Penance: A Chicago Thriller (11 page)

The two guys in front had the couch turned to face the front windows, small black and white TV on a coffee table in front of them, late night movie on, something with a mummy. Guy on the right was bigger, almost a head higher on the couch than the guy on the left, real broad through the shoulders.

“Egypt in Africa, right?” the one on the right said.

“Yeah,” answered the other guy.

“Then I’m pulling for the mummy.”

“Mummy gonna lose, fool.”

“Hey, mummy’s a brother.”

Fisher slid out his sap, a leather tube filled with sand, less than a foot long. Two quiet steps, his arm already swinging, the sap catching the big guy just behind and below the right ear, the guy slumping forward, out cold. Fisher’s arm moving right through, banging the sap hard off the other guy’s forehead. Fisher’s arm shooting past, then swinging back backhanded, catching the smaller guy again on the side of the head, the guy not out but stunned, dropping off the front of the couch to his knees. Fisher swung his leg up, rolled over the couch onto his feet, stepping around behind the guy just as he started to open his mouth to yell. Fisher locking the chokehold on him, pinning his voice in his throat, squeezing him out of consciousness. Fisher propped him back up on the coach, next to the big guy. One more good whack with the sap, behind the ear, to make sure he stayed out long enough.

Fisher walked back to the corner room, slid the door open, could see James on his side in the bed facing him, blanket half off, his smooth chest rising and falling in the light from the kitchen. Fisher stepped to the bed and sapped him hard, twice, then rolled him off the bed so he’d be under the window. Then Fisher picked up the .45 automatic from the nightstand next to the bed, grabbed both pillows, wadded them tightly against the muzzle of the .45. He fired three shots through the window into the wall of the garage at the back of the property near the alley, and two more into the edge of the window frame. More noise than he’d like, but with the vacant lots around the building, it should be OK. He put the gun down on the floor, put Simba’s hand over it.

He returned to the front room, found a heavy-framed .38 revolver on the couch next to the big guy. He still had the pillows from the bedroom and picked up the small pillow from the couch as well. These guys had the front windows open, so he didn’t have to shoot out the glass. Fisher emptied the wheel gun through the pillows and the screen, making sure he hit the tree out front and the car parked across the street. Other guy had a .45. Fisher took five shots with that, hit the wall inside the window, put one in the front door. Three more holes in the screen. He dumped the two guys on the floor by the window, stuck the guns in their hands. Then Fisher shut the windows. Holes in the screen wouldn’t make sense with no holes in the glass, but the windows would be gone soon. In the meantime, he needed them to hold the gas in.

Fisher stepped into the kitchen, pulled the stove away from the wall, and slid his combat knife from the scabbard sewn into the right cargo pocket of his fatigues. Reaching behind the stove, he sawed at the gas connection until he felt the knife bite through and heard the gas start to hiss. Fisher slipped off the small pack and pulled out the walkie-talkie.

“Ready here,” Fisher said.

“On their way,” Riley said. “Lynch will be in the back.”

Fisher put the walkie-talkie away and headed down the basement stairs, leaving the door to the basement open behind him. The gas, lighter than air, should stay upstairs. Simba’s boys had painted over the basement windows, didn’t want anybody seeing downstairs. Which made sense, because downstairs looked like an armory. Fisher took out his penlight, found a crate, and set it by the window facing the back, sliding the window open just enough for a field of fire. He picked up a .45 from a shelf, checked the magazine, and slid the gun in his fatigue pocket. Then he pushed once on the fake panel in the east wall and felt it pop open to reveal the tunnel to the vacant building next door. The tunnel he’d told Jones not to tell Riordan’s guys about. Fisher was ready to go. He got up on the crate to watch the back.

 

At the intersection east of the building, Lynch and the Feds turned down the alley while the three squads with Riordan’s team went straight toward the front of the house. Lynch had told Riordan to pull up quiet, no lights, then, when Riordan saw Lynch’s lights and bubble go on, to turn on the lights and bubble tops out front.

Lynch pulled his squad up behind the house, the Feds pulling their plain sedan in next to him. Lynch hit his lights and bubble, the Feds hit theirs, and Riordan’s team lit up the front.

Lynch got out of his car, staying behind the door, and nodded to the Feds. They got out behind the doors of their cars, and one of them pulled out the bullhorn.

“Harold James, this is the FBI. We are assisting the Chicago Police. You are wanted for questioning…”

 

Fisher watched from the basement of the house while Lynch and the Feds moved into position. He had Hurley Jr’s Walther out. Fisher liked the PPK. He’d used them in Europe during WWII. Smooth action, good velocity, nice flat trajectory at this range.

Lynch was staying behind the car door, which complicated things, but Fisher had a good angle. Didn’t want to shoot through the glass if he didn’t have to, funny things could happen. Let the Feds start with the bullhorn but don’t let them talk long. This Simba had set himself up as a hothead; he wouldn’t hesitate.

“Harold James–” The Feds starting in, Lynch sticking his head up a little to get a better view of the house.

Fisher fired.

 

The FBI guy on the bullhorn heard the crack and saw Lynch drop straight down, not moving again. Two more shots smacked into the door of the Feds’ car. The special agent dropped down behind the door and yelled into the bullhorn.

“Riordan, we are taking fire. Lynch is down. Light em up, and get some gas in there.”

Both FBI men trained their revolvers on the back window – Simba’s room, and opened up. Up front, they could hear all ten guys firing, and the
phoop
of the tear gas gun.

 

Fisher ran toward the front of the house. On his way past the basement stairs, he tossed the Walther up so that it landed next to Jones. He pulled the .45 from his fatigues, popped the penlight once to get a line on the front basement window, and then emptied the entire clip out toward Riordan’s men. With the bushes out front, they wouldn’t see the flash in the basement, but they’d hear the fire, and the rounds ought to hit something. Once the .45 was empty, Fisher moved quickly into the tunnel, closed and latched the door behind him, ran through the basement of the building next door, up the stairs on the east side, over the fence by the next property, and through the next two lots to the street. He was gone.

 

Riordan heard the first shots out back, one and then three more, heard the warning from the Feds, then heard fire coming from the front of the house.

“Tear the fucking place down, boys,” he yelled, and the squad started up with everything they had.

The first two gas canisters crashed through the screens and window in the front room of the house, but the third wasn’t slowed down by any glass or screen because both were pretty much shot out, and it had a slightly higher trajectory. It cleared the couch and bounced into the kitchen, which was now densely packed with gas. The canister set off the gas, and the explosion blew out the back windows and side door, leaving the house in flames.

“Shit!” Riordan got on the radio to call in the fire department. As the house burned, some ammo inside started cooking off, more as the heat in the basement started to rise. Riordan and the Feds backed off, watching to make sure nobody left.

Nobody did.

 

 

CHAPTER 19 – CHICAGO

 

Present Day

 

Lynch dropped nearly a grand on some damn comfortable loafers, toffee-colored slacks made out of some lightweight wool that Lynch couldn’t pronounce, a black silk crewneck top that was almost like a hologram – it had this subtle pattern that looked different every time you switched angles – and a lean, three-button jacket, faint check, little olive, little black, lot of the toffee color from the slacks. Waiting for the jacket and slacks to get back from alterations. The Andre guy even had them letting out the side seam in the jacket along the hip, make room for Lynch’s gun. Have to get a dress gun, Lynch thought, flat little .380 or something.

“How about some underwear, detective?” This Andre guy, he didn’t quit.

“That’s OK, Andre. Got plenty of shorts.”

“Not like these.” Andre holding up some silk boxers, fifty bucks a pop.

Lynch laughed. “I’m not dropping fifty bucks on something nobody can see.”

Andre tilting his head a little. “I don’t know detective, you came to see me looking like that, I’d want to see your shorts.”

Lynch laughing again. Liked this Andre guy, couldn’t help it.

 

Lynch got to Johnson’s place at five after seven, Wrigleyville, Pine Grove and Addison, just off the Inner Drive. He had a Sonata in the garage back at his building, but also a British Racing Green Triumph TR6 he’d bought with some of his dough when he’d been drafted. Didn’t drive it much, but he kept it pristine. Temperature had gone up all day, seventy right now, supposed to stay up in the mid-Sixties all night. Lynch figured what the hell, cruise the Drive with the top down, dressed like movie star, why not?

Johnson answered the door wearing leather pants that fit like a tattoo and a metallic silver top that draped like water, sweater tied loose around her neck. Deep scoop in the top. With her heels, she was Lynch’s height.

“Wow, look at you,” she said.

“Rather look at you. No dress? Thought I was supposed to help you with your zipper.”

She grabbed his hand and ran it up the front of her pants. “These have a zipper, see? Some detective you are.”

 

Lynch headed south on the Drive, swung through Grant Park on Columbus, cut south of the Loop and took Taylor Street west out toward the UIC Circle campus to a little Italian place in an old brownstone set back from the street, patio in the front behind a wrought iron gate. Only ten tables in the place. Lynch knew the owner and had called ahead. Got the little booth in the corner, tucked into a nook next to the fireplace. Expensive, but once you’ve dropped a week’s pay on clothes, Lynch thought, what’s a couple hundred for dinner?

They talked easily all through dinner, Lynch telling her stories he hadn’t told anyone in years. Even talked about his mom a little, Johnson putting her hand on his during that just right, like a balm. Her telling him about doing a year as the TV weather bunny in a station in Duluth just out of school, how the sports guy used to grab her ass and she’d finally broken his nose. Lynch couldn’t believe it when they’d finished the wine and he looked at his watch and it was almost 11.00.

Lynch waved down the waiter.

“If we could get our check please? Thanks.”

The waiter smiled. “No check tonight, sir, compliments of Mr Wang.”

Lynch looked back over his shoulder. Paddy Fucking Wang. Must have been in the private room in the back. Lynch hadn’t seen him on the way in.

Johnson’s eyebrows went up. “You know Paddy Wang?”

“Everybody knows Paddy Wang,” said Lynch. “Thing is, he knows me. We better go say hi.”

Paddy Wang looked like an understuffed children’s toy. Chinese, though he claimed to be part Irish, barely five feet tall, shaved head, wispy white goatee, always dressed in green, sort of a Mao suit this time, but only if Mao had had his handmade from a couple grand worth of watermarked silk. What looked like brocaded scarlet slippers on feet about the right size for a Barbie. Two of his interchangeable minions with him, Chinese guys in black suits, white shirts, black ties.

“Paddy,” Lynch said, putting out his hand.

“Johnny,” said Wang, a broad smile. “Too long. Too long. You never come see me.”

“I know you’re a busy man, Paddy.”

“A man so rich in business as to be poor in friends is a poor man indeed,” said Wang. Wang looked expectantly at Johnson.

“Paddy, this is Liz Johnson. She’s a reporter with the
Tribune
.”

“Intimate dinners with the press, Johnny? You are full of surprises.”

“John and I are also friends, Mr Wang,” said Johnson, putting out her hand.

Wang took it, bowed, kissed it gently, then covered it with his other hand. “Then you have been twice blessed by the gods, my dear. First with this celestial beauty, and then with Mr Lynch’s friendship. Neither are gifts to be taken lightly.”

A smile from Johnson. “Mr Wang, I see your reputation for charm is well-deserved.”

“Christ, Paddy,” said Lynch. “A little thick isn’t it, even for you?”

Wang with his inscrutable smile.

“Johnny,” said Wang. “You will come to the ball this year.” The Connemara Ball, Paddy’s annual St Patrick’s Day shindig. Lynch got his invite every year, but he’d only gone twice, couldn’t even say why, except that the air there just never felt right in his lungs.

“I dunno, Paddy. You know I’m not really part of that crowd.”

Wang shook his head. “I’m afraid I must insist, Johnny. It is the year of the horse. Your sign, and your father’s as well. And please do bring Ms Johnson. She shall be a new star in our firmament.” A short bow from Wang, then his minions formed up at his sides.

“Jesus,” said Johnson as they set out in step through the restaurant and out the door. “Paddy Wang.”

“Long story,” said Lynch. And then he told her.

 

Anybody used to the Newtonian physics of democracy, even the rough and tumble kind, found out the normal rules didn’t apply in the Windy City. There was the usual interlocking web of favors and debts and racial algebra and ethnic loyalty and clout, but everything was relative and relatives. Chicago politics was a world unto itself. And Paddy Wang was the big ball of magma at the center of that world.

You didn’t see him. He didn’t loom over the landscape like the Hurleys – Senior, Junior, or the Third – the divine right of kings by way of the Chicago mayor’s office. But Paddy Wang made the Hurleys. He moved all the continents around.

Lynch’s first memory of Paddy Wang went back to his eleventh birthday, his first after his father was killed. Uncle Rusty coming to the house, loading the family into his car. Lynch’s birthday falling on Chinese New Year, Uncle Rusty taking them down to Chinatown for the parade, telling Lynch he had a surprise for him.

Not real cold for February, sunny day, lots of people on sidewalks. Rusty driving right down Wentworth, past the police barricades, pulling up to the parking lot next to the Emerald Pagoda, Wang’s restaurant that soared over Chinatown on the east side of the street at 23rd Place. The entrance to the lot was blocked by a line of young Chinese men in period costumes, green silk mandarin jackets and black pants. Rusty leaning out the window, waving to them, the line of men parting, letting the Impala through, a simultaneous slight bow.

Outside the restaurant’s front door was a line half a block long of people hoping to get in. Rusty marched Lynch’s family right to the front of it and in the door, another bow from the young Chinese woman there, the one with the fine black hair down to her ass and the green Suzy Wong dress.

The inside of the Emerald Pagoda completely redefined young Lynch’s sense of the possible. Reds, greens, yellows, seemingly no straight line in the place, everything curving away, always the sense of something fantastic just out of sight. Lanterns everywhere. Silk banners a hundred feet long and hand-painted with fantastic scenes hanging from the ceiling in the central atrium. A two-story waterfall tumbling into a stone pond full of large, colorful fish with billowing fins. What seemed like a thousand tables on a thousand levels, the place looking like a cross between an Escher drawing and something by Dali.

Lynch grabbed the tail of Rusty’s jacket as Rusty waded right into the room, Lynch feeling like he was following an explorer into an unknown world. He was afraid to let go, afraid that, if he lost sight of his uncle here, he would be lost forever.

And then Paddy Wang was striding out to meet them, two retainers in black suits a step back on either side.

Wang was wearing a green robe that went down to his feet. The front of the robe was decorated with an intricate dragon rendered in more colors than Lynch knew existed, rubies sewn to the robe as the dragon’s eyes and a line of emeralds as big as lima beans running down its spine. A palpable sense of awe, like the pressure wave and wake of a boat, surrounded Wang as he walked toward them. Wang walked right up to Lynch, not even looking at his uncle, stopped, and made a deep bow.

“Young Master Lynch, you grace us at last.” Wang’s face opened in a radiant smile, he took Lynch’s hand.

“Come, come.” Wang led him off, Lynch looking back over his shoulder, Rusty giving him a nod and a grin and a thumbs up, receding back into the riot of colors that was like camouflage, that gave you so much to see you couldn’t see anything at all.

Wang led Lynch through the main floor of the restaurant, then through a set of huge red lacquered doors. The hall in the back was not as dazzling but almost more opulent in its way. The walls were lined with elaborately carved wooden screens in front of rich silk panels, the parquet floor lined with a succession of deep oriental rugs. Finally, Wang turned Lynch into a small room where two young women, seeming duplicates of the woman at the door to the restaurant, waited. Wang said something to them in Chinese, and they turned to Lynch, smiled, and bowed. Wang squeezing him on the shoulder then, saying, “I will see you soon, young Lynch,” and disappearing into the hall.

One of the women opened a large armoire and removed a green silk robe Lynch’s size, adorned with the same dragon as Wang’s, though without the jewels. Together, the two women raised the robe over Lynch’s head and lowered it onto him. Lynch stuck his arm through the belled sleeves. The women took off his penny loafers and slid on a pair of black slippers. Then, each taking a hand, they led him back into the hallway and farther into the building.

Wang, the two Chinese men in the black suits, and at least a dozen Chinese men in the green and black outfits the men in the parking lot had worn waited by a door in the back.

“Excellent, excellent, young Lynch. Come.” Again Wang took Lynch’s hand, the entire retinue falling in behind them.

The doors opened before them, and Wang and Lynch stepped into a narrow alley behind the restaurant. In the alley was a parade float in the shape of the dragon on the two green robes. Two of the men in the green and black outfits rolled a wheeled set of stairs like those to an airplane up against the side of the dragon. Wang led Lynch up the stairs. At the top of the dragon was a hollowed out area with a sunken floor, and in the middle of the floor were two gold chairs with red cushions. Lynch thought they looked like thrones. Wang motioned to the chair on the right, and Lynch sat down. Wang sat to his left. The two women who had dressed Lynch in the robe climbed up the stairs and stood behind the chairs.

Wang shouted something in Chinese, and Lynch heard a truck engine start under the float. The float drove down the alley and turned left onto Wentworth.

More people than Lynch had ever seen lined the sidewalks and the edges of the street. Even more hung out of windows along the upper floors along the route. The street was full of dancers and acrobats and young men running paper dragons in serpentine patterns. Fireworks exploded everywhere. Gongs banged, and people shouted and laughed.

Lynch heard his name. “Johnny! Johnny! Over here!”

Lynch looked to his left. His mother and Uncle Rusty stood right in front, outside the Emerald Pagoda, Mom holding his sister’s hand. His uncle had his hands cupped around his mouth, making a megaphone.

“Happy birthday, buddy!”

Wang pressed something into his hand. Lynch looked. It was a coin, bronze, half the size of Lynch’s palm. There was a square hole in the middle of it, with Chinese characters on either side.

“Happy birthday, indeed, young man. This is your father’s legacy. Never lose it. It is magic. It can buy anything.” It was the happiest Lynch had been since his father’s murder.

 

At 5.15am Lynch and Johnson sat in her kitchen, drinking tea, Johnson in her panties and an old Golden Gophers sweatshirt, Lynch showered, dressed again, figuring he’d have to head straight to work.

“You never told me if it works,” said Johnson.

“Jesus, Johnson. It works, OK? Needs a little rest now, though.” Lynch giving a little laugh.

“I know that works, Lynch. The magic coin? Does it work?”

Lynch fished out his keychain. The coin was threaded onto the metal loop. He set it on the table. “Tried it once, my senior year at Mount Carmel. I was, I dunno, sort of a jock punk then. Not really, I guess. I was never comfortable with that, but that was the crowd I hung with mostly. Anyway, spring break that year, some of us got to talking shit like guys do. You know, I know this guy, my old man knows that guy. So I say I know Paddy Wang. Which gets me a big bullshit from everybody. I mean, they know my old man had been a kind of quasi-ward boss on the side, but they figure that’s Triple A ball at best, and Paddy Wang, well, Paddy Wang is the big leagues.”

“So you figure you have to show them, right?”

“Yeah. I figure we drive down to the Pagoda, flash the coin, maybe we get comped a meal. Maybe Paddy even comes out, says hello. Anyway, we’re driving down Cicero, just north of Chinatown, and Mutt Warren – he was this big slob of an offensive tackle, complete asshole – he sees the Manila, titty bar used to be down that way, another joint Wang owned. It was pretty infamous. He says, you’re tight with Paddy Wang, you get us in there.”