The Blade Itself (11 page)

The waitress called him honey and touched his shoulder, her tits straining against the cheap uniform. He thought about kicking it back to her, asking when she got off, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble. He ordered, then lit a smoke and took it deep.

So Danny had sent Patrick after him. Surprise move.

Typical, though, of the guy he’d become. A couple of years wearing a white collar, and Danny had forgotten what was important. The thought chafed at Evan, the idea that while he’d been doing his time, the smug fucker was busily erasing his past.

You could read the
Trib
through the burger the waitress finally plunked down. The soup looked like cream of corn-starch. It reminded him of prison food, and he imagined Danny waiting in line at the Stateville cafeteria for a plastic plate of mac and cheese with mashed potatoes, lukewarm
milk to wash it down. He liked that image. Liked it quite a bit. A six-by-nine cell might be exactly what Danny needed.

Something to think about.

He ate without relish, keeping one eye on the cops at the counter. They talked quietly, making the most of their break, radiating that fuck-off attitude. He noticed the waitress touched their shoulders, too, cock-teasing for a tip. Everybody had a hustle.

Outside, the lights of the skyline burned above the Mustang, and as he dug for his keys he stared at the towers of money and influence. They were mute, and far away.

The cold air stung – it would be Halloween in a week or so – but he rode with the windows open anyway. A jumble of tract housing and bungalows spilled off either side of Loomis Street. Johnny Cash sang to him, telling him there was a man coming round taking names, telling him everybody wouldn’t be treated all the same, and cruising alone through the neighborhood that used to be his, rolling under the concrete monstrosity of the Stevenson Expressway, heading for a river that flowed backward, he knew it was true.

Brandenburg was an industrial demolition firm with buildings on both sides of the street, maybe fifteen acres of storage and equipment. A dock wall ran along the river, oily water licking at the rusted faces of barges floating like rotting giants. The company had built its business on smashing things that were no longer useful and then disposing of the junk. What better place?

He glided into the parking lot in neutral, headlights off. Security was probably a couple of rent-a-cops playing gin rummy through the midnight shift, but no need to draw attention. He stopped in a pool of darkness and thumbed the trunk release button.

The black tarp shone like wet ink by the light of the
trunk. He grunted a little getting started – the angle was a bitch – but once he had it out, shouldering the load was easy. Twice a week he squatted several times Patrick’s weight.

A funny place, Chicago. Something like nine million people, forty thousand violent crimes a year, more goddamn cars than you could count, but in the middle of the night, in the middle of the city, you could find quiet. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing and the wet slap of the river. Evan stepped onto the dock running along the river’s edge. The water glowed black a few feet below.

He bent down, lowering his burden to the concrete. A boot stuck out of the tarp like it was waving good-bye. Evan put one foot against the middle of the bundle and shoved. The plastic scraped to the edge, friction fighting him, then the weight overbalanced and it slipped off. Half a heartbeat of silence later he heard a splash like a dark fish jumping, and Patrick was gone.

Evan shook out a cigarette, lit it. The ripples spread out from below, semicircles drifting to kiss a barge forty yards upriver. He could almost see the silhouettes of teenage boys reclining on the mountain of trash it bore, stolen forty-ouncers in their hands and the skyline filling their eyes. What had happened to those kids, him and Marty and Seamus?

And Patrick. And Danny.

Tonight’s work was done. Tomorrow he’d plan his next move. It baffled him that Danny had sent Patrick after him. Could he really be so fucking dense after everything Evan had done to make his point?

Apparently talk wasn’t getting through.

He’d have to find a clearer way to communicate.

Exhaust billowed white in the cold air, but no one sat inside the Mercedes.

Danny let the door to the White Hen swing shut behind him, and took a swig of coffee. An E500 sedan, V8, sticker probably sixty grand, and some asshole had dashed in to buy milk and left it running. He could have it downtown in ten minutes, find a shop through Patrick, and make two weeks’ pay before lunch.

Danny shook his head, turned away, hopped in his truck. Richard expected him, and with midday traffic, he’d be hard-pressed to make the twenty-minute drive in forty.

He did allow himself a last glance as he pulled onto Diversey.

Work had been tough. He had to keep his routine up, pretend like nothing was going on – however this nightmare shook out, he couldn’t afford raised eyebrows. The morning had been spent overseeing the final winterizing of the Pike Street loft complex. The foreman, McCloskey, had it well in hand. The infrastructure of the whole building was in place, and the open walls sealed off with plastic. Tools and materials had been stored, and by the end of the week, the site would be chained up. The unfinished loft complex and the construction trailer would remain untouched through winter’s lonely haul, waiting, like the rest of the city, for spring to resurrect them.

As he turned onto Lakeshore, the wind lashed steel waves against the rocks, spray climbing tall as a man. It suited his mood. Nearly a week since he’d found Evan in his kitchen.
It wouldn’t be long before he showed up demanding an answer. Nearly a week, and Danny still had no plan. All he’d managed to do was remind a detective he existed. That, and make Karen suspicious. He’d thought he was playing it close to his chest, but she knew him too well.

‘Nightmares again, baby?’ She’d touched the dark circles under his eyes and smiled tenderly at him in the bathroom mirror.

‘Just busy,’ he said, and put on his game face. She’d nodded, but he knew her mind was still chewing on it.

Not telling her was eating at him. It wasn’t his way to hide things from her. Just the opposite. She came at things from different angles, fresh viewpoints, and together there hadn’t been many problems they couldn’t solve.

But the most dangerous one of the last seven years? That, he didn’t dare share.

Wednesday, and the lawn crews had descended to service the wealthy. Day laborers called to one another in Spanish as they pushed mowers and raked leaves. A white guy with a clipboard sat in the heated cab of the pickup outside Richard’s house. Late October, and Danny knew the workers must be getting nervous, all too aware that business would shut down for the winter. He had a flash of coming home in the afternoon to find his old man at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering untouched in an ashtray, and knowing that another construction company had screwed them; that this winter, like last, Dad would be getting up at four in the morning to help Kevin O’Bannon with the snowplow.

Richard answered the door in golf pants and a polo shirt, like he planned on hitting the back nine after lunch. ‘What took so long?’

‘Lakeshore was bumper-to-bumper.’

Richard nodded. ‘Come in. Ignore this mess.’ The way he said it, Danny wasn’t sure if he was talking about the leaves on his lawn or the guys raking it. ‘You bring those contracts?’

‘Yeah.’ He stepped in, shutting the front door behind him. Richard was already halfway down the hall, and Danny followed him into the kitchen. Skylights brought autumn sun flooding across granite countertops and stainless appliances. With two ovens, two sinks, and a massive chef’s prep island in the center, the kitchen could service a restaurant, but he noticed the copper pans hanging over the chopping block had dust on them.

‘You look everything over? I don’t want to find out I got rogered again.’

The last time Richard had gotten rogered it had been because he’d ignored Danny’s cost estimates, but Danny kept that to himself. ‘They’re clean.’

His boss nodded, sipping espresso as he flipped through the documents. ‘How’s Pike Street?’ he asked, not looking up.

‘McCloskey will have it locked down by the end of the week.’

‘Good. And we’ve got him on contract for the spring?’

Danny started. ‘Huh?’

‘McCloskey. We’ve got him set for the spring?’

Danny remembered his conversation with the foreman in the trailer, how good it had felt to treat him like a man, to explain the situation instead of just lay down the law the way so many managers had laid it on his father. ‘We’re keeping McCloskey on over the winter, remember?’

Richard didn’t look up from his papers. ‘Yeah, I thought it over, ran some numbers, and it’s not going to work.’

Had he heard right? ‘What?’

‘Jeff Teller has the other projects under control, and he
costs less. We’ll dump McCloskey and his crew for the winter, pick ’em back up in spring.’

Danny’s mind was racing. He’d promised that no one would lose his job. ‘Teller’s good, but not as good as McCloskey. And we could use help prepping next spring’s bids.’

Richard shrugged, his mind only half in the conversation. ‘I don’t need a foreman to tell me how to throw a bid.’

Danny tried a different tack. ‘You know, McCloskey’s pretty connected. We let him go, we may not get him back.’

‘The market’s not going to be much better then. Besides, we can always find somebody else.’

There was no way around it. Danny said, ‘I gave them my word that we had work for them.’

His boss’s head snapped up, surprise on his face. ‘You did what?’

‘I told McCloskey the deal, why we had to shut Pike down for now, and I told him that there was work for him and his crew.’

‘Why would you do that?’ Richard squinted as if trying to see Danny more clearly.

‘Don’t you remember? We talked about it and agreed to keep them on.’

Richard shook his head. ‘I never said anything like that. I might have said that it would be
nice
to keep them on, but that’s all.’

Danny fought a sudden urge to break his boss’s nose. ‘We were sitting in the conference room. Reviewing budgets. You wanted to let them go, and I suggested we could keep them on half-time to get them through the winter. You agreed.’

Richard closed the contract and looked at him appraisingly. Danny met the stare unblinking. Finally his boss
sighed. ‘I know how you feel. But you know how rough things have been. Believe you me, nobody’s been bleeding more than I have.’ He took a sip of coffee and reopened the contracts, spinning the pen between his fingers.

Danny stood trying to think of something to say, his eyes ranging over the rich furnishings as if for the first time. A framed photo of Richard on his yacht, a silly captain’s hat on his head. The Italian cappuccino machine. A laptop, casually placed half on, half off the counter.

With a scribble, Richard signed his name on the contracts and pushed them to Danny. ‘Here. Make sure Pike Street is locked down tight. Don’t want it turning into a homeless camp.’

Through the bay window, Danny could see two Mexicans in hunting vests and fingerless gloves bundling branches that had fallen in last week’s storm. He wondered what he was doing on this side of the glass.

Later, heading south in his truck, Danny wasn’t sure why he decided to skip the Michigan Avenue exit and continue south to I-55; why he got off at Archer; why he found himself driving through Bridgeport. But it might have had something to do with his boss standing in golf clothes, using a gold pen to cut blue collars.

It wasn’t the first time he’d driven through the neighborhood since leaving, but in the past, he’d blitzed along, consciously not looking too hard to the left or right, avoiding the rawest of the old wounds. This time he went slowly and kept his eyes open, intent on yanking scabs.

Things had changed. Things had stayed the same.

Tan and orange bungalows still crowded sidewalks bordered by sagging chain link. The Gothic spires of half a dozen massive churches rose over faded tract housing. White Sox flags hung limp under hazy skies. Smokestacks
and skyscrapers loomed at the edge of the horizon, blurring like fever dreams.

He pulled up at a red light as a group of Hispanic kids swaggered along the sidewalk. They wore long basketball jerseys and bright sneakers, hats cocked to mark gang allegiances. A fair-skinned kid with close-shorn hair eyed Danny’s SUV, his lips opening in a threatening grin that revealed gold-capped teeth.

So there were still young lions in Bridgeport after all.

Danny stared back, putting all his street weight into it. It wasn’t a look you earned in a North Shore private school like the one Richard’s son attended. It required less gentle surroundings.

The kid held his gaze, slowing so that his crew moved past. For a few seconds they watched each other, a young predator and an old one, both bathed in the amber light of late afternoon. Then the kid smiled again, trying for scorn but not quite getting it, turned and pimp-strutted back to his friends. Danny watched him go.

Had he kept all of this from Karen to protect her?

Or because he was thinking of doing it?

Was that why he had come here, why his eyes had hungered for the class differences between himself and Richard? His new life, it couldn’t be that thin, so easily stripped of veneer.

Was
he just a thief with a better address?

The light changed. He turned the truck and steered north.

Salsa was hopping.

Leaning over the balcony, trying to take some weight off her feet – the heels were killing her – Karen had a prime view of the dance floor. The crowd was young, most of them midtwenties, the girls in skintight dresses with sparkles that ended only where flesh began, the men sweating through black linen shirts. Lasers cut rainbow swaths in the swirling cigarette smoke. It was a party bar, and people would stick till the lights came on, throwing down drinks with the accelerating pace of a dreamer who fears awakening.