Dirty Fire (6 page)

He smiled thinly. “Very honestly, a new fire chief—a professional, someone with the knowledge of what a top-flight fire department should be—would have the ability to write his own ticket. That is an advantage not to be wasted.”

Evans had paused. Without appearing to, he studied Cieloczki. The firefighter was still silent, but there was something in his eyes that had not been there before. It was the right moment, and Evans had made his voice harsh and accusatory, with just the proper touch of personal regret.

“But finally, and most important, we had nine human beings die in my city—
and it didn’t have to happen!
I am going to have to live with that fact every day for the rest of my life. I will do what it takes—whatever it takes—to keep something like this from happening in Lake Tower again. I’m looking for a person who shares that commitment to help me. And I need him
now
.”

Gil Cieloczki and Talmadge Evans spoke for two hours that evening. They talked of budgets and personnel and the requirements needed to build a professional system. Somewhere in the midst of this initial meeting, Evans realized that Cieloczki had begun interviewing him. It was, he no doubt thought with satisfaction, a good sign.

Evans left with a substantial volume of notes written in his precise hand in a leather-covered notebook. He did not leave with what he came for, but he also did not leave disappointed. Evans had a keen ability to read other people, and he was a man who knew the value of patience.

Cieloczki had taken Kay to a late dinner that night. “Not Eli’s or the Fishmarket tonight,” Gil had proposed. “Someplace quiet where we can talk.” They had settled on Dannaher’s, a Near North restaurant where the decor favored dark walnut booths and the menu was printed in green. There, nursing a Bushmill’s to Kay’s single glass of burgundy, Cieloczki recounted every detail of Evans’s visit.

“You
want
the job,” Kay said, studying her husband over the rim of her wineglass and marveling at how, after eighteen years of marriage, he could still surprise her.

Cieloczki leaned back and lifted his hands, palms up. “I honestly don’t know,” he said, tacitly acknowledging Kay’s reaction. “And Kay, that surprises me. I’ve never been anything but a Chicago fireman—never wanted to be anything else.” His eyebrows knit together in deep concentration. “Before today, I never considered doing anything else.”

Kay reached across the table and took his hand.

• • •

Later that night, after they had fallen asleep in the warmth of each other, Kay had awakened alone in their bed. Outside the room, light spilled from the stairwell that led down to the living room. Soundlessly, she walked to the head of the stairs.

There, in a circle of light cast by the reading lamp at Gil’s favorite chair, her husband sat. His eyes looked into some unseen distance, and his forehead was furrowed in deep thought.

He held something between the fingers of his left hand. From her vantage above and behind him, it looked like a story clipped from a newspaper. But the headline type was large and black, the size usually reserved for major tragedies.

Many of those who knew about my father automatically assumed that they had uncovered the motive behind my own actions, even if they were convinced I had long since buried it in my own mind.

They were perhaps right, though my own opinion is that the grave they had excavated was not as shallow as they thought. But certainly, the fate that Gerald Davey had brought down upon himself—and by extension, on my mother and myself—was the genesis for what had turned into my own sort of Children’s Crusade.

I understood that. But I also understood something else, all too well. There is a self-knowledge that all zealots possess despite our denials: that buried deep inside each of us is not a revulsion but a secret fascination. The sins we profess to hate the most, we crave to commit ourselves.

• • •

“But I saw the story in the newspaper,” Father Frank Bomarito repeated. The priest frowned, his face no longer the non-judgmental mask it had been as he listened to the recitation of my sins. “You were acquitted.”

We were sitting in the rear pews, near the sacristy. It was dark here, lighted only by votive candles that flickered red and blue beneath statues of saints and virgins. At the front of the church near the altar, a single taper burned white over the tabernacle, signaling to the faithful that the Host was present inside.

“Yes,” I said. “Otherwise, I would be in prison right now.”

“I haven’t asked if you were guilty,” the priest said carefully.

“No,” I said. “You haven’t.”

He waited.

“I didn’t go in there intending to keep any money,” I said, finally. “I know that for certain. But when I walked out, I had five thousand dollars in my pocket. And I remember thinking that nobody knew. Except for people who didn’t particularly care.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Father. Was I tempted? Yes. Definitely. Is that why I didn’t turn it over to…to the people I was working with? I tell myself no; I tell myself I wanted to come up with better evidence. Maybe mark the bills myself, use them for bait.”

“But you suspect that you might have kept this money.”

“I’m the son of a cop, Father,” I said. “He worked in Chicago, back when even a traffic stop involved a shakedown, likely as not. My dad sold his share of ten-dollar pencils to drivers who ran a stop sign; the scores just got bigger after he made detective lieutenant. He used to tell me that on the job, nobody gave you points for being stupid.” I chuckled softly. “I know
he
would have kept it. He always did.”

“Davey, had you ever taken money before?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you’re trying too hard,” Father Frank said. “Sometimes we try to assign ourselves guilt where there is none. Usually we do it because we feel we have sinned in other ways, ways that we cannot admit to ourselves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean your divorce, Davey.”

“Ellen and I were a mistake, Father. We always were. In less than five years of marriage, we were separated half a dozen times.”

“And you always came back together again.”

“I always came back to her. It was never the other way around.”

“Because she is the woman you married. Because you love her.”

It was not a question, but I chose to answer it as one.

“I don’t know that, either,” I said. “I think that Ellen and I are both difficult people to love. What we felt—all right, what I
still
feel—may be more of an addiction.”

“You know the Church doesn’t recognize divorce, Davey.”

“You can’t divorce an addiction, Father,” I said. “In that way, at least, the union is still intact.”

He shook his head, though whether in regret or impatience I could not tell.

“About the money—merely to experience temptation is not a sin,” the priest reminded me. “I can only absolve you of what you do, not for what you may have been thinking about doing. And I can’t ‘absolve’ you for agreeing to a divorce; it’s not a sin,
per se
—it just doesn’t exist under Church law. You’re still a married man.”

“I’m not asking to be forgiven for the divorce,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Father Frank said. “But don’t be too sure.”

By the time I was arrested for soliciting a bribe, Chaz Trombetta had been my partner for almost four years. It was a record of sorts: almost three years longer than any of the others had lasted.

On our first day together, Chaz had laid out the ground rules.

“You’re supposed to an asshole, but good at detective work,” he had told me, without pretext. “Me, too. Do your job, let me do mine.” He had waved off the response his new partner was about to make. “I don’t figure we’ll ever whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears—but I’ll try real hard to live with the disappointment. We understand each other?”

Within a month, we were fast friends. By the end of the year, our record of clearing cases was among the best in the detective bureau.

It helped that Chaz was smart and a savvy investigator. Where I might have been impulsive, Trombetta was reflective. People kept making the mistake of underestimating him. Chaz took it as a compliment and kept putting them in jail.

I pulled to a stop outside a two-story house. The yard was meticulously groomed, and shrubbery artfully placed provided an accent to the pale gray of the brickwork. I was midway up the stone pathway to the porch when the front door opened. A man of moderate height and with a permanent five o’clock shadow stepped outside, his hair dark and curly and his arms knotted with thick muscle. He carried a half-filled green bottle in one hand.

“Hey, J.D.!” Chaz Trombetta yelled. He lunged forward and engulfed me with a bearlike embrace, wrapping both arms around me. He slapped an enthusiastic tattoo across my back and side with the hand not occupied with his bottle, and mock punched me lightly in the stomach. Then he stepped back, his face smelling of Old Spice and his breath of Rolling Rock.

“Junie! Look what the cat dragged in!”

Junie Trombetta appeared at the doorway. Had I been thinking clearly, I might have been puzzled at the mix of emotions that crossed her face.

“Hey, Davey,” she said softly. “Chaz, let him breathe.” She started to step outside, but her husband waved her back.

“I want to show him the roses, baby,” he said to her. “How about you bring us a couple of ‘Rocks, okay?”

He led me around the side of the house through an arched gateway in the cast-iron fencing. The backyard looked like a spread in
House Beautiful
, with flagstone pathways winding around shade trees just starting to fill with leaves. Beds of early-blooming perennials bordered an inlaid-brick patio, and a small, screened gazebo stood guard near the rear property line. It all looked very beautiful, and very expensive.

“You’ve done some work since the last time I was over,” I nodded.

“Well, you know,” Chaz said, a studied nonchalance in his voice. “With Terese off at Notre Dame, we got more time than we know what to do with. So Junie and I, we decided to finally fix up the place the way we always wanted.”

He stopped at a carefully constructed trellis as tall as man, a support for the fan of stems that waved gracefully in the light air. It was still early in the season, but already tight knobs of rose buds formed blood-red drops against the deep green of the thorned tendrils.

“Remember these beauties?” he asked, cupping one branch with a surprisingly gentle touch. “They’re going to have a good summer this year.”

He looked toward the house and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Hey,
Junie
!” he shouted, and his voice was unexpectedly harsh. “J.D. needs his drink!”

It was out of character; it surprised me. Then Trombetta turned back, and I realized my old partner had been avoiding my eyes.

Chaz finished his Rolling Rock with an almost greedy passion, tilting the bottle further and further back, his Adam’s apple bobbing. It was an impressive display; I had forgotten Trombetta’s startling ability to consume, and the speed at which he did so.

Chaz lowered the now-empty bottle and noticed the expression on my face.

“Had half a bottle spill, once,” he said gruffly. “Swore I’d never take that chance again.”

As if the act had steeled him in some way, he studied my face for several moments. His own was expressionless, his eyes wary. Then, in a soft underhand motion, he lobbed the drained longneck onto the neatly trimmed grass near the patio.

“So—haven’t seen you around all that much, old buddy,” Chaz said finally. “Come to think of it, haven’t seen you at all for—what, three months? This is the first time you’ve looked me up.” He shook his head, mock-sadly. “I’m hurt, Davey. Deeply hurt. Anything new with you?”

“Ellen and I are still divorced,” I said. “Looks like we may make it a success this time.”

He nodded, suddenly serious. “Junie ran into her a while back. You two still talk?”

“Hard not to. Mainly about money.”

“Government still on your back?” He glanced at me sidelong, read the expression there and nodded. “If you need some cash, Junie and I could probably—”

“Thanks,” I interrupted, “but no thanks.”

We walked in silence for several paces.

“I’ve missed you, J.D.,” he said. Almost against his will, his face lit up in memory. “Hey, remember the time you tried to shut down Bobby Calderon’s action? Ballsy move, man, walking in to bust the guy right in the middle of the United Way awards luncheon.”

He grinned at me. “Refresh my memory. What’d the judge call it when he threw out the arrest?”

“Poor judgment,” I said, and smiled. “He might have also said something about grandstanding. Didn’t mean he was right to let Calderon go.”

Chaz was looking away when he replied.

“Well, what the hell anyway?” he said. “Calderon skated, sure. Screw ‘im. He wasn’t laughing for long.”

A week after the arrest was tossed, and before we had the chance to convince the state’s attorney to re-file, a pair of Chicago cops found Bobby Calderon. He was in a soiled burgundy dumpster behind a North Halsted Street restaurant, and had been there long enough to attract the local rats.

His obituary had described him as a “prominent, well-connected and successful Lake Tower contractor.” Whether out of deference to the deceased’s family or for less noble reasons, the newspaper had not detailed the extent of Calderon’s connections or the reasons behind his success.

“Big difference,” I observed, “between going to jail and having somebody park a half-dozen .22 slugs in the back of your head.”

Again, the silence fell heavily. After what felt like an eternity, Chaz spoke.

“So, what’s up? What do you want? I heard you were back on the city payroll, J.D. I hear from now on maybe all our big cases are gonna get assigned to firemen and shady ex-cops. No offense, of course—I’m just quoting. Hell,
I
know you’re the cleanest thing since Spic ‘n Span.”

He waved his hand, a dismissive gesture.

“Hey, everybody’s talking about how you and Cieloczki jerked the Levinstein murder right out from under the department. Can’t say us cops are all that happy about it—kind of makes us look like we’re too stupid to run the case, you know? Except even us dumb cops know it means that all of a sudden you are tight as a tick with Evans. That’s the big leagues, at least in this town. So what could you possibly want from me, ol’ buddy?”

His voice had risen, and at any moment I expected to see Junie’s face at the window.

“Chaz, right now it’s me, Gil Cieloczki and Evans,” I said. “I need somebody who knows the score…somebody I
know
is on my side.”

Trombetta snorted. “On your side, hell,” he said. “You mean on the inside, don’t you?” He thought for a minute. “Santori in on all this?”

I nodded, and Trombetta’s face darkened.

“Damn it, J.D.! You never learn! You just have to screw with Nederlander, don’t you?”

“Everybody’s got their little hang-up,” I said. “Nederlander’s mine.”

“You know something, J.D.? It’s time you stopped trying to make up for your old man. It’s twenty years, partner; get over it.”

My partner’s tone took me aback, and I decided to treat it as a jest.

“Gosh, thanks for the insightful analysis,
Doctor
Trombetta. When’d you get so deep into pop psychology?”

“I think the reason you’re so pissed at Nederlander doesn’t have anything to do with whether he’s bent. It’s because they can’t catch him at it—you know, like they caught your dad. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I don’t even think about it anymore. Everybody took something under the table in those days.”

Chaz’s face did not change its expression, and I frowned.

“Ease up, buddy. Look, I need to know: can I count on you, or what?”

Trombetta looked hard at me.

“You’re an idiot,” he said flatly. “Look, you don’t have any friends in the department. You screw with Nederlander, you’re screwing with their money, man—with their goddam lives. They got bills to pay, families to feed, you know?”

“Chaz,” I said. “They’re dirty. They’re cops and they’re dirty.”

“Exactly who’s getting hurt, J.D.?”

“Where does it end? They’re past merely scamming phony insurance claims. I hear the stories: shakedowns, ‘private’ vice raids where nobody seems to file a report. So what’s on the menu for tomorrow? At the very least, they’ve got to keep it covered up. And I know, man—
I
know.”

“Yeah, you know. Then you better know that I got no reason to help you, Davey.” He looked at me from under his thick eyebrows. In his voice was something not quite defiant and not quite ashamed.

“Look—you want to go hunting with Santori, I guess I can’t talk you out of it. But I’m not going to get dragged into it, either.”

I shook my head. “You don’t get it, Chaz—this time, there’s no wiggle room left for Nederlander and his people. The Feds are behind this all the way—wiretaps, financial records, immunity offers, even witness protection if it’s needed. It’s everything we wanted—
needed
—the last time.”

Trombetta’s face was stony. But the harder I had pressed, the more trapped Chaz Trombetta’s eyes had looked.

“Chaz, what the hell’s wrong with you? I’m giving it to you straight. It’s going to be the endgame. I want you in on this, man. I need you in with me.”

He took a deep breath and blew it out hard.

“You’ve been among the missing for a while, ol’ buddy,” he said, and his voice was hard and low. “You want it straight, here it is: these days, I got just as much to lose as any of the others in there.” His voice dropped. “You understand? Is it crystal clear now?”

It came too quickly, too unexpectedly for me to have hidden my reaction. My shock showed clearly on my face, and Chaz reacted as if he had been struck. He took a step forward, as if he was ready to swing back.

“Here’s a thought: why don’t you just get the fuck off my property?” he said, pushing forward until his nose was an inch from my face. His hands balled into fists at his side. “You heard me! Get out!”

From behind us, Junie’s voice was barely audible.

“Stop it, Chaz,” she said. “Davey is a friend.” Two green-glass bottles, condensation dripping onto the grass, dangled from her hands. Chaz Trombetta looked at his wife, then back to me. Our eyes locked for a long moment, and the scarlet of his anger dissolved in an inverse proportion to the rage that rose inside me.

I was breathing hard, my face twisted filled with the force of my emotion.

“How deep, Chaz?” I asked, my voice tight and distant in my throat. “How deep are you in this now?”

Trombetta turned away and walked to his wife.

“Just go, Davey,” Junie said. “Please.”

I stared at the two of them for a moment, as if I did not recognize either. When I spoke, it was to Chaz.

“This time, I’m not stopping,” I said. “I can’t. You have to understand that, Chaz. It’s going all the way, and you’ll get hurt. You’ll go down with the rest of them.”

“You’re not wearing a wire—I checked,” he said, and I remembered the bear hug with which he had greeted me. “Keep trusting the wrong people, ol’ buddy,
you’re
the one who’s going down. And you won’t get up again, not this time.”

I looked at Junie, as if in appeal. There was hopelessness written in her posture along with a loyalty that was unequivocal but not blind. Still, she stood silent with her husband.

I tried one last time.

“It’s not too late,” I said, probably to both of them.

“I’m not going to do anything to stop you, J.D.,” Chaz said. “But I can’t stop anybody else from doing what they have to, either.”

“Then God help you,” I said.

“God help all of us,” Chaz Trombetta corrected me. “But you’re going to need Him most of all.”