Calumet City (5 page)

Julie’s upstairs room. I’m above the bar at the L7. Why’s my .38 sleeping with me? Sonny slurs more ghetto-speak—good chance Sonny’s had a few, probably not enough to ask a girl who doesn’t charge for a date, but enough to think he could.

"I’m sleeping."

"How you doin’, gunfighter? Hear we got injuns."

A reference to my meeting with the superintendent. How my sergeant knows this is interesting. "Could be. How’s your patient?"

"Cisco?
Shit,
Cisco don’t talk right, but he bad, honey; Forty-seventh Street bad."

This is the first time Sonny Barrett has ever called me "honey" and I have known him all my adult life. In deference to his condition and the loose nature of cell phone transmissions, I’m happy to discuss his attempt at camaraderie or sexual banter, two conditions I’m sure he wouldn’t attempt when sober. "Fuck you,
honey
."

I hear two men laughing. Sonny burps, says he’s sorry to someone else, then tells me. "Kit Carson thinks you’re an asshole. I couldn’t argue and sound convincing, so—"

"Gee, that’s news."

"So I says he should soak his ass in gasoline, see how fucking brave he felt."

"We could use him as a flare."

Sonny pauses and I hear Cisco say "ask her" in his modified speech. Sonny clears his throat into the phone and says, "You coming to work tomorrow, right?"

Julie’s clock glows on the nightstand. "In five hours."

"But you’re coming."

I’m too asleep to register how weird that sounds until after I answer. But the question hangs there, like some of the things Chief Jesse in the backseat—

Calumet City.
Annabelle Ganz
.

The covers fly off and I jump out of bed; my eyes snap to the door, then the window. It’s not possible, Annabelle Ganz, back again, and in my district, not five miles away.

Sonny’s voice is tiny and talking to my hip. "Patti? Hey, Patti?"

The room is…empty, safe; it looks empty. The phone keeps calling my name and I fumble it to my mouth. "I’m here. Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow." My thumb kills the phone and I stare at the moonlit room. What the fuck is going on? The room doesn’t answer. Neither does the window. Leaves blow across the sidewalk below. Annabelle Ganz. A demon in a gingham nightdress. Cold, slippery hands. The devil’s wife and mother and…
Stop, Patti
. Me and Richey and Little Gwen.
Enough
. Three of us children lost in hell, too ruined to help ourselves or each other.

A cab passes slow. The storefront neons are dark; the Northside and its nursery-rhyme life is asleep—butcher, baker, candlestick maker. My hand clenches the curtain and the fabric brushes my cheek. The attic had curtains, but they didn’t move, neither did the moldy ones in the basement. My eyes squeeze shut, but I don’t like what’s there either. Me, Richey, and Little Gwen…three empty shells sitting together, then not; always finding somewhere else to look.

I want to hide.

Am I coming to work tomorrow?
I blink back to the present. Why
wouldn’t
I?

   And five hours later I do.

From inside Art’s on Ashland I can feel the sun rising behind the building and see the day coming. The sun never quite hits Art’s, except in the early summer; the rest of the year it shines elsewhere. I’ve eaten breakfast here six days a week for seventeen years, preferring the booths to the stools at the cigarette-burned counter. The booths have an equal amount of electrician’s tape and vinyl. Square windows frame the ghetto changing from night-shift gangsters to poor working people trudging to jobs that don’t pay enough. There’s hope in that somewhere and on the better days I find it.

The door opens. Two older GDs stop just inside, both with jackets. "Older" in gangster parlance is twenty-five and they are, by far, the most dangerous. But Art’s is a ghetto DMZ. Cops and bangers eat here and generally leave one another alone. It’s also the only white-owned restaurant that’s survived the economic spiral.

Me and the GDs stare. We all know each other by job description; they nod small and so do I. That’s today’s agreement—no shit in here unless they start it. One is from the same set as the two we killed on Monday, the same set that fired first and put my partners in the hospital. He sits facing me with three empty booths between us. His partner lounges with his back to the window. Either one could be here for me or for the toast and coffee.

Anne brings bacon and eggs and news of her daughter’s separation. She adds coffee left-handed and an opinion that the husband wasn’t Jewish so it’s no big loss. The GD whose hands I can see is dipping silverware in his spotted water glass, a move all regulars make, including me. His partner sneaks a side glance in my direction, then away. He’s medium black with high African cheekbones that catch the harsh light; his cap is spotless and off center; his shoulders are hunched to accommodate the lack of space between his table and him.

If you saw this setup most places you’d think: breakfast.

Today, that’s not what my instincts think.

Until today, I’ve never drawn my pistol in Art’s. Now it’s gripped tight in my lap, but unless I commit to putting it on the table, it won’t be useful. Either GD could have a sawed-off or a TEC-9, and then it won’t matter anyway. I slip a finger inside the trigger guard and hesitate…There’s a certain amount of street pride in showing no fear. Watch a prison movie: Street pride is necessary for survival, even for cops. It’s not that I don’t draw three or four times
every day;
but being empty-handed confident down here is big face, big armor.

My toast is getting cold. The Gangster Disciple facing me isn’t looking away—not right at me either—but close enough that he can see me move. The hair rises on my neck. If I carried a cannon like my Magnificent Seven partners, I could shoot through all three booths. Hell, I could shoot through an engine block. The GD lounging starts to turn, his shoulders coming with his cap.

Heartbeats. If this is it, this is it…

The front door fills with Sonny Barrett and, "Yo, Anne, baby, how you doin’?" Sonny has both eyes on the GDs and one hand visible. The lounger eyes him back; the one facing me shifts just his eyes to Sonny’s voice, then back to me, and right at me this time.

Sonny passes their booth too slow to be polite, nods less so, and says, "Gentlemen."

The lounger raises his chin. Sonny steps to a stool, leans his back on the counter, and shows his gun hand full and a thick finger on the trigger. The grin doesn’t match his bloodshot eyes, but Sonny’s voice is happy. "Anne, how ’bout some coffee?"

Anne steps between Sonny and one of the GDs to pour their coffee. Not the move I would’ve made. Anne is smart but has less fear than she should, and once chased a ticket walker three blocks. Got her ass kicked too.

Sonny hard-eyes the GDs, but bitches about me, "You
gotta
sit by the window?"

It’s where I always sit.

The GDs don’t touch their coffee. We all sit and wonder what’s next. Sonny announces to no one in particular, "Funerals ain’t today, no reason to be all jacked till then. Me? Shit, I’d grab a forty and forget about it. Maybe some bitches too. Party, you know, till it’s time."

The GDs don’t look at him. Both get up. Both glance at me. And leave. The last of their oversize jackets passes through the door and Sonny says to me, "
Get the fuck out of the window
. Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?"

I dip the cold toast instead of answering. Sonny cuts to the Seventy-fourth Street windows, waiting for the gunship. I figure to hit the floor beneath the sill if it happens. If not, still being in the window when they pass reinforces what I’ve been telling this neighborhood since they were schoolboys. "I live here too, homes. Me
and
you."

Anne has remembered where she works and found a reason to be in the kitchen. A blue-black Impala slow-passes on Seventy-fourth and the driver stares—he isn’t one of the two who were inside—not a good sign. The Impala waits on traffic that isn’t there while the driver makes sure that I am, then makes a slow right onto Ashland. The cook behind Sonny acknowledges the tension; it’s tight across his face and chest, the stained apron deflating when he lets the breath go. I know why I’m working down here, but honestly have no idea why he is.

Sonny asks for coffee again, slips into the booth, and says, "The mayor, huh? They think
these shitheads
tried to clip him? Put fucking Ayatollah Gibbons in office?"

My toast stops mid-arc. I add two blinks and wait for Sonny to continue. He doesn’t. The bread is raisin and more aged than toasted. Sonny’s a lot of things, most of them A-male Irish and blunt to the point of painful, but he isn’t telepathic. I know better than to bite on anything but the toast, so that’s what I do.

Sonny accepts coffee from Anne in a cracked cup, comments on her having lost weight since yesterday, and turns to me. "The mayor, right?"

"The mayor…what?"

"Somebody did try to kill him, remember?" Sonny’s eyes are ponds. "
Jaze,
I feel like shit. Drank half the night with Cisco. Boy’s got every nurse in that building working his room."

"You called me, remember?"

"Cisco called you?"

"You."

"Cisco called me?"

I check my toast. "How’d you pass the sergeant’s exam? Your cousin take it?"

Sonny winces at the coffee, then frowns an inch over his shoulder toward the kitchen, as far as his neck allows. "So, what’d he say?"

"Who?"

"Cochise. Who the fuck do you think?"

I try a change of subject, one I’d prefer not to broach but can’t help needing to know more, if there is more. "The body in the wall, they ID her yet?"

Sonny says, "Ask the dicks."

"They’re not, ah, my biggest fans."

"So ask…Who gives a shit anyway?" Sonny wrestles with the hangover. "Could be interesting, though. White broad in 6, buried alive in a ghetto wall." He smiles. "Has to be a hooker or some Ted Bundy shit." The smile broadens to his ears. "Hope it’s a Ted; we’ll be Dennis Farina."

Dennis was a Chicago cop who made it in Hollywood. "It
is
interesting, Sonny. Ask, okay? They’ll talk to you, a big swingin’ dick who speaks the language."

Sonny checks his crotch, "Got that right," then back at me. "So what’d Chief Jesse say?"

"How’s it, ah, you know he and I did dinner last night?"

Sonny blinks again, almost like he’s mad. His hand flexes and he slides it under the table. "You and him…
are
an item?"

"Baby shower’s this week. After IAD charges me for dereliction."

Sonny leans back, eyes tighter.

"The superintendent and I are registered at Field’s."

Sonny reads my eyes, then hardens up. "Fuck you."

Now I think I’ve hurt his feelings, not that anyone would believe Sonny Barrett has any. "Listen, this is quiet, okay? That’s why he said it to me."

Sonny nods, looks at me straighter but doesn’t lean in to hear.

"He wants to know if folks from here," my fingernail taps the table between us, "are part of it. Farrakhan and Alderman Gibbons in particular."

Now Sonny leans in, "Shit, I thought I was jokin’." The beginning of another smile competes with his hangover and whatever reason he’s pissed off. "You absolutely gotta be shittin’ me."

"Nope."

His neck flexes back into his collar. "So much for the civil rights movement." Sonny gets the implications better and faster than I did. "We got cameras and pickets three deep at 6. This could be big, Patti. Big."

And it could be. Messy too. No one would mount an attempt on the mayor—an operation this complicated—without serious players on the inside. Looking at Sonny’s face it begins to dawn on me how serious this is if Alderman Gibbons or Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam
is
involved, even peripherally, if one can be "peripherally" involved in a coup d’état.

Sonny goes back to the coffee he couldn’t drink a second ago. "Who else knows?"

"How’d you know about my meeting last night?"

Sonny shrugs. "His driver, Fatso Leary."

I wag my index finger.

Sonny frowns, not unlike how he frowns when he has explained something to the crew that none of us captures. "Fatso’s married to Kelly, my older sister, the one in Humboldt Park. She called all excited that one of my crew was having dinner with the superintendent. Wanted to know why, since Fatso wouldn’t tell her."

"That right? The guy driving him last night might’ve weighed one-fifty tops. Tall too."

Sonny screws up the rest of his face. "So fucking what?" He leans almost to my nose and waits until he has my undivided attention. "All of a sudden you and me ain’t working together for seventeen years? I ain’t somebody you talk to?"

I smooch the air between us. He startles back; I grin. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in twenty-four hours.

Sonny growls, "You got any fuckin’ idea what it’ll be like, sticking our hand up the asses of Gibbons and Farrakhan? Without being on the record?"

"Won’t be good."

"
Won’t be good?
" Sonny shakes his head, "It’ll be shit city if your boyfriend decides to front us. We’ll be out there alone, fucked sideways, is what it’ll be."

"Why’d you ask if I was coming to work today; why wouldn’t I?"

Sonny keeps staring; he’s no-shit angry and gets like this when he isn’t provided answers or feels threatened by the system. The explanation I want will have to wait.

"I got this assignment directly from the superintendent, so I get to pick. You and the boys take Farrakhan. I’ll do Gibbons."

Sonny stands, "This is fucking bullshit," and glares at everything he can, including down at me. "We been together a long time, Patti; do not lay down on me or the guys."

"
Me?
" My face flames. "
Lay down?
" Where the hell did that come from?

I’m not thrilled about this assignment either, mixed up in a backroom mayoral-mob fistfight that may or may not be real. Cops are paranoid by nature and mystery shit like this isn’t good for our digestive systems. Sonny exhales but doesn’t move.