Urban Renewal (29 page)
“Keep it,” Cross said. “Divvy it up with the others. Sharyn’s not going to say anything to Ace. And neither am I.”
“
YOU UNDERSTAND?
”
Cross asked Princess. “All you’re going to be doing is taking your dog for a walk.”
“Sure!”
“Leave the pistol here, Princess.”
“But …”
“You’re just warning them. We’ll be close by, but we don’t want any noise that doesn’t sound normal.”
“It’s the only way,” Rhino assured him.
“Can Tiger come, too?”
“No,” Cross said quickly. “We want them to run, not root them to the ground.”
Tiger actually blushed.
“Okay,” Princess said. “Let’s go.”
“
SO FAR
, empty,” Tracker said, from his position high on a telephone pole. Too high for anyone at ground level to see that the goggles he wore were telescopic in one lens and a normal piece of plastic in the other. Anyone glancing his way would be looking at a repairman, so using the handset wouldn’t draw a second glance, either.
“He’s on the block itself?”
“Roger. Walking slow.”
“Okay, just—”
“Action!” Tracker spoke calmly. “Hold your positions. No danger. He’ll be off the block in less than—”
“We got him,” Cross said.
“
WHAT HAPPENED?
”
“I was just—”
“He’s asking Tracker,” Rhino explained.
“All I could see was three of them. The Akita nailed one in the thigh. If it hit the femoral, he’s going to bleed out right there. If not, he’s going to need a lot of surgery—the dog tore off a big chunk.
“One of them took off faster than Usain Bolt. The third, Princess grabbed his wrist and threw him against the side of a car. He didn’t get up. Probably won’t.”
“They yelled a bunch of stuff, Cross!” Princess immediately
went on the defensive. “And I didn’t do anything. It’s just words, like you always tell me. So me and Sweetie were just walking. But then they ran up on us. They had knives. I thought they were going to hurt Sweetie. So I just grabbed one of them. When I looked for the next one, they were all gone. Then I saw the one that Sweetie bit. It was self-defense! They had those knives and—”
“Fools bought a ticket without checking the schedule.” Buddha chuckled. “Didn’t know the next stop was Dodge City.”
“You did a perfect job, Princess,” Cross reassured him. Turning to the rest of the crew, he said: “If either of those two never make it to the ER, so what? I can’t wait for them to tell the cops that, this time, it was a
dog
they saw wearing the black hood.”
“
LET
’
S PUT
it this way,” McNamara said, taking another sip of his blazing-hot Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. “You’re not exactly on the side of the angels, Cross.”
“Meaning what?”
“Whenever you do the right thing, there’s always something in it for you.”
“What’s in it for me sometimes is doing a favor for a friend.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the hard-faced man other cops knew only by reputation. And that reputation was only magnified each time another story made the rounds.
“Sure” was all Cross said, reminding the cop he’d
known for years that the long-distance round that ended the career of a predatory pedophile a while back had nothing to do with either of them. The predator had traded his intimate knowledge of a kiddie-porn ring for a lightweight sentence in a minimum-security federal prison, complete with plastic surgery and a full set of ID to match. His last kill had been the only child of a young couple whose home McNamara had visited, patiently listening as they sobbed out the pain of their loss. The fact that the grieving father was a cop was the kind of coincidence nobody would ever explain.
“You know, I was talking with the detective who interviewed a couple of really out-there bangers last night,” McNamara said. “Those kids must have huffed a
lot
of paint. What a story: invaders with black hoods over Klan robes. Okay, so maybe some local skinheads were up to no good. But then they really went off the rails: now it’s a
dog
wearing the hood.”
“What’s next, space aliens?”
“
Nothing’s
next. I don’t know how many that gang started with, but every one of them is going back to wherever they came from. As far away from that spot as they can get.”
“I don’t blame them. That rocket the aliens rode in on, next time it might have hit wherever they operate out of.”
“Buddha
does
love fireworks.”
“The Fourth is coming up. And we’re all patriots.”
“What’s up with the new look, Cross? I’ve seen that one before,” he said, pointing to the back of the mercenary’s right hand, where a lightning-bolt slash had replaced the bull’s-eye tattoo. “But that thing on your cheek, how did you
get it to—? What the hell? I could swear I just saw a little blue … something flare just below your eye.”
“Probably just the sunlight—I haven’t changed anything. You getting bored, Mac? I heard you retired from fighting.”
“Just taking a breather.”
“Through what’s left of your nose? You think a torn meniscus, no rotator cuff in your shoulder, and that titanium U-bolt that’s keeping your neck straight, all that’s going to heal by itself?”
“I can still—”
“I know. That’s the problem. You look at the other guys competing and you say, ‘I can beat them with nothing but my left.’ You probably can. But you’re willing to risk spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair for … what? Another gold medal? You’ve retired that trophy, Mac. Nobody’s going to beat your record and you know it.”
“It’s not about records.”
“I know—you just like fighting. And you call some of
my
guys crazy.”
“I was
going
to say, I can still
train
fighters.”
“Any money in that?”
“Probably not. But you never know.”
“Yeah, you do. You got a lot of candidates up for the kind of training you’d put them through?”
“Not yet.”
“The old days
are
the old days, Mac. Remember when you used to spar with Princess?”
“That I’d never do again. He could go five fives straight, twenty-five minutes, no rest, and he’d have plenty left. But you can’t train a guy like him—you’d have to antrain him first. Even with full pads, a helmet, and him wearing those
sixteen-ounce pillow gloves, he almost killed me. I hit him with one of the best ridge hands I’ve ever thrown in my life and he didn’t even flinch. I’m not sure you could stop him with a handgun, never mind
any
kind of strike.”
“I know.”
“He just doesn’t get the concept of rules, Cross.”
“Why would he? You know what kind of fighting he was doing when Rhino pulled him out.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. Put him in some ‘MMA’ fight and he’d be arrested for homicide.”
“There’s no chance of that. Rhino tells him ‘no’ and that ends anything he even
thinks
about doing. Which is a good thing, because his idea of having fun is sometimes … felonious. But he’s not in this for money, either.”
“Neither of them, I know. This ‘Tracker’ you added, he’s off the radar. Must have worked for the government.”
“I did that. So did Buddha.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah. And they shred all the documents after twenty years, just like they say.”
“You know what I mean. The woman—‘Tiger,’ right? If she’s got another name, it doesn’t show up.”
“She’s got—”
“The name she used when she visited you in the MCC? Funny, that name belongs to a baby girl. Stillborn, thirty-some years ago.”
“What are you talking about, Mac? I was never in federal custody.”
“I know. Like I said, you’re not always on the side of the angels.”
Cross felt the burn on his cheekbone, so he bent forward
and lit another cigarette to hide what he’d never convince McNamara was a bit of reflected sunlight. “So why am I here?”
“Because Ace owns a house now.”
“No, he doesn’t. Ace? Come on.”
“You think all cops are stupid? Okay, so his woman, Sharyn,
she
owns a house. Not very far from where a lot of mayhem has been going down the past few weeks.”
Cross hit his cigarette a second time. “Chicago PD’s got a Gang Protection Unit now?”
“You’re a laugh riot, Cross. But if there
was
such a unit, they wouldn’t have a lot of gangs to protect. Not on either side of this house we’ve been talking about, anyway. Men wearing hoods, no way to make an ID. But that dog, if anyone—”
“Who? Animal Control? Where would they look? Besides, we’ve got a lawyer all ready with a SODDI defense.”
“What’s a—?”
“Some Other Dog Did It,” Cross answered, with no change of expression.
“So—what now?”
Cross took a deep drag from his smoke, and snapped it out the side window of McNamara’s white Crown Vic.
“It’s done,” he said.
“That right?”
“That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”
“It’ll do,” McNamara said, starting up his car as a signal to Cross that their conversation was over.
