I still carry that feeling, but vengeance is no savior. I know that now. But I didn’t know it then and—this, I promise you—I wouldn’t know it for a long, long while.
I stumbled back to Goodwin’s and wasn’t surprised to find Slade long gone. I ordered a drink and sat there cursing God for a good half hour. I wanted to spend the night drinking and fuming and feeling sorry for myself and the dead. But I knew Jackson needed me and Slade to solve the Castaneda murders. And I knew Slade—whether he admitted it or not—was worried about me. Slade was a worrier, and I gave him cause to worry. An imperfectly perfect partnership, I thought.
And the Castanedas were dead. As bad as they were, whatever they did, the dead needed me. I used my cell to call Slade from the bar. When he answered, I said, “I was chasing down a lead. Know that before you cuss me out.”
Slade sighed. I knew he was posted up at his desk digging through phone records, or sifting through campaign funding documents, or whatever the hell else a responsible detective did. “I bet you were, Frank. You’re always chasing down something.”
“I talked to Donovan. They knew about Decassin, but he had an alibi for when the Jacobys went missing. Case got taken by our pal Xander Dames, one and the same, and the business dealings between Jacoby and Decassin were known to the detectives, to the feds…Hell, to everybody.”
“Except for me and you,” Slade said.
“We know now. I’m thinking that Dames guy, and his partner, Miss what’s-her-face—”
“Atkins. Tracy Atkins.”
“That’s it. I’m betting the two of them are protecting somebody. Maybe Applewhite. Or someone close to him. That makes sense to me. If Decassin is a big donor to Applewhite’s campaign, if they were gearing up for a DA run, the Jacobys disappearing would kill it.”
I heard Slade grunt and scratch his chin. “That could be. So, the agents quash the inquiry into Jacobys’ business dealings. Which would lead to Applewhite, one way or another, and the man gets elected. Except for one fucking thing, right?”
“Castaneda gets got,” I said. “And then me and you find the Jacoby family.” Neither of us spoke for some time and I watched the television above the bar. One of those mixed martial arts fights was playing and a young kid with tribal tattoos and a soul patch was pummeling a redneck from Tuscaloosa. He punched him hard in the face until the redneck tapped out. The referee jumped in and pulled the winner to the corner of the cage. “And now,” I said, “me and you are caught in the middle of some political shitstorm because if we bring this to Jackson—”
“We’re not bringing shit to Jackson until we use our handcuffs.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you want to do then?”
Slade sighed again and breathed hard through the phone. “I’m about to look into the campaign donations now. Let’s make sure we’ve got that as legit. And then, if it comes out true, I think we have a nice civil conversation with Decassin.”
“And when he tells us to fuck off?”
Slade sucked air through his teeth. “We threaten to go to the press. I know a reporter who could really use a big break. This would be a great fucking story.”
My yellow piss ran in a circle around the porcelain urinal, pooled in the silver drain, and seeped into the pipes below the city. I zipped up, flushed the urinal and moved to the bathroom sink. Goodwin’s was plastered with stickers declaring Chicago sports teams God’s gift to Earth. I pinched a Blackhawks sticker between thumb and forefinger, ripped it off the wall. I crumpled it up and tossed it into the trash can. I had to get back to the office and help Slade dig through campaign donation records, but I drank a few beers to relax. I might not be walking straight when I got to the station, but I’d be breathing easier. I flipped on the hot water, started to soap my hands. When I heard the bathroom door whoosh open, I looked in the mirror. For a moment there was only a shadow there. It lingered for a second, let the door whoosh closed, and moved forward. Probably some drunk taking a piss, I thought. I focused on washing my hands and, for some reason, I couldn’t get Miranda’s face off my mind. I kept seeing those bloated lips from my experience with Santa Muerte. I closed my eyes, squeezed. But I opened them when I felt a presence behind me. You know that feeling—a heaviness behind you, like your shadow gained weight. In the mirror’s reflection I saw a man much shorter than me. He had a bruised face and one side of his head looked plump, like a ripe fruit ballooned with a day’s heat.
It was Johnny. And he was smiling.
I noticed half his teeth were black with blood.
He said, “How do you do, Detective Pinson? Odd to see you two evenings in a row, isn’t it?”
“You the one who sent that fucking video?”
Johnny didn’t answer. Instead, he reached into his coat and pulled out some brass knuckles. He slipped them over his right hand. Before I could turn around or duck away, Johnny’s arm swung upwards and around in a loping-hooking punch that connected with the right side of my face.
Blood flew from my mouth and splattered the mirror. I fell to my knees and couldn’t block or avoid the second punch. Of course, I saw nothing because I was already deep into the recesses of unconsciousness.
Chapter 24
When I stumbled into the station, Slade had his coat off, his sleeves rolled to his biceps, and he was sifting through a stack of papers with yellow highlighting. My head throbbed like a beating heart and I had blood caked on one side of my face—it stuck to my right ear and cheek, seeped from my gums. I drank what blood I could, but some of it dripped over my bottom lip. “Sorry it took me so long,” I said and sank into my chair beside Slade. I stared at the ceiling.
He didn’t look at me right away. That took a few seconds.
“You know, Frank. I’m getting sick of covering for your ass. Jackson was down my throat about where the fuck you were and I had to lie to him. Again. If this shit keeps happening, I swear to you I’m going to—”
“I got tied up, Skinny.”
He dropped the sheaf of papers in his hand, swiveled in his chair. “Oh, shit. What the fuck happened to you, Frank?”
Slade yanked at my chin before I flinched.
I groaned.
“You need a paramedic, Frank.”
“Fuck that, Skinny. I’m fine. Just give me an aspirin or three.” I pulled away from him. My chair rolled back into the empty office’s center. “Does anybody else work cases in this fucked up city? Where is everybody?”
Slade opened a drawer in his desk and started digging through it. He came out with a bottle of pills and tossed it to me. “Jackson and everybody else went up to the casino to watch the fight.”
I twisted the pill bottle’s top, yanked it off. I poured a handful of the white pills into my mouth, crunched them into powder. “And they’re clocked in? What the fuck?”
“Because you’re such a fucking saint?” Slade looked at me without pity. “Way I see it, I’m the only one around here earning my pay. Maybe I should take that shit to the press. I’m wondering if you’re going to give me your story, Frank.” He pointed at my face.
“After I got back to Goodwin’s, I got clocked in the bathroom.”
“What for, Frank?”
“The fuck if I know. I didn’t even see the guy.”
Slade sat there with calm, sad eyes. He crossed his arms. “Fine, Frank. Whatever you say. How about before that? You ran off somewhere, right? Or was that just me lost in my own fucking time warp? And don’t treat me like a rookie, Frank. I’m really sick of covering—”
“I found a place where they worship the Death Saint. I’m on the street talking to Donovan and I see a kid walk by with that same pendant around his neck, the one Chato wore. I stopped him and asked about it.” I recounted following Ricky downtown and how he showed me the shrine, but I left out the part about praying with him and, most important, all the weird shit about me crying and seeing Miranda’s face. I figured Slade didn’t need to know that.
&nb
sp; Nobody did but me. It was personal.
“You get anything good from your little pilgrimage?”
If you only knew, I thought. But instead I said, “Met a lady who runs the joint. Word’s already out about the Castaneda brothers taking the long goodbye. But not much more than that. I think Decassin’s our big break. We need to chat with the guy.”
Slade turned back to the papers on his desk and lifted one. “I highlighted all the donations to Applewhite’s campaign that didn’t come from individuals or easily identifiable organizations. There’s lots of shit that looks weird, but the bigger deal is this.” Slade tapped his keyboard and the computer screen lit up. A simple website with a telling title: “Political Action Committee to Elect Ronald Applewhite.” The logo was the acronym—PACERA—in red, white, and blue block letters. “Applewhite,” Slade said, “has himself a PAC. And they’ve done a decent job. By that I mean they’ve done one hell of a job on the money front.”
“You’re telling me Decassin runs the PAC?”
Slade shrugged and crossed his arms again. He squinted at me in the way people with graduate degrees often squint at fat men. “No telling who really runs the PAC, but I’d bet my last paycheck it was Decassin.” He smirked and turned his head to study the computer screen. “Politics, man—it always gets somebody killed.”
Slade would know. I nodded and leaned my head to one side. My cheek felt swollen and the right side of my mouth ached. It was getting late and I began to think that a few hours’ sleep would do me well. Ice pack, bourbon, and a few sleeping pills—all those goodies called my name. But I knew Slade far too well. “Let me guess,” I said, “you want to run out and surprise Decassin tonight. See how well he thinks in his pajama bottoms.”
“Shit,” Slade said, “you and me both know a murder investigation never stops.”
I rolled my eyes. Again, my fucking partner was right. I took daily inventory: First, there was a brutality allegation caught on camera. Second, we had the other Castaneda body. We had the cowboy snapping my picture at the crime scene. We had QB putting us on Decassin, and maybe Applewhite. And we had Donovan’s information coupled with the political action committee. I put the Santa Muerte shrine and my spiritual experience—should I call it that?—in another list altogether. Maybe it was on the same list with Johnny clobbering me over at Goodwin’s. Fuck it, I thought, might as well visit Decassin and complete the order. I said, “It’s up north, right? You can drive.”
“We need to wash that blood off your face first. I’ll drive, but while I do, you’re going to come clean. I want you to tell me who took brass knuckles to your head. And why.”
“It’s personal, Skinny.”
“Good,” he said. “That means you’re fucking it up, and you need my help.”
Fucking lawyers, I thought. They think they’re so goddamn righteous.
Chapter 25
On the drive north, I told Skinny about the video of me pummeling Johnny.
He put my new injuries together with that story and said, “So, you somehow went and made a man of the cloth your number one enemy.” The car’s engine groaned as Slade powered into the fast lane. “Went and got yourself a starring role in a viral video. That’s smart, Frank.”
“I don’t think I’d call him a man of the cloth.”
Slade tilted his head from one shoulder to the other. “Well, he works at a church, but the man meets you and now he’s cracking skulls with brass knuckles. What do you say to that, Frank? Now me and Jackson are up to our asses in your shit. Same as always.”
“You don’t know everything, Skinny.”
Slade frowned at me, swung his pesky peepers back to the dark highway. He shifted lanes, crossed to an exit. As he applied the brakes, he said, “That’s the biggest problem here, partner. We keep walking around, acting like we’re in this thing together. Meantime, you got some shit I need to know about. And it’s some real shit, too. The kind that can get me hurt and—”
“You weren’t there.”
“But I could have been,” Slade said. “And I’ll be fucked sideways if I’m going to let some youth pastor get the drop on my partner. And that’s what I mean when I say that you—”
“Miranda slept with the man,” I said. “It happened a few weeks before she…” I paused and tasted the words on my tongue. Like swishing year-old coffee in my mouth. “Before she jumped. Before she killed herself.”
The way Slade’s shoulders slumped, I felt bad for telling him. There are personal things grown men shouldn’t discuss. And for me to tell Slade, after all the shit I’ve dealt with, and with how he remembered Miranda, that she cheated on me—I knew it meant a quiet rage inside him.
There was a stop sign where the exit ramp met the road to Decassin’s neighborhood and Slade stopped the car. He squeezed the steering wheel for a minute, a half-assed attempt to control himself. He looked both ways down the empty road, but didn’t make the right hand turn the voice coming from his cell insisted he make. He shook his head in violent denial. “You can’t fucking tell me that Miranda cheated on you, Frank. There’s no way you can tell me that.”
“I just did tell you that, Skinny. Didn’t want to, but I did.”
“That woman. She…” He trailed off, whistled a low tone.
“Miranda was a fucking saint,” I said.
“God, I loved her,” he said.
“Yeah, me too. You probably shouldn’t blame Miranda. I mean, hell, you know how much I work. And it’s not like I made much effort to keep shit together. Any effort. None at all.” I cleared my throat and fought back some sobs. The pain in my head flared now and then, like a drone soaring back and forth overhead. “I’m a bad husband. Or, shit, I was a bad husband.”
“I’ll tell you what, Frank. Some shit I do not understand.”
He made the right turn and got the car up to the forty-five limit. The road weaved through tall stands of mesquite trees and, farther on, a surprising wealth of pines. We stopped after about two miles, when the road ran into a guarded entrance, and Slade punched off his GPS application. The cell disappeared into his coat. We were about ten feet in front of the guardhouse. “I wish you would have told me, Frank. I’m no shrink, but it’s not like—”
“It’s one of those things. It’s embarrassing. For me it is.”
Slade didn’t respond. He pulled next to the guardhouse and rolled down his window. A chubby teen in khaki pants and a wrinkled beige polo shirt opened a door and leaned into the window. When I saw his face, I realized the chubby guard wasn’t a teenager, but more likely in his mid-twenties. He had the vague facial expressions of a failed actor, and a nose that belonged in a paper bag.
I said, “We want to see Regis Decassin.”
The chubby guard said, “Did Mr. Decassin call ahead about you?”
Slade and me produced our badges at the same time. The shields glinted in the orange-ish light cast by the guardhouse lamppost. “We’re detectives,” I said, “and we just need to chat with Mr. Decassin. I appreciate how thorough you are, but we’re just going to be—”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the president of these United States. Truth is, I’m supposed to vet everyone who comes in here. No exceptions. They got me on camera,” the guard tilted his head behind our car, “and I can get fired if I don’t follow procedure.”
I thought I smelled potato chips and ranch dip on the guard’s breath. Slade was leaning back in his seat, as if trying to avoid a bee buzzing near his chin. He smelled it too.
“Look, son—”
“I’m not your son,” the guard said rolling his eyes.
“That’s true,” I said, “but you’re sure as shit somebody’s son. And if you don’t open that fucking gate, you’re going to be somebody’s bitch.” It felt good to let my anger run out of me. I felt like an ice cube thawing on a warm sidewalk. “I wonder if you know how much shit I can shovel onto a fat rent-a-cop in too short khakis?”
The guard sm
irked and said, “I don’t suppose you know the password, do you?”
“Open sesame?” Slade grinned at his own joke.
The guard backed away from the car. “Let me phone Mr. Decassin. I’ll let you know, sirs.”
“Detectives,” I said.
The guard entered his station and, through the tinted windows, I saw him pick up a phone and dial a number. I looked at Slade and couldn’t contain my disappointment. “Open sesame? That’s all you got for an opening like that?”
“I didn’t think it was too bad. Doesn’t compare to ‘I’m going to make you somebody’s bitch.’”
“A tad cliché, huh?”
Slade shrugged. “You’re getting fed up with all the run around in this case. Shit, in both these cases. I can see that and I respect it. All I want is for you to keep it legal, know what I mean?”
I did know what Slade meant, but I didn’t give two fat shits. I had a headache. Some chubby rent-a-cop was giving me backtalk, and I wanted a break in the two murders I needed to solve by Monday. “Yeah, Slade,” I said. “I get it—no funny stuff around Detective Slade Ryerson. Not on his watch. I’m just wondering, with all your fucking wisdom and riches, what the hell we’re going to do about the video that shows me punching a man of the cloth into dark submission?”
Slowly, the gate swung upward and cleared our path.
Slade shifted the car into drive, slid forward while his window closed on the approaching guard. As we passed through the open gate, Slade turned to me and said, “I don’t know, Frank. Might be you have to face a fact: Sometimes you can be a real asshole.”
To Bring My Shadow Page 12
