Start Shooting

by Charlie Newton

  I nod at the black suits sandwiching me. “Don’t think you’ll want witnesses.”

  Robbie doesn’t want witnesses, but he doesn’t want to die, either. “We frisked him?” The suit nods. Robbie grips his Glock. “Wait outside.”

  They hesitate. One points me to the wall under the TV. “Shoulders on the paint.” Then tells Robbie, “Up to you, but if he comes off the wall I’d shoot him. We’ll put a cold piece in his hand and call it self-defense.”

  Robbie aims the Glock at me. I flatten against the wall and both bodyguards leave. Robbie eyes me and the envelope. “So?”

  I offer the envelope. “Not going on tape.”

  “Ruben think that’ll keep him alive?”

  Gut punch. My brother’s name. “Read it. We got business.”

  “Business? All of a sudden I know you?”

  I offer the envelope again. “You wanna get paid, read it. You wanna die, shoot me.”

  Robbie lifts the Glock with both hands and aims at my heart, then tells me to step forward and open the envelope. I do both, extracting a page sealed into a tight, see-through plastic letter holder. The page appears old; it has a government seal at the top and bottom that may be Imperial Japan circa World War II. There are two paragraphs of what Hahn said are Japanese characters; the letter is signed and dated. I extend him the page.

  He points the page to the bedsheet covering his legs, his eyes and the Glock on me. “That it?”

  I drop the signed page on his sheet, then pull out four four-by-five photos. The first photo is of a metal-and-glass receptacle being attached to the fuselage of an unmarked vintage plane. At the bottom of the photograph it reads “infected fleas” in blue ink. I show it to Robbie, who does not want to touch it.

  The next photo is an aerial shot, looking down past the same receptacle to the ground below flooded with soldiers aiming their rifles upward. A plume of smoke trails the receptacle. The same blue ink reads “October 27. Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, Chinese Army.” The third photograph is the same plane on the ground, a tall thin Japanese man in uniform stepping out. At the bottom the blue ink reads “Lt. Gen. Shiro Ishii, Director, Epidemic and Water Supply Unit.” The fourth photograph is the front page of a Chinese newspaper. A large headline roofs a photograph of bodies littering a village. The blue ink reads “Results.”

  I toss the last photo to the others piled just below Robbie’s knees and retreat to the wall. He bends, winces at the pain, then falls back with a deep exhale. He breathes until he’s steady, then uses a pencil to move one photo after another close enough to view. When he’s done, he studies me. Thinks about where we are in the crime, what I’m doing here, what he knows that I don’t.

  “Talk.”

  “Furukawa.”

  Robbie blinks, breathing with his mouth open, then stares, reading me for the trap. “Assuming you know what the fuck you’re talking about—” He stops, squints. “Pull up your shirt.”

  I pull up my shirt. “Furukawa won’t pay.”

  “Bullshit. They have to pay.”

  I shrug and roll out the lie. “White Flower wants to use one vial … at the 10K this afternoon. Lý does that, we’re facing feds, not corporate criminals.”

  “Fucking psycho Vietcong. Her and his Irish bitch put a bow on me for the Koreans. Set me up in that fuckin’ alley. And your brother let ’em.”

  “Wasn’t Ruben. I wouldn’t be standing here hoping you don’t shoot me.”

  Robbie glares. “Not Ruben and Lý? Some cocktail waitress put the whole thing together?” Robbie’s face is gray-red and blotchy; he can’t take much more anger. “Tell your brother”—breath—“I want my full share.” Wince. “And if he thinks he can fuck me like he did the Koreans”—Robbie tries to push himself farther up in the bed but can’t—“then he’s dead.” Wince. “And so are you. Two less child molesters for Chicago to worry about.”

  “I came here to tell you it wasn’t Ruben. And that we have to rein in White Flower.”

  Robbie stares, hand tightening on the Glock. “Am I missing something? ’Cause I’m not a fucking Mexican? White Flower is your brother’s squeeze. How do we figure I can run her?”

  “We thought maybe Toddy Pete could help.”

  Silence. Robbie goes a hundred percent wary. “You did, huh?”

  SUNDAY, 4:45 AM

  The stairwell on Mercy’s east side feels like the morgue. I steady into the concrete wall and cue up Ruben’s number. Three times he doesn’t answer. Sweat stings my eyes. I call a Yellow Cab, tell them to pick me up outside the emergency room.

  Ruben. My brother.

  My eyes squeeze shut and I vomit down the stairs.

  The railing keeps me upright. I vomit again, stumble back sucking fouled air, and my shoulders bang the wall. The heels of both hands wipe my cheeks and eyes. I spit bile, breathing short. My jaw clamps. I twist and kick the shit out of the metal door. Kick it again. “NO. JUST FUCKING NO.” The echoes beat back at me and I kick again. My stomach cramps me to half.

  Ruben can’t be part of Hahn’s horror show, can’t be Robbie and White Flower Lý’s partner, can’t be willing to kill people for money. Sweat wipe. Ruben’s my brother. He can’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t do that. Just fucking NO. Maybe, hopefully, they tricked him, or if they didn’t, they don’t have Hahn’s Hokkaido package; they’re scamming a mass murderer and his corporate protector. Ruben would be a crooked cop, but he wouldn’t be a murderer. ’Cause he can’t be.

  And Robbie never said Buff’s name. And he would’ve if Buff was part of the blackmail, wouldn’t he? Bile burns in my throat. I start down the steps. Who knows? But Robbie damn near shot me after I said Toddy Pete’s name, that’s damn sure a fact. Robbie smelled me fishing; I could see that in his eyes, even clouded with painkillers. Had we been in an alley with no witnesses, I’d be dead.

  Ground floor. Hallway, movement, nurses, orderlies, business as usual. I semi-sleepwalk through the halls, buy a Coke from a machine to rinse out the bile. Outside the emergency room, a Yellow Cab idles with his windows up. I get in and tell him, “Wolfe City on Halsted.”

  The cab drops me at my car across from Wolfe City. The limos are gone, the curbs clear other than my Honda and empty King Cobra forty-ouncers. Above the door, the WCRS neon is dark. The door lever rattles in my hand. The great, life-changing, good things have quit happening. I press the doorbell just in case, then the intercom button and lean into the speaker … to say what?

  My phone rings, Hahn’s number on the screen. By now she knows I ran; knew my car was here. I’m not ready for her plan to crucify Ruben. Don’t want to hear it, believe it, know it. I point my car north toward Ruben’s condo and call him again. “Call me, Ruben. Now. I just left Robbie Steffen. You gotta talk to me.”

  I turn onto South Michigan at Cermak. Have to find Ruben. Now. Before—

  Hahn calls again. For twenty-five blocks, I call Ruben everywhere I can imagine him being at five AM on a Sunday. City workers are already out stacking street barricades on the sidewalk, prepping Grant Park, downtown, and Millennium Park for this afternoon’s Furukawa 2016 Olympics 10K fund-raiser. Right turn on Randolph. Ruben’s building is at the far east end overlooking the lake. He could watch the 10K from his fifteenth-floor windows. I park in Ruben’s drop-off circle, tell the doorman and then the deskman/security I’m Ruben’s brother. One recognizes me. They let me in. I elevator up, pound Ruben’s door, get nothing, then elevator down to his parking place. No car.

  If just half of this stuff is true, Ruben could be in serious jeopardy somewhere. His partner White Flower Lý, Hahn, the Koreans, Robbie Steffen. Ruben’s dancing in the big time with forty million on the table. Find Ruben. He’s gotta be somewhere.

  I bail downtown for Lawrence Avenue, no idea what or where to search other than Koreatown. But it’s five AM on a Sunday, and even if mob guys were wearing signs, they won’t be out now. Hahn keeps calling. Three trips up and down Lawrence Avenue yield nothing. Maybe I could modify her plan, use what
she knows to … to what? Warn Ruben? Save him? My stomach rolls. Stop him? I need a gun.

  Really need a gun. Ruben has partners who won’t want to be saved or stopped.

  I have a gun at my apartment, ten minutes northeast. Sneak in, turn on the a/c, grab a gun, touch things that prove I’m me. Risky—I’m already out on bond—exhale—for child rape. Any hallway confrontation with the little Irish girl “victim” or a 911 call from her mother and I’m either shot or in handcuffs doing a TV perp-walk to the street. I punch Recall on Hahn’s number and head toward my apartment to sneak in.

  Hahn answers on the second ring. “Taking big chances, Bobby, hoping these folks don’t do something stupid while you do.”

  “Tough night.”

  “Today will be worse. Tell me you didn’t warn your brother.”

  “Can’t find him.”

  Her voice hardens. “I can help Ruben and you, but it has to be now.”

  My head throbs. “If you knew about Ruben from the beginning—assuming it’s true—why drag me in? Why not—”

  “We’re about to lose control of the plague, Bobby.”

  “If they have it; if you aren’t full of shit.”

  Hahn takes a breath. “Had I told you about Ruben, you wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “And I’m supposed to now? Because Robbie Steffen says so?”

  “If it wasn’t Ruben’s name, you’d be kicking in their door already.”

  “You say you’re gonna help Ruben. How?”

  “Tell me—in person—every word Robbie said. While we’re talking, we’ll find your brother. You’ll save him by helping me trick him and Buff Anderson and anyone else who has their hand in or out.”

  “Me. Trick my brother, for you?”

  “That’s why I involved you. Why the CIA and the mayor let me involve you. You’re the one person right next to both suspects, and the one person we could trust to do the right thing. Fast.” Pause. “And you will do the right thing for two reasons—save you and maybe your brother, and save innocent civilians if Ruben and White Flower Lý do have the Hokkaido package.”

  “I didn’t hear you mention the U.S. attorney on your team.”

  “She’s on her own team. Best we keep her and the FBI dark.”

  No lights on at my apartment building. I pull into my parking space and kill the engine. “How can you find Ruben?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Trust? Somebody—probably you—makes me a child rapist so you can save me? Just give you my brother because you say he’s guilty. He knows Robbie Steffen, big deal.”

  Pause. “What if they have it, Bobby? The Hokkaido package—”

  “I’m not giving you my brother.”

  “Running out of time, Bobby. Maybe Ruben’s crew uses some this afternoon. At the Furukawa 10K.”

  “Not doing it.”

  “I’ll give you one last chance to save your brother. Meet me at the bottom of Chinatown in an hour. I have someone for you to chat with. Maybe you and Ruben can have it both ways.”

  I flip the phone shut. I can’t be talking about … what I’m talking about. I climb the stairs, creep the hall—my hall—past the door of my Irish neighbor and her “sodomized” nine-year-old daughter. Jesus, that sounds awful.

  I key my door and shut it behind me. Bobby Vargas lives here, the Bobby Vargas who returns every night after policing the city the best he can.

  A wave of safe harbor washes over me. Me is an accumulation of the things I’ve done, not charges and innuendo and TV cameras and disgusted, angry glares.

  A cleansing wave, affirmation, proof that I could line up if the media and courts will let me. My very first guitar leaning against the wall, signed by Ruben on the back and Howlin’ Wolf on the front. A Wolfe City poster framed in scrap wood from 2120 South Michigan, the Chess Records building that Willie Dixon has now. Dreams regular kids have, regular grown-ups have. My parents’ pictures; Ruben and me as kids; Gang Team 1269—me, Jason, Buff, Jewboy playing softball, fishing for lake coho we never caught, sunburned stupid in Jamaica at Eggy’s Bohemian, drinking parasol drinks with both hands. Ruben in uniform, receiving his first of nine meritorious service awards.

  I reach for the smallest photograph. It’s in a soft plastic wallet holder I carried till I was twenty-five—me and Arleen on her stoop, heads together, shoulders touching, both of us with sidewalk chalk in our hands. For years, and at the oddest times, I’d think of her, us. Boyfriend-girlfriend, but way beyond—we were promise partners, a big colorful life outside the gray violence of the Four Corners, happy ever after. So absolutely real … then winter came and she was gone. Everything we were and were going to be, was gone.

  My guitar stares at me. The best but saddest songs I’ve ever written are about us and the death of that dream, sad enough I don’t play them. Then suddenly today, as the threats and accusations mount, there she is, five foot seven and smiling. Joan of Arc walks through the fire and kisses my cheek, tells me she believes me. Me and her, one more time. Makes me dizzy. Proof I guess that God does, in fact, work in mysterious ways.

  The sun’s up. Neighbors getting ready for work will see my car. Horrified neighbors who know I’m guilty, know I’m John Wayne Gacy up there in his window staring as their little girls walk to school.

  I take a fast shower to wash off Gacy and wake up. I don’t look in the mirror, or at my pictures, or at my couch. I grab clothes and the gun I’ll need more than happy ever after to meet Tania Hahn, and leave.

  In the hallway, my neighbor’s door stops me. I want to walk past, but don’t. I stare, visualizing the door splintering as I kick it in. Mrs. McKenna and daughter Katherine terrified at a real threat. I rock from heel to toe, twelve inches from mother-and-daughter’s door, the daughter I raped and sodomized and threatened to kill if she talked.

  Policeman bubbles up in the rage. Who does this Irish mother and daughter know that I know? Hahn? Danny Vacco? The U.S. attorney? The Korean mafia? Dr. Ota at Furukawa? What are Mrs. McKenna’s sins? What or whom does she fear so much that putting me in prison as a child molester is a better option?

  She’d tell me if I put a gun in her face. Oh, yeah, she’d tell me, because if I had to, I’d look at her daughter like she says I did. We all have family to protect, no? Why is theirs better, more important than mine?

  Kick the door down, let’s find out.

  I leave before the rage and filth overcome the last of my judgment.

  The drive south toward Chinatown doesn’t help. I keep calling Ruben and get no response. I want to cry, to pound the dashboard into powder. Call Arleen Brennan and just fly away. Jenny and Forrest, Arleen and Bobby—we will save each other just like we promised. The sun glitters the lake on Lake Shore Drive. I dial Arleen’s number, but don’t finish the call, don’t know what to say, finally typing a text message wishing her luck with her Streetcar audition.

  Except Arleen doesn’t need to be saved, she’s about to become a star, and a Vargas around her neck would be the end of that dream. The Vargas brothers are from the Four Corners in every possible way, and we’re never leaving.

  SUNDAY, 8:00 AM

  Chinatown’s still dirty from Saturday night. Hahn pulls up to my car just west of Wentworth and says, “Get in.” She’s wearing last night’s clothes, drives a block on Twenty-sixth, and turns left on Wells before she gets to Ricobene’s. “I said I’d help you and your brother and I will, but you gotta get with the program.” She nods at me. “Before Ruben buries our chances. The fight between him and Buff Anderson—”

  “What fight?”

  “The two of them went at it early this morning in the lot at Area 4. Twenty cops broke it up. Your pal Jewboy Mesrow hit Ruben from behind, knocked him over his car.” She jerks a sudden hard left veering through a chain-link fence that’s been recently knocked down. Instantly, we’re under the elevated Dan Ryan access lanes, avoiding the tall columns and concrete bridging that blocks the eastern sunlight into checkerboard shadows. Her tires ricochet
gravel and something rustles behind my seat. Hahn hits the brakes. Her Pontiac slides to a stop as dust clouds engulf us. A blanket sits up in the backseat, then half falls away. I cough, have to blink twice to see what I’m seeing.

  Danny Vacco, La Raza street king, handcuffed in the backseat, naked to the waist. Duct tape over his mouth—

  Commotion in the dust cloud. I twist to the windshield. Hahn has stopped us just short of two homeless men, one of whom staggers away; the other falls back over into the trash. She puts the Pontiac in Park, reaches across her hip, digs out a 9-millimeter Beretta, and tosses it in my lap.

  “As promised.”

  Danny Vacco eyes me, then Hahn, then me again.

  “All yours, Bobby, shoot him, gun’s cold. Don’t worry about the upholstery, car isn’t mine.”

  I dig the Beretta out of my lap, drop the clip, check it full, then rack the slide—loaded—replace the clip, but don’t lower the hammer.

  Hahn says, “My word’s good; for this and your brother.”

  I stare at Danny Vacco, the brown pockmarked cheeks and forehead. The faded blue Twenty-Trey tats circling his neck. Danny’s pushing thirty-five, has poisoned my neighborhood for years. Ruben and I had a chance to kill him in a confrontation years ago and didn’t. My decision that day has come back to haunt or destroy a lot of people in the Four Corners.

  I stare at him. “Little Paul?”

  No answer; wary eyes.

  My hand squeezes the Beretta he can’t see but knows I have. The headache hardens my tone. “Little Paul’s mom? The girl in my building?”

  No answer. Danny Vacco’s street-king piece-of-shit face is twenty-four inches away.

  Harsher. “I rape children, right?” Louder. “Sodomize them? You know what that means?”

  No answer, no expression, but full attention. His eyes dip to the seat back between us, a silencer of sorts. I stare, hate clouding my eyes. My finger tightens on the trigger.