Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel (49 page)

“Three pizzas’re a little excessive, don’t you think?” I asked Sinkovich.

He shrugged. “Jim’s a growing boy.
I could pack away an entire pizza by myself at his age.”

“Don’t give him ideas,” I said, and then grinned at Jimmy, who had already taken three pieces in the time it had taken me to grab a can of beer out of the refrigerator.

“Beer?” Sinkovich said. “The world must be ending.
I thought nothing so crass would touch your lips.”

“It sounded good,” I said, thinking crass was appropriate right now.
I sat down, took two large pieces
,
and tucked in.
This was perfect, better than I could’ve expected.
Jim and I hadn’t been eating well lately, and for once I didn’t care.
Food was food, and pizza was even better.

For the first hour, we talked and laughed and gossiped.
Sinkovich had dozens of stories about the Conspiracy Trial, some quite funny.

“I ain’t supposed to talk about it,” he said, “but screw them.
They’re not following the rules, so I’m not gonna either.”

“Is that right?” Jimmy asked me.
“Can you break the rules when other people do?”

“Jim hasn’t read Emerson yet, has he?” Marvella said, surprising me.

“I think it’s Thoreau,” I said, “and no, I don’t think teaching budding teenagers about civil disobedience is always a good idea.”

“Bull pucky.” Sinkovich took the last piece of pizza, then took the tray and
,
without standing up, set it in my sink.
“Kid, sometimes there’re rules you follow and sometimes there aren’t.
Your dad knows this.
He
knows about
Dr. King.
And the good doctor, he broke a lotta laws.
Went to jail a few times for it, too.”

“You’re saying that telling us about the Conspiracy Trial is the equivalent of breaking segregation laws?” I asked.

Sinkovich’s grin faded.
“Guess I am.
Those bastards — pardon my French — think they own the world.”

“I’m pretty sure coming to court under guard has changed their minds ab
o
ut that,” I said.

“I don’t mean the defendants, Grimshaw.
I mean the prosecutor, the goddamn judge, and the assholes lying on the stand.” He bowed at Marvella.
“Excuse the language.”

“Why?” she said.
“Mine’s worse.”

“But Jim’s isn’t yet,” I said.
“Let’s be careful, shall we?”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Jimmy said with a grin.
“I like French.”

Sinkovich got up and took the second pizza out of the oven.
He set the tray on the nest of hotpads Marvella had built, then gave us each another piece, before adding to his own pile.

“They got me and four others sitting in there day after day, undercover, you know why?”

I shook my head.
I couldn’t imagine why they would want five undercover cops in the courtroom.

“They say it’s because they need help when those kids get out of hand.
They say they’re expecting riots inside the courtroom.”

I had seen a shooting inside a courtroom.
I would’ve expected something like that in the trial of the Chicago Eight.

“You don’t?” I asked.

“Hell, half those kids think it’s theater, and two of them are just plain confused.
Only one of the white kids seems real serious about it — and he’s not a kid.
He’s the old guy, what’s his name? Dillinger?”

“Dellinger,” Marvella said quietly.
Obviously she’d been following the trial too.

“But that black kid, Seale.
Man, he’s the only one who’s been respectful, standing every day when the judge comes in, yessir and nossirring him, and the judge is treating him like dirt.
Worse than dirt, not letting him have a lawyer or speak up for himself. Which ain’t legal, by the way.
I asked some lawyer friends of mine. They’re part of that national group of lawyers that’s been calling for a mistrial.”

“Jack told us how they tried to talk to the court yesterday,” Jimmy said, his mouth full of pizza.

The sense of relaxation had left the room. Sinkovich was unhappy about all of this, and the feeling radiated.
Jimmy didn’t seem to notice, but he was the only one.

I didn’t need any more tension in my day, and I was about to ask him to change the subject when Marvella said, “Tell Bill why you think you’re there, Jack.”

Sinkovich nodded, then ran a hand through his thinning blond hair.
“I don’t think it’s coincidence that the five of us who gotta wear a suit and tie every day and scatter ourselves around that room were the five who wouldn’ta lied on the stand if we were called.”

The tension increased.
“Lied about what?” I asked.

“What you yelled at me about after the Democratic National Convention.
What got me thinking about what I was doing in the first place.
Birdshot in our gloves, going out there to beat up the kids and start the riots ourselves, the speeches the bosses gave before the cops headed out to Grant Park those days.
All the stuff the defense claims happened, which did happen, which half the cops on the stand and more than half the officials’ve been lying about, saying none of it happened.”

He was getting red.
We had had a fight back then.
I’d told him exactly what I thought of a cop who would beat up an unarmed student.
Sinkovich actually listened to me, which was the beginning of his transformation from a guy who went along with department policy
,
whatever it was
,
to a guy who stood up for what he believed was right, no matter what the cost.

“Thing is,” he said, “we got the assignment before we know what it is, before we can say no. I’m hearing undercover, which after being at a desk for almost a year is like a blessing.
Then
when we show up, in our suits and stupid neckties, we get told where to sit. First day of testimony — because you know what? If we hear the testimony, we ain’t gonna be considered good witnesses. They deliberately contaminated us.
Deliberately.”

I wasn’t sure he took a breath throughout the entire speech.
Jimmy finished two more pieces of pizza while he listened, but Marvella watched, spellbound.
I wasn’t even appalled any more.
On the scheme of what I was dealing with, this seemed relatively minor.

“Which brings me to what I gotta talk to you about,” he said to me.
“Can we go to your office?”

“Sure.”
I got up.
Marvella picked up her dishes.
I waved her away.
“Leave them.
You’ve done enough.
You’re welcome to stay.
I don’t think this’ll take long.”

She smiled at me.
“If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” I said, “and I’m not sure Jim’s done with his entire pizza yet.”

“I get hungry,”
he said.

“It’s not a competition.
Just because Sinkovich could eat an entire pizza at your age doesn’t mean you have to.”

And with that I went to my office.
It was the smallest bedroom in the apartment.
I had crammed a desk, credenza
,
and some filing cabinets in there.
They were the nicest furniture we owned, all thick
,
polished
,
blond wood.
I sank in my heavy metal desk chair.
Sinkovich took the wooden table chair across from me.

“Before I forget, I got your report.” He had been carrying his coat.
He slipped his hand underneath it and pulled out a manila file.

“You brought the actual report?” I asked.

He shrugged.
“No one else’s using it.
Give it to me next week.”

He set it on the desk.

“That’s not what you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked.

He shook his head.
“I got issues,” he said. “I got the divorce — my wife, she found some guy who’s convinced her he’s in love with her, and he wants to take her and my kid to Northern Minnesota, if you can believe it.”

“I thought you said Wisconsin.”

He frowned at me.
“What’s the difference? It ain’t Chicago.
My attorney says I don’t got much to fight with.
My job’s hanging by a string, and if I lose it, I can kiss any chance of taking the kid bye-bye.
Then there’s the issue of me.
I wasn’t the best father in the first place, and I ain’t sure I can do it alone.”

“You want me to advise you on how to raise a child alone?” I asked. “Jim was a lot older when he moved in with me than your son is.”

“No,” Sinkovich said. “I know my limitations.
I don’t even got family close.”

“You’re gonna give in,” I said.

“I’m gonna make the right decision for my son.
If he can have a real family and me, y’know, summers or something, then that’s maybe the best.
She ain’t staying here.
That much I know. It’s either her family in Wisconsin or Northern Minnesota, and if I follow her, I got nothing.”

“Except your family,” I said.

“Not even that. She says she’ll make it real hard on me if I do that.
She wants out.
She means to get it however.
That can’t be good for my kid.” He was shaking.
This was hard for him, and he clearly had been thinking about it.
“My lawyer says I can split Christmas and Easter with her fifty-fifty
,
then get all the other holidays and summer too, if I just play ball.
That’s like half the year in little chunks.”

I nodded, wondering how this concerned me.

“If I do that,” Sinkovich said, “I don’t need this cocksucking job no more.
I can resign and tell these motherfuckers what I think of their games and their lies and the way they treat the people they’re supposed to protect.”

He had obviously been doing a lot of thinking.
He had lines on the sides of his face that hadn’t been there before.
His hair was nearly gone and he looked older — as if the past year had been harder on him than any other in his life.

“What would you do?” I asked.

“That’s where you come in.” He rubbed the side of his nose nervously, then looked out my window as if there was
no
more interesting view than the side of the neighboring apartment building.

“Me?” I asked.

He nodded, still not looking at me. Then he took a deep breath.
“I’m wondering if maybe we can join up, you know, two detectives.
Rent an office not far from here, work together.
You need help.
You got the kid most of the time, and you can’t be everywhere all the time.
Then when my kid comes, I got back
-
up, you know? We trade off.”

The pizza I ate turned into a lead ball in my stomach.
“I’ve never worked with anyone.”

“I been a cop my whole life,” he said. “My dad was a cop. My grandpa too.
We’d be learning how to do this business thing together.”

“It takes money management,” I said. “Some months you don’t get paid at all.
And an ability to keep a secret.”

He flushed.
“Which I wasn’t doing out there because I was pissed off.”

“Yeah,” I said.
“That worries me.”

I didn’t want to say no outright. This man had been trying very hard this past year and everyone had rejected him for doing the right thing.
I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to work with him either.

“I got department contacts, like a million of them, guys who’d be willing to give me information even if I’m not on the force.
There’re a lot of disgruntled guys out there who need an outlet, maybe someone to take a few cases the police ignore, you know? We’d get those.
I know the city better than most.
I grew up here.
My grandparents grew up here.
I went to school with half the mayor’s office.
I’d be willing to be the junior guy, the trainee, you know? And if you need an investment up
-
front, I got some savings.
I could rent the office.”

He said all that in a rush.
I stared at him.
He fidgeted in the chair, knowing that I was as uncomfortable as he was.

But he had some points.
I had trouble working alone.
In the past I’d hired Malcolm Reyner to help me on some cases, but Malcolm got drafted this summer and wouldn’t be back from his tour for more than a year.
I didn’t know a lot of people in the city, and I certainly didn’t know a lot of white people.