I looked at my plate. The chicken was steaming, the potato too. Solid food would do me good. I reached for the ice bucket, opened a beer, and drank.
“He’s an old friend,” I said. “From long ago.”
He nodded like he knew it. “It might be time to make new friends.”
I cut a bite of chicken, put it in my mouth. It was hot, the marinated skin crispy. I felt almost grateful. “That’s what he said.”
Monroe smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t like dirt. I’m dirty. His words.”
“Some friend,” Raj said.
Monroe looked thoughtful. “The first twenty-four hours after the Southshore mess, we expected shit to fly. All you had to do was identify us and there’d be a late-night knock at the door and that would be that. I didn’t sleep for expecting it.”
Raj and Finley nodded. They hadn’t been at the Southshore site but they seemed to have gone sleepless too.
Monroe said, “Then twenty-four hours became forty-eight, and we were wondering when everything was going to come down. Then forty-eight became seventy-two, and we started wondering if you’d talked and if you hadn’t why not.” He looked me in the eyes. “No reason you shouldn’t talk. You’re in deep, and talking’s the only way you’re getting out. But we listen around the department and we read the newspaper, and, holy fuck, it looks like you’re not talking.” He leaned toward me. “So, you know what our question is. Why not?”
Because no one asked me to, I thought. They’d left me alone in the cell. Anyway, as Bill Gubman had told me, at least a few people in the department already knew who had been at the Southshore site. “They threw me in jail and I don’t like jail,” I said. “I saw no reason to help.”
“Even if it meant you stayed up to your chin in shit?”
“Even then.”
He sat back. “And what did you say to Gubman today?”
“Before or after he called me dirty?”
“Both.”
“Before, I shook his hand and said I was glad to see him. After, I told him to fuck off.”
Raj and Peter Finley laughed at that. Bob Monroe just nodded.
Then we ate. I wanted to refuse the food, but I didn’t.
The men ragged each other about the women they were dating. They ragged about the evening supervisor on the vice squad. They ragged about the Bears, who’d lost again.
They could have been guys anywhere on a night out, catching up, bullshitting.
Then Monroe leaned back from his plate and said to me, “You know how many gang members there are in Chicago?”
I shook my head no.
“National Youth Gang Survey says almost seventy thousand.”
Raj said, “Like a little island nation. Third world.”
Monroe nodded. “But you know, even third-world island nations have economies. Think of what you could do if you could mobilize seventy thousand.”
I looked at him hard. “What could you do?”
“First of all, there’s forty-two gangs in the city, maybe a couple more. But just four of them are really big—the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, the Maniac Latin Disciples, the Latin Kings, and the Vice Lords. Between the four of them, you’ve got the majority of the gang members—let’s say, between thirty-five and forty thousand. So, what would it look like if we ignored the other thirty-eight gangs and gave the big four some structure and rules?”
Again, I said, “What?”
“It would look like business. Like a well-organized business. Right now, the guys on the street know their own crews but they don’t know the guys in the other crews and they don’t know the guys on top. Same thing from the top down—they don’t know the guys on the street. See what I’m getting at?”
“No. Seems to me that the way things are keeps them safe. The bottom guys can’t inform on the top.”
Monroe shook his head. “They could be safer. They need organization. They need structure. They need protection. That’s where we come in.”
“At what cost to them?”
Like a salesman, he said, “A very low price—a very good deal for what they get in return. Let’s say we can’t reach all the gang members in the city. Let’s say that even by working with the leaders we can reach only a third of them—twenty-five thousand. Let’s say each of those twenty-five thousand brings in just a little bit each day, a buck or two even—say, ten bucks a week. That’s two hundred fifty thousand dollars a week. Or let’s be conservative. Three out of five of the gangbangers we reach forget to show up with their ten bucks. We’re down to a hundred thousand a week.”
Peter Finley said, “You can do a hell of a lot on a hundred thousand a week.”
Monroe nodded. “A hell of a lot.”
I said, “And what do they get in return?”
Monroe said, “They get left alone a lot of the time. We protect anyone whose name is on the list, and we arrest anyone whose isn’t. So we take out the competition. Cheap price for that.”
I took my last bite of chicken and pushed my chair back like Monroe’s. “They’ll never pay.”
“Yes they will, because the price keeps getting higher if they don’t.”
I shook my head. “My guess is, in less than a week, one of the gang members would inform on you.”
Monroe smiled. “It works already on a small scale. The key is to deal only with the leaders. They’ve got as much to lose as anyone and they’re a hell of a lot smarter than you’d think.”
I eyed the remaining piece of chicken, a wing. “What’s this got to do with me?”
Monroe stabbed the wing, lifted it to his plate. “We need a guy who knows his way around the city and can pull a trigger if he needs to. Someone who’s fearless enough to go out and collect money when it’s slow coming in. We figure that a guy who’s willing to shoot a man in a uniform might be good at this kind of work. You interested?”
Fearless? Me? “I want to talk to Earl Johnson.”
His head snapped back at that. “What do you know about Earl?”
“Probably a hell of a lot more than you want me to know,” I said. “Anyway, I know he’s the one who makes the decisions.”
He smiled again, and I hoped I’d made him think that I’d been looking into the group before the night at Southshore. “He’s not here now. I’m making the offer.”
I said, “How much of that hundred thousand a week do I get?”
Monroe laughed. “There’s no hundred thousand. Not yet. That’s what we’re working toward.”
“How much?” I said.
“An equal share of anything you’re involved in.”
I gestured at the cheap furniture. “No offense, but you’re not exactly a poster boy for the riches you imply you’re getting.”
Monroe smiled like he was talking to someone of limited imagination. “I’ve got four years before mandatory retirement. Same thing for some of the other guys, give or take a couple years. Why would I do anything to call attention to myself? You know where I’m going in four years? Arizona—a little town outside Flagstaff. I’ve got the piece of property and I’ve got the architect plans. Slate floors. Redwood beams in all the rooms. Swimming pool. The works.”
It sounded like his version of my little fishing village, but maybe he would have the money to buy the dream. I looked at Finley. I put him around thirty-five, more than twenty-five years away from Monroe’s dream. “You already bankrolling your retirement too?”
He tilted his head and drained the last of a Heineken. “I’m not waiting for mandatory. I’m having fun along the way.”
“Yeah?”
He exchanged glances with Raj.
“You want to see?”
I don’t know if I nodded but the other three pushed their chairs back from the table.
“Let’s go,” said Monroe.
EIGHT
WE DROVE NORTH ON Michigan Avenue, Finley at the wheel, Monroe beside him, Raj in the back with me. The night was cold and windy. Shop windows glittered u
nder the streetlights—jewelry stores, a high-end toy store, restaurants. When Michigan ended, we continued up the lakefront to a high-rise facing Oak Street Beach. Finley turned across the oncoming lane, drove the SUV onto the circular driveway in front of the building, and slowed to a stop.
A valet, who’d been standing under a heat lamp outside the building, jogged to the car and opened the doors. “Good evening, Mr. Monroe,” he said, then greeted Raj and Finley by name. He nodded to me.
The big glass doors had brass handles and a doorman in gloves to use them. He also greeted Monroe, Finley, and Raj by name.
A large oriental rug covered most of the lobby floor. Leather sofas and easy chairs were arranged in a circle around a large dark-wood table. On the center of the table stood a tall vase with flowers and ferns fountaining out of the top. A crystal chandelier hung over the table. The room looked like a fine place to wait for a limousine.
A uniformed elevator operator stood by the elevator. He wished us a good evening. He didn’t need to ask where to take us.
At the top floor, the elevator door opened to a lounge lighted by blue-tinted bulbs. A red neon sign hanging on the facing wall said THE SPA CLUB. About fifteen tables were scattered around the room, a third of them occupied, mostly by men who were drinking from highball glasses or eating small dinners off small plates. The waitresses wore high heels, short khaki skirts, and khaki halter tops like strippers who’d shopped at L.L.Bean. Behind a bar, two men in khaki safari shirts that hung tight over muscled bodies were making drinks in blenders.
“What is this place?” I said.
Monroe put a large hand on my shoulder and smiled. “It’s where we hang out until we move to Arizona.”
Raj said, “The mayor’s been here.”
Finley said, “Not the mayor himself. His chief assistant.”
Raj nodded. “One of his chief assistants. And a lot of other guys you’d recognize.”
Monroe said, “We run it. It’s ours, you understand?”
A hostess approached, greeted us, and gave Finley a kiss on the cheek. Then Finley and Monroe left us, and the hostess led Raj and me to a table in the back of the room.
She asked us what we wanted to drink.
“Heineken,” Raj said.
I said, “Bourbon.”
Raj tilted his head and admired her as she walked away.
“What are we doing here?” I said.
He eyed me. “You’ve got a better place to be?” He leaned in. “You said you want to talk to Johnson. Johnson wants to talk to you too.”
“Okay,” I said, then asked again, “What is this place?”
He kept his face close to mine. “Private club.”
“Uh-huh, I figured that much.”
He glanced around the room at the waitstaff. “See anyone you like? You can have her.” With his eyes on me again, he added, “Or him, if that’s what you’re into. We’re equal opportunity. Or if you want, you can bring in a friend of your own and have a party with one of our staff. You can have whatever you dream of.”
“You don’t want to know my dreams.”
Raj smiled and tipped his head toward a man and a woman at a nearby table. “See them?”
The man was tall and thin and had black hair and the pale, glistening, whiskerless facial skin that you sometimes see on burn victims. The woman was tall and thin too, flat-chested, with wheat-colored hair braided in pigtails. She had a bruise on her left cheek.
“He gave her the bruise,” Raj said. “They’re a perfect couple. He likes to hit her. She likes to get hit.”
He glanced at a table of four men in their young thirties. Three had steak salads in front of them, one a piece of broiled fish. They wore blue jeans and shirts stretched tight over their biceps. “Wannabes,” Raj said.
He nodded toward another couple.
She had black kinky hair that she wore tied back and eyes so weirdly intense you could see their blue across the room. He wore black pants and a black silk T-shirt. His gray hair was short, his beard at a couple days’ stubble. He was no more than five foot four.
Raj said, “He’s the most dangerous man in the place.”
The woman kept her eyes on the short man when he spoke to her but when he looked down at his asparagus she gazed at the bartender, at me, at Raj.
Raj smiled at her.
She quickly turned away.
Raj said, “When a woman hangs out with a guy like him, she’s always watching for her next move in case she needs out fast. I’ve seen it.”
I started to feel sick the way you do when a whiskey drunk runs low, but I’d drunk plenty to keep going for another hour or two. I figured I was feeling the city and its rotting bodies, the ones rotting on the outside and the ones that looked like a hundred thousand dollars of plastic surgery on the outside but you knew the inside had gone bad.
Still, when a waitress brought our drinks, I tipped my glass back and downed the drink. It was top-shelf stuff, higher than I usually reached.
Across the room, a door opened behind the hostess station, and a man came out. He was wearing faded jeans and a heavy white cotton shirt. He moved with the ease of a man who owned everything around him. I hadn’t seen Earl Johnson in six or seven years but had no trouble recognizing him. He looked the same as when we went through the academy together in the 1980s. Some guys get lucky that way naturally. Some work hard at the weights, diets, and the pharmacy to stay lucky. I figured he was a natural.
The woman with the black kinky hair and intense eyes watched him as he crossed to our table, and she didn’t turn away when he flashed her a smile.
He flashed me the smile too as he sat at the table. “Joe,” he said with the warmth of an old friend. “It’s been a long time. Life treating you well?”
I turned to Raj and said, “The last time I saw Earl, I was still in the department but barely. Then I lost the job, cleaned myself up, got married and divorced, played dad to my nephew, and opened a detective business that’s kept my head above water most of the time. Now I’ve shot one of his friends and I’m drunk on his whiskey and mine. He knows damn well how life’s treating me.” Then I looked up at Johnson and said, “Couldn’t be better,” I said. “You?”
His smile held. “Can’t complain. I’m keeping busy.”
A waitress brought him a glass with a piece of lime and something clear in it. He hugged her around the waist. She gave him a smile and he let her go.
“You like this place?” he said.
I shrugged. “For an overpriced whorehouse, sure.”
He ignored that. “My friends and I have worked hard to get where we are.” The warmth dropped from his voice. “We’re not going to let someone like you come in and fuck things up. You understand that, right?”
“I understand what you are.”
He looked at me, patient. “You know, I’m a slow but steady learner. You and the other guys were way ahead of me in the academy. Everyone expected great things from you. Not me. I was a screwball. I’m sure you remember that. But I got through and I kept learning afterward. And now here I am, and there you are. Ironic, right?”
“I guess so.”
He stared hard at me. “Kind of sad too.”
“I suppose so. An honest jerk like me sitting at the table of an evil jerk like you—you’d think there’s no justice.”
He hit the table with his fist. The others in the lounge looked at him for a moment, then went back to their conversations. He spoke quietly. “Why did you meet with Bill Gubman this afternoon?”
“I already told your friends. Ask them.” I pointed my thumb at Raj. “Ask him.”
“I’m asking you.”
I said, “Bill and I go back as far as you and I do. But I respect and like him.”
“What did you tell him?”
I looked Johnson in the eyes and said, “I gave it all to him. I named you and Raj and the others. I gave him the dates and locations where you’ve boosted copper and appliances. I told him you’re runnin
g prostitutes and said where. I told him you’ve got plans to poke your sticky fingers into all the corners of the city. What do you think I told him?”
Johnson sighed. “Did you give him any of our names?”
“If I told Gubman an eighth of what I know about you, you would be in jail, not sitting in your fancy club pinching your waitresses. No, I didn’t give him your names.”
Johnson said, “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I said and kept spinning the story. “I guess I’m tired of being fucked over.”
Johnson rubbed his fingers on his chin, eyed me. “I don’t trust you,” he said.
“Then you did learn something in all those years since the academy.”
Johnson shook his head and laughed liked he figured I was an idiot. Then he stood. “I’m watching you.”
I shrugged and lied again. “An eighth of what I know could bring you down.”
He shrugged too. “Just as long as it doesn’t.” He crossed the room and disappeared back through the door he’d come out of.
Raj whistled low. “Earl’s a dangerous guy to play with.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but he knows I can outplay him.”
Raj laughed like he figured the whiskey had me thinking I was tougher than I was but he leaned in and said, “Okay, my honest man, are you going to work with us?”
“I don’t think Johnson would like that.”
Raj grinned. “He left the table without shooting you. And he said he’s keeping an eye on you. That’s as good as a job offer.”
“I don’t work well with others,” I said.
“Finley’s worked out the numbers. He figures each of us should clear ten thousand a month. That’s for starters.”
I stared at him.
He said, “Are you expecting a paycheck from somewhere else?”
I shrugged. “Okay,” I said.
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “I’m in.”
* * *
RAJ SHOWED ME AROUND the club. Beyond the lounge, it was like an upscale exercise club, with carpeted floors, painted steel railings, and the smell of chlorine, but no exercise equipment.
A hallway took us to a lobby where men and women relaxed on sofas or stood talking, most of the women in the khaki uniforms. The far wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Lake Shore Drive, across the beach, and to the lake.
A Bad Night's Sleep Page 5
