The Underground Detective: A Novel of Chicago Streets

by Thomas Laird

“Jesus Christ! I thought you were a bunch of coons come to rob me!”

  The black patrolman next to me looks at me and smiles.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He smiles at Terrio, and then at me. We have him in the same room where I questioned the doorman, with Bill Terrio.

  “We have a witness that has you in the building at the time of the murder. You have any other clients in that building where Sharon O’Connor lived?”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “You know the jury’s going to love the old guy who barely makes ends meet by working for the rich and famous. Then they’re going to get to know you real well over the course of the trial, Kirk.”

  He’s watching me with a slight sneer on his lips. It’s his street look, his badass persona.

  “We already found the knife you used on her. Clean it any way you try, there’s almost always a trace left over. And then it’s weasel on a stick for you, motherfucker,” Terrio grins.

  “You confess, you might get life. You never know. You make the Prosecutor work, he will stick his weewer in every single one of your orifices. You’ll be one unhappy bitch when he gets through with you, Kirky.”

  “You don’t have a thing. I want a lawyer.”

  “We already made the call. Since you’re indigent—now there’s a fucking laugh—we’ll have to get you a grab-bag guy. You know, a PD. They love feeding swine to the grinder. No, Kirk, you’d be lots better off confessing.”

  He’s starting to squirm. Twenty years ago, we might have used a telephone book off his head before his attorney arrived. If you hit them just right, they don’t leave much of a mark or a bruise. The sound is scarier than how much it hurts. I’ve seen really brutal interrogations in Vietnam and in Laos and Cambodia, but I never engaged in that kind of thing on the job. For one thing it’s not me, and for another you can lose your job with the new attitude toward police brutality.

  So we have to use psych ops to get them to own up. And when that doesn’t work, they lawyer up and it’s up to the Prosecutor to unhinge them in court.

  “I’ll wait for my lawyer,” he repeats.

  Party’s over. Too bad there’s no telephone book handy. Be nice to offer him a parting shot.

  At dawn, I’m still in the office.

  Lila walks in.

  “I’m back.”

  “Back where?” I ask. I’m tired and woozy, and I have to get a couple hours sleep before we go to Marquette Park for all the fun and frolic. Especially if Franklin Toliver actually appears.

  “Back with you. Didn’t the Captain tell you? Anderson left Homicide, and he’s going into Tactical/Gangs again.”

  “I haven’t seen the Captain.” Then I see the memo stuck to the upper left of my desk.

  “You never read memos,” she smiles.

  “It’s a flaw. I admit it.”

  “Aren’t we due to go to that Aryan thing this afternoon?” she asks.

  “The Captain?”

  “Yeah. He filled me in.”

  “It’s today. Yes.”

  “You look shitty. You need to go rest for a few.”

  “Really? You think?”

  She smiles sadly at me, this time.

  “You could’ve hooked on with somebody else if you wanted to, Lila.”

  “I guess. I didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we work well together. How’s that?”

  “Not good enough.”

  Her hair has grown back to her shoulders. Her eyes remain as blue as an October’s fair sky, and her color is back to full and blooming. I’m in love with her all over again, and this time I can barely restrain my urge to jump across the desk and lay one on her lips.

  “I want you back, Danny. But you have to go slow.”

  “You want me back as a partner, you mean?”

  “You going to pull it all out of me?”

  “I just want to know what the hell’s going on inside you, this time.”

  She glances over my head at the serene and cold February sky.

  “I love you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “And you figured that out when?”

  “I always knew. I told you before. I just couldn’t commit.”

  “But now you can?” I ask.

  “Why are you making this so hard?”

  I look at her pale pink lips, her best feature. I like the rest of her a whole helluva lot, too, but her lips are perhaps the most sensual detail in a sensual package.

  “Maybe I’m a little bewildered. You know, Lila, that I was ready to make things permanent for us, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Don’t you watch those afternoon talk shows?”

  “I don’t watch television.”

  “I’m an eighties guy. I’m supposed to get in touch with my inner feelings and I’m supposed to be open with you about how I feel, and I have. But you, being the woman in this partnership, are supposed to really be the relationship person of the two of us. I’m supposed to be the hard case that you have to labor to win over.

  “You’ve never been married and then fucked over. I should be the one who’s wary about solidifying our deal. See, you should be the heartbroken one who thought it was all over between us when you got shot and then sidled up to a new partner.”

  “All right. Okay. Are you through?”

  “Yeah. I got all that spleen out. And the bitch of this is that I love you more than I did before you boogied on me.”

  “You do?”

  A smile spreads over her face.

  “You didn’t think there was no price of readmission, did you?”

  I get up and walk over to her.

  “We’ve got a few hours before we go out to the park to meet Franklin.”

  I bend over and kiss her.

  “I love you, Lila. I never stopped loving you, and I’m never going to stop loving you, either.”

  I bend and kiss her again, and she stands and hugs me.

  “My place is closer,” she says, looking right into and through me.

  Her nipples are pink and taut. This would be a great shot in an R rated soft porno, but I don’t think I’m aroused as much as I am overwhelmed with her. I don’t know where to begin. It’s as if I’m a sixteen-year-old kid in the backseat at a drive-in with not the slightest idea what comes next. It’s what some of these goofy Catholics call “born again virginity.” The idea is asinine, but it almost captures where I am, right now.

  She puts her fingers through my short, stubbly hair. It’s difficult to explain how much affection is worth. I had plenty of sexual arousal with Mary, and with a few other women I’ve been with. The two encounters with Lila were plenty exciting, but what distinguishes our lovemaking is the way she simply touches me. And I don’t mean the usual sexual touching or the penetration itself—all of which are very cool, don’t get me wrong. But what stays with me more than anything else is the love I see in Lila’s eyes, and the slight grazing of her fingertips against my hair and my flesh. She does everything else very well, of course, and there’s no doubt she’s the most energetic and enthusiastic lover I’ve ever had or ever will have. There can be no doubt she’s got no equal, at least not in my life or in my future life.

  It’s tough to call it by a name. I feel safe with her. Comforted, with her. Sheltered, with Lila. It’s not because she’s a cop or a black belt or because she was a fighter Ace in the Vietnam War. It’s not because she took a bullet that could’ve got me, back out there in the street with that gangbanger.

  I really have never felt this deeply about anyone. I thought I did with Mary. I still do love her even though I shouldn’t. I just can’t shake what I felt about my ex-wife.

  If Lila leaves again, I know I’ll never recover from this one. This is for all time, and there’s no coming off the mat if she takes off on me like Mary did. I may have some resiliency. I was trained to keep fighting until there was no breath left in my lungs a
nd no beat in my heart and no wave in my brain. I shouldn’t be thinking about losing Lila. I should instead be relishing and living in the moment.

  What happened to Justin can happen to me, and now I don’t feel so goddamned invincible. There could very well be a bullet with my initials carved in its tip. I don’t own any damn ghost shirt that makes me invisible to my enemies.

  And in just a few hours, all this wonderful heat and pink-nippled flesh will be replaced by a much more stark scene in Marquette Park. The torrid pleasure will become iciness. I shouldn’t be thinking about any of that now.

  So I look down into her eyes and I kiss her as intensely as I know how to, and she thrusts her tongue into my lips just as we thrust ourselves against each other below. I’m as deep into Lila as I can be. I don’t want to move because I know I’ll climax way too soon because there’s too much intensity, too much fire inside both of us.

  She pants and moans, and I see surprise on her face, and then I see it again, and then once more. I can’t contain, so it begins, a lengthy and slow draining of everything I’ve stored up for all these months, all these years, and everything wells and ebbs and wells and ebbs, and my release is explosive and long. Lila moans again, and then I see her finishing in her eyes again, and she smiles and laughs in joy and I’m still flowing into her and it won’t seem to stop.

  When it’s finally done, I have to lie by her side in exhaustion.

  “Ready for round two?” she giggles.

  “You’ve murdered me. You’re under arrest.”

  She turns over onto me and licks the sweat from my chest down to my groin, and then she takes me and starts it all up, one more time.

  33

  After we share a shower, we have to get ready to go to work. The march, the rally, whatever this thing is, begins at 1:30 P.M. The days are still short and will be until spring elongates the sunlight, but there will be no illumination on this gathering. The clouds are thick and bulbous and snow-bearing. It’s better suited for a funeral in Moscow, outside.

  We drive to the southwest side and Marquette Park. I used to play softball here when I was in high school, but the racial intolerance has been high in this neighborhood since I can remember. Blacks didn’t tarry around these blocks twenty years ago, but the city is in flux, things keep changing, and Hispanics and African Americans have made inroads into this vicinity. Soon, most whites will have fled to the monochrome far suburbs, if they can afford the migration.

  The anti-Semitic thing is more insidious, of course, because there’s no way some of these mutants can spot a Jew simply by sight. That doesn’t stop bigots, however. They have a nose for intolerance the way a hound has a snout for the kill.

  We arrive just fifteen minutes before the Aryan Nation begins its walk through the park, which will then be followed by their high muckety’s address to his people. He better keep it quick, or all his apostles will remain frozen in place. The Hawk is booming in out of the northeast, and the flurries have already stormed the storm troopers and all the rest of us, as well.

  There are literally hordes of police here. State, Federal, County and City. I can’t imagine how any uprising will get started with all the firepower in attendance.

  The Zionist Movement is well represented. And their ultra conservative brothers, the Hasidic Jews are among us, also. You can tell them by their hats and long side locks and by their traditional garb. There must be a few dozen of the Hasidim awaiting the speech from the Aryan president, Elroy Carpenter. Here’s a motherfucker who embraces “teeth optional.” Elroy is dressed in his SS uniform with the skull and cross on his left armband. There is a blown up poster of Adolph Hitler near the podium where the address will be given. Some of the flurries have already obliterated the poster.

  “Can we go home, back to my nice, comfortable bed?” Lila smiles coyly at me.

  “Don’t get me crazy.”

  “He hasn’t got the balls to show up here, Danny. Look at all the po-lice.”

  “Marvin said he was going to show anyway. And Marvin would’ve showed if I hadn’t shot the sorry son of a bitch. I should’ve put one in his head, but then he wouldn’t have directed us here, no?”

  “You see anybody who even remotely resembles Franklin?” she asks.

  The Aryans are walking past us now, and they will traverse the entire park on the concrete path that circles this recreation area. The Zionists follow the Aryans, and then all the cops are right behind both of them. It’ll take a good hour to get around the entire park, I figure. Then the speech could go on for—who the hell knows how long. It’s going to be a miserable afternoon, any way you cut it.

  At least I can walk with Lila, right behind the suits, the FBI guys. I can’t remember when we spent this much time together, period. It’s been a long time since she was shot and since she got a new partner. Now she’s back, but I’m still afraid that this is a dream that’s going to turn into a nightmare when I wake up and find she’s gone again.

  I spent most of my adult life waiting for those footsteps to creep up behind me. Dr. Fernandez says I have a few paranoid tendencies, but she thought it was typical of an ex-combat soldier to be suspicious of everyone and everything around him. I just have to really come to terms with the cease fire, the beautiful Latina shrink explained to me.

  She wants us to work on my relationship with Mary. She said I have to formally get over my ex-wife before I can move on to anyone—like Lila. Fernandez told me that I’ve got to learn to trust people more. I asked her if she was going to stand behind me and let me fall into her arms, and she thought that crack was very amusing but not likely to happen.

  “I’m dying,” Lila says. She’s clenching her sides, even though she’s wearing a thigh length leather coat and a scarf and a knitted hat and gloves. I’m wearing my own black leather coat and gloves and a knitted watch hat, and my teeth are chattering already, too. The Hawk is at his most brutal in January and February in Chicago. He floats in on ice wings and spreads his chill to anybody dumb enough to be outside in this shit.

  We’re halfway around the park, now. I can faintly hear the chants of the Aryans, the guys in the SS and Gestapo outfits that they rented from some Halloween outfitter, probably. Unless they had relatives from the Old Country. But you’d think they’d be smart enough to ditch those unis after WWII was lost. Unless, of course, they were headed for South America or Central America, where they’re kind of lax about immigration.

  The Zionists are shouting now, too, and they’re chanting something right back at the neos, but the wind is blowing at our backs and I can’t make out the words.

  The hour finally passes, and we’re back at the podium. No sign of Franklin Toliver, and I don’t think there will be, today.

  Elroy jumps up on his platform and does the perfunctory “Sieg heil!” and his followers respond in kind.

  The Zionists and the Hasidim begin shouting at them in Yiddish or in Hebrew—I have no idea which. But they’re not crying out, “Let’s be friends!” That much I’m sure about.

  “You think we could skip the speech?” Lila says to me. We’re standing at the rear of the assembly of friends and foes and cops.

  “You really uncomfortable?” I ask.

  She gives me a look.

  “Give it just five more minutes. Let’s take a look around, and then we’ll get out of here.”

  She nods and clutches herself.

  I tend to forget she’s only been back full time for just a little while after being wounded.

  We walk from the left rear of them all toward the other flank. I see Aryans in uniform, but I don’t see anyone who’s the right height. They’re either much taller than Franklin, or they’re short and toad-sized. Some of them are shaven bald and look like ex-cons. The Aryans are still big, in the joint. Some have the tattooed tear- drops atop a cheek to designate their loyalties to the Brotherhood. These guys are scarier than the little shit freaks who want to belong to something because they’re nothing without numbers behind them.
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br />   We finally approach the Hasidim. The beards and the long locks. The gabardines and the hats. Most of them wear glasses. Most look rather scholarly because most of them are.

  As we approach the far edge of the crowd, one of the ultra conservative Jews looks toward me, just briefly. He’s dressed as his brethren Hasidim are, but as we get closer, my eyes wander down to his feet.

  He’s wearing black running shoes.

  I stop in my tracks and force myself to look at the speaker, and he’s in mid-rant. Lila looks over to me.

  I whisper straight ahead and don’t turn to her.

  “The guy on the end is wearing running shoes. Black running shoes,” I tell Lila.

  “Is that Kosher?” she grins.

  I unzip my jacket and reach for my .38 police special, and I palm it and take it out and drop my hand with the gun at the side. Lila goes inside her coat, then, and removes her .38 snubnose. She also lets her hand with the weapon drop to her side.

  We begin to move toward the far flank where the guy with the sneakers was standing.

  He’s not standing there anymore. We keep moving in his direction, and when we get to where he was, I see a man walking quickly across the softball diamonds. He’s making a beeline to the parking lot.

  “Go back and get help,” I tell Lila.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Lila, goddammit! Don’t let him get away again!”

  She stops abruptly, and then she heads back to the crowd of believers and policemen.

  I keep going after the Hasidim with the tennis shoes. He’s got a half block lead on me, so I break into a run. He looks over his shoulder quickly, sees me pursuing him, and he breaks into a sprint, as well.

  “Nah, not this time, motherfucker!” I’m thinking to myself. I’m not going to expend any air by calling out to him. The cavalry will soon be following us, but he could get to his ride and be out of here before I can catch up. The parking lot is only a block ahead of him, so I have to cut the distance between us. I might be able to nail him from here, but a .38 is not exactly a sniper rifle, and when you’re running and bouncing, the odds are horseshit that I’ll plant one in him.