Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “We can get around that.”

  Hurley put a hand up, shushing Clarke. He walked back to the window for a minute, sipping his whiskey, then turned back.

  “Here’s what we do. You declare. You’re the independent taking up Junior’s flag. Press’ll eat that shit up. They love to give it to me in the chops anyway. All those hippie loonies, they’ll flock to you. Meanwhile, I pick out some schmuck, run him in the primary. My side takes a dive, we get some of the vote out your way under the table. You’re the underdog who takes down the machine. Comes the general election, I got no choice but to back the party side.”

  Clarke thought for a moment. It was brilliant. But it could also be a ploy. Could be a way for Hurley to buy his silence long enough that Clarke couldn’t ever come forward, then cut him off at the knees, have his guy actually win, send Clarke packing. It could be, but it didn’t feel that way. There’s always a moment when you have to take that leap.

  “Smart play. I’ll give it a few days, lay low, grieving, get through the funeral. But you announce your candidate first – somebody out of the machine. Then I’m outraged. I have to step forward in Junior’s memory.”

  “Right way to play it,” said Hurley, nodding. “Just remember one thing here. We got each other by the balls. I’ve been at this a long time, had mine twisted before. You try to cross me, I’ll rip yours off.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Clarke.

  Hurley let out a soft snort.

  “What?” Clarke said.

  “The assurance of each other’s fealty? You wanna make it in this town, you better stop talking like that. Your Ivy League crap don’t carry no weight around here.”

  After Clarke left, Hurley sat in the office with Riley.

  “I’ve been thinking about who we want handling it with the cops,” said Riley. “You know that Declan Lynch guy?”

  “Up on the northwest side? Does some precinct work and whatnot? Rusty Lynch’s brother?”

  “Yeah. Rusty can help keep him in line. Also, once he reads the tea leaves, I think he’ll smell an opportunity in it.”

  “Good. Call the commissioner.”

  “Zeke Fisher called while you were talking to the kid. He’s done over there. Wants you to know he’s sorry, but it’s going to be ugly. What he had to work with, only way he could go. On the plus side, looks like a chance to clean up the rest of your nigger problem. He also wants to know does he need to do anything about Clarke.”

  CHAPTER 5 – KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS

  Present Day

  Ishmael Leviticus Fisher lay awake in the anonymous hotel on the frontage road off I-57. He needed to sleep, but the moment kept coming back to him. His wife, the quick smile and short wave out the driver’s window of the Blazer as it crunched through the yellowed leaves, down past the short stone wall, past the chestnut tree, angling to the right as it backed into the street.

  Andy’s face in the back window, the delicate skin around the blues eyes crinkled, that smile that seemed to split his head like a melon full of teeth. Amanda in the car seat past him, just a year old, just a hint of Amanda through the reflection of the white house and the black shutters and the fragile blue of the autumn sky.

  Then the white-yellow flash of the Semtex, like diamond lava, and a sound like all the bones in the world snapping at once, the driver’s side of the Blazer pitching up, part of the bottom showing, and then the gas tank exploding, a richer, redder fire with a sound like a bass drum stretched with his own flesh and beaten with his own heart.

  Picking himself up and running to the burning hulk, half, half, half his son strewn into the street, his head now truly split, brains, not teeth, smiling out. And his wife, thrown out onto the lawn, blood sheeting down her face and a flap of her scalp hanging across one eye, a ragged triangle of gray plastic jutting from her abdomen, her right leg gone almost to the hip, the scarlet, arterial blood arcing out in desperate spurts. Her clawing at the plastic as he reached her, clawing at the invasion into her already crowded womb. And her remaining eye meeting his eyes just once, and her saying “the baby,” and her hands falling away from her stomach as that one good eye rolled back and the blood from her leg slowed, no longer propelled by a beating heart.

  Fisher closed his eyes, forced the memory away. He got out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and went out into the night to run.

  CHAPTER 6 – CHICAGO

  When John Lynch got to his desk, he had a message to call McCord at the ME’s office. Got what he usually got, McCord eating something while he talked.

  “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast, McCord.”

  “Brunch, Lynch. Had breakfast couple hours ago. We can’t all keep your hours.”

  “So what have you got for me?”

  “You know about the cancer?”

  “Priest told me. Bad?”

  “Broad’s a walking tumor. Got it everywhere.”

  “She in pain you think?”

  “Must’ve been.”

  “So I should put out an APB on that Kevorkian, huh?”

  “Depends. Can he shoot?”

  “So what else?”

  “Definitely a descending line on the shot. Had to have some elevation. Like I was saying yesterday, bouncing off all those bones, maybe it just got kicked down, but I got a real clean entrance wound in the sternum, and the beveling on that tells me the round was headed down when it hit her. 7.62mm, so definitely a rifle round.”

  “Fuck.” Lynch trying to picture the scene in his mind again. “You see anything when you were over there? Parking lot, right? Then the park. Bungalows behind that. Anything high enough?”

  “Maybe the guy climbed a tree in that park, I dunno. Like I said, I just do the science. By the way, got her in the heart. Pretty much dead center. Guy’s either real lucky or real, real good.”

  Lynch ran through the ME’s findings for Starshak.

  “How far’s that park from the church?” Starshak asked.

  “Got the street, parking lot, another street, the trees in off that a bit. Gotta be three hundred yards anyway, probably more.”

  “Long way. Right in the heart, you said?”

  “Yeah.” Lynch thinking a minute. “Hey, you used to be SWAT, right?”

  “Yeah,” Starshak answered.

  “What about one of the department sharpshooters? Think one of them might be able to break this down?”

  “It’s an idea. Let me make a couple calls.”

  Lynch went back out to his desk. Liz had left his place early that morning, wanting to get home, clean up, change. Lynch feeling funny standing naked in his kitchen, trading phone numbers. Lynch pulled out her card and called her office. Got her voice mail.

  “Hey, Liz. It’s Lynch. Just thought I should call. Listen, I’m not that good at this stuff in person, so I’m not going to go on to some machine, but if you’d like to get together, get some dinner or something, call my cell. I’m, you know, glad you called last night.”

  Starshak walked out, handed Lynch a piece of paper. “Guy named Darius Cunningham. He’s off today, but he’ll meet you over at Sacred Heart at 10.00.”

  “Thanks, Cap.”

  “So I hear from McGinty you were out late with some blonde looker,” Starshak said with a little dig in his voice.

  “Fucking McGinty better learn to keep his mouth shut or he’s gonna lose his lease.”

  Resurrection Hospital was on the way to Sacred Heart, and Lynch hadn’t been to see his mom in three days. He parked the Crown Vic outside the emergency entrance, badged the guard, and headed up.

  Lynch took a minute to suck it up before he walked into his mom’s room on the sixth floor. When the doctors first diagnosed the cancer they gave her six months. That was four years ago. She was down two breasts from the cancer and a foot from the diabetes, weighed maybe eighty pounds. Better to go the way Dad went. Bullet through the head and you’re two hundred and thirty-five pounds of morgue fodder.

  With his chipper face cemented in place, L
ynch stepped in. The first bed was empty. The room was dark, washed with the blue flicker from the TV.

  “Hey, babe,” he said. “Lookin’ hot. Docs still hittin’ on you?”

  She still lit up when she saw him, but she was down to about a twenty-watt bulb.

  “Johnny,” she said. She put up her left arm for a hug. The right one had too many tubes in it.

  He bent down and kissed her parchment-like cheek. Her arm across his back felt like a piece of rebar in a paper bag. He sat in the chair by the bed.

  “So how you doin’? Pain OK? These nurses won’t keep you in dope, I got some contacts, you know.”

  “Oh, stop it. I’m fine.” She smiled. “It always does me good to see you, Johnny. You’re a good boy. You hear anything from your sister?”

  He hadn’t, not in a couple weeks. “Yeah, mom, talked to her last night. She’d love to come down, but with the boys and the new job and all, well… Sends her love, though. She’s prayin’ for you.”

  “She sent flowers,” his mother said, nodding toward the arrangement on the stand by the window.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “She’s a good kid.”

  “I got good kids. You both grew up good. That’s the biggest comfort I have. That and your father waiting for me.”

  “Yeah, well good thing he’s such a patient guy, Ma, cause I’m nowhere near done with you yet. Boy needs his mother.” He squeezed her hand.

  She smiled at him again, then he watched her eyes drift closed and her breathing settle into a sleeping rhythm.

  Lynch would wait. She wouldn’t sleep long. Besides, WGN was just leading in to the morning news. The Marslovak killing was the lead story.

  “That poor woman,” he heard his mother say.

  “Hey, sleepyhead, back with us?” The motor moaned as she raised the bed.

  “Why would anyone shoot a lady coming out from mass?”

  “Wasn’t mass, Mom. She’d just been to confession.”

  “Well, that’s good, then.”

  “Good how?”

  “State of grace. She died in a state of grace.”

  They both sat for a minute, Lynch having nothing to say to that.

  “You keeping your soul clean, Johnny? You gettin’ to church?”

  “Sure, Mom. They practically gotta kick me out of the place. You know me.” Who was it said children had a duty to lie to their parents? Lynch couldn’t remember. Didn’t matter. People said a lot of things. Most of it was bullshit.

  She drifted off again. Lynch left.

  CHAPTER 7 – CHICAGO

  Darius Cunningham was waiting on the walk at Sacred Heart when Lynch pulled up. Black guy, six-four, shaved head, wearing brown gabardine slacks and a short-sleeved black shirt. Black Grand Cherokee parked at the end of the walk. Lynch could see a thick web of muscle fanning away from Cunningham’s neck and into his shirt. Very thick through the shoulders and chest. Tight end, Lynch thought.

  Lynch left his jacket in the car. Couple minutes after 10.00, already pushing sixty-five degrees, sun making it feel hotter than that. March in Chicago – freezing his ass off yesterday, sweating through his coat today. Lynch had stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts and picked up a couple of coffees. Least he could do.

  “You Lynch?” Cunningham putting out his hand. “Darius Cunningham.”

  Lynch balanced the two coffees in his left hand. “Yeah. Listen, thanks for coming down on your day off.” Taking Cunningham’s hand. Tight grip. Maybe not a tight end, maybe a speed rusher, Javon Kearse, somebody like that. Lynch offered Cunningham a coffee.

  “No thanks, don’t drink it.”

  “Cop who doesn’t drink coffee?”

  “No, caffeine gives you the shakes. I get called on some hostage deal or whatever and I end up putting a round through some innocent schmuck cause I got a little wobble in my sight picture, I gotta live with that.”

  “Hey, more for me.”

  Cunningham turned toward the stairs. “This is the spot, right? The Marslovak deal? Saw the news last night.”

  “This is it,” said Lynch. “She was head-down on the stairs. Forensics put her on top of the stairs when she got hit.”

  Cunningham walked up the stairs and turned to face down the walk. A black metal railing ran down the middle of the staircase. “Right or left of the railing?” Cunningham asked.

  “Left side.”

  “She’s right-handed then? Figure, grabs the rail like this?” Cunningham took the rail with his right hand.

  “I guess so. Does it matter?”

  “Probably not. Just figures. Know anything about the round?”

  “Haven’t got ballistics yet. They pulled the slug out of the bottom of that wooden chest back by the wall. Couple inches up from the floor. ME’s guy says the shot came in at a descending angle. Something about beveling in the entrance wound. 7.62mm.”

  “.308 caliber, .30-06. Doesn’t help much. Most of your decent rifles will chamber that. Where’d she get hit?”

  “Center chest. Through the sternum, through the heart, through the spine.”

  “Nice shooting.”

  “Or lucky,” Lynch said.

  Little snort from Cunningham. “Ever been to Vegas, Lynch?”

  “Couple of times, yeah.”

  “Still believe in luck?”

  Lynch thought for a moment about last night. “Sometimes. Sometimes I do.”

  Cunningham stood for a long time, staring out to the south.

  “That shit up there yesterday?” Cunningham pointed to a faded red rag hanging off the phone line across the street.

  “I don’t know,” said Lynch. “Looks like it’s been there awhile.”

  “Got another one over by the park. See it there, on the light tower next to the basketball court?”

  Lynch looked. He could barely make out another red rag hanging down from the cross member that held the lights.

  “We looking for the guy’s laundry here or something, Cunningham?”

  “Tells. The shooter hung those so he could get a read on the wind. If you were hoping for some neighborhood yahoo getting lucky with his deer rifle, you better get over it. You’re dealing with a pro here.”

  Cunningham started down the walk toward the Cherokee. “Guess we better head down there,” he said, pointing out across the parking lot toward the park.

  “Over to the park? You think maybe he was up one of those trees?”

  “No. Past that, that factory building.”

  Lynch looked south. Same view as before. Parking lot, park, bungalows. Looming beyond that, a sprawling cement structure.

  “The old Olfson factory? That’s gotta be half a mile away.”

  Cunningham nodded. “Seven hundred meters, give or take.”

  “Who could shoot somebody through the heart from seven hundred meters?”

  “I could,” Cunningham answered. “For starters.”

  The Olfson factory had been empty since the early Nineties. Out front, there was a fading sign with a huge photo showing a kitchen with granite counters and stainless appliances advertised The Best in City Living Starting at Only $315,000. In 2006, a connected developer got the place in some kind of sweetheart deal – hardly any of his own money, big grants from the city, the state, the Feds, tax breaks, the whole enchilada. Mess of people had put money down on units, then the economy cratered, the development went belly up, and most of the buyers got squat. Caveat emptor, Lynch figured. Around Chicago, though, you hand your dollars over to some real estate guy who’s wired in down at City Hall, you better emphasize the caveat part.

  The building ran west-to-east in a kind of zigzag for a couple of blocks. Part closest to the church was on the west end, then a short north-south section, then a longer section running east again. Taggers had covered the cement walls solid as high as they could reach. Lots of gang signs. West end of the building was just across the street from the bungalows. The empty space where the building jogged back was fenced off, overgrown with weeds and concrete-bust
ing little trees. Behind the building, an unused rail spur ran southeast to northwest. A berm behind that, then a strip mall on the other side.

  “Start down at the west end, that’s closest to the target,” Cunningham said. “Those windows up on four, that or the roof. Probably the windows, though.”

  The building was four stories, each story with long banks of divided glass windows. Almost all the glass was broken out of the first two stories, and large chunks of it were gone out of the third. Most of the fourth-floor windows were intact.

  Cunningham went through the building in complete silence and with aggravating patience. Stopping in each doorway, standing for a time, walking over to the windows, sometimes squatting down to look at the floor, touching the glass in a couple of places, sometimes assuming a shooting position as he looked back toward the church. Lynch followed along feeling useless as hell.

  The place got some use. Lots of graffiti inside, lots of garbage. Fast food wrappers – lots of Popeye’s Chicken boxes. Popeye’s was back in the strip mall across the tracks behind the building, Lynch thinking he should ask over there, see if he could get anything. Lots of malt liquor cans, beer cans, busted liquor bottles – bottom-shelf stuff mostly. Pop cans here and there. One room with an old mattress on the floor and used condoms scattered around. Maybe talk to vice, see if there’s a local girl he should check out.

  Cunningham had gone through the first wing, back through the north-south section, and was most of the way through the last wing. Finally, he stepped into a room and said, “Bingo.” Just like that.

  “What’cha got?” Lynch asked.

  “This was the room. Smell it?”

  “Smell urine,” said Lynch. “Gonna be smelling that for a while, I think.”

  Cunningham walked directly to the right front corner, where the windows looked out toward the church. He pointed to a broken pane shoulder high and two rows in from the wall. “Took the shot through here. See the smudges in the dust here? Him setting his feet. Right-handed. His toes are pointing east. No tread in the tracks, though. Probably wearing booties over his shoes, like they do in the hospital. Didn’t want to leave us prints.”