Greed: A Detective John Lynch Thriller

by Dan O'Shea

  That put Esteban’s death on Hardin’s account. He’d skipped town, left him and Juanita behind. He’d thought about skipping out on the Legion, heading back to the US, making sure she was safe. But all that would do is put him back on Hernandez’s radar – and point Hernandez at Juanita. No, if she was safe, the best thing he could do was stay away from her.

  Forever.

  CHAPTER 17

  “You’re one lucky fucker, Lynch,” said Detective Dick Karsten. He was an Area 2 cop Lynch knew going back to his Academy days. “Powers that be got a hard on for you. Every weird-ass case we get, they dumping it on you?”

  Starshak had called Lynch and told him to get down and eyeball a crime scene on the old US Steel property on the far south side. Something about more .22s.

  “Looks that way,” Lynch said. “How it’s been going? I hear you dumped that place up in Eagle River.” Karsten had flipped a handful of properties in the Northwoods over the years; guy knew his way around a toolbox. He’d helped Lynch out at his place a couple times, Lynch taking some time here and there over the years to pitch in up north.

  “Sweet deal,” said Karsten. “Some trader started in on his log dream home on Big Arbor Vitae, over toward Minocqua. Know it?”

  “Little west of St Germain? Yeah.”

  “Place is like 3800 square feet. Guy had just got it enclosed when the market tanked. Foreclosure sharks were circling. Swapped my place for his. He still has his Northwoods love pad. I finish this out nice, I make a damn killing. Property’s got another little two-bedroom, three-season job on it, too, so I get things fixed up, I can parcel that off.”

  “Sounds nice. You need some help up there, let me know.”

  “Gets to where I need the unskilled labor, you’re my first call.”

  Lynch laughed, looked past Karsten to where Bernstein had joined some crime-scene guys who were working around a body – big fat guy on his back. “So what have we got?”

  “What you got here is Beans Garbanzo,” said Karsten.

  Lynch’s face went hard. Garbanzo worked for Tony Corsco, head of the outfit in Chicago, the whole Midwest, actually. The gangbangers were bad enough, but Lynch understood them at least. You grow up in public housing, got an entire society shitting on you when they aren’t ignoring you, bad shit happens. But the fucking mob, a couple generations of wealth behind most of them, and they just keep going. Drugs, prostitution, protection, robbery, protection rackets, gambling – show them a human weakness and they’ll kill for a piece of it. Lynch had been picking up bodies with Corsco’s fingerprints on them his whole career, always watching the bastard skate. Watching the media play it like the guy was some kind of charming rogue, just another piece of local color.

  Lynch remembered a night his second year out of the academy. Dead girl, fifteen years old. Her older sister waitressed at one of Corsco’s clubs, one of them where waitressing meant if Corsco wanted her on her knees giving some slimy bastard head as a favor, then that’s what she did. The older sister’d killed herself, but not, evidently before the little sister heard something. She started making some noise. A week later, Lynch is looking at her naked body in a North Side ally, not an inch of her without a bruise on it. Lynch was still in uniform at the time. Nobody ever came close to clearing the case.

  What Lynch heard, though, was it was Corsco, personally. Raped her first, then took a bat to her.

  “Garbanzo is Corsco muscle,” said Lynch.

  “Yep. And down yonder where McCord is fucking around, you got Snakes DeGetano.”

  “And they both got done with .22s?”

  “I’ll let McCord fill you in on that. Don’t want to ruin his fun.” Karsten looked at his watch. “I’d stick around and help with the canvass, but canvass what, you know?” The empty US Steel site stretched almost to the horizon. “Damn, almost five. And with the cavalry here, I can make first pitch at Comiskey.”

  “You mean the Cell, don’t you?” said Lynch.

  “US Cellular Field my ass,” Karsten said. “Fucking deal will run out, somebody else’ll buy up the name. Be goddamn Kotex Field or something.”

  “Be perfect for you pussy Sox fans,” Lynch said.

  “Yeah, well, this pussy Sox fan is going to be at the game tonight. You’re gonna be here eyeballing goombah stiffs. Y’all have fun, now, you hear?”

  Karsten took off. Lynch walked over and joined Bernstein.

  “.22s?” Lynch asked.

  “Three of them, nice grouping right in the forehead.”

  “So what’s with all the blood?” Garbanzo had blood all down the front of his shirt, some more on his right leg from the knee down. Three to the head, guy should have been DOA right off. He wouldn’t have bled much, especially lying on his back.

  “Some kind of trauma to the side of the head. Doesn’t look fatal, but he bled a good bit before he got shot.”

  “You catch the hip holster?”

  “The empty one? Yeah.”

  Lynch turned to one of the techs. “You guys turn up any weapons?”

  Guy shook his head.

  Lynch looked down toward the second cluster of uniforms. “Guess we better go see what McCord has for us.”

  It was almost half a mile down to the next body. Bernstein and Lynch stayed way to the right walking down. Little crime scene flags were sticking up out of the dirt every couple yards all the way there, and they didn’t want to step in any evidence.

  DeGetano was also on his back, some blood on the front of his tracksuit from a wound in his neck. Lynch squatted down and saw a round hole. Shadow fell on him, and he could hear somebody chewing on something. McCord.

  “OK, McCord, Karsten didn’t want to rain on your parade. So I give, what’s up?”

  “The fat guy back up toward South Shore, he got it with a .22 for sure,” said McCord. “And what made me think maybe your guy again is there’s no powder, no stippling, nothing like that. So he got it from at least a little ways off, and the nice grouping looks a lot like your shelter guy. Now, the skinny guy here, this is real interesting. That wasn’t a gun at all.”

  “I was thinking a stab wound of some kind.”

  “Bingo,” said McCord.

  “Except I haven’t seen a lot of round knives.”

  McCord held up an evidence bag. “Killer was kind enough to leave the murder weapon in the guy’s neck.”

  Lynch stood up, looked at the bag. “A pen?”

  “Yep. Thought you’d like that.”

  “Can I see that?” Bernstein said.

  McCord handed him the bag.

  “Air France,” Bernstein said. “Interesting.”

  “Why?” Lynch asked.

  “This Hardin guy? From Oprah? Before a couple nights ago, all we hear is he’s from Africa, right?”

  “And?”

  “And if you want to fly from Africa – or West Africa anyway – to the US, I’m thinking Air France may be your best bet.”

  McCord bit another chunk off the Snickers bar he was working on. “Looks like we’ve got prints on the pen, so we’ll run that. If this Hardin’s in a database anywhere, you’ll have your answer. But if you want interesting, we got interesting. You get a look at the fat guy? The head trauma?”

  “Yeah,” said Lynch. “Wondered about that.”

  “OK, we got this one set of tire tracks that stop right here, skinny dead guy right next to them, some scuffing on the ground. The way the blood ran down the front of him, he was either sitting or standing when somebody stuck that pen in his throat, and he was dead or close to it once he hit the ground here. Otherwise we’d have more blood running down the sides of his neck. With the tire tracks and scuffing, I’m figuring he got it in the car, then got dumped here.”

  McCord walked a few yards toward the lake, toward a pile of rubble. He pointed a few yards south. “We got one set of footprints to here, another that stops maybe five yards from old pen neck over there. Some scuffing on the ground here, some more over there, plus over there it looks
like someone was down on the ground and there’s some blood – on the ground and on a couple of stones we found. You saw all the flags on your way down from the fat guy, right? Between here and the fat guy, we got a bit of a blood trail. Somebody was dripping. Not bad, not like shot, but dripping all the same.”

  “Ah, fuck me,” said Lynch, seeing where this was headed.

  McCord nodded. “Yep. Looks like somebody drove out here with these guys, stuck a pen in Skinny, dumped him, and then bounced a few rocks off the fat man. We’ll check the head wound, get some trace evidence, probably match it up to one of the rocks.”

  “So some guy plays Nolan Ryan with Fatso way down here,” Lynch says, “then lets him walk most of the way back to South Shore before he drives up and shoots him?”

  “Nope. Our tire tracks here? They loop around and head back out to South Shore. We’ve got Fat Guy’s footprints on top of the tire tracks in a couple of spots. So whoever did Skinny and roughed up Fat Guy, he left before fat guy walked back up there and got shot. About ten feet from Fat Guy’s body, you got another set of tracks that pulled up and then pulled away. Different tread, different wheelbase.”

  “So we got Mr .22 showing up as a second act?” Lynch said.

  “Looks that way,” said McCord.

  Lynch blew out a breath, pursing his cheeks. “I notice Fatso’s got an empty holster. Is Skinny strapped?”

  “Skinny’s got an empty shoulder rig. Haven’t done the formal test yet, but Skinny’s got some gunshot residue on his right hand. I could smell that.”

  Lynch looked out at the lake.

  “So some guy drives down here with Skinny and the Fat Man. Since they’ve both got holsters, we gotta figure they’re both armed. And I’m thinking our mystery guest isn’t, since he stabs Skinny in the neck with a pen instead of just shooting him. Skinny gets a shot off but misses. Then our guy disarms Skinny, disarms Fatso, throws rocks at him, gets back in the car, and leaves. Then Fatso walks back up toward South Shore, and Mr .22 pulls in, shoots Fatso dead, and he drives off.”

  McCord shrugs. “How it adds up.”

  Bernstein’s phone went off, the Kanye noise again.

  “What the fuck is that?” McCord asked.

  “Ring tone,” said Lynch. “He’s working on his street cred.”

  “You threaten to shoot him yet?”

  “Threatened to shoot the phone,” Lynch said. “He’s next.”

  Lynch’s cell buzzed, he checked the ID. Liz. She was flying back in from her network gig that night, going to be in town for a couple of days. Between her book launch and the network gigs, it was getting hard to see her. Lynch was looking forward to it, though. He took a few steps away from Bernstein and McCord.

  “Hey,” he said. “You at LaGuardia yet?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  He could hear it in her voice. “But?” Lynch asked.

  “But I’m on my way to LA.” A pause, like she wanted him to say something. He had nothing to say.

  “I’m sorry, John; it’s some film deal thing. My agent just dumped it on me an hour ago. I know this sucks. It’s just, with everything going on right now, so much crap is up in the air.”

  “Yeah,” Lynch said. “Look, I can’t really talk now. I’m down on the South Shore looking at a couple of stiffs.”

  “You’re angry.”

  Lynch exhaled. “Not at you. Just, ah hell. Call me tonight if you get a chance.” Lynch thinking the “if you get a chance” was a bit of a cheap shot even as he said it. She’d call. He knew she’d call.

  “I will. I’ll call tonight.” In the background, some airport PA noise. “We’re boarding,” she said, “I gotta go.”

  Another pause.

  “Are we OK?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Lynch said, trying to sound like he meant it. She ended the call.

  Lynch looked out at the lake. What he’d had with Johnson the last year, it was something he’d given up on. Figured it just wasn’t in the cards, maybe just wasn’t in him. Gotten used to being alone, stopped really trying not to be. Got to where it didn’t matter that much, sort of the way, if you don’t eat long enough, you might be starving, but you don’t really feel hungry anymore. He was hungry now. He’d gotten used to her being in his life, in his bed. Now, more and more, she wasn’t.

  It had been kind of exciting at first, Johnson hitting the big time. He’d flown out to New York with her once, been wined and dined with some of the network people, the publishing people. Lynch getting the star treatment too, some guy from Harcourt and Johnson’s agent tag-teaming him, trying to talk him into doing a book too.

  At the hotel that night, some five-star joint, Johnson had put her two cents in too, not really understanding why he didn’t want a bite at the apple, Lynch not sure how to explain it, just that it didn’t sit right with him for some reason, Johnson taking that as a shot at her, not how he meant it. Been a little tense then, not a fight exactly, but Lynch looked back at that moment as a kind of divide. Things had looked up until then. Seemed like they’d gone downhill since.

  Lynch had read it wrong, figured it was a temporary deal, figured it would calm down. It hadn’t. Johnson was playing in a different league now. It wasn’t just the book. She was smart, beautiful – the Hastings case had put her on the radar, but she had the chops to stay on it. The Trib was pretty much a part-time gig now. TV was the big thing. And TV, for a political reporter, meant Washington, meant New York. Chicago was flyover country.

  Lynch knew she was working at it, spending more time in town than was good for her, probably. And shit, she’d won the media lottery, it’s not like he expected her to give it all up. Nobody’s fault, nothing to be done about it. Didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Lynch had a couple tickets to the Hawks game for tomorrow night – Minnesota in town, and Johnson being a Minneapolis girl, she liked her hockey. It was going to be a surprise. Took his phone back up, dug up Dickey Reagan’s number, reporter at the Sun-Times Lynch went way back with. Dickey was a hockey guy. Lynch figured he throw Dickey a bone, stay on his good side.

  Bernstein worked the phone all the way back to the station, getting background on Hardin while Lynch turned the facts over in his head. The body count was now four: three with .22s, one with a ballpoint. He had a rich trader, an African refugee, and two mob soldiers. On top of that, he had a witness that put Hardin in Stein’s box right before the first killing, and now he had a video that tied Hardin to a movie star who happened to be in town. The only other time the two of them had been in the same place at the same time, far as anyone knew, was five years ago in Africa, and the two of them had gone at it then. This Membe guy was from Africa, but better than a thousand miles from Darfur. What’s that song from that kid’s show? “One of these things is not like the other?” Christ, Lynch would be happy if any of these things had anything to do with anything. This was like a goddamn random clue generator or something.

  CHAPTER 18

  Lynch and Bernstein sat in Starshak’s office, Starshak up futzing with the giant fern that hung in his window.

  “What you got on this Hardin, Bernstein?”

  “French national,” Bernstein said. “For a good stretch, he worked as a sort of logistics and security guy for news crews doing stories in Africa. That’s how he got involved with Jerry Mooney. Met him at some point, ended up as his right-hand man, pretty much set up that whole Dollars for Darfur thing for him. That’s when he got into that punch-up with Shamus Fenn, not much on him since. Couple of people I talked to said maybe he came out of the Foreign Legion – nobody remembers him saying it, it was just what people heard.

  “Anyway, I checked the airlines. This Hardin flew Air France out of Casablanca three days ago – Casablanca to Kennedy, connection on United to Chicago. The flight landed just after 10am the day Stein got shot. I checked the car rental places, working on the hotels, but it doesn’t look like he’s used the Hardin ID since he got to town. So either he brought a pile of cash with him or
he’s got another ID.”

  “Gotta have some kind of ID,” said Lynch. “Can’t even rent a hotel room without one.”

  “So maybe something he can flash for a hotel, but that he didn’t trust enough to get him through an airport?” said Bernstein.

  “Makes sense,” said Starshak. “Either way, we’ve got an Air France pen in the mob guy’s neck. You said he was on Air France.”

  “Yeah,” said Lynch. “Listen, we got his arrival time at O’Hare and we got his picture. Get that to the techies, he’s got to be on video at the airport, right? Track him out, see does he rent a car, does somebody pick him up, does he take the L, or what.”

  “That gives us a place to start,” said Starshak. “Pretty clear he came here to see Stein. Any thoughts there?”

  “He must have had something to sell, all I can think of,” said Bernstein. “Stein’s got his fingers in a lot of pies. Lots of commodities in Africa, lots of shady deals. If Hardin had the right dope on something, Stein could pony up pretty good for it.”

  Lynch’s cell rang. He checked the screen. McCord. “Yeah?” said Lynch.

  “You remember the dirt on Stein’s pants; I told you we’d check it out?”

  “Yeah,” said Lynch.

  “OK, first off, this is actual dirt, soil of some kind. When we get something here that looks like dirt, usually it’s pollution; road salt, urban grime. So this being actual dirt seemed a little strange. First of all, it’s fresh. Not worked into the fabric all that deep and it’s not like Stein couldn’t afford to get his suits cleaned. Gotta figure he got it on him that night, so that’s weird cause there ain’t much loose dirt around the United Center. And the weather the last few days, what dirt we got is frozen solid. Second, being actual dirt, it’s got geological properties that can tie it to a location. Thing is, this wasn’t our usual nice Midwestern sediment. This shit was funky. I had to ship it over to a geology guy at UIC. I’ll send you all the fun science – stuff about alluvial deposits and riverine something or another – but bottom line is this: the dirt’s from West Africa. And this dirt-specialist guy, he had an interesting question. He wanted to know had anybody brought up diamonds. Said this type of dirt is consistent with the geology around West African diamond deposits.”