.

"The G says they got him cold. Dropped it in the
Herald
from ’highly placed sources inside the U.S. Attorney’s office.’"

"But he’s alive?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, shit, I thought you knew. Yeah, better too. Not good, but he came outta the coma twelve hours ago and the G tried to serve him. Motherfuckers. Two HBT guys, Tommy Moore and Babe Catenzo, were there in the waiting room—you remember Catenzo, big, giant dago, he was uniform in 6 way back. He and Tommy Moore damn near killed the Gs, wrinkled ’em up good, then threw their asses in the elevator." This time Sonny’s laugh sounds so good it’s food. "Gonna be some shit over that. But they’re both legends now. They’ll get cush city jobs somewhere when they get out."

"The G’s not bluffing, are they?"

Sonny’s tone loses its street-cop triumph. "They’re gonna pop you tomorrow a.m. That ain’t bullshit, honey. If you liked Arizona, I’d go back."

At this moment, and God knows I don’t know why, I want to tell Sonny the whole story. So at least someone I care about knows. Not just Tracy and the parts she has, but the whole thing and how I feel about it, what I hope to do. A confession, I guess, before I step off the cliff. I suppose I want to be the old me one last time. The good guy.

"Sonny, I—"

But I stop because I’m not
her
or the good guy anymore. I will save my son, and Gwen, and her son if they’re still alive. I will murder Roland Ganz because no one else will or has.

"Patti? You there?"

"Yeah. Thanks. Listen, uh…like I said before, if you can get away from me, do. It won’t hurt me and I’ll understand even if nobody else does. Tell Cisco and Eric too. I’m gonna go all the way on the guy who’s after my son. No matter how he and I meet, he’s over."

"Shit, Patti."

"And about Chief Jesse, listen to me, okay? I don’t want him to be dirty. I don’t want anything ever to be bad for him. Ever. He’s my dad, the closest thing I ever had to one." The air in my lungs is real thin. "But—"

It goes silent on Sonny’s end too. Not even trucks and horns. Nothing. I shouldn’t say what I’m about to.

"The PI, Delmont Chukut, and Chief Jesse are the same brand of Indian. A tribe I’ve heard of only twice in my life. The Hohokam. They’re from the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and northern Mexico, the quote ’vanishing people,’ and they need to be ’cause there ain’t shit out there but sky and cactus. Chief Jesse lived in the building at Gilbert Court. We found my foster mother’s body in the basement. Twelve years after she goes in the wall, her husband is hiding out in Hohokam country."

There’s just no way to say how much I hate saying what I’m saying. Just-fucking-hate-it and my hand pounds twice on the phone cover. But I keep going, pouring gasoline on my mentor’s future.

"Chief Jesse sends me, a TAC cop, to Joliet and then Calumet City, and then two phone transfers and a meeting in his office and another one in Canaryville with a photographer there. And somehow there’s another photographer waiting for me when I show up at Ruth Ann’s porch. Chief Jesse loves me, but it ain’t right, Sonny. As much as I hate saying it, it ain’t right."

"You told anyone else?"

"C’mon."

"That reporter?"

"Why the hell would I do that?"

"I don’t know. Why the hell would you bring her to 6?"

The hair stiffens on my neck and I feel the prickles on my forearm. Somehow Tracy got my vacation records from personnel. I spin, losing the phone, and draw the Smith. Nothing but air, not even a stray or a leaf or a…

The dangling phone is a disembodied Sonny saying my name.

"Sorry." I start to say something spooked me but don’t. "Dropped the phone."

"What’re you gonna do?’

"Do? Shit, I’m gonna kill Roland Ganz. Nothing else I
can
do." Saying that out loud, on the phone, is as big a shock to me as it is to Sonny.

"I didn’t hear that. Must be a bad connection. How ’bout we meet and talk this out in person. Possibly you need advice you don’t seem to be gettin’."

Meeting him was my plan but now it isn’t. "Stay away from me, okay? Nothing good’s gonna happen in my neighborhood. And the Chief Jesse stuff…I said it ’cause I want you safe. Please don’t hurt him with it if you’re…"

Sonny’s voice drops two octaves. "If I’m what?"

The hair is still tight on my neck. This man has saved my life and sided me in life-and-death encounters for seventeen years. I have never, ever known him to screw over anyone in uniform, ever. Beat the shit out of few, yes; criticize and insult them when he shouldn’t, yes; but never burn them, ever. And now that’s what my instincts are telling me. No explanations, just instincts. I want to tell him those same instincts
know
the mayor’s wife is part of this too. But I don’t.

"Gotta go. Love you, bye."

I’m walking to the car when I realize I just said, "Love you, bye." I have lost my mind. No question about it. And where I’m going that can’t be anything but good.

   At 1:16 p.m. Central Time, the Chicago Cubs began playing their last game of the season, a game that could clinch them a playoff berth as the NL wild card. North of the river, not far from Tracy’s town house and the L7 Bar, the city was already balls-of-their-feet drunk.

At 11:16 a.m. Arizona time, ace reporter Cowboy Bob Cullet and a crew of off-duty Arizona civil servants dug up the first of five bodies buried together in His Pentecostal City. The grave was unmarked, other than the small rupture caused by a magnitude 2.6 earthquake not uncommon in the area. One body had suffered two bullet wounds to the temple and one to the sternum. The first two bullets removed half the skull and all the upper teeth. All three rounds came from a revolver found in the grave.

Prior to his phone being confiscated, Bob Cullet made two calls to Tracy Moens. Tracy’s cell phone was on, but it was packed in her kit bag, safely in the trunk of Julie McCoy’s car while they warmed up for BASH. An unfortunate set of circumstances for everyone involved.

   I’m pacing in front of Tracy’s plasma TV. The Cubs are on but I keep glancing at Roland’s boxes. They aren’t just boxes; I know better. They’re little metal demons. The Cubs go down in order. Tracy’s phone rings in the kitchen. I pace her living room instead of answering, then walk around the boxes to the bathroom and avoid the mirror. The bathroom smells like an expensive department store and feels like a cell. I step out and stop.

Avoiding the mirror? Why?
You’re a ghost, remember? The girl who never was; mirrors don’t matter. I check my hands, not sure why.
What am I thinking about?