Trigger City (8 page)

T
erry sat with some regulars
in Wise Guys Corner at the Billy Goat. Wise Guys Corner was a spot at the end of the bar where eminent newspapermen had congregated for decades, from Mike Royko to Rick Kogan…and now Terry Green. In addition to newspapermen, it was also the favorite perch of local political operatives, union bosses, advertising executives, and other hustlers. One of the last great water-cooler spots for people plugged into Real Chicago.

As I looked down from the doorway, it struck me that Terry was Alpha Dog tonight. If Kogan or John Kass had been there, that wouldn't have been true. But they weren't, so it was. Terry was Alpha Reporter and for a second I felt a twinge of envy and wondered what might have been had I not abandoned my newspaper career.

Then I remembered the compromises Terry had to make along the way. How he'd seen legitimate stories—sometimes his own—spiked by clout, and how he'd seen other stories tailored and trimmed to protect the powerful and corrupt.

The business of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,
wrote Finley Peter Dunne. Or words to that ef
fect. Anyway, I don't know how Terry lived with the compromise, but he did.

My old editor at the
Chronicle,
Colm Stanwell, once tried to help me with his gruff brand of fatherly advice. I'd just been pulled off a good story and I was sitting in my newsroom cubicle eating my spleen about it. Stanwell walked by and without pausing said, “Welcome to the world, Ray. If you don't bend, you break. Get used to it.”

I couldn't.

There were about two dozen people in the Goat tonight. It was after midnight so there wouldn't be any more tour bus invasions that evening, although we were sure to get some drunk college kids if we stayed long enough. Terry saw me coming down the stairs, picked up his drink, and nodded me over to the “VIP Room” at the back. I stopped at the bar and got a couple mugs of dark from Nick the bartender, took them to our table. Terry and I were alone back there, surrounded by framed and faded Royko columns and photos of ballplayers and famous Chicagoans and infamous Chicago goats.

I lit a smoke and briefed Terry on recent events.

We agreed that Blake Sten had given me a plausible accounting of Zhang's firing. Unusual? Yes. Unexpected? Hell yes. But plausible nevertheless, and we agreed to look into the identity of Jia Lun. We also agreed that Dellitt was working for Hawk River.

“But Sten threw in a little friendly menace of his own,” I said. “So why'd he tell Dellitt to smash Ernie Banks? Seems like overkill.”

“Yeah, but you're not an idiot,” said Terry. “Maybe they're taking no chances, in case you are.”

“Always good to be underestimated,” I said. “That way I never disappoint. Still, it doesn't sit right. Dellitt's search wasn't meticulous. They knew I'd notice the place had been searched. They didn't have to smash Ernie Banks.”

“Then maybe Blake Sten is humping you,” said Terry.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You know, like dogs in the park. Showing dominance. What's so funny?”

“Nothing,” I said, “I was just thinking about Alpha Dogs a few minutes ago. But without the humping imagery.”

“The humping imagery is important,” said Terry. “A lot of Alphas need to express their dominance, so they hump until they get a display of submission. But some keep on humping, even after the Beta Dog has submitted. Giving the order to smash Ernie Banks was overkill, you're right. So maybe Blake Sten is the second type of Alpha.”

“Maybe I should roll over and expose my belly and find out.”

“Not your natural posture.” Terry finished his beer and picked up my empty mug. He left the table and returned a few minutes later with a couple of rocks glasses filled with something amber over ice, handed me one. I swirled the ice around and took a sip. Jameson.

“Sláinte,” I said.

Terry raised his glass in reply, swallowed some whiskey, and said, “You know, there's a major flaw in the working hypothesis here.”

“Good. I didn't like the idea of being humped by Blake Sten.”

“Not that. The hypothesis that Hawk River engineered Joan Richmond's death to stop her from testifying. Given the specifics of the murder, it's all a little too
Manchurian Candidate
for my liking.”

“Ever hear of MK-ULTRA?” I said.

“Yeah, it was a failure,” said Terry. “Proves the point. The poor bastards were completely unreliable.”

“Unless you count Sirhan Sirhan.”

“Oh, come on. You don't believe his bullshit.”

I dragged on my cigarette. “Maybe not, but I don't believe the official version, either. Anyway, you're assuming that my hypothesis includes Hawk River causing and managing Steven Zhang's psychosis. I'm saying, maybe he wasn't crazy at all. Maybe they got him to fake it.”

“Still too unreliable. These guys don't leave anything to chance, and they couldn't count on him doing a perfect impression of a paranoid schizophrenic.”

“Didn't have to be perfect,” I said. “Just good enough to fool his coworkers. His act wouldn't be scrutinized by a psychiatrist until after
his arrest. My bet is, if he hadn't killed himself, he'd have been shivved in jail before he could undergo a psych evaluation. That's easy enough to arrange.”

“The more obvious explanation is that Steven Zhang was crazy,” said Terry.

I pulled out my notebook. “So everyone thinks Steven Zhang was crazier than a shithouse rat. Paranoid schizophrenic.”

“Looks like it.”

“Looks
exactly
like it,” I flipped a few pages. “The confession,” I said. “It's got everything. Paranoia? Check. Messianic complex? Check. Vast conspiracy? Check. Auditory hallucinations? Check. It's like Zhang was serving up a psychiatric diagnosis on a platter, when any two of the symptoms would've been enough to lead the cops to the same conclusion. Like he was making absolutely sure.”

“It could just as easily mean he really was a paranoid schizophrenic. In essence, you're saying he was so crazy that you don't believe he was crazy. Both his wife and coworkers confirmed behavior consistent with the disease.”

“His coworkers aren't qualified to judge and I think his wife is just saying what she's been told to say. And there's this: With the overwhelming majority of schizophrenics, initial onset of symptoms occurs in their teens. Sometimes in their early twenties. But Zhang was thirty-seven when this suddenly started. That would be extremely unusual.”

“Unusual but not unheard of,” said Terry. “What else you got?”

“Okay, he kills Joan, leaves the confession, goes home. According to the confession, he killed her so he could ‘carry out his mission.' But when he gets home, he's no longer crazy, is he? He calls his wife and tells her he's done something terrible, then kills himself. Both reasonable things to do if you've just killed an innocent woman. But not if you've just foiled an evil conspiracy that was trying to stop you from saving American democracy.”

Terry nodded, “That's better, but still not enough to outweigh the more reasonable premise that he went crazy. I think if you do some
research you'll find that they can occasionally snap out of it for moments at a time.”

“Hold on.” I took a drink and told myself not to be frustrated by Terry's resistance. He was a good reporter doing his job as a skeptic, poking holes where holes could be poked. I said, “Here's the final piece that takes it from suggestive to conclusive: Amy Zhang made a mistake during our interview. She said that Steven's English wasn't as good as hers. Said he had a limited vocabulary.” I read from Zhang's confession, “‘
I must carry out my vital mission, imperative to saving American democracy.'
That sound like a guy with a limited vocabulary? If my theory is right, Blake Sten somehow convinced Zhang to put on a crazy act and kill Joan.”

“You and Joan are on a first-name basis now?”

“Don't,” I said.

“You're getting emotionally involved in this case, Ray. That's not good.”

“Can we please get back to my theory? Sten convinces Zhang to act crazy, but he's not gonna take any chances with the confession so he writes it himself. He wants the note to read like it was written by a paranoid schizophrenic but he's a little overzealous about it, makes sure every damn symptom is present and accounted. He gets Zhang to transcribe it in his own handwriting. But the confession doesn't read like it was written by an English-as-a-Second-Language guy with a limited vocabulary. Instead, it uses words that are second nature to a guy like Sten. Any military man has heard the words
vital
and
imperative
about a zillion times in the service. Hell, Zhang even spelled imperative correctly. I always want to put two
r
's in it. And I am fluent.”

“That's debatable,” said Terry.

“But you concede my point.”

“I concede that you
have
a point, and I think it takes us from suggestive to highly suggestive, but not all the way to conclusive. And it doesn't promote your hypothesis to theory. You may end up being right, but you're way ahead of yourself in the certainty department. And that's dangerous.”

“Now you're just being intractable,” I said.

“Ooh, I guess you
are
fluent, after all,” said Terry.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Look, I'm telling you, you're losing your objectivity on this case. You can't afford that. Not with these guys.”

 

Back between the floral-print sheets of Joan Richmond's bed, I lay waiting for sleep. I'd taken my last two Percocets with some cold vodka and the pain was receding and I could feel sleep nearby, making a tentative approach. But Terry's warning still rang in my ears, keeping the sandman at bay.

Maybe Terry was right. Maybe I was getting too emotionally involved in this case.

Maybe? You're sleeping in the woman's bed, man. This is not a “maybe” situation.

Okay, so I was definitely getting too emotionally involved in this case.

The operative question was—why? It wasn't about Isaac Richmond's grief. That wasn't even close to it. It was about Joan, who lived alone and died alone and whose life and death meant nothing to the rest of the world, but who died for a reason. And it was about Amy Zhang, who was scared for the same damn reason.

Amy Zhang, who had been effectively thrown to the sharks by the police and who needed someone's help.

Jill had once suggested that I became a private detective as a way to save people—as a way to fulfill an
unconscious
desire to go back in time and save my mother. Or maybe she said
subconscious
—I can never keep the psychobabble terminology straight. I didn't care much for her amateur psychoanalysis and I thought the mother angle was a stretch. But I realized she was right about the desire to save people. I'd spent my whole life watching the strong roll over the weak, and if I could occasionally win one for the underdog, that seemed a worthy goal.

As a young man, I thought I'd be able to do it as a journalist. That hadn't worked out so well. But as a private detective, I'd gotten an innocent man off a murder charge, I'd helped a prostitute get out of the life, and I'd found a few runaways. I'd helped get insurance settlements for people who deserved them, while catching a bunch of others who were trying to defraud the system. And of course I'd bagged a bunch of corrupt public servants in the big Outfit scandal.

I hadn't changed the world, but I'd made a difference in the lives of a handful of society's underdogs.

And sure, I'd also worked a hell of a lot of crap cases, digging through people's garbage and poking around in their private marital woes and generally feeling like a scumbag. But a man's gotta eat, and it was worth it for the few cases that meant something. Right or wrong, working as a private detective was the only job I'd ever had where I didn't feel like I should be doing something else. And the only job that purged the internal pressure of simmering rage.

Jill was wrong. I wasn't trying to save my mother by saving other people.

I was trying to save myself.

It was perhaps the stupidest letter I'd ever written. But my visit to Hawk River was chum in the water and the sharks were now circling, as evidenced by the assault on Ernie Banks.

Until I started poking around, it was better for them to coerce Amy Zhang's cooperation than to kill her. Joan Richmond's murder had been successfully put to bed, and Amy Zhang served to corroborate the official version of events. Another death would only bring unwanted attention, perhaps fresh scrutiny. But my involvement had obviously set off alarms and now it might be worth the risk to tie off loose ends.

So if they killed her, wouldn't I bear some responsibility?

I signed the letter, added my cell phone number under my signature, and sealed it in an envelope. Drove to her town house, parked in front, and rang the doorbell.

The door opened a few inches, secured by a chain lock that a twelve-year-old could snap with a hard kick at the door. Behind the chain, a pair of frightened eyes.

“I can't talk to you,” said Amy Zhang. “Go away.”

My foot prevented the door from closing and I stuck the envelope through the narrow space.

“Just read it,” I said and flicked the envelope past her onto the floor.

I pulled my foot away and the door slammed shut. I heard the dead bolt slide into the door frame.

 

I'd slept on my right shoulder again. No nightmare, thankfully. But shifting up through the gears now generated intense stabbing, and it was hard to shift. I was out of Percocet and had neither the time nor inclination to make a doctor's appointment, just to get a new prescription and yet another stern lecture about putting off the surgery.

I opened my cell phone and scrolled down the list of stored numbers to the entry that said D, pressed the call button.

“Hey, Jimbo,” said Darnell Livingstone. Darnell's frame of reference for a PI was
The Rockford Files,
and he always insisted on calling me Jimbo. And I let him. He was not a man with whom you want to argue over trivial stuff.

“You gonna be there?” I said.

“Come around midnight.” The phone went dead in my ear. Not a man for long good-byes, either.

 

I parked just north of Fiftieth Street and glanced at the luminous hands of my Submariner: 12:05. I rang the brownstone's front doorbell and when the lock buzzed, I pushed the door open and walked down the hallway to the ground-floor apartment. This was not a neighborhood where you'd normally leave a '68 Shelby parked on the street—day or night—but
nobody
messed with a car parked in front of Darnell Livingston's crib. There wasn't a safer parking spot in the city.

I didn't have to knock. If Darnell hadn't recognized me on his video monitor when I rang the bell outside, he wouldn't have buzzed me in. He didn't have to worry about an upstairs tenant buzzing a stranger in—he owned the building and the two floors above were unoccupied. I opened the apartment door and was greeted by the sweet smell of reefer and the heavy bass notes of hip-hop. I crossed the threshold into the darkened living room.

Blue bulbs in wall sconces provided some mood lighting and African masks threw ominous shadows against the wall. On another wall, Malcolm X raised his fist in a Black Power salute. A red lava lamp sat on a glass table in the corner.

But most of the light in the room came from the large screen of an Apple computer. A knight in full armor hopped around the screen, swinging his sword at an angry green dragon while dodging the dragon's fiery breath.

“One minute,” said Darnell Livingstone without turning away from the battle. He sat in a new wheelchair, clutching a game controller and stabbing at it with his thumbs. The back of the chair sported a sharp white “C” and a pattern of white skulls on a black background. The wheels had three thick curved spokes of bright chrome, each spoke forming a shiny question mark.

Darnell lost the use of his legs back when he was with the Gangster Disciples, a top Chicago street gang with about thirty thousand mem
bers in maybe thirty states. Ten years ago, the Disciples successfully fought back an incursion by the Black P Stones, but during the war a bullet took out Darnell's spinal column, just above the waist. He was sixteen years old.

After three months in the hospital, Darnell quit the Disciples and went into business for himself. Because he'd given his legs to the cause, they let him. And they charged him a much lower street tax than they collected from the other independent operators in their territories.

I'd met Darnell when a criminal defense attorney hired me to dig up some reasonable doubt for a client charged with
unlawful use of a weapon
. Darnell was the defendant. He'd been busted for carrying a switchblade and he was guilty of it, but we got him an acquittal. Darnell told me to call him if I ever needed anything he could supply.

And a month ago, perhaps against my better judgment, I called.

The brave knight on the computer screen miscalculated, hopped in the wrong direction, and was consumed by the dragon's fire. Darnell flipped on a desk lamp and let out a baritone chuckle. He pivoted the chair around to face me. “That same motherfucker gets me every time. Level 4 is a bitch.”

I offered my hand and he launched into a complicated soul-brother handshake. I followed along, gave up after the fifth maneuver, and said, “Jesus Christ, doesn't anybody just shake hands anymore?”

“Not on this block, Jimbo. Take a seat.” I sat on a black leather chair and Darnell wheeled down a hallway and returned with a couple bottles of High Life and handed me one. He picked a half-smoked joint out of the ashtray and sparked it up. The flame threw light on his forearm, which bore an old tattoo. A heart with wings and horns and a tail, a six-pointed crown above, and a pitchfork on each side.

It made me think of Blake Sten's Hawk River tattoo. You expect members of a street gang to ink themselves with gang symbols, but how many IBM employees tattoo the corporate logo on their bodies? What does such a permanent and personal statement say about the corporate culture? Made me think that Hawk River had a lot in common with the Gangster Disciples.

I said, “Music's a little loud.”

Darnell picked up a remote control and pressed a button and the music came down to a tolerable level. He said, “Saul Williams. You ever hear him?”

“No.”

“Man's got something to say.” He held the joint out to me.

“I'm good, thanks.” I took a pull off the beer bottle and lit a cigarette, just to be smoking something. “Looks like Xzibit pimped your ride.”

“No doubt. Got four-wheel independent suspension and all the motherfuckin' options. Called the Shockblade, cost me almost five grand. Worth it, too.”

“Business must be good.”

Darnell smiled. “Speaking of, how many you need?”

“Sixty should do me.”

“That's what you said last time, but here you are again.”

“I'll get another scrip from my doctor in a few weeks,” I said.

“All right.” He left the room again and I drank my beer and listened to Saul Williams. Darnell was right; the man had a great deal to say.

I thought about what I was doing here and how it would cost me my detective's license if I got caught. It was a risk I was willing to take. This was my second buy from Darnell, but it probably wouldn't be my last.

Darnell Livingstone came back with a pill bottle and traded it to me for $300. I swallowed the last of my beer, thanked him, and left.

“Be seein' you, Jimbo,” he said as I closed the door behind me. The words landed on me like an accusation.

I drove home to my own apartment for a change. I'd been living at Joan Richmond's condo in recent days, returning home only to do laundry and exercise and pick up fresh clothes. I felt more at home in Joan's place than in my own apartment, but I had to admit that the proximity might have contributed to that loss of objectivity Terry warned me about.

It was time to spend a few nights at home, nightmares or not.