Calumet City (9 page)

Yawn. Last night’s catching up with me; my eyes are heavy and my right shoulder aches like somebody kicked it until they tired. On the bright side, Cisco’s doing fine in the hospital; his voice in my phone an hour ago sounded as smooth as Mel Tillis singing, like painkillers and student nurses were definitely the way to go. He didn’t know I’d been transferred and I didn’t tell him. My new partner finishes the turn and says,

"Patti Black in the flesh. Either I’ll be dead or make detective by the weekend." He smiles like that’s a compliment. "No offense, but you’re kinda young to be on the job seventeen years."

Exhale. "Guess so."

He’s about thirty and surprisingly, not an asshole. I say surprisingly, because he’s wearing light-colored pants and has peppered me with cop slang—attributes one needs to be the TV police, a rank of limited value in a gunfight. He’s also wearing a wedding-ring tan line and has a second gun I can see, but he does have on the right shoes. Shoes tell you a lot about whether a cop plans on working or not. We’re passing buildings that mean nothing to me. Same for the early street gangsters out from Cabrini Green—crack’s a 24/7 business now—that much is the same.

"Young ’cause of the history, you know, back in the day. LT said you rode with Denny Banahan."

Denny’s name makes me smile. Denny Banahan didn’t drive a desk like most bosses or field offers from Hollywood. He didn’t mince words either. Denny Banahan showed me and Sonny and every other gunfighter in 6 how to be the police. The gangsters tagged him with "Zorro" and with good reason. If you were a banger, Denny and the law met only occasionally; the rest of the time he was Irish and disinclined toward your rehabilitation.

"Zorro was one crazed copper. LT said that since Banahan retired back to Homicide, you’re the most decorated cop in the city."

I tell my window what I tell the reporters, "That’s a misprint. All the old guys who actually worked retired."

"So, you really work like they say?"

I glance, knowing what he means, but not where he wants to go with it.

"Rumor has it there’s a bunch of these shitheads," he nods at the crack crew on the corner, "still alive because you don’t shoot till they make you."

"That’s what they say, huh? Up here on the Northside?"

"Yep." No tone change, no bait. "That’s what they say all over."

This is not the first time I’ve had this discussion. Usually it’s with uniformed patrol officers sporting tight sleeves and hard eyes, peacekeepers who think I’m putting the good guys unnecessarily in danger. "I’ve been where a lot of these folks are; don’t have to hate ’em to arrest ’em."

He wants to know what I mean, like we’re gonna be best friends and need to share all this shit. I just want to go back to bed and hide. We pass a busted-open section of wall and I see Annabelle Ganz and her hand, hear the whoosh of the steel mills twenty years ago and taste the metal air on my tongue.

He asks, "That where you’re from, down there in 6?"

Without thinking, I say, "Calumet City."

He breaks into a half smile. "You’re
from
Calumet City?"

Calumet City touches Chicago just the other side of the city’s main sanitary district. Not so much a city as a switching yard for the Michigan Central, B&O, and Penn Central railroads, all shoehorned between the Port of Chicago and the Indiana border. Picture transients, dead elm trees, bust-out strip joints, and pawnshops with no customers. Add smokestack winter all year long, and you’re in Calumet City.

In its only heyday, my hometown was the Outfit’s prime gambling and vice locale—"The Strip" before the one in Vegas was named. In the ’80s, when I was still there, John Belushi made it famous again as the home of Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues. Belushi got the look down, but the humor was new—there wasn’t one thing funny about it I can remember.

My new partner tries again. "Calumet City.
No shit?
That’s where Monday’s stinker was from; the one in the wall. Today’s
Herald
said the mayor’s wife owned the building. Hell, the superintendent lived in it."

"That a fact?"

"For real. The Homicide dicks ID’d the body two nights ago, traced her from an old driver’s license in her wallet." He pauses to stare at two street-corner Nike jumpsuits standing face to face. "She was party to some weird shit over there,
plenty
weird for a small town, hell, for a big town." He’s laughing now. "You know her?"

The radio squawks an all-call. "1812?"

A uniform car answers, "1812."

"1812 and all units on city-wide. Kidnapping in progress, two perpetrators, Assistant State’s Attorney Richard Rhodes. 1-7-1-0 Wells, in the alley."

Before I can say,
Jesus Christ, an ASA,
my partner pulls the mike, "1863 rolling in plainclothes," and we light it up. U-turn, siren, and he’s doing 70 eastbound on Division’s narrow lanes. The neighborhood morphs from projects to yuppies in four fast blocks. We dodge a bus and a van, slip to the wrong side of the yellow line and jam the brakes.
Hooooooorn
. I’m braced into the dash. We miss the truck coming at us, swerve, more brakes, gas, hand-overhand, and we’re sliding onto Wells Street.

Only the TV police hit an intersection like this. Almost a lock you’ll be T-boned or kill a pedestrian. Mid-block he’s doing 80, using the center stripe, screaming past pedestrians lunging for cover. We miss a bicycle and a parked Baird’s Bread truck that someone else didn’t. The radio squawks again. "All units on city-wide. Suspect kidnap vehicle southbound on 1600 block of Wells. Brown Chevrolet SUV, high rate of speed, officers in pursuit."

"Comin’ our way." He jams the brakes and turns the wheel to slide-block the street. This means the 6,000-pound SUV traveling at a "high rate of speed" will smash my side and kill us both. The tires on my side buckle and we flip straight. An SUV grille roars up Wells at us like a train. Nowhere to go. I duck and the SUV shears off our driver’s side fender to the door. We spin into parked cars, bang three and our gas tank ruptures. Sirens scream past. Gasoline replaces the air. Disoriented, I jerk the seat belt that saved me.
Stuck
. The gas ignites and takes all the air with it. Hot. Loud. The belt pops; the door won’t open. Flames. I lean into my partner and kick the door. He moans in my ear. I kick with both feet. Flames fill the backseat, smoke everywhere. Can’t breathe, see stars. My shoe catches the handle; the door opens and I’m out, through the flames, rolling on the pavement. The car’s belching fire.
Scream
from inside. I dive back in because I don’t think. My partner comes when I grab through the smoke. Too heavy, can’t breathe, somehow I drag him out to pavement. Somebody slaps us with jackets; more screaming. It gets dark very quickly and everything stops.

   Heaven has coarse linen bed sheets and perfume I’ve smelled before. Somewhere.

And strangely enough, a police superintendent. Could be he’s God after all, like he always said. Wish I would’ve listened. God is holding my hand which I take to be a good sign. The crowd behind him is not so good. Over his shoulder is a very pained-looking Sonny Barrett and six strangers in suits, one of them a middle-aged, well-heeled woman. Is she the perfume? Beyond them, uniforms are holding reporters at bay. Chief Jesse lets go of my hand as soon as he notices I’m awake.

I smile. "Miss me? I can come back from 18 anytime."

He doesn’t answer and waves Sonny and the other men out of the room. Sonny hesitates like he’s thinking about it, then does what he’s told. I remember the fire. "Oh, shit, tell me the kid didn’t die."

Headshake, pride in the superintendent’s face but suppressed. "The cop you pulled out of your car…his father was the alderman in the old First Ward, Toddy Pete Steffen."

Wow.
The old First Ward was the Chicago equivalent of Tammany Hall—guys who could fix murder trials for Outfit hitmen as notorious as Harry Aleman and some say the occasional presidential election, 1960 for sure. When he’s not doing the public’s business, Toddy Pete Steffen is a
big deal
insurance broker, big in the insurance biz like Alan Dorfman was before the Outfit capped him.

"Toddy Pete’s very pleased with your performance, thinks you need another commendation. Personally, I’d recommend a convent. Of late, the stars do not seem to be aligned in your favor."

I hear reporters yelling and say, "Nice of the press to notice."

The superintendent of police straightens a bit. "That’s not why they’re here."

   Lake Shore Drive, heading south. I’m out of the hospital, that’s the good news—tan, rested, and ready, having snuck past two groggy reporters without answering a question. The bad news is everything else Chief Jesse said. IAD is waiting on me, licking their lips. The clothes I’m wearing are ruined, including most of my Cubs hat and Julie’s shirt—that’s two of hers in two days—and I smell like an oil furnace.

Thursday’s sun leaps out of the water, glaring dead-level across Lake Michigan. I add Ray-Bans but they only block half. All I can do is squint and hope the car in front doesn’t stop. My cell vibrates but I can’t answer until I can see better. When I first got to my car my cell had six "911" messages from Tracy Moens, five of which I haven’t listened to, and one from Sonny Barrett that said "Call me at 0-10 hundred."

I know what Tracy and Sonny want to talk about. To steal a phrase just used on the radio, it’s the kidnap that almost burned me to death and has the whole city sideways. Chief Jesse told me before he left my room that the person the SUV kidnappers grabbed was not just an assistant state’s attorney, but the ASA heading the mayor’s assassination task force.

This is big news. And whether the kidnap is tied to someone taking three shots at His Honor and almost killing his wife or not, it represents a certain brazenness not seen in this city since Al Capone. And that Outfit comparison isn’t lost on anyone with both eyes open. The jazzy radio banter quits and Cameron "Superfly" Smith says almost twenty-four hours have passed and there’s been no ransom demand.

No ransom demand is not good news for Richard Rhodes. Cops are rarely cheerleaders for state’s attorneys—they blame us for all courthouse failures—but I shiver for this one’s situation and knock the dash twice above my radio. There aren’t any prayers you can say for captives; God doesn’t listen to those.

Before I report back to 18 this a.m., I’m trying to get to my locker in 6 via what the Northsiders call the "Whiteman’s Expressway." They call it that because Lake Shore Drive’s northern half runs along the Gold Coast and its yacht harbors to Evanston and leafy North Shore society beyond. Most of my trip will be on the southern half because it runs to Ghetto Central via Forty-seventh Street, Stoney Island, and Seventy-ninth Street.

The plan is to dodge the Ayatollah’s pickets at 6, clean out my locker, then stop by the duplex, feed Jezebel and Bathsheba, change clothes, and tell Stella not to worry if she watched the news last night, and not to plan a wedding if she didn’t. Me and traffic are crawling over a drawbridge that spans the river and the glare makes us all Ray Charles; it’s now clear why so many Northsiders working downtown die in traffic accidents. My leg vibrates again, I answer this time and try not to drive into the lake or the river.

The superintendent of police says, "Phone transfer. You’re reassigned to the Intelligence Unit."

I don’t have to ask by whom. Only he can order two phone transfers in two days. To describe that as suspicious would be to understate the Virgin Mary appearing in Gerri’s Palm Tavern. "Can I ask why?"

"Front page, today’s
Herald
—the task force ASA, Richard Rhodes, was in a foster home in Calumet City. Guess which one."

I swerve up onto the sidewalk.

"As a minor he was a suspect in the 1987 murder that occurred there. No reason till now to match the name in an eighteen-year-old homicide report to
our
Richard Rhodes. The murder never cleared, hence he remains a suspect."

Horns blare. I drop the phone and hear "FBI," while two-handing my Celica to a stop in Daley’s $450 million Millennium Park that I’ve never seen before.

"Officer Black?"

I fumble the phone to my face. "Yeah. Sorry, Chief, ah Boss. Sorry."

"Can you hear me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, traffic.
Jesus
. Did you say Richard Rhodes was a foster…He was in Annabelle Ganz’s home?"

"Stop at the next landline and call my office."

"Ah, yeah. But—"

Click.

I stare at my cell like it bit my ear.
Richard Rhodes was in that home too? With me?
A face flashes, he’s called Richey, he’s ten or eleven. Like me, Richey’s scared shitless all the time too.
Oh my God
. Daddy’s favorite boy and I’m Daddy’s favorite girl. The vomit gushes before I can get the door open. And keeps coming.

   The soapy pistol wand at Leon’s RideBrite cleans hospital breakfast off my floor mats and hands. The wand’s detergent doubles as mouthwash, not something I recommend. The superintendent is still waiting for my landline call. I need to run away, be somebody else. A gang-encrypted pay phone stares at me. The phone is surrounded by three street gangsters doing crack business. I pull the CPD star out of my shirt and unholster my pistol. Being here alone is not a good idea, but neither is eating soap or reliving a portion of your life that came close to killing you the first time you lived it.

The gangsters retreat twenty feet and bitch-stare me. I dial the superintendent’s direct line.

"Sir, Officer Black reporting."

"You’re official at Intel and working directly for me. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

I understand, sort of. The Intelligence Unit is an investigative arm of the Superintendent’s Office, working directly under his supervision, with citywide jurisdiction and no enforcement responsibilities. Lots of juice when an officer’s carrying that star and on a mission from the boss. Lots of suspicion, too.