High Chicago (20 page)

G
abriel Cross drove me back to my hotel, by way of a Walgreens on North Clark Street. I stayed slumped in the car seat while he went in to pick up what I needed—extra-strength Tylenol; gauze and tape; peroxide; Polysporin; arnica gel.

Sadly, they didn’t sell rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

When he pulled up in front of the Hilton, he said, “My wife has a friend who’s a nurse. Lives in our building. I could see if she’s around.”

“There’s nothing a nurse can do for me.”

“How you going to wrap your hands? Neither one of them’s working.”

He had a point.

“Her name’s Nola,” Cross said. “If she’s home when I get back, I’ll send her over.”

“What should I pay her?”

“Whatever you can spare,” he said. “She’s a single mother.”

“A hundred? Two hundred?”

“Two’s all right.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You saved my fucking neck.”

“You want to pay me?”

“If you could use it.”

“I can always use it. But I’m going to say no thanks.”

“Sure?”

“What I did, I did for me, not you. I told you, I didn’t like how Mr. Birk spoke to me.”

I said, “I’m going to thank you anyway.”

He said, “Okay.”

I tried to open the car door but my hand wouldn’t grip the handle. He got out and opened the door from the outside. I got out slowly, feeling pain in more places than I could count. Cross walked behind me, a hand at the small of my back, as I shuffled into the lobby. He had to press the elevator buttons for me and work the key card into the lock on my door. Once I was flat on the bed, he left and I dozed for an hour until the knocking began.

“My lord,” Nola Johnson said. “You look like you were beaten with tire irons.”

I was stripped down to my underwear, covered in welts. My palms were burning where skin had been rubbed off. “Close enough,” I said.

“Do I have to tell you this might sting a little?”

“That would be a major improvement.”

She used peroxide to clean my palms and the oozing cut between the first two knuckles of my left hand. I gritted my teeth and sucked in air. She covered the broken skin with a thin layer of Polysporin and wrapped my hands in gauze. She went out to the hall and filled a bucket with ice and had me sit in the tub while she rubbed ice cubes onto the welts on my arm, shoulder and thigh. Then I lay down on the bed and she rubbed arnica gently onto the bruises.

“I don’t think anything is broken in your arm,” she said. “As to the rest, you should probably get X-rays. I wouldn’t be
surprised if your second metacarpal showed a fracture. That bone isn’t that hard to break.”

“I practise karate,” I told her. “I’ve broken it before.”

“Your patella is awfully swollen,” she said. “Can you straighten your leg?”

I tried. Couldn’t do it.

“And there’s your clavicle. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a break. How much Tylenol have you taken?”

“Four extra-strength.”

“Any alcohol?”

“No.”

She reached into her pocket and took out a small vial. “These are Tylenol 3s. You can take one now and one in four hours.”

“Thanks.”

“But you have to wait the four hours. Promise?”

“Yes.”

“I work at Cook County Hospital,” she said, handing me a slip of paper with a phone number. “I start at eight in the morning. If you come in at seven forty-five, I can get you X-rayed.”

“I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”

“You worried about the cost?”

“No.”

“You should be,” she smiled.

“Thank you.”

I told her where my wallet was, and to help herself to her fee.

“Don’t forget,” Nola said. “Four hours until the next pill.”

“I won’t.”

I didn’t wait the whole four hours. But I did wait until the door had closed behind her.

Then I called Jenn at home.

“Cancel your flight,” I said.

“Why? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“But you said—”

“I didn’t say not to come. I need you to come by car. Tonight.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I need you to bring something you can’t take on a plane.”

“What’s that?”

“Dante Ryan,” I said.

I
must have slept with my hands clenched into fists. I could barely get them open far enough to pry the top off the vial of Tylenol 3s Nola had left. I did, though, and took two. Struggled to make a pot of coffee without burning myself, then limped down the hall wrapped in a complimentary bathrobe and refilled the bucket with ice.

The bruises were ugly. Like someone had rubbed my forearm and knee with blueberries. I couldn’t see the one on my shoulder without a mirror and didn’t see the point in trying. I lay naked in the tub with ice on my arm and my knee, waiting for the codeine to hit. Pondered the wisdom of taking two more.

One codeine, two codeine, three codeine, four

If that doesn’t do it, take a few more
.

I wondered if Jenn had been able to find Ryan and, if so, where they were. Still in Ontario? On I-94 by now?

When the ice had melted, I got out of the bath and started filling it with hot water. Nola had said alternating between cold and hot would help reduce inflammation and relax “the insulted areas.” I towelled off and slipped back into the robe and managed to open the door locks and retrieve my courtesy copy of the
Chicago Tribune
. I sat on the bed while the bath filled. The news section had nothing about a man in a hockey
mask being assaulted in Daley Plaza the previous night; nothing about a man being forced to walk the plank eighty-five storeys above the city; no mention of a corrupt cop throwing his weight around in Grant Park.

I closed the paper and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Didn’t take much longer than a bear going over a mountain. I turned off the water, tested it, found it below scalding and steadied myself with my elbows as I lowered my sore self down. Waited for its relaxing properties to take hold.

Yeah, that’s me—Jonah the waiter. Waiting for relief from heat and codeine. Waiting for Jenn and Ryan. Waiting for a bright idea that would take me off the hot seat and plant Simon Birk on it.

I was lying flat in the tub in water up to my jaw, my hands up around my ears to keep the gauze wrappings dry, raising and lowering my knee, when I heard a click sound at the door. An entry card going in and out, the lock disengaging, the handle turning.

I used my elbows to get into a sitting position. The bathroom door was halfway open. I must have forgotten to relock the door and set the chain. I could see a tall black woman in a wine-coloured uniform holding a stack of towels. Her skin was coffee-coloured and she was heavily freckled, especially around the eyes, and she was about to see more than she’d bargained for. I called out, “Hello.”

“Oh, sorry. Housekeeping.”

“I’m a little indisposed,” I called. “Can you leave those on the bed, please?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were out.”

I was sinking back into the water when I realized I hadn’t heard a knock. Heard the card whisper into the lock. Heard the electronic click of the lock release. Heard the handle turn, the door brush open against the grain of the carpet.

No knock.

If she hadn’t knocked, or called out a greeting, why would she think I was out? I kept my eyes on the mirror as she passed out of view on the way to the bed. Waited. Saw her come back toward the bathroom, holding one towel flat in one hand, the other hand hidden within its fold.

I was on my way out of the tub when she burst through the door, slashing down at my torso with a long, thin blade. Nothing rubber about this one. It was a good old-fashioned knife meant for gutting. I landed on my back and used my legs to push left and away from the thrust. Her hand plunged into the hot water. I grabbed her wrist but couldn’t hold it in my injured hand. She pulled it away and slashed down again. I blocked it. She stuck her other hand in my face and tried to push me under water. I kicked out at her and caught her a glancing blow against the head, just enough to stun her a bit. I wrapped my arm around her knife hand and pinned it there and kicked again, this time catching her a good one, the ball of my foot against her chin. Her head snapped back against the tiled wall. As it bounced forward, I wrapped both ankles around her neck and twisted downward. She lost her footing and fell toward me. When she hit the water, a wave of bathwater coursed into my mouth. I coughed it up, planting my elbows on the bottom of the bath, squeezing my legs together until her face went below the surface. Her free hand clawed at my face. I bit her fingers. She tried to bring her knife hand up. I kept it pinned. The water bubbled furiously around her face, as if piranha were stripping an animal of its flesh. I kept squeezing. My quad muscles shuddered. She tried to gain purchase, to back away from the tub, but water had splashed onto the floor and her feet slipped sideways. One knee gave way beneath her with a sickening crack. Her hands stopped trying to attack and tried to push off against the sides of the bath. I kept the knife hand pinned where it was.

Then the bubbles stopped.

I kept the pressure on for another minute. And one more. When I knew she’d been under water too long to be faking it, I let go. She slumped into the tub, sloshing more water out onto the floor. I scrambled back, looked under me to locate the knife and plucked it gingerly out of the water. My bandaged hands were wet but I didn’t care. I dropped the knife on the floor. My chest was heaving, my head pounding from the effort. I wanted to stay in the bath but didn’t care for the company. I got out, almost wiping out on the slick floor, and stumbled to the bed and fell on it, wet as a seal. I reached for a towel and was drying off when I heard a loud knock on the door.

“Yes?” I called out.

A woman’s voice said, “Housekeeping!”

Now
that’s
the way it’s done, I thought, not knowing whether to laugh, cry or limp back into the bathroom and get the knife off the floor.

“I’m sick,” I said. “Come back tomorrow.”

“You don’t need towels?”

“I’ve got enough for today, thanks.”

When she was gone I locked every lock there was—deadbolt, security bar, chain—and stuck a chair under the door handle.

I
was sick to fucking death of Simon Birk’s attempts on my life. Even sicker over what the latest one had made me do.

When Stefano di Pietra had drowned, I’d had the luxury of telling myself I hadn’t actually killed him. Hadn’t physically laid a hand on him or held him under. Had merely eased out the rock on which his neck had been resting until the water rose over his face.

There was no getting around it this time. I had drowned the woman in the tub, had held her under as she fought for her life. Stefano had been all but paralyzed by his fall onto the rocks in the Don River. She had bucked and slashed and clawed and thrashed until all the air went out of her.

Try getting around that.

I couldn’t. There was nowhere to go with it. So I decided I was through trying to gather evidence against Birk, through trying to prove my point. Everyone in any position of authority—Hollinger, my brother, Avi Stern, Birk himself—kept saying it couldn’t be done anyway. So enough already. Now it was time to do whatever had to be done to bring him down, make him pay for the corpses he had piled up. If anyone else was going to die on his account, it might as well be him. And Curry if he chose to ride along.

I drained the bathtub and closed the curtain on the corpse inside, then mopped the floor using my feet to push towels around. The wet towels went into the tub as well. Then I called the
Tribune
newsroom.

“Dude,” Jericho Hale said. “You stood me the fuck up. Had to buy my own damn Macallan at twelve bucks a shot.”

“I ran into trouble,” I said.

“What kind of trouble would keep you from me?”

“Pirates.”

“Right here in Chicago?”

I told Hale what had happened, leaving out the part in Daley Plaza and any mention of Gabriel Cross.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Do I still get the info you had for me?” I asked.

“Remember I told you Tom Barnett was a head breaker back in the day? So I talked to one of the guys on our police desk—not the newbie you saw, Alvaro, but an old-timer, a real crime dog—and got some of the lowlights of his career.”

“And?”

“The worst jam he ever got into was maybe a dozen years ago, when he first made detective. He and his partner pulled in a guy who matched the description of a rape suspect, wanted for a real vile assault on a fourteen-year-old girl. Guy practically ripped her insides out. So Barnett and his partner questioned the suspect—with extreme prejudice, shall we say. Shoved a damn broomstick up his ass and broke it off. Only problem was, he wasn’t the guy. Not only was he not the guy, he was a church-going, God-fearing, Jesus-loving straight-A student whose father represented the Seventh Congressional District of Illinois. Barnett probably would have been kicked off the force, but his partner admitted he instigated it, not Barnett, that Barnett only did what he was told, being the junior partner. So only his partner got kicked off the force. Barnett just got suspended for two weeks without pay.”

“I get the feeling I’m supposed to ask you who his partner was.”

“’Cause you’re one smart cookie.”

“And if that’s what I’m supposed to ask, then I know the answer.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Francis Curry.”

“Give the man a silver dollar. You got those up in Canada?”

“We have loonies.”

“So do we. And some of them, unfortunately, carry a badge.”

“What about the third man?” I asked. “Any unsolved killings match up from that time?”

“A couple,” he said. “Ronald Atkins, white male, thirty-six, five-eleven. Found bobbing along in the river, not far from the Ohio Street bridge. No suspects, no arrests. The other was Chuck Belkin, forty years old, six-foot-one, found shot to death in the Humboldt Park area. No arrests, but a theory that he was buying or selling drugs and stepped on some Latin King toes.”

“That’s him,” I said.

“What makes you so—”

“Birk said something to me about dumping me on gang turf, make it look like I’d wandered into the wrong neighbourhood. What’s Belkin’s background?”

“He was unemployed at the time of his demise.”

“Any police or security work in his past?”

“No.”

“Carpet cleaning?”

“Dude, we didn’t have his CV on hand. All our guy had on him was he was an army veteran, served in Desert Storm.”

Ex-military. After my first meeting at Birk’s office, Francis Curry had told me he was “ex a lot of things.”

I was betting military was one of them.

—

Jenn called at ten o’clock. I’d never been so glad to hear her voice.

“Is Ryan with you?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We left at five and we’re making good time. Still in Michigan but close to the Indiana state line.”

“You can’t say what you want to say?”

“Nope.”

“He’s not your average bear.”

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

“You talking about me?” I heard Ryan say. “Hey, all I did was put my hand on your leg when we were crossing the border.”

“It wasn’t my leg,” Jenn said. “It was my thigh. My upper thigh.”

“I was trying to be convincing,” he said. “You know what the border is like now. We’re a couple on holiday, I figure we’re supposed to be lovey-dovey.”

“A little too lovey there, dovey.”

“Put him on the phone,” I said.

There was a pause and then Ryan came on. “Do yourself a favour,” I told him. “Don’t touch her tits. Last guy who did that is still trying to find his balls.”

“And hello to you too.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“You know me,” he said. “I still like a party.”

“Did you bring your, uh, camera case?”

“Of course. I mean, I assume that’s why we couldn’t fly.”

“You assume correctly.”

“Hey, you okay?” Ryan said. “You sound a little dopey.”

“I had some codeine for breakfast.”

“What happened?”

“I’m a little banged up.”

“How banged up?”

“I’m turning all the colours of the rainbow.”

“This Birk again?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll tune him up good.”

“That’s why I invited you.”

I stood a long while at the window looking out at the city, grey now and overcast, the wind up, the waves churning and foaming on the shore of the lake. People on the street below were holding onto their hats, clutching their coats around themselves. At twelve o’clock, I took two more codeine and leafed through the sports section. I don’t know when I fell asleep but it was two when I woke up, thirsty and hungry enough to order a club sandwich. When it came, I ate half of it. Could only look at the other half. Wanted to soak my aching muscles in another hot bath but had no desire to share the tub with a dead assassin. Lay back on the bed. Clenched and unclenched my hands, felt the raw skin pull against the gauze wraps. Got up and paced, bad knee and all, until there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“It’s us,” Jenn said.

I removed the chair and undid all the locks, opened the door and there they finally were. Jenn looked at my hands, the welt on my arm, and threw her arms around me and held me. I felt like crying into her shirt the way Marilyn Cantor had. “Look at you,” she said. “You’re a mess.”

“And you’re only seeing the outside.”

Ryan said, “Hey,” and set his camera case down and got out his cigarettes. “Please tell me this is a smoking floor. Your partner here wouldn’t let me smoke in my own fucking car. Hell, she barely let me speak.”

Jenn rolled her eyes. “Only because so much of what you say is in Neanderthal,” she said.

“Don’t start that again,” Ryan growled. “Christ, I say one little thing and she’s all over me.”

“One little thing?”

“All I said was that if I wasn’t married—”

“Like that makes a difference,” Jenn said.

“—that I would love to help you switching teams.”

“Like that would do it.”

“It was a compliment,” Ryan insisted.

“From another century!”

“A way of saying you’re a looker. Plenty of dy—sorry, plenty of
gay
women, I could give a shit, with their crewcuts and legs like Bulgarian wrestlers. But you’re fucking beautiful, man.”

“How can anyone resist him?” Jenn said. “How’d you get your wife to marry you? You club her and drag her to your cave by the hair?”

“There you go again with the caveman shit. I’m plenty modern, okay? I help my wife with our kid, with dishes, with laundry—”

“You help
her
with it, meaning it’s still her responsibility.”

“Twelve hours of this,” he said to me. “She’s lucky the guns were in the trunk.”

“See? Threats of violence,” Jenn said. “You don’t agree with a woman, just shoot her.”

“Finally,” he grinned. “Something we can agree on.” Then to me: “This the can here? I got to take a leak. I been holding it in since fucking Skokie.”

“You might not want to go in there,” I said.

“I’ll hold my breath.”

“It’s not that. I had, uh, company this morning.”

Ryan went into the bathroom. I heard the shower curtain swish along its rail, plastic rings clacking together. “Holy shit!” he said.

Jenn searched my face for a clue as to what was in there. I
shrugged. “You might as well look,” I said. “So you know where things are going.”

She walked slowly into the bathroom. Said, “Holy shit,” too, and came out looking pale. Ryan, on the other hand, went straight to the phone book provided by the hotel and flipped through the Yellow Pages section.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Sporting goods,” he said.