I lean farther away and Bobby pulls me back.
“It’s complicated, I know, but I think you and I can collapse the whole thing in on all of them.” Bobby makes a test tube with his fingers. “Provided the bomb hasn’t already gone off.”
“The vial I—It was symbolic. Something Dr. Ota would know.”
“Hope so.” Bobby eases back to explain. “There are thirty vials like the sample you gave the Japanese. Hahn calls them the ‘Hokkaido package.’ By the end of World War II, Dr. Ota and his fellow scientists had created what they hoped was the equivalent of America’s atom bomb—a live virus, a form of the plague that helped them kill thirty million Chinese.”
“That’s what Ruben’s selling?”
Bobby nods. “If his partner hasn’t changed her mind.”
“Oh. My. God.”
ARLEEN BRENNAN
SUNDAY, 6:00 PM
My reflection in the coffee-shop window looks scared and off-balance—like me, not Lilly Dillon from The Grifters. I’m waiting for Ruben Vargas, a sociopath willing to unleash live-virus plague in Chicago.
A man I’m going to help. My phone rings next to my coffee.
Be Lilly Dillon. Be The Grifters. I inhale into a tough, streetwise character who spent much of her life outside the law, then tell my phone and Ruben Vargas: “ ‘Reckless’ would be a compliment—”
“We have to talk right now,” says Tracy Moens, “about your father. Before tomorrow’s depositions.”
“Bye.”
“I know your father raped you. And Coleen … for years. Something happened that February night that was impossibly worse and your sister ran. You couldn’t get away or didn’t try, but Coleen did.”
Moens keeps talking. My eyes squeeze shut—the go-away defense Coleen and I used. Before, during, and after—it didn’t happen. She’d promise me; I’d promise her back—bad dreams, only bad dreams, hold each other under the shower till the bad dreams were gone.
“Your father lied to the police and the prosecutors during all three trials; stood by while one black teenager was imprisoned for life and Anton Dupree was executed. Your father knew he was the rapist, not Dupree. That’s the same as murder.” Pause. “Your mother knew. And you knew. But no one talked.”
Coleen and I talked every night. She didn’t stop screaming for years.
“That year you watched the echoes of that night slowly kill your mother, then ran away hoping to keep them from killing you. Nineteen years later a ‘blond woman’ shot and wounded your father on a pier in Santa Monica, and then let him drown … four days before you arrived in New York.”
I hang up on Moens, drop the phone, and both hands wipe at my father on my skin. The air fouls with the taste of the Four Corners—the stockyards slaughter, and—
Ruben slides into my booth.
His hands and knees are inches from mine. Ruben looks at my hands, then me. His brown eyes are empty, chilling; my father’s eyes. “One hour, you make the trade.”
My phone rings again. Ruben barks, “Don’t answer.”
I force my father away. Lilly Dillon bites my jaw tight and stares at Ruben across the table. I’m going to the Shubert, motherfucker. You’re going to prison.
Ruben’s skin has blackened under the bandage that crosses his left eyebrow. His lower lip looks as swollen as three hours ago when he dropped me on South Michigan. With my empty vial of live-virus plague. That we hope was empty.
Ruben’s clean jacket and shirt suggest he’s been home, probably had a shower. Calm and cool, like a serial killer with a whole night ahead of him. Like killing your partners, robbing the Korean mafia, and risking mass murder for money is Lesson One in the sociopath manual.
He says, “My little brother and you find some time?”
Lilly Dillon: “Been kinda busy running your errands.”
Ruben’s coffee arrives. “Met his girlfriend yet, Tania Hahn?”
I don’t blink or look away, or do anything Lilly Dillon wouldn’t. “She your other partner? Robbie’s mystery Vietcong bitch?”
Ruben smiles at another default admission I was in the alley, but he’s focused on any tells, any hint that I intend to harm him or betray his plans. “In thirty minutes, you’ll deliver a box to the Jap women who were at the Maxwell Market. That simple. We get a taste of the money, they get half their vials. Let the Japs inspect your box. They’ll give you a bag that weighs twenty-two pounds. The bag and you drive back to me.”
Lilly Dillon sips her coffee, wary but confident.
Ruben keeps watching me for tells. “Round one will be simple—half don’t help ’em; they gotta recover one hundred percent of the package or Furukawa and Ota are front-page.” Ruben stares. “Round two could be tougher.”
Lilly Dillon: “My two million’s paid out of the first trade or no deal.”
Ruben leans his sociopath, serial-killer smile closer to me. “Or you’re gonna call Toddy Pete and the U.S. attorney? From here? While I sit back and watch?”
I don’t move or blink, because Lilly Dillon wouldn’t. “I have a friend. My friend has a script and two phone numbers.”
Ruben nods, then lays his oily hand on top of my coffee cup. Where my mouth was. His nails are long and perfect and way too close to me. “Niña, the Japs are only payin’ one million up front, just a taste. We wanted more, thought we could get it, but old Dr. Ota’s too smart for that. You get your money after round two. And save the lie that you don’t care about the Shubert, okay? If that’s the truth, then take a walk, make your next two million waitin’ tables in a Koreatown basement.”
Lilly Dillon adds up her limited options, demonstrating resolve not fear, then grabs her purse. “The very first lie I smell in the fifty lies you plan to tell me, I blow this up for everyone.”
“Don’t need to hurt or rob you to get what I want.”
Lilly stares. “Then let’s go do it.”
Ruben doesn’t move. He peers out the window. “Your friend out there?”
“I’m not that stupid.”
Ruben searches the street, the parked cars, the buildings, then says, “Catch a cab, take Ontario toward Greektown. I’ll call you on this phone and tell you when to get out.” He hands me a phone with no key pad.
“Big bad Ruben nervous?” I nod across Ohio Street where Bobby and Tania Hahn and her crew are supposed to be. “Maybe you’ll have a heart attack. Die somewhere alone in the dark waiting for your life to catch up with you.”
Smile. “Do this dance every day, chica.” He curls one finger at my purse. “Gimme your phone.”
“No.”
Ruben lowers his chin.
I pull my phone, flip it open, punch the Lock code, and hand it to him. “I want that back. And my 9-millimeter you stole at the market.”
Ruben nods toward the door. “Wait five minutes, walk up to Ontario, catch a cab going west. Understand?”
Lilly nods, hiding bad thoughts she’s thinking. Ruben drops a five on the booth table and leaves. Lilly watches him pass the window.
I exhale big and let go of Lilly, then slump back into the vinyl. The empty space where Ruben sat radiates scary. I dip my napkin in my water glass to wash Ruben’s proximity off my hands and arms. Water was never enough to wash off my father.
More and more yellow Olympics T-shirts pass the window. There’ll be a crowd at Furukawa’s concert. Just what Ruben wants … My five minutes are up. I inhale a deep Actors Studio breath that remakes me Lilly Dillon, grab her purse, her cold resolve, and step outside.
Bobby and Hahn’s crew are out here, but I don’t see them. I walk up to Ontario and flag a westbound cab. Ruben or his partner are watching, tailing me to see if I’m followed. The cab that stops is a Yellow. Lilly opens the door, realizes the driver could already belong to Ruben, says, “Sorry, changed my mind,” and shuts his door. He drives off without arguing. I wave down the next one, a gypsy, get in, hand him five twenties from my purse, and say, “Toward Greektown.”
With the twenties
is Bobby’s number and a note that reads “Call this number now, leave your phone on, but don’t raise it to your face.” The driver sets his mirror to frame me. I smile. He shrugs, says, “Okay.”
Lilly tells him to start singing. “Sing the name of the street we’re on, your cab number, and the cross streets as we pass ’em.”
He squints in his mirror.
“Go ahead, sing till I get out.” He starts singing and I sit back, hoping Bobby can hear. Eight lights and hundreds of southbound yellow T-shirts later, Ruben’s phone rings in my hand. Ruben says, “Left turn on LaSalle.”
I lean forward to the hole in the Plexiglas, repeating Ruben’s words to the driver and I hope Bobby listening on the driver’s phone. We turn south, make almost five blocks. Ruben says, “Left on Kinzie.” I tell the driver and he turns at the next light. Ruben says, “Get out at State Street. Walk to Rossi’s, west side, 400 block at the alley. Stand out front.”
I yell loud at the driver, “I’m going to Rossi’s. Let me out at State.”
OFFICER BOBBY VARGAS
SUNDAY, 6:45 PM
Arleen’s gypsy cab is a block north. Hahn and I are running parallel. I pocket my phone. “Cab’s dropping her at State and Kinzie.”
Hahn loops into the oncoming lanes. She has an earpiece in her right ear and tells the mic bar at her mouth, “State and Kinzie. Stay well clear till she has the goods. Do you have visual?” Hahn listens, pushes her earpiece in tighter. “I say again, State and Kinzie. Do you have visual?” Hahn listens. “Car two, do you copy?”
HORN. Traffic jams behind two buses with Wisconsin plates. “Alley, alley.” I point Hahn across traffic. “Go; I’ll show you. Arleen’s at a bar, Rossi’s, west side of State Street.” I brace into the dash. “Don’t kill us or she’s all alone.”
Hahn skids into the alley, misses a row of trash cans, and tromps the gas. She says, “Car two, do you copy?”
ARLEEN BRENNAN
SUNDAY, 6:50 PM
The cab drops me at State and Kinzie. At the curb, I stare straight ahead in the heat. A bus passes so close Lilly and I can smell the dirt. Bobby said believe and that’s what I’m doing. Lilly says, I can beat this asshole. We walk half a block north toward Rossi’s faded green awning. I peek for Bobby or Hahn’s crew.
Parked between Rossi’s and me is a dented four-door white Mercury Marquis, engine running. Two young Hispanic men eye me from the backseat. Both wear T-shirts and bandannas instead of caps. One has the thin lines of a teenage mustache. The driver is older, no shirt, muscled and hard. He has Twenty-Trey tattoos on his neck. I haven’t seen Twenty-Trey tattoos since I was a little girl, since my uncle Terry Rourke shot the little deaf boy and started the war.
I cross the alley and step under Rossi’s awning. A late-model Chevrolet backs out of the Self Park entrance across State and straight into the alley. The tinted window drops. Ruben Vargas says, “Get in.”
I back up, trying to kill time for the cavalry to get here. “Why? Where are we going?”
Ruben points my 9-millimeter at me from just above his window. “Get in or die.”
Just as I get in, a green SUV veers into the corner to our left, screeching a tire. Ruben jerks to the noise. The SUV slows too fast and stops. Ruben tells his phone in Spanish, “Green SUV Ford Explorer, northbound. Two males.” He glares at me and jams the 9-millimeter hard in my ribs. “I warned you.”
The white Marquis with the Twenty-Treys eases from the curb, heading south toward the SUV, riding State Street’s center line. The green SUV can’t move. No, don’t—The Marquis pulls broadside—driver to driver. The Hispanic boy on the passenger side stretches half out his window and over the roof with a short-barreled machine gun. The other boy extends a similar gun from behind the driver. Both open fire. Glass explodes into the street. Brass casings ribbon-arc in the flames and roar. The Twenty-Trey driver pumps a sawed-off shotgun point-blank. The SUV rocks on its tires.
Ruben wheels us out of the alley northbound and pounds the gas, the 9-millimeter stays jammed in my ribs. Over the seat I wide-eye the pocked and smoking SUV a block back. “You’re a goddamn monster … you just murdered—”
“Your friends. That’s what happens, chica. Fuck with me, people die.” Ruben jams hard with the 9-millimeter. “Who’d you sell us to? Robbie? The Koreans? Tania Hahn?” Ruben jams harder. “Who?”
No SUV. Bobby wasn’t in it. Be Lilly Dillon.
“I’m getting two million from you, right? So I’m gonna cheat you then hope my new ‘friends’ don’t rob or kill me? Robbie wants me dead to stay out of prison; the Koreans want me dead; and I’ve never heard of Tania Whoever. You’re an idiot lowrider who just shot a carload of choirboys.”
Ruben backs off the gas, finishes seven blocks at the speed limit, then pulls into the parking lot across from Holy Name Cathedral. He eases the 9-millimeter out of my ribs but keeps it pointed at me. “Who was in the SUV? You’re gonna tell me.”
I make the fear spike a glare.
“Chica, I can smell gunfighters on you, not ‘friends with scripts and phone numbers.’ Could smell ’em when we were having coffee. I don’t know who, but I know you got gunfighters.” Ruben nods at the street. “If there’s any left, best you send ’em home or all of you die today.”
Lilly Dillon nods gangster to piker. “Okay. I’m caught. It was your little brother in the SUV. Batman, Bobby, and me; we’re a three-way. You just killed him.”
Ruben’s eyes jump to his mirror—something he sees that I don’t. He jams the 9-millimeter in my ribs again and says, “When the back door opens, keep your face forward.”
I twist to see and he jams the 9-millimeter harder. The door opens behind me. Someone gets in. I smell oleander and glance at Ruben without moving my head. His eyes are in the mirror. He asks whoever he’s looking at, “We good?”
Silence.
Ruben stares at the mirror. His tension screws the 9-millimeter deeper in my ribs. The back door opens. I hear a rush of movement, the door closes, and the oleander is gone. The side mirror flashes a grayish shape before the sun glare obliterates the reflection.
Ruben eyes his mirror for twenty seconds, then thumbs-down the hammer on my 9-millimeter, belts it, and points west. “Drive this car to the lot across from Harry Caray’s. I have people in the lot to cover you. Find a space with an empty on your right. I’ll call the phone I gave you.” He points to the dash. “Put the phone up here and leave it on. Dr. Ota’s Japs will find you. They’ll want to inspect the package in the backseat.” Ruben tilts his head to the backseat. “Don’t let them in this car; Japs are tricky and might try to LoJack it. Take the package to their car, get in, let the Japs take a look. They give you our taste; you get back in this car, then I’ll tell you where to go next to finish up.”
Sweat runs down my sides. I know what’s inside the box but Bobby wants to be positive Ruben does. “What’s in there?”
“Your friends didn’t say?”
“If I had friends who did this kind of thing, I’d have them kill you.
And Robbie.”
Ruben blinks once. “Drive this Chevy, chica. Don’t drop the box. And don’t make any new friends.”
I inhale to answer. Ruben backhands me into the window, then grabs my dress and twists it to choke me. “Wanna fuck my brother before you die? Assuming you weren’t ridin’ his cock back in the day?” Ruben twists tighter and I fight at his hands. His face is dead calm but his eyes are molten. “Fuck with me and everything you care about dies.” Ruben slams me back and lets go. “Drive, you make money. Fuck it up, I do shit to your life you can’t imagine.”
OFFICER BOBBY VARGAS
SUNDAY, 6:50 PM
White Flower dies; I trap my brother and he goes to prison; Arleen becomes a star; and I go to Jewboy’s funeral. And maybe Buff’s, if my friends will let me in. For the first time, I’m glad my parents are dead. Hahn wheels onto State, brakes hard, and stops half a block short of Rossi’s.
Arleen’s not out fro
nt.
Ruben’s car isn’t there; no Crown Vic, either.
Arleen wasn’t supposed to get in any car. Not until she knew we were here. Hahn points at the south corner. Her crew’s green SUV is mid-street, windows shot out, driver’s door open, part of one man flopped out in the street.
Customers peek out Rossi’s door. I stare at the Self Park across the street. No Arleen. Then check Magnum’s Restaurant behind us on the corner. No Arleen. I pop the passenger door. Hahn grabs my shirt. I jerk out, gun in hand, loop between parked cars, and sprint sidewalk to Rossi’s.
ARLEEN BRENNAN
SUNDAY, 6:55 PM
The box of mass murder in my backseat has no odor, but I can smell it and feel it. Fifteen vials of plague. Every pothole on the nine-block drive puts my heart in my throat.
The lot across from Harry Caray’s isn’t full of concertgoers willing to walk a mile, but they’re beginning to pull in. The box on my seat has stains at the bottom. Never thought I’d die like this. A white Cadillac Escalade pulls in fast. I tell Ruben’s phone, “Cadillac SUV.”
The driver’s tinted window drops to half. The Japanese woman from the Maxwell Market studies me without expression. She’s wearing a mic and headset. “My associate will get in your car. I have a pistol pointed at you. Do not move or speak.”
I shake my head. “No. Doors are locked.”
Her passenger exits the SUV anyway, reaches to open the door to my backseat but can’t. The driver says, “Unlock the door.”
Headshake. “Can’t. I have to bring the box to you.”
The driver speaks Japanese to her mic and the woman passenger at my door returns to the SUV. The driver says, “Bring the box to the door behind me. Open, get in, shut the door.”
The box of mass murder an oleander ghost placed in my backseat is UPS brown, twelve inches square, and sealed at the top with one piece of flimsy tape. I slide out and extract the box. The Escalade’s back door opens. I place the box in the middle of the bench seat next to a Japanese man of middle age. He wears a helmet-less Tyvek suit; a thick pad covers his knees and legs. The driver says, “Get in. Close the door.”
Start Shooting Page 29
