Chicago Stories: West of Western (7 page)

“Stop dripping all over my new floors. What do you mean, business as usual?”

“Give me one of those,” Terreno said, reaching for a rag. “My wife would kill me if I messed up her floor at home. Look, Pelligrini, gangs knock each other off all the time. You got yourself a place on the border between the Lobos and the Duques, so guess what? You surprised? Hell, even the media vultures don't bother to show up anymore.” He dropped the rag and swiped it around with his foot. The detectives were obviously tired and seemed more interested in her coffee and Oreos than the victim in the doorway.

“What was that about West Village?”

“West Village is the new Realtor-talk for this neighborhood. It's west of Ukrainian Village—so, West Village. Cute, huh? They figure if they give it a name, yuppies will come,” said Terreno.

“Yeah, right,” said Markowicz, licking foam from his upper lip. “Course, they fail to mention the bodies. Like the one downstairs.”

“Gang stuff. That's why he was shot?” Her shoulders relaxed. Maybe it had nothing to do with her after all.

“Could be any number of reasons. Maybe a mugger. The vic was trespassing, wearing Duques colors on Lobos territory. Maybe the Lobos got him. Maybe a gang recruit needed to earn his tears. Maybe, maybe, maybe. You got any cream for this?” He waved the cup.

“No.” Why was she so angry with these guys? They didn't kill the kid.

Markowicz opened a battered notebook. “Okay, now you tell us. Any chance that cute little camera out there picked up anything?”

She shook her head. “First thing I checked when I came back in. The kid must have been shot close to the building but to the side of the door. There's a blind spot on either side.”

“Figures, a video'd be too easy. What happened tonight?”

“No idea. Like I said, I woke up fast with a sense of shots fired, slipped into the bathroom and called 911, got my boots on, and went downstairs. You guys are quick. The uniform was at the door when I got down there.”

He rubbed his face and yawned. “They were close by. We been waiting for something like this. Yeah, I figured.” Markowicz put the notebook in his pocket, looking older now, more fifty than forty. “Shots fired and everybody goes blind around here. Any ideas about anything?”

“I wish.” Her anger was gone as quickly as it had come. “Just surprise at how neat it all was. I would have expected more gunshots, something. One shot behind the ear, almost professional. You think there's any chance this could be connected to the other attacks on me?”

Terreno was slumped against the kitchen table. Seeing Markowicz yawn had started him off, too. “Dunno. There's a difference between vandalism and murder, even for Chico and his fucking loonies. It's not always about you. Right now I don't see any connection between this kid you don't know and your garage door.” Terreno stopped as a thought surfaced, chewed it over, then went on, “Unless maybe they had an extra body—”

“Taking out the trash,” Markowicz interrupted, rubbing his neck. “Two for one. I like that, get rid of the stiff and scare the shit outta you, package deal.” He thought that over and nodded, “Efficient. First the picture of the dead woman and the guys with the death tears on your garage door, now another threat, big one. Actual body at your front door.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, but,” began the more thoughtful Terreno, then hesitated, worrying his lip. He looked over at his partner. “We maybe got some complications here. What if the Duques want revenge?”

“Shit.”

“Revenge? Like a gang war?” Seraphy thought of stories half-watched on the news, newspaper headlines, neighborhood marches through Englewood. All she knew about gang wars was second or third-hand, a lot and nothing at all.

“Right. Last one, a couple of years ago now, Gage Park, twenty-one gang bangers dead and three bystanders,” said Terreno, wiping his hand over his face as if trying to wipe the thought away, then looking up at Seraphy. “You might consider moving out, at least for a while. Rockwell's the border and you're sitting right on the traditional shooting ground for these guys. Might get a bit iffy around here.”

“No.” She was silent, letting their words settle. She got up. “Wait—are you saying I should move? Give this place up? Give me a minute.” She walked down the length of the loft in the brightening dawn light, letting her eyes take in the sandblasted brick walls and caress the maple floor, then returned to the waiting detectives. “Like hell I'm leaving. Not. I don't want to be in the middle of a gang war, but I'm not leaving. What do we do now?”

When
the detectives had gone, Seraphy turned off the lights and went back to her window to watch the last of the techs box up his equipment. Five minutes later the street below was empty.

A man, hardly more than a boy, had died here less than five hours ago and now he was gone and the street back to normal except for a little blood on her doorstep. Nobody seemed to care. How could that be? Markowicz claimed that nine hundred murders a year made the Chicago police efficient at processing murder investigations. Scrape ‘em up and move on. This was her first time and it wasn't going so well for her. Back to normal wasn't that easy.

Seraphy ran her hands through her hair. God, she was tired. Almost seven already, Sunday morning, sun coming up soon. Her mouth tasted like she'd been licking paint thinner cans. And her mind—did she still have a mind?

She shucked her clothes on the way to bed. Fuck flight or fight response, more like a fight or flop response for her. Doze or repose? Attack, go back? Ax and relax, she liked that one.

Bye, brain.

Chapter 5

By the time
she got home from Jerrod & Etwin Monday, Seraphy was exhausted. Too little sleep and too much adrenaline the night before, followed by hours shepherding permits through Chicago zoning department hell today, had left her running on fumes. Too tired to go outside and too wired to settle down inside, she prowled the loft, looking out the windows, checking and rechecking the video cameras now connected to her computer. The images weren't clear enough or the fields of vision large enough, so she decided to widen the range of motion to cover more area outside her front door. Refining the settings took over an hour and was tedious enough to leave her relaxed and yawning.

Her head had just hit the pillow when a car sped down the alley, waking her enough to remember. Shit. Streets and San would be there to pick up garbage at dawn and the damned toter was still in the garage.

“Son of a bitch.” She hauled herself out of bed, yanked on her Nikes and pea coat and headed downstairs.

When she touched the switch and the overhead door rose, she spied a figure lurking behind her neighbor's toter. No way, she thought, whoever he is, the bastard better keep his distance. It's too late and I'm tired, no strange encounters tonight. She had the toter half-way out the door when the lurker attacked.

“Get the fuck out!” The old woman began yelling abuse before Seraphy's toter cleared the garage door. What the hell? Ignore the old bat, maybe she'd go away. Seraphy wrestled the toter onto its platform and turned back toward the door.

“You there! You hear me? Get outta my neighborhood!”

Hell, a loony, and she was coming this way. Seraphy reached to bring the door down. A walking heap of rags lurched from the shadows. Blue-white alley light washed all color from her pock-marked face and short, wide body buried under an accumulation of garments held together by a ragged coat. She looked more pathetic than dangerous. A bag lady. Seraphy frowned. Funny place to hang out, couldn't be good pickings around here.

“Hey! I'm talking to you, Chickie,” the woman snarled, her flabby jowls quivering, spit flying to sparkle like diamonds in the alley light. “Look at me.” Stiff-legged, she stumped her way closer on arthritic knees.

“I'd rather not,” said Seraphy, holding her left hand up to stop her aggressor and speaking in her sergeant voice. “My name's not Chickie and I don't know you.” In no mood to be drawn into a confrontation with a scavenger, she yanked the toter straight on its pad and retreated into the garage. “Or want to.”

“I'm warning you, get the fuck out of here,” the woman yelled, her face red with the effort and spittle flying, waddling toward the open door, hissing and flapping her hands like some kind of peculiar goose. “You got no business here, Chickie.” She pounded the side of the doorway for emphasis. “Get your fancy little butt back over the other side of Western where your kind belongs. This is our place.”

“I'm going upstairs now,” said Seraphy, deliberately calm, taking another step backward into the garage. “Stay back or the door's going to come down on you.” Bloody old witch, she thought. Thank God for steel doors. She wondered how much of the exchange the new camera picked up. Too bad she hadn't opted for sound. The door began descending.

“Like hell I will! Stop that door! I'm not done with you yet.” The old woman shoved her garbage cart in front of the electronic eye at the side of the door and the door jerked to a stop, leaving just room for the toter, or a crouching old woman, to slip under. She braced herself to keep it in place, shaking her fist and yelling, “You just listen to me, Chickie. Yuppie slime, exploiting the poor! You come here, cause trouble, take our homes, all we got.”

“And just who's ‘we’?” said Seraphy from inside, searching for a way to get her attacker back out into the alley.

“Us folks your kind drove out everywhere else.” Christ. She was drunk or crazed. Or drugged, maybe. Seraphy didn't really care which.

“Come off it. I never pushed anybody out of anywhere in my life,” she said, flattening her voice. “If you live here, you know this building was abandoned for years before I came.” The woman was too close, standing behind that damned toter, just outside the door. Her rancid body odor began to invade the garage.

“This is our neighborhood, all we got, us people trampled under the wheels of capitalist exploiters!” Seraphy shook her head, unable to think of a reply. Capitalist exploiters? Who talked like that anymore? “Fucking bitch! Get outta here!” The woman spluttered, then grunted and pushed her toter with her stomach, using her weight to force the cart through the doorway.

If Seraphy hadn't been so tired, the situation might have had its funny side, but enough was enough. She raised a foot and shoved the toter out, the woman staggering back into the alley. The door resumed its journey down, blanking out the rest of the tirade. When the bottom edge was within six inches of the pavement, the woman shoved a stick between the pavement and the door. Seraphy hunted for a something she could use to knock the stick out.

“Sister Ann! Sister Ann, we need you!” The newcomer slurred his words. Seraphy held her breath to catch the exchange. Did he say
Sister
Ann. A nun? Surely not.

“Manny, what do you want?” Sister Ann asked.

“Sister Ann, come quick. Pedro's head's bleeding again.”

“Shit! Don't think this is the end, Chickie. I'll get back to you.” Sister Ann scuffled away. Seraphy kicked the stick out and the door came down and locked with a satisfying snap. She waited by the door a moment to be sure they wouldn't return, allowing the garage's sudden peace to wrap itself around her.

“A close call,” she said to the silence. “But we made it, you and I.”

Chapter 6

Seraphy woke briefly
at seven the next morning, memories of last night's shooting reverberating with those of the bag lady in the alley. Maybe Ellie had been right. Maybe she had been out of her mind to move over here on the wrong side of Western. Groaning, she pulled the comforter over her head and fell back asleep. An hour later she surfaced long enough to call Jerrod & Etwin and inform an answering machine she was sick with the flu, then burrowed back under the covers.

At noon, with the headache gone and her body done with sleep, she lay reviewing the events of the night before, the image of the dead body on her doorstep more vivid in memory that it had been in actuality. One shot from a small caliber weapon, neat and professional. Whatever the cops thought, it looked to her to be a professional hit, not the work of a bunch of street punks. Maybe she should—but this wasn't her problem, not as if she knew the kid. Leave it to the cops, that was their job.

Out of bed and after standing under a hot shower that left her skin nicely pink and her stomach awake, she pulled on faded jeans and an old sweatshirt and headed for the kitchen. With the espresso machine grumbling, she rummaged in the refrigerator and refused to think about anything but food. Today would be recovery day, recovery from the pell-mell rush to make the loft habitable, from moving, from the attacks on her and her building, even from having a body dumped on her doorstep.

Just demanding enough, tuck-pointing took the rest of the morning, then stretched on into the afternoon and evening. Repetitive and comforting, almost like stroking a large cat, the work left her shoulders aching, her knees wobbling and her mind clear. She was in bed before the news came on at ten. Somewhere between sleep and waking she thought about how she enjoyed the brickwork, and even cleaning up afterwards. Probably channeling Martha Stewart . . . never done that before . . . a little Martha never hurt anybody . . . maybe tomorrow she'd polish her knife.

Playing hooky from work again the next morning, she opened the windows to let the bright fall air and normal everyday sounds fill the loft. The mailman's cart squeaked to a stop, her mail flap clinked shut. Seraphy ran downstairs to snatch up her mail, the first at her new address. Grocery store flyers, a postcard with coupons for an oil change and new tires, a letter from Com Ed confirming her service, flyers from two cable services, one of which she already had installed, and a letter. Pale gray envelope, nice, addressed to ‘New Neighbor.’

Dear New Neighbor,

We live next door and would like to welcome you to our neighborhood. Would you come to dinner tonight at our humble abode? Or is this too late to ask?