by Marcus Sakey
Another silence, then Jenn said, “What do we do?”
A fair question. He decided to think about it, and was surprised to realize that he could. That in fact, he felt sharp. “OK. Let’s go through this. That guy.” He had a flash of the man’s face, buried it. “He must have been the drug dealer Johnny was meeting with. Damn. I really figured we’d have time before he arrived. He must have known Johnny—what?” Realizing Jenn was staring at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to get my head around this.”
“Get your head around it? Get your head around what, that you, that we . . .”
“Yes,” he said.
“Can we look on the bright side?” Ian’s eyebrows high. “The cash?”
Funny. Mitch had forgotten about the money. He straightened, pulled the bag to his lap. Opened the zipper. What he saw inside, less real than raising the gun and pulling the—stop, bury it—was bundles. He reached in, took out a handful, packs of hundreds and twenties.
“Wow.” Ian sounded reverent. “How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m saying, count, man.”
“No.”
“OK, let me.”
“No.” He stuffed the money back in the bag. “We’re not talking about the money now. We have to think first.”
“About what?”
He looked up, met Ian’s gaze, held it. “About how to get away with this.”
“Get away with it?” Jenn made a squeaky sort of sound. “How?”
“One step at a time.” Mitch’s thoughts came clear and clean and logical. Like a machine, a big industrial machine that stamped out part after perfect part. “First. In the restaurant. We were wearing masks and gloves. Ian, you didn’t take your gloves off, did you? Get sweaty, wipe your hands?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.”
“I might have touched something,” Jenn said quietly.
“Touched what?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“In the alley?”
She nodded.
“That’s OK. It’s an alley. Hundreds of people go through it.” His body felt like it was getting low-grade electrical shocks. He stood, cracked his knuckles. Pulled the pistol from his waistband and dropped it on the table. It hit loud and heavy. “This was the only gun we fired, right? So that’s lucky.”
“Why?”
“It’s a revolver. Revolvers don’t leave casings.” He saw Jenn’s expression, said, “The part that comes off a bullet.” He took two steps forward, spun, took two back, feeling muscles in his legs. Stopped, looked at Ian. “What were you thinking, man? Pulling out your gun like some freaking gangster?”
“I was—”
“You didn’t even have the safety off.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not the one who shot him.”
“No. You’re just the one who left us no choice.” He glared at his friend, feeling the anger run through him, remembering the guy doing coke in the goddamn car. Ian tried to meet his gaze, then looked away, at the window, his feet. Shuffled them. Looked up again, something in his eyes.
Something like fear.
Strange. Mitch couldn’t remember anyone being scared of him before. “OK. That doesn’t matter now. These guns, the guy you got them from, who was it?”
“Just a guy I know. He runs a private casino. Some other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I don’t really know. Prostitutes, I think.”
“Can the guns be traced to him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because he would have worried about us getting caught. He’d have given me ones that couldn’t be traced.”
“OK,” Mitch said again. It felt good to say, to mark off little increments of thought, like ticking off items on a list. “You’re right. And we didn’t leave any fingerprints, and the bullets can’t tie to us. So, then.”
Jenn stared at him. Hanging, he realized, on his next words.
“So then we’re OK.”
“OK? You killed—”
“We. We killed.” He closed his eyes, rubbed at them with his forefinger and thumb. “But he was a bad guy, a drug dealer. And he saw you.” He moved to her, dropped to a squat beside the chair, took her hands in his, not thinking about any of it, just doing. “Jenn, he saw your face.”
She said nothing. Something was happening behind her eyes, though he couldn’t have said what. He kept speaking, talking fast, wanting to make everything better. “But now we’re safe. Things didn’t go exactly how we planned, but we got the money and got out, and didn’t leave anything that would lead to us.”
“But we—”
“Yes,” he cut her off, his patience snapping. “Yeah, we did. Which is just one of the reasons I didn’t want to do this in the first place, remember? You wanted your big adventure? Well, now you’ve got it.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What’s fair got to do with it? It happened, damn it. Do you get me? It happened. It’s real. Do you understand?”
Jenn’s eyes were wide. She nodded yes in a way that meant no.
He sighed, squeezed her hands. “Look, it’s nobody’s fault. But what matters is that there is nothing to point to us. Nothing at all.”
“Sure there is,” Ian said. “The money. The cars. The guns.”
It was a fair point, and it froze him cold. Ian was right. He’d been so focused on thinking about what had already happened that he hadn’t put any thought into what happened next. Still, he was the one holding it together, while the two of them seemed about to come apart, Jenn retreating into herself, Ian’s swaggering a thin veneer over panic. If someone had to be strong, to make the hard decisions, it looked like it was going to be him.
He was surprised at how good that idea felt.
“You’re right. We’ll need to take care of all of that. But first things first. We need to talk to Alex, see what happened on his end. With the shooting, the police will be involved. We hadn’t counted on that. We need to know what they think.”
“I’ll call him,” Jenn said, rising.
“Wait. He’s probably on the way to the hospital.”
“The hospital? How hard did you hit him?” She glared at Ian, who sighed and dropped onto the couch.
“Harder than I should have, OK? I was nervous.”
She shook her head. Straightened her back and ran her hands through her hair. “Which hospital would they take him to?”
Mitch realized she was asking him, him directly. “I don’t know,” he said. “And we can’t start calling around, or dial his cell phone a hundred times. We can’t do anything that would raise suspicion.” His mind still churning steady and strong, focusing on the task at hand. Maybe if you do that hard enough, you won’t have to remember what you—stop.
He took a deep breath. “The idea from the beginning was that there was no reason why anyone would look at us. Far as we know, that hasn’t changed. We need to talk to Alex and find out what happened on his end. He won’t be in the hospital long. Overnight, probably.”
“So what do we do?”
“Leave one message on his cell, something perfectly normal. Tell him that we’re getting together tomorrow morning. Here.”
“And until then?”
“Wait.”
CHAPTER 14
THE CT SCAN hadn’t been a lot of fun. It wasn’t claustrophobia so much as the noise—loud, rhythmic clunking and banging while his head throbbed like an apocalyptic hangover. But worse was just lying there, not knowing what had happened.
Maybe the gun went off accidentally? But there had been two shots.
Were one or two of his best friends dead in an alley right now?
“Mr. Kern.”
“Yeah.” He opened his eyes. An Indian guy in a white coat stood in front of him. Weird. The guy looked younger than him. Alex pushed away his thoughts,
struggled to focus. “Doc.”
“How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts.”
“Any nausea?”
“No.”
“Numbness?”
“I wish.”
“Pain in your teeth? Double vision?”
“Huh-uh.”
The man nodded, made a note on a clipboard. “Good. Well, the results are fine. No evidence of fracture or permanent damage. The blow hit just above the zygomatic arch, which protects some important nerves. Sort of like hitting your funny bone, how it shoots through your whole arm?” He took out a pad and began to write. “I’m going to give you some Tylenol-3 for the pain. Don’t take any more than you really need.”
“What about the cut?”
“We stitched that when you arrived. You might have a little scar, nothing too dramatic.”
“You did?” He blinked. “I don’t remember.”
“You have a mild concussion. That can affect your memory.”
“Will it—”
“Be permanent? You shouldn’t have trouble remembering things that happen from now on. If you do, come back immediately. Same with vision problems or severe pain.”
“Come back? You’re saying I should go?”
“You have insurance?”
“I have child support instead.”
The man laughed. “Look, if you want, you can stay. But my advice? You’ll rest better at home, and it’s a lot cheaper.”
“Rest? Am I allowed to sleep? I thought with a concussion . . .”
“Depends on the level. You’ll be fine. In a couple of days or a week, follow up with your family practitioner.” The man handed him a slip of paper. “Your prescription.”
After the doctor left, a nurse came in, helped him stand up, gave him his clothes, wallet, and cell phone. After he changed in the bathroom, she had him sit back down in a wheelchair. “I can walk,” he said.
“Policy,” she said. “You have someone here?”
“Someone?”
“To take you home. You shouldn’t drive, sugar.”
“I can call a cab, I guess.”
“I got a better idea.” The voice came from behind. Very gently, Alex turned his head to look.
The man in the chair wore a suit and tie. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short hair trimmed to razor edge. Something about him made Alex immediately nervous. “My name is Peter Bradley. I’m a detective with the Chicago Police Department.” His hand held out.
“A detective?” Alex shook the guy’s hand on reflex while his brain conjured images of the tip of the scissors an inch from his eye. For a moment, he thought about calling for the doctor, saying he sure felt some nausea now.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Umm.” His mouth was dry, his thoughts sticky. We robbed Johnny Love. Ian hit me too hard. Someone got shot, and I don’t know who. “There were men with guns.”
“That’s right. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. I can give you a ride at the same time.”
“Do we have to do this now?”
“Not if you’re not up to it. But the sooner we talk, the more likely we are to catch these guys,” the detective said. He gave an apologetic shrug. “Since you need a lift anyway . . .”
You have nothing to hide. “OK, yeah, I guess. Sure.”
“Good.” Bradley stepped behind the chair, took the handles. “Don’t you hate this crap?”
“What?”
“This. Everybody so worried you’re going to sue. Cut your finger, leave in a wheelchair.” The automatic doors whooshed open. The night was sticky after the hospital’s air-conditioning. “Here you go.”
Alex put his hands on the armrests, stood up slowly. The motion sent a bolt of pain through his head. He wobbled for a moment, kept one hand on the arm of the chair.
“You all right?”
“Feel like I spent the night slamming tequila.”
The cop laughed. “Doctors say you’ll be fine. At least you probably got some good pills out of it, right?” He gestured. “I’m over here. Where do you live?”
“Rogers Park.”
Bradley reached the car first, a pale blue Crown Vic. He unlocked the passenger-side door and held it open. Alex got in, his eyes scanning the radio mounted to the dash, the switches that controlled the sirens, the handle that moved the spotlight. Bradley climbed in the other side, fired up the engine. “Ever been in a police car before?”
“Nope. Well, once. When I was a kid.” He realized how that sounded, continued in a rush. “Got caught drinking a twelve-pack in an alley. The cop—the officer—put me in the back, drove me home.”
“Ouch. He talk to your parents?”
“No, he was cool. Just put the fear of God into me.” He reached up and gingerly touched the side of his face, his fingers tracing cotton and tape. There was something about the cop that he liked, an easy manner. Under other circumstances, he seemed like a guy it would be fun to have a drink with.
Bradley signaled, then nosed into traffic, heading for Lake Shore Drive. “So. Tell me what happened.” The headlights of other cars flared into stars.
Keep it simple. “I was in the back room with Johnny Lo—with Mr. Loverin.”
A smile danced quick across Bradley’s lips. Alex continued. “Two men came in. They had guns and masks. They told us not to move. One of them was close to me, and I, I guess I took a swing at him. He hit me with the gun. After that, everything is fuzzy.”
“You tried to punch one of them?”
“I wasn’t really thinking.”
“Did better than most. People usually just freeze up.”
“Kind of wish I had.”
“Did you recognize the men?”
“No. Like I said, they had masks on.”
“Anything distinctive about them?”
“Guns.”
Bradley snorted. “Anything else? Scars, tattoos, heavy, tall? Anything about the clothing?”
A memory came, a time two years ago when he’d been mugged. How afterward he couldn’t remember a thing about what the man had looked like. It had been a strangely helpless feeling: all those hours lifting weights, all the standard male fantasies about what he would do, and in the moment, he’d done nothing at all—not even remember what the man looked like. “No. It’s weird, but I guess I didn’t really see them.”
“What about their eyes? Anything unusual about them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“You didn’t notice if one had a black eye?”
Something in Alex went cold. “I’m not sure.”
“What were you doing in the office?”
“Mr. Loverin asked me to come back.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Bradley merged onto the Drive, pressed the gas. There was a party going on in a Gold Coast penthouse, men and women crowding the windows, smoking on the balcony. “Tell me about Johnny Love.”
“What about him?”
“How long have you worked for him?”
“About ten years. Well, at the bar that long. He bought it, I don’t know, six years ago?”
“Did you work with him before?”
“No.”
“You never did anything for him, any side jobs?”
“What kind of jobs?”
“Anything at all.”
“I never knew him until then.” These questions were hitting closer to home than he wanted. He faked a grimace. “Look, Detective, I’m really hurting. Do you mind—”
“Sure. Lean back, relax.” Bradley moved a lane over, sped up. “I don’t want to wear you out.”
Alex felt an absurd surge of gratitude. “Thanks.”
They rolled through the night, high rises glowing on the left, their windows too bright and plentiful. Out Alex’s window, sail-boats swayed in the harbor. “I’ve never been through anything like this before.”
“You’re lucky. Things could have gone a lot worse.”
/> “Is everybody OK?”
“A bad guy got killed, but none of your coworkers were hurt.” The cop stared forward as they rounded the curve, Lake Shore Drive merging into Hollywood. “Do you know how Johnny Love made his money?”
A bad guy. Mitch? Ian?
“I heard rumors.”
“Bad ones?”
“I guess.”
“So you don’t mind my asking, why stay?”
“I needed the money. I’m divorced, got a daughter.”
“You couldn’t find another job?”
“Johnny was an OK boss. I figured maybe they were just rumors.”
The cop looked over, cocked an eyebrow.
Alex sighed. “Look, I hear you. You and my ex-wife think alike. I probably should have quit years ago. I just . . . never got around to it. I mean, I never saw anything that made me uncomfortable, so I ignored the rumors.”
“Went along to get along.”
“I guess. I kind of get through life by not thinking too hard about it.”
“I hear you.” Bradley nodded. “What’s your address?”
“There’s a Walgreen’s at Western and Howard. Mind dropping me there? I need to get this prescription filled.”
“Sure. I can wait.”
“You don’t need to. I’m just a couple blocks.” He tried to sound casual as he spoke, to hide the part of himself that was desperate to get out of the car, ASA-freaking-P. At least they were moving fast. Traffic was light. He had a weird memory, how when he’d first moved to Rogers Park he’d been surprised to hear sirens most every night. At first he’d thought it was cops—the neighborhood was rough around the edges—but before long he’d worked it out. It was the old folks’ homes that lined Ridge. Somebody was always dying.
“What about the shots? Tell me what you remember.”
A bad guy got killed. . . . “There were two. One a few minutes after they left. Then a pause, maybe thirty seconds or so—it’s hard to say, my time sense was screwed—and then another.”
“Nothing after that?”
“Sirens.”
The cop clicked his tongue against his lip. “Anything else?”
Alex paused. Tried to remember the scene, to envision it as if he had no greater knowledge. “I don’t think so. They were in jeans, work pants. Ski masks. The masks were black.” Shook his head. “One minute I’m standing there, then the door bangs open, these guys come in yelling—”
