“Now this is a proper party,” he said, nodding with approval. “Feels just like home.”
As the guards worked him over, and the pepper spray closed his eyes and throat, Burke kept asking himself the same two questions:
After all this time, why is Cole coming after me again?
And what am I going to do about it?
• • •
MASON IGNORED THE BURNING SENSATION in his healing right shoulder as he aimed the sniper rifle. He put all of his focus on the crosshairs, on his breathing, until he pulled the trigger and the butt of the rifle kicked against that same shoulder. He had to close his eyes for several seconds, dealing with the pain, acknowledging it, accepting it. He opened his eyes and took off the ear protectors.
“Low. Low. Low. Every shot’s been low,” Eddie said.
“No,” Mason said, putting the rifle down on the bench. “Exactly where I’m aiming.”
They were shooting at an outdoor range in Joliet, a few miles outside Chicago. There were closer ranges, but it was Eddie’s suggestion to come here, and Mason liked the fact that you could clearly see the range from the parking lot. When he pulled his Jag into the lot, the gray sedan that had been following him all the way down here from Adriana’s school was nowhere to be seen. But the next time he looked up, Mason noticed Quintero’s black Escalade parked in a back corner of the lot. Mason wasn’t particularly worried. All Quintero would see was Mason practicing his shooting skills, getting some tips from his old friend who happened to be an ex–army sniper. No reason for him to question that.
“Look at my target,” Eddie said, nodding to his bottle—the center mass plus the head. “If the target had been human, he would have taken every round straight through the sternum.
“Now look at yours,” he said, pointing to the shots along the beltline on Mason’s target. “What are you trying to do, pick his fucking pocket?”
Mason didn’t answer, because that’s exactly what Mason was trying to do. It’s what he’d done at the Aqua. It’s what he meant to keep doing. It would’ve been hard to explain to Eddie, because even though Mason killed people, complete strangers, he lived by a code: No innocent victims.
But Eddie wasn’t finished.
“Every yard you add to a shot amplifies all the factors affecting it. Wind, drop, all of it. Center mass, Nick. Center mass. Whenever you try to pull off one of those Hollywood shots, you put your own life at risk.”
Eddie was sounding like Quintero, Mason thought. And I’ve got a hole in my shoulder that proves them both right.
Mason knew Eddie was trying to protect him. Eddie Callahan, who was built like a tank, had been Mason’s best friend ever since they were kids running around Canaryville. Eddie was the one kid in the group who had a real set of parents, and they sent him away to the army when he was twenty-two years old. He came back a year later, identified as a natural-born sniper but drummed out when he couldn’t put up with asshole sergeants telling him what to do every minute. With a good rifle, a good scope, and a minute to dial it all in, he could still hit anything under a thousand yards.
Today, they were just shooting holes through paper with rifles and a couple of semiautomatic pistols that Eddie had brought with him. The irony wasn’t lost on Mason: he didn’t even own a gun, because whenever he used one, he left it at the scene. If he wanted to practice, he had to borrow guns from Eddie.
When they were done shooting, Eddie slipped a Browning 1911 into Mason’s hand.
“You’re taking this home with you.”
“Don’t need it. When I get a job, I get the hardware, too.”
“This isn’t for a job,” Eddie said. “This is for you.”
Mason held the pistol in his hand, thought about what Eddie was saying to him.
He’s right. I may need this.
“I appreciate you coming down here,” Mason said. “What did you tell your wife?”
“I told her I was going shooting,” Eddie said as he closed his gun case. “She knows it’s how I unwind.”
“Did you tell her I’d be here?”
Eddie hesitated, and fought off a half smile.
“Yeah,” Mason said, “didn’t think so.”
Eddie lived in a little house in Bridgeport now. As South Side neighborhoods go, it was one step up from Canaryville. He had a small business in his garage repairing computers, twin three-year-old boys, and a wife, Sandra—Don’t call me Sandy—who made no secret about how she felt about Eddie’s old friend Nick Mason. The fact that Mason took the fall for the harbor job and Eddie did zero days in federal prison didn’t seem to factor into the equation.
“Listen,” Mason said, “I’ll tell you why we’re really here.”
“I was wondering when you’d get to it.”
“I need your help again,” Mason said, taking a quick look at the parking lot to check on Quintero. “I’m willing to pay you.”
“I know what you did for me, Nick. You don’t have to pay me.”
“I have a safe-deposit box at First Chicago on Western,” Mason said. “There’s ten thousand dollars cash in there on the first of every month.”
“Who puts it there?”
“That’s the first thing I want you to find out. Tomorrow’s the drop day. I need you to watch the bank, figure out who’s leaving the money, follow them wherever they go.”
“How will I know who to follow?”
“Use your instincts,” Mason said. “This person is a member of Darius Cole’s operation. I don’t even know what color they’ll be. But a pro’s a pro.”
“A pro doing a job. I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Take pictures,” Mason said. “Wherever you follow them. Write down the addresses. I need to start collecting information.”
“No problem,” Eddie said. “These are the people you work for now?”
Mason nodded. “We’re doing counter-intel on the entire organization. Everybody we can identify. That money they give me every month, we’re going to start using it against them. I’m also paying you with it.”
“I told you, Nick, you don’t have to—”
“This is going to be a full-time job, Eddie. You’re going to have to explain this to your wife.”
Eddie took a moment to think it over. “Or just don’t tell her anything.”
“You work in your garage. How the hell are you going to explain being out all the time?”
“I’ll tell her I got a new job. Fixing computers at different locations all over the city.”
“Next thing,” Mason said. “Don’t look right now, but there’s a black Escalade in the back corner of the parking lot. I want you to follow it when I leave. Find out where the driver lives.”
“Done.”
“Last thing,” Mason said. “Next time I go on a job …”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll call you,” Mason said. “I want you to go out to Elmhurst and keep an eye on Gina’s house. If I don’t call you back by a certain time, that means I’m dead. Which means you’ve got to do one final thing for me.”
Eddie nodded his head slowly as he waited for it.
“You find that black Escalade,” Mason said. “You go up to the window. And you put a bullet in the driver’s head.”
9
Detective Frank Sandoval was alone. Again.
He was on his way out of Homan Square, the redbrick monolith that took up one whole city block between Fillmore Street and a set of railroad tracks. Once an abandoned Sears warehouse, now it belonged to the Chicago Police Department. It was home to the Evidence and Recovered Property Section, which is why Sandoval was there dropping off the bag of clothing he’d recovered from the house on Sixteenth Street.
Homan, as most cops called it, was also home to the Organized Crime Bureau, the ballistics lab, and the SWAT unit. It had also been home, at one time, to the Special Investigations Section, or SIS, an elite task force of rock star cops who’d been given a blank check to take guns and drugs off the streets using an
y means necessary.
A month earlier, Sandoval would have had to make his way through a crowd of people gathered around the Homan Square gates. Protesters with signs reading Stop Police Terror and No Gitmo in Chicago after the newspapers broke the story that thousands of suspects had been detained here over the past decade, denied access to attorneys and never allowed to make contact with their families. Some of them, according to the papers, physically tortured—like this was some sort of Third World dictatorship.
As he drove through the gates, Sandoval didn’t have to wonder where the protesters had gone. They had moved on to other parts of the city, even to the sidewalk in front of the mayor’s house, to protest the police shooting of yet one more unarmed black man. Sandoval didn’t wear a uniform anymore, but whenever he identified himself as a member of the Chicago Police Department, he could feel the unspoken words hanging in the air: You are the enemy.
It was a city that had paid out over a half billion dollars to the families of victims shot by the police. A city where most cops on the beat didn’t see much reason to do more than the minimum anymore: answer the 911 calls, but don’t make proactive stops, don’t put yourself in a situation where you can lose your job. Or your life.
Sandoval parked and went inside. The evidence window was on the first floor. At one time SIS had the top-floor offices overlooking the whole city. Those were empty now after Sandoval had turned in the information that put SIS out of business. And seven of its members in prison.
Sandoval’s identity as the man who brought down SIS had never been officially revealed. No medals, no photos in the paper of him shaking hands with the mayor. He wondered how long that anonymity would last, was already starting to get that icy feeling down his back that other cops were watching him. That’s why he had asked Mason about it—the only other man who knew about where that information had come from. Because cops walk a tightrope. You ask any officer what he thinks of dirty cops and he’ll tell you they should fry. But you turn in brother cops, no matter how dirty, no matter how much blood on their hands, and you’re a rat. And for a lot of cops, a rat is worse than anyone the rat turns in.
As Sandoval walked down the hallway, there was something eating at him, something he’d missed that day, but he couldn’t identify it. He ran through everything he’d done so far: going to the Aqua, meeting Marshal Harper, his conversation with Mason at the school. Then, finally, his real job.
There’d been plans for him to transfer to days, but there was still something about the second shift that appealed to him. Even if it had sped up the end of his marriage, and even if it made it almost impossible to see his kids during the school week, Sandoval was secretly happy when the transfer got put on hold. His mornings were free for him to keep tabs on Nick Mason. Then he’d go to work and the sun would go down in the middle of his shift or it would be down already if it was the dead of winter. The city waking up a second time with a brand-new energy, the last of the sunlight reflecting off the glass buildings, the streetlights beginning to glow on the bridges over the river.
This was his Chicago. A city that would see over four thousand shootings that year alone. And over seven hundred murders—more than Los Angeles and New York combined.
The most beautiful, fucked-up, heartbreaking city in the world.
He watched the gloved evidence technician going through Derrick Moss’s clothing. Moss was the main suspect in the brutal rape and murder of a teenage girl, but when Sandoval went to serve the warrant, Derrick was nowhere to be found. He was gone, but he’d left behind the clothing he’d worn the night before. Pants: blue denim. Shirt: white tee. Socks: white athletic. Shoes: white Air Jordans, brand-new.
“They always find money for the Jordans, huh?”
The tech smiled at him, waiting for acknowledgment of his social commentary. Sandoval just looked at him. And then it hit him:
The shoes.
He wasn’t wearing them because he was still in the house.
Sandoval hurried back outside to his car, called his new partner as he drove back to Sixteenth Street. Tony Alonso, a twenty-year veteran detective who dressed better, looked better, talked smoother than anyone else at Area Central. Sandoval wasn’t convinced he was half as good a detective as he thought he was. Or even a quarter as good. But right now, Sandoval needed his partner.
He pulled up in front of the house again, one story on a city lot barely big enough to hold it. Got back on the radio, called for Alonso. Heard nothing back but silence. He called for the dispatcher and asked for backup, gave her the address.
There’s a back door leading into the alley, he thought, reconstructing the interior of the house in his mind. An alley behind it running parallel to the street, like a thousand others all over the city.
He saw the front door open for one moment. A young face looked out at him. Then the door slammed shut.
God damn it.
Sandoval drew his Glock 27 as he crossed the street. He was years past the days when he wore a radio on his belt and a mic on his shoulder. He could only hope that someone else was on the way as he hit the narrow passageway between the Moss house and the house next door, climbed over two garbage cans, and kept going. When he got back to the alley, he looked east, saw nothing, looked west, caught a brief glimpse of someone turning a corner.
Let him go. You don’t do this by yourself. The voice of reason in the back of his mind. He ignored it and kept running.
When he got to the end of the alley, he found a small group of men standing together. All of them were black. None of them was Derrick Moss.
“Which way?” Sandoval asked them.
They stood silently, watching him. The old rule in Chicago, reinforced by recent events and made more emphatic than ever: You don’t give anything to a cop. Ever. Even as he brushed past them, they did not move aside.
Sandoval crossed the street to a small church that stood on the corner. He took out his cell phone and dialed his partner’s number.
“Where are you?” he asked as soon as the call was answered.
“There’s another unit on the street. I’ll be right behind them.”
“I’m at the church at Fifteenth and Austin. Suspect is inside.”
Now you wait, Sandoval thought. He circled the church, watching for the man in case he decided to run again. As he came under an open second-story window, he heard an older man’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but the voice was tightened by fear.
Sandoval looked up and down the street, swore to himself, and went to the back door. It was unlocked. He pulled it open.
He was in a storage area, barely illuminated by the late-afternoon sunlight streaming through a single high window. He saw chairs and audio equipment. Another door on the far side. He moved across the room, put his ear to the door, and heard the same man’s voice on the other side.
“You don’t have to do this,” the older man said in a careful, measured way. Most likely, the pastor of this church. “Let me help you.”
Sandoval pushed open the door a fraction of an inch. He saw the back of a lectern and wooden benches where the choir would sit during the service. The voice was louder, but he still couldn’t see who was speaking.
“Don’t do this, Derrick. You got a chance to make this turn out different.”
He knows him. He’s reasoning with him.
Sandoval pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the sanctuary. He led with his Glock, held it with both hands, moving it in perfect sync with his sight line. Left to right: empty pews, an aisle, more empty pews. Where are they? He swung the gun all the way to his right and saw them. An older man, in a black shirt with a clerical collar, and a younger man, sitting at the edge of the front pew.
Derrick Moss.
“Show me your hands!” Sandoval yelled.
Moss leapt to his feet and ran along the wall toward the back of the sanctuary. Sandoval kept the gun trained on him as he moved down the center aisle to cut him off.
“Get on t
he floor, Derrick! Get on the floor!”
Moss hit the rear door hard and flew back. It was locked.
“Get on the floor now!”
The next few seconds lasted an eternity as the young man turned to face him, his eyes wide open, his hand moving to his back pocket.
“Derrick!”
Two visions of the future popped into the detective’s head: Sandoval’s two kids watching a black box being lowered into the ground, policemen in uniform firing off their guns in salute. Or a different black box, lowered into a different plot of ground on the other side of the city, while the streets burned over yet another black man shot down by the police, this time in a church.
In a church.
Derrick’s right hand came away from the back pocket. As Sandoval’s finger slowly squeezed the trigger, Moss’s mother’s words from earlier that day rang in his head: He doesn’t carry a gun, please don’t let them shoot my boy. And something in that face, the empty look of despair and fear …
“It’s just a phone!” Moss said. “It’s just a phone!”
He dropped the cell phone to the floor and got down on his knees. Sandoval let out his breath and moved forward, pressing the man’s chest against the floor and putting cuffs on his wrists. He stayed on his knees, one hand pressed on the back of the young man lying next to him. He felt own his heart pounding in his chest.
You were dead, he said to himself. If that was a gun, you were dead.
Sandoval didn’t move for several more seconds as the pastor moved closer to sit in the last pew and Derrick Moss kept his forehead pressed against the floor.
Finally, Sandoval heard the sounds of footsteps in the hallway outside, the door being pushed roughly open, wood splintering as the lock gave way. A half dozen men in uniform burst into the room, guns drawn. Another terrifying second as Sandoval looked up into the dark tunnel of another cop’s gun.
“Secure!” Sandoval said. The cop lowered his weapon. Two other cops picked up Moss and led him out of the room. Another two attended to the pastor, asking him questions and offering to send for an ambulance. Nobody said a word to Sandoval.
Exit Strategy Page 8
