Start Shooting (13 page)

Plain as day. And Ruben wins the bonus round, too: both potential
witnesses—me and a cop partner who’s facing a retrial by the U.S. attorney—aren’t available to roll after the scam is complete. Headshake. I’ve been expendable since this started, one of the reasons I’m sure I got the job. Gotta hide. Maybe upstairs above the L7? My best friend’s bar. Julie’s hideout room, the Butch and Sundance suite.

Traffic bunches ten deep at the light on Ashland Avenue; all four directions?
I’m trapped
—Calm down, calm down. Wrigley Field is eight blocks up; must be a Cubs home game; shit, the L7 will be packed with visiting-team fans wondering
why are all these women in here
? No, it won’t—Wrigley traffic this late means a national TV game—watch check—they’re ready to start. I’ll hide my car—that’s the plan—then walk to Clark Street mixed in with the fans, call Julie on the way in—my anchor, a smart, fearless, tough man in a pretty-girl suit—Julie will know what to do. She left me a voice mail on Friday when the
Herald
came out with their exposé and their support for exhuming Coleen, said she’d go with me to beat the shit out of Tracy Moens for writing it.

The
Streetcar
pages stare from the passenger seat. That’s what I’ll do—me and
Streetcar
. We’ll rehearse in Julie’s hideout suite. Then, then in nineteen hours I’ll take the stage at the Shubert Theater … and save the Brennan sisters.

Right. Be Blanche DuBois; that’s who you are; she wasn’t in that alley. Ruben’s not trying to kill her. Make that work. Find a parking place; be invisible. Coleen and I win this one.

I brake for two girls in the street. They’re wearing bright yellow 2016 Chicago Olympics 10K T-shirts, walking down the street’s center line. Passing out bumper stickers. One girl turns her back. Across her shoulders the font is big, bold, and Japanese: Furukawa.

My breath catches. Robbie said, “Jap motherfuckers will eat you three alive.” Then everyone started shooting.

Walking. Took another hit of Valium and changed my bloody shirt in the car. Been over an hour since I shot a man, think I’m in shock—floaty like after a car wreck that demolished your car but not you. The two hits of Valium are working better than one. Red VW is parked,
blue tablets swallowed—I think I covered that—journey to friendship and safety begun. Just stay away from Koreans and
Jap motherfuckers
who will eat me alive.

Block three of a five-block walk to the L7 begins to feel good—me floating through leafy normal world—anonymous—with happy people in Cubs blue-and-white preparing to drink beer and eat peanuts. People who haven’t murdered anyone. The not-so-good part is everything else. At block five, Bushmills or Jameson will level what the Valium hasn’t. I flip my phone open with some difficulty and dial a large, athletic, saloonkeeper who loves me.

Bagpipes and singing answer. Julie McCoy yells,
“Blanche! Did we get it?”

“The audition’s tomorrow. I’m three blocks from you. Is there room at the inn?”

Over the din she yells: “For a star? Any bed she wants.” Riot noise. “We won the Chicago 7s! Beat South Africa—the natural-blond bitches—Chicago RULES.
Boo-yah!
”

She means women’s rugby. “Any men in there … asking for me?”

“Men? What are they for?”

My foot skips a sidewalk crack, don’t want to break your mother’s back. We loved our ma, most of the time; our da not so much. “Never mind. Be there in a sec.”

I fold the phone, walk two more blocks, and hit Clark Street at Addison, the Valium OD beginning to numb-shuffle my feet and knees, weird feeling for a dancer. I loop fifty pregame revelers out front of the Cubby Bear Lounge and sidestep into Clark Street’s game-day Mardi Gras—car horns, cops with Cubs hats directing traffic, fans in the street, flags, banners. They don’t care if they win, the North Side’s past that; this is ritual. Must be wonderful to belong to this kind of world.

Mid-block at the L7, the two smiling female doormen don’t ask for my ID or the gun in my purse. The chunky one with the “Kesey Does It” T-shirt says, “Busy in there.”

Kesey must mean Ken Kesey of
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
 … makes sense … I think. The L7 is a “woman’s bar” but it’s also the Beat capital of Chicago. Been here since the ’30s, a beer hall/tavern with a Jack Kerouac pedigree. Julie added John Waters and Tallulah Bank-head,
and our friend Beth Murphey painted the a/c ducts like snakes that only get that big in Imax anaconda movies.

The brunette opens the door and LOUD rocks me back a step. If Annie Oakley lived in Chicago, this is where she’d drink. Visiting-rugby-team banners hang haphazard from the high tin ceiling. Bagpipes wail across thirty tables pushed aside by muddy women in colorful jerseys and questionable haircuts. Have to be a hundred girls in multiple uniforms, all of them singing and sloshing a beer in each hand. To my right the long historic bar has
five girls marching on it
? Parasols on their shoulders, throwing beads at the crowd? Right, right—the Mardi Gras March, the New Orleans team Julie played for. The stage at the back is the only spot that’s empty except for the band equipment.

Julie McCoy will be in the mosh somewhere—probably guest-starring with the pipers. Jesus, it’s loud in there. Julie was a world-class athlete and well on her way to becoming a concert cellist before “the accident.” The accident is depicted by a huge twenty-foot back-bar photo mural of Julie crashing her Ducati into a Nice café, showing off for a girl whose name she couldn’t remember.

Brilliant red hair. I duck the flash—not sure why—just know I should. Two or three dead in an alley may be the reason … or twenty milligrams of Valium, or giant snakes squirming overhead of an allgirl riot. I veer toward the bar, shuffling for traction, staying close to the front window and the lesser violence. The doorway to Julie’s office and the stairs up to the Butch and Sundance suite are all the way at the back, stage left, or to the right if you’re a civilian.

Bump, shuffle. Young faces with bulletproof grins. The crush of shoulders and feet and hips and hair and singing—singing is way too kind—all this might be more than the Valium OD will allow. Keep moving. Four minutes of snaking through the crowd keeps me upright. This is a post-tournament party that will be off the hook in another hour. I’ve been to a few of these; wild like a badger, as me ma would say.

Hey! There’s my picture, an eight-by-ten framed with others, each with a lipstick kiss and autographed to the L7. Mine is from
The Argonautika
four years ago. If I get
Streetcar
Julie will do a life-size poster and put me next to the Lisa Law photo of her hero, Allen Ginsberg at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur. If I get
Streetcar
 … loopy grin, three dead in an
alley, homicide cop trying to kill me, Japanese motherfuckers wanting to eat me alive—no problem, take twenty milligrams every day and everything’s everything.

The door to Julie’s office is unlocked. I slip through, shut it behind me, and lean for a second. The noise cuts by half. Her oak desk has a folded copy of the
Herald
that won’t quit following me and a framed photo of her adopted daughter, Hannah, playing the guitar. I pick up today’s
Herald
. Please have something in here that can be used against Ruben Vargas for real, and soon, like today. Big picture of Dr. Hitoshi Ota, the Furukawa CEO, with the mayor. I fold the
Herald
and reach to lock Julie’s door. Nope, double deadbolt that requires a key. The other door leads to the tiny hall and stairs to Butch and Sundance, and safety for now, and I’m through the door, pulling it closed behind me and—oh, shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Sitting on the stairs—
No possible way
—Ruben Vargas couldn’t have known I was coming here. The door is shut tight behind me. Blink. He’s blinking, too, both hands on a red guitar, not a pistol. And he’s younger than he looked earlier today, my age now, and his eyes are kind, not cold and reptilian. The devil’s last cruel trick before he grabs me, his newest killer.

My ma says, “No, you baked the crumble muffins.”

Blink. Half swallow.
Do something
. Gun … I have a gun.

I reach for the gun. And all the saints of heaven.

Eighteen hours ago, Officer Sheila Lopez was murdered during her third shift with the Chicago Police Department. The dead shooters ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-two. My part of the officer-involved interrogations ended at 4:30
AM
when U.S. Attorney Jo Ann Merica cut me loose. I drank two hours, semi-slept six, then ate breakfast at one o’clock watching the national news cycle marry gang wars and dead policewomen to Olympic rebids. The comments in Tokyo were of great shock and sympathy for the victims.

Officer Lopez’s parents came in from Ohio; limp, washed out, holding on to each other and the cloudy, fuzzy hell-walk you see when somebody’s child dies. And the cameras were right there. The Lopezes’ parish priest was with them. Mayor McQuinn made a statement, called Sheila Lopez a hero in the war on drugs. The parish priest called Sheila a daughter, a casualty of this society losing its moral compass. The reporter said, “Back to you, Jim.”

Twenty minutes till showtime.

I’m here at the L7 but my bandmates aren’t. My cell vibrates. I put phone to ear, knees balancing my guitar.

Ruben says, “Lopez was a fed. Dead-bang.” Pause. “But neither the ATF, FBI, or DEA had people at Area 4. No one on Hahn’s hospital room, either. I’ve been seeing feds a long time,
esé
—and G is what these girls are—but this ain’t how their organizations act.”

“You’re sure about Hahn?”

“They rolled in together, no?”

Exhale. My eyes squeeze shut. One hand presses my cell phone tighter, the other covers my ear to block out the party noise beyond the greenroom wall.

Ruben continues. “Homicide’s investigating the Lopez murder—we got jurisdiction, but can’t get the U.S. attorney to tell us what Lopez was working on. And I know Merica knows, which means it’s all about CPD, maybe another Greylord …”

My back slumps into the stairway wall. Floor polish and mop disinfectant mix with Ruben’s words.

“Or … we got us some kind of wild-card situation. Hahn give you any idea who she is? Who they work for?”

“Nope. Said her history was FBI, then DEA; got sworn here through Mayor McQuinn. We figured if they were feds, it had to be for Dupree.”

“That don’t wash. The mayor’s not gonna help anyone with the Dupree lawsuit. And even if he wanted to give city money away, why would feds be undercover in your team for that? None of you was even on the job then. No, has to be the G’s after someone in your team for something else.” Pause. “And whoever that
vato
is got their girl killed.”

My Stratocaster slides half off my lap but my elbow catches the neck. A cop killer in my gang team—my family; guys I bet my life on every day.

Ruben says, “Our lawyer wants a conversation tonight, eight at the Mambo; get you thinking right for IAD on Monday—”

“Damn, Ruben, I don’t want—”

“
Carnal
. Trust me, this you have to do. Don’t know how Barlow did it—probably Toddy Pete—but Barlow got a judge to sign an injunction against the
Herald
. No part three on Sunday. Barlow and them go to court Monday, we won’t have to read about us again till Tuesday, maybe Wednesday at the earliest. Even if we lose, Barlow will have seen whatever Spanish news the
Herald
is selling; gives us a chance to buddy up with the
Tribune
or WGN with a rebuttal.”

“The U.S. attorney asked me about you ninety-five times.”

“I saw the transcript. Watch your ass. I’m your brother. I know you think I’m nine-foot armor-plated, but I can’t keep a U.S. attorney off you.”

“I didn’t do so good in the interviews, huh?”

Pause. “People running for cover,
carnal
, they gonna run over whoever
they have to. You hear
anything
about what Hahn’s up to, let me know. See you at eight.”

I flip the phone shut and reset my guitar. If you have to fight giants or bet it all, no one better to stand with than Ruben Vargas. The door to the stairwell opens. A svelte, curvy woman slips through with her back to me. She closes the door, leans into it, and exhales deep. Professional dancer; it’s the posture and her jeans couldn’t fit any better. She turns, shaking strawberry blond hair out of her face—

My heart literally stops.

The ghost at the door sees me and goes rigid, welding her back to the door to stay standing. Her eyes widen to their limits and so green they take your breath away—

Never ever forget those eyes, not as long as I live. Not in summertime across our alley, bold and timid sitting in her window, peeking up from her book after every page. Or a year later making a Neverland promise from three inches away, both my hands in hers. Not in the rose-red blush of a first kiss, and not in the harsh white of winter, pleading terror frozen in the prettiest eyes God ever made. Someone uses my voice to say: “But you’re dead.”