Chapter 2
Bill Owens
August 2009
6:00 a.m.
If you grade on a curve, stay clear of the neighborhoods that have five-pointed crowns spray-painted on the walls, and don’t say “Outfit” unless you mean clothes, the West Side of Chicago is no more difficult to navigate than Beirut during a cease-fire.
When I was a kid in the ’70s, West Madison Street was skid row. Now it’s home to the United Center and Johnny’s IceHouse. The reason hockey players with a past, or a future, come to Johnny’s IceHouse is the bright-white ice oval at its center—a training rink that is to pro hockey what Gleason’s and Stillman’s Gyms were to boxing.
I’m not here to play hockey—pre-sunrise at age forty-four—before I go to work in the concrete and rebar. I’m here because I’ve got some karma I bought a long time ago in the West Indies. Karma I’m still trying to buy back. Ten Commandments kind of stuff. The silver neck chain I wear isn’t jewelry; it’s a talisman for night terrors.
Did I plan a life that required a talisman to sleep at night?
Nope. Actually, the teenage plan was to accomplish the opposite—become a “beloved” songwriter and/or save the planet (Peace Corps, Nobel Prize)—the Boy Scout trip but without the shorts. For better or worse, my plan was designed to dodge the gangster-in-training program that quickly swallowed most of my friends.
So me and the Plan went in search of the world I’d read about in the library. Unfortunately, we hit some bumps along the way. I was young, didn’t quite know how to steer yet. Not an excuse; there aren’t any good excuses when innocent people die, and you don’t.
Which explains why we’re here.
At 6:00 a.m.
The rink at Johnny’s is cold, silent, and empty other than a pack of small round-faced misfits at the blue line: twelve total, all rolling around in hockey pads and jerseys like a dozen eggs that escaped their carton. They are Grossfeld’s Flyers. Although no eggmen (or women) will actually ever play hockey, this is the happiest he or she will be today.
“Mr. Owens!”
Shit. Eye roll.
Out of shadows, waddling her Nurse Ratched shoes toward me, is a third-generation civil servant from County Protective Services who doesn’t think hockey and Down syndrome are a natural match. Her name is Ms. Balloon-Ass Law & Order. She has a large Cook County sheriff with her, same as last time. I’m six foot; he’s taller, heavier, and has a Glock 19 on his hip. Mr. and Ms. Law & Order stop at fistfight distance.
She slaps my work shirt with another subpoena. “Third and final. Court date is twelve days.”
“Wow.” I fake a smile. “Twelve more days? Still won’t grant you the emergency restraining order?”
“Check the judge’s name, asshole.” Ms. Balloon-Ass Law & Order’s posture is not encouraging. “Think jail. ‘Child endangerment.’ Maybe prison.”
“Maybe you’ll come visit? I’ll introduce you around?”
“Twelve days.” She turns, doesn’t look at the Flyers she’s here to save, and walks out with her gunfighter in tow.
Grossfeld’s Flyers are a special-needs hockey team that my erstwhile business partner, Dave Grossfeld, and I organized, sponsor, and for all practical purposes, raise. As wards of the state, all twelve live on the dwindling largess of bankrupt government—state, county, and city—and the corrupt, petty politicians who make up the Illinois and Chicago brain trust for administering funds that neither entity has. If not for my monthly stipend to the Flyers’ expert wrangler / bus driver / daytime den mother, Patty “Prom-Night” (don’t ask)—an army medic who left a butt cheek and two ribs in Iraq—the Flyers could not train daily to become the Wheaties-box Special Olympians they will surely be.
Ha, you say?
The Flyers may be a one-team league, but they’re sufficiently popular to have a coach: Johnny’s best, ex-pro Kenny Rzepecki. They also have friends on the Blackhawks starting roster, and a nemesis, Ms. Balloon-Ass Law & Order, whom you just met. She thinks fluorescent-lit dead-end corridors and institutional dayrooms are the way to go.
I slide Ms. BAL&O’s subpoena into my jeans pocket behind today’s Daily Racing Form. This is her big-moment, final court-filing to disband the Flyers, hang my partner and me with a permanent NCO (no-contact order), and reduce Coach Rzepecki’s afterlife chances for something better than eternal purgatory to zero—like me, Kenny’s got some karma issues. Mine forged twenty years of night terrors. The ether’s way of asking for payment for my little brother, Michael, and a Down syndrome kid who went down with him, both innocent, both murdered by Caribbean hitmen who mistook Michael for me.
Coach Rzepecki’s Right Guard deodorant announces him as he appears at my shoulder. He frowns at act III of The Eggmen Fold, leans a bad hip against his hockey stick, and says: “Flyers need a new lawyer, a pit-bull bitch protecting her pups. I know a woman; comes in here with your pal Todd Smith. Not gonna be cheap, or pretty.”
I float hopeful eyebrows at woman. Women of a certain type find me interesting for a week or two.
Coach Rzepecki cold-eyes my primp. “She’s into money; ain’t gonna care that you modeled underwear.”
“Really?” I pat a reasonably good set of aging-action-figure abs, daily armor against past-life indiscretions that crisscross my back. “You know someone else who’s graced the Sears catalog? On three occasions?”
“Twenty years ago, when the pay was fifteen bucks and you keep the shorts.”
“Fine. Assuming your NHL customers at the Blackhawks can live with ‘not pretty,’ how much does a pit bull cost nowadays?”
“Thirty thousand to beat the no-contact order—”
“Thirty?” I step back so the number hits someone other than me.
“Fifteen more to keep the Flyers on the ice and you and Dave un-charged; and five more to convince one of Toddy Pete Steffen’s insurance companies they should write medical.” Coach Kenny nods at the blue line. “Should one of the Twelve Days of Christmas get hurt.”
“Jesus Christ. Fifty grand?”
Kenny goes blank, not taking responsibility.
I glance for the rich patron saint who looks after God’s misfires . . . the glance lands on empty seats like it does most places Mother Teresa doesn’t frequent. “Your fifty include full absolution from Francis Cardinal George? We could take that to Taylor Street or Chinatown; Outfit guys pay for that kind of paper.”
“No paper. And the insurance itself is extra.”
“God damn, man; was your fucking lawyer raised by wolves?”
“Hey, don’t fuckin’ cry to me. Wanna dump your kids back to the projects, up to you.”
“My kids?” I flip Kenny the bird and walk away.
Then back. “How the fuck am I the guy—”
I walk away again, eyes up in the rink lights, then back. “Their parents didn’t want ’em; the city couldn’t give a shit; but I’m the guy?”
Kenny stares at me, then the night-terrors talisman around my neck that I’ve unconsciously gripped with a specific hand.
Exhale. Neck-chain release. “You have how much of the fifty?”
“I have the ice-rink job; and like you, some history I wish I didn’t; and morning doughnuts. And every so often, Blackhawk players who tear-up easy.” Stare. “Same as you do, tough guy.”
“Allergies.” I wipe one eye; blow air through my lips. Ice glance. “Little shits are kinda cute, you gotta admit.”
“Cute is a topless auto-shop calendar girl. Yes or no on the pit bull?”
I look at the spot Ms. Balloon-Ass Law & Order just vacated, then the eggmen and women. “Fifty fucking grand? Really?”
“Plus the insurance.”
Headshake. Flyers glance. Our goalie, Lisa “The Wall” Saunders is making snow angels on the ice in front of the net she’s guarding. My eyes close. All good things end. The Flyers had a good run with Dave a
nd me; somebody else could step up . . .
Without my permission, my right hand checks my phone and the third message from a downtown heavyweight attorney, a summons I had no intention of honoring.
No. Absolutely not. Do not fucking think about it.
The name on the screen means trouble—Levee Grill, backroom-city-politics, organized-crime kind of trouble—trouble way beyond what a regular guy can survive if the dominoes fall wrong . . .
Ice glance: Lisa scrums up to her padded knees in time to block the slowest slap shot of all time. She pumps both arms into the rink lights like she just won the Stanley Cup. Her defensemen mob her.
Fucking shame. Crying goddamn shame. But life’s hard, and then you die. Coach Rzepecki glance: he’s focused on the Stanley Cup celebration, a smile softening his scarred face.
Don’t, Bill. Don’t you fucking dare. Mother Teresa has blood relatives, and they ain’t you. My mouth says: “Your pit bull take half in ten days, the rest as soon as Dave and I can scrape it up?”
“You mean you, right? Dave ain’t scraping up shit and we both know it.”
I walk away again, faster and farther this time. Keep fucking moving, don’t stop until you can jump out a fourth-floor window. I watch my Redwing work boots slow down, then stop, then turn, the steel toes now pointed at Kenny. Someone who sounds like an incredibly stupid version of me says, “Will she take half or not?”
Kenny looks at the Flyers, then nods. “She owes me on something else; I’ll spend that. If she needs another reason, I’ll give her one.”
I glance my phone, feel the suicide moment of clarity just before you do the swan dive or pull the trigger, then hear myself say:
“Fuck it. I’ll find the money. Tell mama to bite.”
***
Traffic downtown adds to my headache. Headaches are God’s way of reminding you that accepting contracts from people you know will be trouble is asking for same.
The polar opposite of self-induced headaches is the Daily Racing Form (my copy waits un-studied on my passenger seat). It has more pages than the New York Times, more numbers than a math textbook, and contains every winner of every race that will be run today. The racetrack’s voluminous “newspaper of record” represents a handicapper’s hopes and dreams as well as his commitment to achieving them. I’ll find the money, as spoken to Coach Rzepecki earlier this morning, is the equivalent of setting those aspirations and commitments on fire.
Horns blare. A bus swerves. Brake lights. More horns.
My mission this morning—I’ll find the money—is inscribed on at least one tombstone in every cemetery, everywhere. Trust me, I know. When I’m not managing the Flyers’ front office or at a racetrack, I’m in a cemetery, covered in concrete dust, making a modest living building mausoleums.
Back in the ’80s, while a bunch of my mausoleums’ residents were doing blow at the North Side’s 950 and the Fire Alarm, I was at Oxford—yeah, the one in England—on scholarship, no less, for Advanced Game Theory and English Lit. I can read the writing on the wall pretty well. But paying attention to what’s on the wall? That’s a different construct, up there with “Mind your own business” and “Know your limitations.”
But I did model underwear. And, for the record, it was twenty-five bucks.
Left turn, finally I’m on Michigan Avenue, two blocks south of the Barlow-O’Hare law offices in the Willoughby Tower, Mr. Barlow is on the sixteenth floor, facing Millennium Park and the fourth-largest freshwater lake on planet Earth. Mega storms crash inland here every year. Fitting, because inside Chicago’s city limits, attorney James W. Barlow Jr. does not fear God, or mega storms, or anything else. Why? James W. Barlow’s DNA is in the base code of the Democratic political machine that has ruled this city, one way or another, since 1931. For those folks born elsewhere, Chicago runs on bare knuckles and no apology. If you don’t favor that style, you’re far better off in New York, where they at least hide the guns and knives before they use them.
Barlow-O’Hare’s receptionist is a sturdy Scandinavian American blonde in her sixties named Ragnild. She’s power-dressed in a whale-blue pantsuit, seated behind a transparent crescent desk, shoulders back, chin up. Her part of the office smells like Copenhagen after the rain. Ragnild accepts an envelope from a five-five alpha male who looks through me to the storm clouds over the lake, then gives her curt FedEx instructions.
Ragnild speaks to me instead, says, “Hi, Bill,” winces at her watch, adds, “he’s waiting.”
I wince back—neither of us care for Mr. Barlow.
The five-five alpha male quits Ragnild’s window, focuses on me, isn’t any more impressed than the last time we met, then disappears in a waft of scented hair gel and shoe lifts.
Ragnild swivels out of her chair, straightens my bow tie, shifts my seersucker coat on my shoulders, stands back, nods at her work, and says, “Go home; change back into your work clothes. However bad you need the money, you don’t need it from here.”
I kiss her forehead and quote Elwood Blues. “I’m on a mission from God.”
***
James W. Barlow Jr.
Barlow is at his desk. Next to his intercom is an advance reader copy of the nonfiction book Get Capone. The intercom announces: “Mr. Owens is here.”
“Send him in.”
Barlow opens a drawer, places an unopened bottle of Barbancourt Rhum inside on top of a file labeled “O’Hare/Piccard/Grossfeld.” He stands, adjusts one red suspender across his starched-white shoulder, then walks to one of the four windows overlooking Millennium Park and Lake Michigan.
The coming storm frames him when the door opens . . .
***
Bill Owens
My meeting with Mr. Barlow is over.
He catches me at the elevator, says, “Bill—”
“Sorry. The answer’s still no.”
“Really? I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for the job. You have your history all over the Caribbean selling for Myers’s Rum. You know a close friend of Ms. Devereux’s down there. And you need the money.”
“Hire a detective from Miami, Nassau, or Kingston. My ‘history’ in the West Indies includes more than selling rum, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“Ten thousand plus expenses for a few day’s work. Twenty-five thousand more if you prove Susie Devereux’s alive. Another twenty-five thousand if you can find her.”
Barlow pushes a Susie Devereux file and the Get Capone book into my chest.
My hands remain in my pockets. The elevator bings. Barlow reoffers the check for ten thousand.
I stare at the check, then Barlow. “Wanna tell me what you’re not telling me? Whatever it is that really makes me perfect for your job?”
Barlow shrugs innocence.
“Bye.”
Barlow blocks the elevator. “Your hockey team, Bill. Without you, they’re . . .”
Exhale. “Fifteen thousand for openers. Ten now, five when I get back and tell you I found nothing. But first you explain—here and now—why you want me to travel knowing less than you know.”
Nassau, Bahamas
(Three days later)
Chapter 3
Bill Owens
August 2009
Midnight
Palm trees rustle in front of pastel colonial edifices. A distant steel-drum band adds soundtrack to air you smell only in a flower shop. As they say in the guitar-and-parrot-shirt anthems, “Another day in paradise.”
As I stand here wearing Sperry Top-Siders (that should never have walked into James W. Barlow’s office), the harbor and dock are mostly shadows, save for the red glow of ganja spliffs and the running lights of the almost seaworthy M/V Lady Frances mail boat. The eight-year-old next to me is named Harba Gangsta. I can call him Haba G ’cause we down; Haba G has adopted me “for your protection, and $10.”
Haba G points at my T-shi
rt. “Wasa Grossfeld’s Flyers?”
“Hockey team.”
Round eyes; confusion.
“Ice hockey.” I bend, do a slap shot. “Kids like you, but with Down syndrome.”
“Huh?”
The kid’s eight, but that’s the universal reaction, as in: What kind of asshole would sponsor a Down syndrome hockey team?
“You play cricket, right? When you’re not running the docks? Hockey’s like that, but on ice. Something to do other than sit in a room waiting to die.”
“Die? They sick, your team?”
“Sorta. Nobody wants ’em, so I . . .”
Round eyes again.
“Yeah, I know. Long story.”
***
One second-thought shy of midnight, I pay Haba G his $10, then another $40 to a shirtless Bahamian captain who looks like he could hula with the Hawaiians and probably does. Captain Stooz points me aboard what a professional seaman might call a “rust bucket” for the weekly run to Rum Cay, 185 miles south.
The ship’s horn attempts throaty. My left hand grips rusted rail as we slip away into the channel. My right hand grips a freshly acquired Kalik beer. Let’s call today a fool’s errand. Not that I want to be labeled a fool—I am getting paid—but as is often said, if you look around the table and can’t find the schmuck, he’s you. And for the record, the furniture doesn’t have to be a table.
For the next six hours of moonlit trade winds, me, Captain Stooz, and the Lady Frances sail through the Bahamas’ out islands. I ask my captain to play us some Bob Marley, which he does. The islands twinkle in the breezy dark. Two spliffs into the four that the Stooz-man and I share, I have no trouble singing “One Love” to the dolphins that track us, then testing my hula chops once I feel like me and the dolphins are all on the same page.
***
High noon at sea has more sun in it than my Blues Brothers Ray-Bans can filter. Captain Stooz slides the Lady Frances up to the concrete dock at Rum Cay’s Grand Hotel Boblo. I am the only cargo that disembarks.
Privateers Page 2
