Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  They downed the shots and sat in silence a while longer.

  “So what now?” Ed asked. “We go back to Arturo. We tell him there’s something going on with the rats. Some kind of disease. Shit. I can see the look on his face right now.”

  “No,” Sam said. “We call the TV stations. Tell them what’s going on. Get some footage of those dead rats.”

  “And you think they care about dead rats?” Ed asked.

  “Shit. They don’t care about folks killing each other, as long as it stays on the South or West sides. What makes you think they gonna care about dead rats?”

  “We need to pray to the good Lord for some guidance,” Qween said.

  Ed and Sam pretended they hadn’t heard her suggestion.

  Qween said, with a little more conviction, “I said, we need to pray.”

  “If that helps,” Sam said, “go on ahead and pray.”

  “What’s your religion, Mr. Sam Johnson?” Qween asked.

  “I don’t think that has any bearing on this case,” Sam said.

  “I think it has a whole lot to do with this case,” Qween said. “Answer the question. If you want any more help from me, answer the question.”

  Sam took his second shot. “Okay. My folks were Jewish. I grew up in Skokie. Reform, I guess you’d say.”

  “Be straight. You Jews, you don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  “Not in the way you believe, no.”

  “Okay, then. I ain’t hold that against you.”

  “Good to hear it.”

  “But you ain’t got any bearing on this, so shut the fuck up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Edward Jones. What’s your story? Don’t break my heart. Tell me you’re a Baptist from Down South. Please, boy. Please.”

  “Ma’am. Don’t take this personally.” Ed picked up his shot glass and held it, waiting until Qween held hers and they clinked the glass together. “I don’t believe in God.” He knocked his shot back. “Sorry. Your Bible, it’s just myths and legends. No different from any other culture on Earth.”

  She surprised them and gave Ed a grin that displayed how few teeth she had left. “Don’t you worry. Jesus Christ doesn’t judge. He understands.” Qween knocked back the Jameson, slammed the shot glass upside down on the wood. “You need to get yourself to church. Make sure it’s Baptist. None of that Pentecostal foolishness. Shit, when I want to speak in tongues, I just drink Sambuca. Now, excuse me.” She wriggled her bulk out of the booth. “All this quality whiskey goes right through me. I expect at least three more on the table when I get back.”

  When his cell phone rang, Lee was grateful for the interruption. He’d been sitting in a back room at a shithole of an Italian restaurant on the Near North Side and his throat hurt from all the laughing he was having to fake at all the stupid jokes. They kept shoving sausage and pasta on his plate; it wasn’t like he could refuse to eat, so training tomorrow was going to be brutal. And it didn’t help that he was sweating his balls off. Christ, what was it about these old fucking goombah types that they needed to keep the heat going in August?

  Still, he was careful. The last goddamn thing he needed was for one of them to suspect he wasn’t being sincere when he laughed. They’d turn on him like starving dogs. Forget his career. He’d be lucky not to end up as another “suicide” in the river.

  Even though some of the older men frowned when his phone went off, he checked the number, saw that it was his uncle, and apologized profusely, saying, “It’s Uncle Phil.” The old men understood the importance of family, more specifically, the importance of getting a call from an elder in the business. Lee excused himself and slipped into the alley.

  “What the fuck, Phil? These guys, they take it personally if you answer a phone in their presence.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t have called, but we got bigger problems. You see the news? Hear about the rat loose in City Hall?”

  “If this is your idea of an emergency, then I’m gonna have these guys cut your nuts off.”

  “Watch your mouth and listen close. Somebody’s reaching out to you, and they’ve got enough juice to know to contact me first.”

  “So what?”

  “Somebody from the CDC wants the names of the two employees that were in charge of catching the rat.”

  Lee’s mind spun. “What the . . . why the fuck?”

  “I have no idea. Only something big, bigger than us, is here, and they are serious.

  “You need to find out who the fuck was downtown today and give them up quick. These people, they aren’t fucking around. They got a hard-on for this rat and I don’t want to know why.”

  CHAPTER 27

  12:09 AM

  August 12

  The owner kicked the detectives and the homeless woman out when closing time rolled around. Qween took her cart and disappeared in the shuddering roar and squealing sparks from an overhead El train. Ed and Sam barely noticed.

  Ed said he’d walk home and Sam hailed a cab. Vague promises were made to follow up with Qween the next day, but they both knew it was bullshit. Sam fell into the cab and promptly fell asleep.

  Ed told the cabbie Sam’s address and knocked on the hood. He headed east, crossing Wacker, then the Chicago River. He lived in a condo on Clinton that overlooked the diesel-choked Metra and Amtrak train yard, the only reason he could afford the mortgage.

  His girlfriend, Carolina, had been working the early-morning shift at a pancake place up on Belmont while Ed dropped her son off at his middle school. She would pick him up in the afternoon, spend time with him in evening, and if Ed was on duty, her mother would take over while Carolina went to law school at night. Ed whispered good night and gave Grandma a peck on the cheek and slap on her ass as the grinning woman left.

  His wife had died years earlier and his own children were grown with families of their own, scattered out around the suburbs. He grabbed a beer from the fridge and went to sit on the patio. At night, the train yard wasn’t so bad. Only a couple of trains rolled by every half hour. He sat back, trying to focus on the reflections of the lights on the oily surface of the Chicago River—a dizzying array of spectral rainbows—and hoping he wouldn’t have any dreams about the subway tunnels, he fell asleep.

  The cabbie woke Sam up and said, “Eighteen-fifty, please.”

  Sam gave the guy a twenty and crawled out. He stood on the sidewalk and realized he didn’t want to go inside and sit in the darkness and listen to the drip in the sink, the whine from the air-conditioning unit in the bedroom window, and nothing else. Around three, the dripping would be overshadowed by the muffled industrial noises from the dry-cleaning business downstairs.

  He checked the time as the cab left. He knew of a liquor store about six or seven blocks away and set off. The night was cooling off and the air smelled decent. After walking a block, he felt good. The nap in the cab had really paid off. It was the first real sleep he’d had in a week, at least. He bought a pint of vodka, walked another half of a block, and ascended the Western Brown Line station. He sat in the shadows and cracked his bottle, drank deeply.

  After a while, the next inbound El came along, so he stowed the bottle and boarded. He got off at Belmont and watched the traffic for a while. He took a few more pulls from the bottle. The next southbound train was nearly empty. In his car, there was only a Latino couple whispering and giggling and an older Asian guy trying not to fall asleep. Sam took a seat in the back. No one else got on at Fullerton.

  Just past Armitage, the train descended into the tunnels under Chicago.

  Sam pulled out the bottle and spent the night riding the subway, watching his reflection bounce and flicker against the rushing darkness beyond the window, wondering how many dead rats were out there.

  CHAPTER 28

  8:15 AM

  August 12

  The maintenance man in charge of the day shift found Herman curled up under his desk. He frowned. This was not like Herman. As long as he’d known the man, Herman
had never slept through the night on the job. He knew for a fact that Herman sometimes took a nap, but only after he had finished his work, and needed rest before heading off to drive a cab. The day shift man didn’t give a damn if Herman slept or not as long as the work was done, but he’d found the floor buffer in the middle of the hallway.

  “Herman, Herman.” He shook Herman’s shoulder. “You can’t sleep here, man. Come on.”

  Herman jolted awake and stared around, blinking rapidly, as if he didn’t know where he was. He tried to swallow. His eyes finally focused on the day shift man. He croaked out a question.

  The day shift man didn’t understand him. “I don’t know what the problem is, man, but you’d better get up and finish the floor before anybody else gets in, you know?” He held out his hand.

  Herman smacked it away and scrambled out from under the desk. He made a sound halfway between a whimper and a deep whine, and backed away from the other man.

  “Herman, you okay? You want me to call somebody? A doctor, maybe?”

  Herman spun and shuffled quickly down the corridor, disappearing into the shadows.

  He raced up a utility staircase and burst into a corridor padded with thick carpet and bright fluorescent lights that burned his eyes. He stumbled along, hand slapping at door handles. They were all locked. He finally found a supply closet and fell inside. He crawled under the shelves to a dark corner and pressed his face into it, trying to quell the sobs threatening to erupt. The pain in his head was excruciating. The pain obliterated everything else, his job, his appearance, any rational thought. He couldn’t even follow a logical sequence of ideas to try and understand what was wrong with him. He scraped his fingernails against the rough paint and pushed his forehead even harder into the corner.

  Gradually, a new sensation crept up underneath the pain. Something bubbled mischievously under his skin. For the briefest moment, he almost felt relief, as this new feeling tipped the balance and he found that he could focus on something other than the agony spiking through his head.

  But the sweet reprieve was gone in the time it took to exhale.

  And then he wished he could have the pain back.

  A sinister itch crawled up his back, starting just under his buttocks and snaking its way along his spine. He’d never felt anything like it before. It was maddening, as if a spider with feathers for legs was gently pulling itself along the inside of his skin.

  He twisted his right arm back and frantically clawed at the whispering, teasing irritation. The second his fingers dragged the fabric of his shirt across the bare skin, disturbing the thick hair on his back, the itch got a thousand times worse. He heard something, something indistinct from a great distance, and didn’t realize it was his own moan of despair.

  He ripped his shirt over his head and dropped it. Twisting, he tried to reach the bad spots, his thick, stubby fingers failing to provide any relief. The blunt fingernails finally tore the surface of skin, and blood trickled down his back.

  It made the itch worse.

  He was openly sobbing now, slapping, clawing, raking his nails across the skin on his back as far as he could stretch. The itch, though, kept dancing away, waiting mockingly just out of reach. He struggled to his feet, pawing through the shelves for something, anything that he could use to scratch.

  His fingers closed over a pair of industrial scissors with foot-long shears.

  Without hesitation, he shoved the sharp points up into the spot between his shoulder blades. He rubbed them vigorously back and forth. A curious burning relief slowly spread along his spine and he closed his eyes. His breathing sounded unnaturally loud in the cramped closet.

  The itching under his buttocks grew worse. He shifted his grip on the scissors, gripping them halfway up the shears. He stabbed the back of his right thigh, and raked the points from side to side. The blades tore through his pants and flesh like a fork sinking through the skin that forms on pudding as it cools. He paid no attention to blood seeping down the back of his legs, staining the khaki fabric a dark red.

  The closet door opened.

  A woman stood there. She gave a startled gasp at finding someone inside. She’d been working as an office administrator for over five years, and she’d never, ever been shocked like this at work before. She blushed and started to apologize. Then she saw the look in Herman’s eyes. And when she saw the blood, she started screaming.

  The scream pierced the insanity of itching, driving a bolt of fear directly into his skull, right between his eyes. The itching and pain from the headache cracked and fell away, leaving nothing but raw, naked panic. Adrenaline exploded throughout his system, and he lashed out with the scissors.

  The two tips, spread slightly apart about an inch, like the jaws of a bored, not very hungry shark, sank into her side between the lower ribs, just under her left breast. Her scream caught and broke apart sharply as she struggled for another breath.

  Herman yanked the tips of the scissors out, reversed his grip, curling his fingers through the round holes of the handles.

  The woman found another breath as she stumbled backwards into a cubicle wall, and produced an even louder scream. Herman stayed close, raised his arm, and brought the scissors down across her face. The points slid through the plump tissue of her cheek, scraped along her jawbone, until finally plunging into the soft skin above her collarbone. He ripped them out and drove the blades into her skull again. This time, the shears sank four inches into her left eye, popping it like a squashed grape.

  She kept screaming.

  He did not relent, even as she fell to the floor. Again and again, he drove the scissors into her eyes. Her mouth. When she finally stopped making noise, her face looked like she’d fallen headfirst into a wood chipper.

  He left her twitching in the hall and ran.

  Herman burst out of the spinning doors into the August heat, full of sticky air and exhaust fumes. He stumbled, falling to his knees on the sidewalk in the midst of a throng of early-morning commuters. He had no comprehension that he was shirtless and covered in blood. Nothing existed for him except the liquid fear that was quickly hardening along his nerve endings into teeth clenching hate.

  The roar from a northbound Orange Line train grew louder as it passed, clattering along above Wells a block away. Herman clapped his hands to his ears and howled.

  Most everyone approaching stopped once they saw all the blood. Except for one businessman, striding purposefully down the sidewalk, yammering into a cell phone. He wasn’t paying attention and was nearly on top of Herman before he noticed anything. All he saw, though, was a shirtless man, which undoubtedly meant he was inebriated, rocking back and forth, hands on his head for some reason.

  “Hang on, Bob. There’s some kind of moron—”

  Herman sprang at the man and stabbed him in the throat. The scissor blades hit the businessman’s carotid artery, and when Herman yanked them out, blood erupted in a fine mist, spraying four feet across the sidewalk. The man took a step back, but something about his inner drive, his desire to dominate, remained in his posture, keeping him on his feet. His brain wouldn’t let him drop his cell phone either.

  Bob kept asking, “Hello? You still there? Hello?”

  More screaming erupted around Herman. He threw himself into the crowd in a berserk frenzy, slashing and stabbing at anyone within reach. People fled in all directions. Behind him, the businessman’s body finally gave up and sagged to the sidewalk.

  Herman zeroed in on a shrieking woman in a gray suit. She darted into the empty street. Half a block away, the light had just changed, and the vehicles surged forward. All the drivers saw was some executive trying to beat the traffic.

  Herman darted between a FedEx truck parked at the curb and a Streets and Sans van and chased her into the street. He focused solely on the running woman, utterly unaware of the giant black SUV that was racing up the street.

  The driver was intent on beating a cab that had been irritating her for blocks, and when she saw the shi
rtless, hairy man dash out into the street, it was too late. The driver used her three-inch heels to stomp on the brakes, locking the tires up, rubber howling as it burned into the pavement, but the SUV had been travelling at nearly thirty-five miles an hour. All it did was slow down enough so that when the left headlight struck Herman, it knocked him forward a dozen feet, but then the fender caught him up and drove him into the pavement, grinding him along for a while. Eventually his legs drifted back and were caught under the front tire, and his entire body was ripped in half. Both halves tore loose and were crushed under the back tires.

  Later, when they found his arm, his hand was still clutching the scissors.

  CHAPTER 29

  6:01 PM

  August 12

  Don didn’t show up for work. Tommy wasn’t particularly surprised at first. They’d spent the night before drowning in beer. He figured Don would stumble in soon, so he clocked in, changed into his overalls and boots, and waited. At 6:30, Don was a half-hour late. He had never been this late since Tommy had started work at Streets and Sans. At 7:00, Tommy called him. Nobody answered.

  They’d started the night before pounding Old Styles, sure, but it hadn’t been any different than any of the other countless nights they’d spent at the bar with no name, except Don kept showing off the torn rubber glove, the marks on the leather gloves underneath, and finally, his unscathed hand. Everybody had wanted to hear the whole story as they came in, so Don and Tommy hadn’t paid for one beer.

  Around ten, Don had heard about some house party one of his nephews was throwing, so they drove down to Blue Island and found the place full of community college students. Don had tried to impress the girls, but somehow, tales of catching rats hadn’t done much for them. Don’s nephew heard the stories, and started bitching about a goddamn raccoon that had torn a hole in the roof and moved into the space above the attic. Full of a beer and fueled by the eyes of the coeds, Tommy had volunteered to climb up under the roof and catch the critter. He promised not hurt the poor animal, something he later regretted.