Trigger City

by Sean Chercover

  As fervently as I might have wished him to be, Dr. Andrew Glassman was not Public Enemy Number One. I’d had Vince on him almost a month and the guy hadn’t so much as changed lanes without signaling.

  I flipped to the next report. Last evening, the good doctor left work, bought a single red rose at the hospital flower shop, and drove to Lakeview. Jill’s neighborhood. He parked at a meter on Halsted and took a table at Erwin Café, an upscale American bistro. He sipped a glass of white wine and read a novel called The Book of Ralph, until his date arrived fifteen minutes later. Of course his date was Jill. Vince terminated surveillance, according to my instructions.

  The last item on Vince’s report: “Subject closed his book, stood and presented the rose to Ms. Browning. They kissed.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Surprise!”

  Terry and Angela Green stood on the other side of their front door, both wearing huge smiles. Their greeting confused me at first. Then I looked down and saw the bump. Angela was pregnant. I almost dropped the wine.

  “Congratulations,” I said, because what the hell else was I going to say? Big hugs ensued as the happy couple drew me into their home. I handed the wine to Terry and said to Angela, “How far along?”

  “Five months. We didn’t want to tell anyone right away because, well, you never know.”

  I held her at arm’s length and looked her over. She was always a thin woman and hadn’t really filled out yet, cheekbones still prominent on her chestnut brown face. But she seemed to be gaining weight where it mattered. She had the bump and was a little fuller in the hips and backside. I judged that she was now a C-cup, the inappropriateness of such an observation notwithstanding. I’d always had a secret thing for Angela.

  I let go of her shoulders and said, “You look great,” in a tone purely platonic. Turned to Terry and asked, “Boy or girl?” Terry was a reporter—I knew he wouldn’t wait to be surprised with the pertinent information readily available.

  “Boy,” said Terry.

  Angela said, “His name is Chester, after Chester Himes. And if it’s okay with you, we’d like his middle name to be Ray, after Terry’s best friend.”

  It hit me like a bucket of cold water. Why would anyone want to name a kid after me? I said, “Sure, it’s okay with me.”

  “Try to contain your enthusiasm,” said Terry.

  “No, I didn’t…I didn’t mean it that way. I think it’s great. Thanks.”

  Angela laughed and waved us off. “You boys go out on the balcony, smoke your cigars. I’ve got dinner to make.”

  “Cheers, man.” I clinked my glass against Terry’s and we sipped his scotch and smoked my cigars. “I’m happy for you guys.”

  “Thanks. It’s not a done deal but all the tests are normal so far. I think this one’s gonna take, knock on wood.”

  “You’ll make a great dad.” And I meant it. But on another level, I wasn’t happy for Terry at all.

  More accurately, I wasn’t happy for me.

  Truth is, I felt the end of an era approaching. Terry and Angela were moving on. Soon their life would be all about little Chester Ray Green. They’d be obsessed with first teeth and bowel movements, things I do not find fascinating. And they’d have new friends. Friends with babies. Friends similarly obsessed with first teeth and bowel movements.

  Terry stood and went into the house. A minute later, music came piping through the balcony speakers. Hound Dog Taylor, Natural Boogie. I’d given this album to Terry for his nineteenth birthday, when we were journalism students at Columbia College. Terry turned me on to bands like The Cure and XTC, while I turned him on to Hound Dog Taylor and Son Seals. Terry is black and I’m white. Neither of us was unaware of the potential for irony but I think we were both pleased that it was about the music and didn’t have to be about race.

  We met as J-school freshmen and quickly bonded by comparing idols. The names you’d expect—Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Studs Terkel, David Halberstam. Hunter S. Thompson was massive for both of us, as he was for most American teenagers who aimed at a career in journalism and many who didn’t. Mike Royko and Clarence Page were our current local heroes.

  And then there was Woodstein. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Between us, we’d read All the President’s Men probably a dozen times and we spent many nights in Terry’s studio apartment, drinking bargain beer and eating white cheddar popcorn and playing the movie over and over again. We knew it by heart and would often say our favorite lines along with Redford and Hoffman, Balsam and Robards. Sometimes we’d talk right over the film, debating the investigative techniques and journalistic ethics portrayed on the screen.

  The editor of the school paper affectionately dubbed us Woodward and Bernstein, and we sometimes still used the nicknames, twenty years later.

  Christ, twenty years. Terry hadn’t brought down any crooked presidents but he’d built a solid career, married a lovely woman, and was now about to become a dad. I’d given up on journalism and wasn’t entirely sure what I had become, or what I was building.

  Terry returned to the balcony and said, “Still love this album.”

  “Tempus fugit,” I said. Looking for safer ground, I steered the conversation to Joan Richmond and Steven Zhang.

  He pulled out his notebook. “Thought you said there wasn’t a story in this.”

  “Far as I know, there isn’t.”

  “You may change your mind. If there is a story, I want it.”

  “Goes without saying,” I said.

  He flipped some pages. “Joan Richmond. Murdered by Steven Zhang on August 13. Worked at HM Nichols…”

  “I’m up on current events,” I said. “I’m looking for red flags in the background. Previous employer may be a lead.”

  “Damn right it is,” said Terry. “You’ve heard of Hawk River.”

  “Military contractors. Got a lot of security guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  “And at least fifteen other countries,” said Terry, “including ours. Since the geniuses in Washington sent our National Guard to the Middle East, we’ve even got these guys in New Orleans and Mississippi.”

  “Politics aside—”

  “Politics is never aside,” said Terry. He’d finished his scotch and refilled his glass, topped mine up. “Dude, we’re talking about some powerful motherfuckers. And there are whispers…assassinations, sabotage jobs, you name it. Word is, if you want a civil war started in some Fourth World country, these are your guys.”

  “And Joan Richmond used to work for them.”

  “And Joan Richmond used to work for them. Six years, head of payroll. She quit ten months ago.” Terry drew on his cigar, blew out a stream of fragrant smoke. “But it gets better…or worse. The congressional Oversight and Government Reform committee is looking into Hawk River’s billing practices. Care to guess what comes next?”

  “Joan Richmond was scheduled to testify?”

  Terry shot me with his finger. “Bull’s-eye. She was scheduled to testify this month, in a closed-door hearing. But now she’s been murdered.”

  “People get murdered all the time,” I said.

  “Which brings us to Steven Zhang,” said Terry. “Not much on him, but once I knew about Joan Richmond and Hawk River, my curiosity was piqued. Checked Zhang’s tax records.”

  “And he worked for Joan at Hawk River,” I guessed.

  “Don’t know if she was his boss, but he worked at Hawk River. Seventeen weeks.”

  “Odd number,” I said. “He was an IT guy. Contracts are usually three months, six months, one year. Seventeen weeks?”

  Terry shrugged, “Maybe he was hired for six months, but he was efficient. Or three months but he was slow. Or maybe he quit or got fired. His tax records showed seventeen weeks. Anyway, it would seem that his contract ended, however it ended, about a month before Joan Richmond quit. Point is, he worked there when your victim worked there and he killed her just in time to keep her from testifying before Congress. And you know how I hate coincidences.�
��

  I hated them, too.

  As my cigar burned down to the band, I heard the doorbell ring inside the apartment. Terry said, “Oh yeah, Angela invited a friend from work. Diane. She’s great, you’ll like her.”

  I left my cigar to die in the ashtray. “You have got to be shitting me. A blind date?”

  “Relax, you’ll like her—”

  “You already said that. What I don’t like is being ambushed.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “To me it is. And I don’t appreciate it.”

  “Just come inside and be nice.” Terry stood up. “It’s not a blind date. It’s just Angela and me, each inviting a friend for dinner.”

  “A couple of single, heterosexual friends of the opposite sex. That’s what we call a blind date.” I fished a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and lit one.

  “Fine, call it a blind date if you want. I’m not asking you to propose marriage to the girl. Angela had her heart set on introducing you, and—”

  The balcony door swung open and a perky brunette stepped out, pulling a pack of Dunhill Lights from her purse. As I stood, she flashed a mouthful of perfect teeth at me and extended her hand and said, “Oh, you smoke! Me, too!”

  “We’ve got that in common,” I said. “Wanna get married?” I went for dry humor, barely suppressed the sarcasm. It could’ve been taken either way.

  And that pretty much set the tone for the evening.

  I wasn’t rudeness personified but I put little effort into hiding my disinterest and my humor was more caustic than usual. And throughout dinner, I seemed to find ways of turning conversation into debate. I tried not to notice the uncomfortable glances between Diane and Angela, Angela and Terry.

  Suffice it to say, I acted like an ass and by 9:30 we all suddenly remembered that we had early starts in the morning and we’d better pass on coffee and call it a night. I told Diane that it had been a pleasure meeting her, reiterated my joy over Angela’s pregnancy, thanked everyone for a lovely evening, and got the hell out of there.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was warm for late September and the sky was clear and I felt like walking. Terry and Angela lived in Andersonville, a hip, recently gentrified neighborhood on the north side. I walked the clean, tree-lined streets and counted the FOR SALE signs until I lost count. Most of the rentals had gone condo. Which was happening all over Chicago, including my neighborhood south of the Loop.

  The week before, I’d gotten another letter from my landlord—just a friendly reminder that time was running out. The building was going condo. After renovations it would be called the Burnham Park Lofts. Which was funny because it was about fifteen blocks south of Burnham Park, and funnier still because Burnham Park was a fake name given by developers to the neighborhood properly known as the South Loop.

  The “Burnham Park Lofts” would boast modern kitchens with Sub-Zero refrigerators and trash compactors. Jacuzzi tubs in the bathrooms. A communal workout room and a roof deck complete with hot tub. All this can be yours, starting at $395,000. My unit was a two-bedroom. The second bedroom had served as a workout room, and although I still used the recumbent bike, the punching bags had hung silent since my injuries. My apartment was priced at an even $439,900. Plus about $600 a month in maintenance fees and taxes.

  I couldn’t afford it, and my lease was up at the end of October.

  Terry and Angela loved Andersonville and it looked like a nice place to live, but I couldn’t see myself living there. It was becoming a family neighborhood.

  I walked south into Uptown, which seemed more like my kind of neighborhood. Uptown had been trying for years to gentrify, but all the surrounding neighborhoods had beaten it to the punch and there was nowhere nearby for the poor folks to go. So it was holding on to its shabby charm. I slid over to Broadway and took in the neon glow of tattoo parlors, the homemade signs in the windows of army surplus shops and Jamaican grocers and used bookstores, and the warm aroma of Mexican take-out joints.

  When I got to Lawrence I stopped in at the Green Mill. Thursday is swing music night, but the big band was on a break between sets and the place was mercifully quiet. I took a stool at the bar and signaled the bartender with a nod. The bartender came over with a generous pour of Appleton Estate twelve-year-old over ice and put it in front of me, water back. I hadn’t set foot in the place in at least a month. I like bars where they remember your poison.

  I swiveled on my barstool to face the booth that had been Al Capone’s, back in the day. From Capone’s booth, you could keep an eye on both entrances, and you were five steps from the bar. Behind the bar there was a trapdoor in the floor that led to a system of subterranean tunnels, and you could emerge a block away.

  Capone’s booth was now full of young urban professionals, who knew nothing of the tunnels and who didn’t have the sense to keep an eye on either entrance. There were four of them. Double dates, I figured. They were too young and frivolous to be married. They drank Cosmopolitans and Bullshit-Tinis and wore Versace suits and carried Prada purses, and everything anybody said was hilarious, judging by the recurrent spasms of too-loud laughter that erupted from the booth.

  I hated them. Then I hated myself for hating them. I finished my drink, dropped enough money on the bar, and resumed my walk.

  I meandered down to Wrigleyville, over to Clark and Addison, and stopped across the street from Mecca.

  Wrigley Field.

  Yeah yeah, I know. I’ve heard it all before, so save your breath. Sometimes it sucks being a Cubs fan.

  I stood for a minute and admired the oldest ballpark in the National League. A beautiful ballpark, where some truly ugly baseball had been played this year.

  I continued my walk south. I could’ve hailed a cab or hopped the Red Line down to Roosevelt. But I knew that I would do neither. Since leaving the Green Mill I’d been fingering the HM Nichols keychain in my pocket and Joan Richmond’s apartment was within walking distance. I wouldn’t be going home tonight.

  I crossed Belmont, well aware that if I turned east and walked a few blocks, I’d be standing in front of Jill’s yellow brick apartment building. But I didn’t turn. A few blocks south of Belmont, I stopped at Jake’s Pub for a pint of Guinness. Jake’s is a friendly place that caters to neighborhood regulars and has a very good jukebox, but I didn’t stop in for the music.

  When Jill and I were an item, we’d spent a few evenings at Jake’s and I knew she sometimes met friends there for drinks after work. I didn’t know what the hell I’d say if I bumped into her. Vince was almost definitely right—I should forget about her and move on with my life. But I still had it bad and I didn’t know how to let go. I did a circuit of the long barroom, nodded at a few familiar faces.

  Jill was not there.

  By midnight I was lying in Joan Richmond’s bed, reading her diary.

  Joan Richmond did not catalog the daily events in her life, so much as her emotional state. She’d write about how upset she was about some annoyance and how she shouldn’t allow such things to bother her so, without ever being specific about what had triggered the upset. A feeling of isolation prevailed throughout the diary and Joan often wrote about feeling “different” and “disconnected” from the people at work, in bars, on the bus. She wished that she could be “like everyone else.”

  As if everyone else were alike.

  But then this flash of insight:

  Took the El today, fifteen stops and wanting to scream the whole way. A hundred people in the car, all crammed together, all far apart. Parallel universes. What’s it like in yours? The same, I think. Why can’t we talk? Why can’t we look at each other, smile at each other, even acknowledge each other’s existence? Why can’t we say, “I know you. You’re me.” We don’t have to be alone, we’re standing right next to each other. But we can’t even look at each other.

  And then I saw a man, and he saw me. He was a black man, very dark skin, very thick hands. We looked at each other and, I swear, we saw ourselves reflect
ed. And we had to look away. Frightened. And that’s how it will always be.

  Sometimes I just hate the world.

  Not a light read. I skimmed some, looking for anything related to Hawk River. Found it, although she never wrote down the company name.

  Joan worried about her decision to quit her job without ever saying what led to the decision. She worried about how Daddy would react, and her fear of disappointing him was palpable. Then she would chastise herself for caring what he thought and that would lead to a new round of reliving the trauma of her childhood abandonment by a mother who died and a father who was never there.

  And then I noticed the alteration. About a dozen pages had been removed from the diary. They’d been cut out cleanly, right at the binding, so it was easy to miss. It looked like a professional job, not just someone tearing pages out. With the pages removed so carefully, I knew there wouldn’t be fingerprints. Anyway, it could’ve been Joan who removed the pages. Maybe she’d written something that she later regretted saying. Maybe she’d cut them out carefully so that she wouldn’t be reminded of it when she flipped through the diary.

  Or maybe it was someone else.

  Joan had been an irregular diarist. Sometimes six entries in one week, other times weeks would go by between entries. She was always careful to record the date in the top right corner of the page, whenever she started a new entry. Terry had said she quit her job at Hawk River ten months ago. Douglas Hill said she began work at HM Nichols eight months ago.