The Blade Itself

by Marcus Sakey

  Evan nodded.

  “Cabrini Green is one of the worst projects in the country. Something like ninety percent unemployment. So bad they have those chain-link walls on the hallways, so the cops can see inside from the street.” It had always made him a little sick, the people walking out their own front door to an exposed hall like a cage. Kids leaning against the wire with forties in their hands and anger in their eyes. “But it’s on great land. Close to the city, the trains. The only thing wrong with the area where the Green sits is the Green. So Daley Junior, he’s been tearing down what his father built, one at a time. Technically they’re building mixed-income housing, but what you got, there’s a strip mall half a block away now with a Starbucks, the parking lot full of expensive cars. Lofts going for three hundred grand.” Danny sat at the table. “You want to make money in Chicago, figure out where the poor people live and move them.”

  Evan shrugged, his interest gone. “Sucks to be poor.”

  “Yeah.” Danny’s eyes roamed the walls, the old instincts coming back, a strange rush with them. Was it excitement? Guilt? Hope? A bit of all of them. It set him on edge, like too many cups of coffee, his stomach jittery, wondering what he was doing here, knowing he had no choice.

  “All right. We snatch the kid, get a blindfold on him, bring him here. Tie him to the couch.” Evan paused. “What happens if a cop comes by, sees the cars?”

  “Nothing, so long as we don’t act stupid. They see cars in here all the time.” Danny scratched at his elbow. “We make the call-”

  “I make it.”

  The words came too quickly, not the easy toss-out Danny would have expected. It set off an internal alarm. But Evan was right, it wasn’t like Danny could call his own boss. “You make the call. We ask for half a million. Tell him we’ll call back in a couple of days to set up the meet. Debbie takes care of Tommy. How much does she know?”

  “She knows she’s babysitting. I told her she’d see twenty large on it. She doesn’t know who the guy is.”

  Danny nodded. “I might need her help with something else, too.”

  Evan shrugged. “Whatever. She’ll do what I tell her.” He moved to the couch, dropped down, put his feet up on the counter opposite. Leaned back with hands laced behind his head. “You know what I like about this?”

  “What?”

  “Keeping the man’s kid in his own trailer.” Evan’s face split into a hard smile.

  Later, back in his truck, the seat sun-warm against his back, Danny replayed that look. Saw how much the cruelty of the irony pleased Evan. It made Danny wonder, turning onto Halsted, made him question. Was he about to get back in over his head?

  Enough. He’d been over this a million times. Given the choice between losing everything he cared about but standing on principle, or bending the rules in a way that didn’t harm anyone, well, that wasn’t any kind of choice at all.

  Besides, he was starting to think they could pull it off. His problem would be solved, and Karen would never know a thing. And while he’d happily trade the money to get Evan out of his life, having a quarter million in a safe deposit box couldn’t hurt. In fact, he was starting to entertain a strange sort of hope, an old excitement. The looming black clouds might turn out to be a summer storm, hard and fast, but gone without doing any real damage.

  Before he’d left the trailer, Danny had cleaned up. He didn’t want the kid to somehow accidentally see a piece of letterhead, an envelope, something that might help the police track them down. Though at half a million, Danny didn’t see Richard going to the police. The guy was a blowhard and a bastard, but he loved his son. Why play games?

  “It doesn’t matter what kind of car it is,” he said, giving Evan his assignment. “So long as it’s decent-looking. The neighbors will notice a beater.”

  “Sure. And afterward?”

  “Park it in front of Cabrini-Green with the keys in it. Give somebody a stroke of luck.”

  Evan liked that.

  “I’ll bring masks and gloves.” Danny’s mind churned, trying to think of all the angles. He’d talk to Debbie later. Stop by the store on the way home for some rope. Maybe a pair of nylons? Something that wouldn’t chafe or scrape the kid up. There was something else, something important.

  Oh yes. “One more thing.”

  “What?” Evan said, bored already. Always happier to be doing the job than thinking about it.

  “Don’t bring a gun.” Danny kept his voice level and his eyes hard, not trying to stare Evan down, just letting him know he was serious. “Not a scratch, remember?”

  Evan shrugged. “Okay.”

  Danny held the look for a minute, then nodded, went back to straightening up. “Get the car tomorrow morning. You can pick me up at the same spot as last time, round one o’clock.”

  “We going tomorrow?” Evan sounded surprised, turning to look up.

  “What, you got somewhere to be?”

  21

  Trembled and Burned

  When they were ten, they’d played a game called Pisser. It was a made-up game, but it lasted for almost two years, until Bobby Doyle missed his jump from the roof of a two-story CVS to the fire escape of the building next door and broke both wrists.

  When Danny remembered the game, he always felt the way he did when he caught his own voice on an answering machine. It felt familiar, but a little off, too. Like someone else was telling a story that had happened to him.

  The leader of the game was the Big Dick. It was a title they fought to earn, though mostly it meant that as they went about their lives, they kept their eyes open for the right kind of opportunity. Say, a new skyscraper going up in the Loop, the concrete and glass of the curtain wall only half finished, the dark silhouette of a tower crane looming sixty stories up.

  Boom. Call a Challenge.

  Meet at seven o’clock, the yard deserted except for the security guys drinking coffee in their trailer. Squeeze under the chain link on the far side, keeping low until you’re in the building. The first floors would have actual staircases, what would become the fire steps. After that, plywood ramps. When those ran out, grab the A-frame of the crane, hoist yourself over the rail to the gridwork stairs, and start climbing.

  At twenty stories, your calves burn.

  At thirty-five stories, you’ve come farther than the outside wall. The wind hits.

  At fifty stories, five hundred swimming feet of vertigo, people on the street are just dots. Cabs are those mini-Matchbox cars you can put a dozen in your pocket.

  At sixty stories, you’ve run out of stories. The building drops away, structural steel blackened by welding marks. You’re climbing the crane to the sky. Start counting steps. Ignore your legs Elvis-ing.

  One hundred and eighty steps later, you’ve reached the operator’s cab, the white box like the driver’s seat of a semi. But it’ll be locked, so go up twenty more, to the gangway on top of the mast.

  Take panting breaths on the ceiling of the city, the sky indigo around you, the world spread out jeweled at your feet.

  Now the Challenge, because that was just a warm-up.

  Step onto the crane arm. The metal grid is maybe two feet wide, but it feels like a tightrope. Indian-walk one foot in front of the other, keeping low to fight the wind, nothing on either side, just a few inches of steel between you and a five-second trip to State Street. Hit so hard, they’d tell each other, your shins come out your shoulders. Hit so hard nobody can tell your head from your ass. Hit so hard your teeth bounce for blocks.

  Step. Breathe. Step.

  When you reach the end, take a bow. Then hustle back fast as you dare. If you’re the first to ante up, congratulations. You’re the new Big Dick. Pussy out, you’re the Pisser, a little baby still whines for his mommy and wets the sheets. No hair on his nuts. No nuts at all.

  It was vivid to Danny, like he could step back into that Challenge today if he wanted. The way his legs had trembled and burned. The way the air cut as he drew it in, far, far above the city-street
smells of exhaust and garbage.

  Once he took that first step, the fear would fade. His mind would throw up interference, like radio static, that screened out everything but a calm inner monologue and his body’s response to it. The first step wasn’t the hard part.

  No, the hard part came before he stepped into the void. The hard part was the waiting, his brain imagining all the things that could go wrong, all the things he couldn’t control, all the ways that fate loomed beneath him, hungry, eager for him to slip.

  The hard part was sitting in the passenger seat of the nice black Saab Evan had stolen – a sedan, probably a five-star safety rating, just the thing to drive your kid to private school – watching Evan light yet another cigarette. Watching the digital clock soundlessly change a four to a five. He caught his hands fiddling with the strap of the duffel bag, and made them stop. “Go around again.”

  Evan nodded, his cigarette bobbing up and down, the muscles in his neck rigid. He was feeling it, too. They stopped at a sign, then turned right, taking the block the other direction. On both sides of the car, wide lawns sprawled in front of five-bedroom houses nestled beneath towering shade trees. The streets had that oddly wide feeling of a neighborhood where every house had a garage, nothing like the crowded city parking he was used to.

  “We saw the kid come home,” Evan said. “What are we waiting for?”

  “You got to put yourself in the mind of the boy, right?” Talking to relax. “He gets home, drops his schoolbag, wonders what to do with himself. No brothers, and Dad won’t be home till eight or nine. So the kid,” Danny wanting to avoid calling him Tommy, not wanting to think of him that personally, “he’s got the run of the house. What’s he do?”

  “Fuck should I know?” Evan said. “Turn on the TV?”

  “Exactly. That’s where I want him. Watching TV. It’ll drown out noise, and I don’t think there’s an alarm console in that room.”

  “So how long do we wait?” Evan seemed eager, almost anxious. Best to move.

  “What’s it been, twenty minutes? Now’s probably good.” He unzipped the duffel for one final inventory. Everything was just as it had been the last dozen times he’d checked. Before closing the bag, he brushed the inner pocket. The plastic rectangle inside felt strangely reassuring.

  Evan turned the corner, another right, Richard’s house now in sight, a brick and shingle two-story with bay windows, architecturally a cross between a Swiss chalet and an English manor. The driveway was smooth blacktop that hummed beneath the tires as Evan turned in gently, letting the car coast up to the closed garage door. He threw it in park and rested his hands on the wheel. They’d both put on driving gloves in the McDonald’s parking lot, and seeing Evan tap the Saab’s wheel with his elegantly gloved hands, Danny had a flash of him as a chauffeur. Just put a jaunty cap on him. The image was funny, but he pushed it aside.

  “Ready?” Evan’s voice had a hint of excitement, a familiar note that Danny had almost forgotten. He used to have the same tone playing Pisser, just before diving off the Michigan Avenue drawbridge, or sprinting across Lakeshore at rush hour.

  “One second.” Danny opened his cell phone and dialed. She answered on the second ring.

  “Debbie. Give us five minutes.”

  “Okay. Be careful.”

  “Yeah.” Danny flipped the phone closed.

  “What’s that all about?”

  “Let’s go,” not answering Evan, grabbing the duffel bag and opening the car door. The October wind slapped at him as he left the heated car, the air high-thirties, way colder this year than most. Careful to keep his face pointed toward the house, he scanned the windows for any sign of life. Nothing.

  He looked across the roof of the Saab at Evan, who also stood with his door open, and for a moment, they just held the gaze. Then Danny nodded, and closed his door.

  Time to take that first step onto the ledge.

  He turned and walked toward the near side of the house, around the garage, feeling Evan fall into step behind him. The adrenaline hit full force now, the rush of blood in his ears drowning out the fear, giving him the quiet he needed. They walked steadily around the garage, keeping up a front in case any neighbors happened to look out the window.

  Nothing suspicious here, ma’am. Just checking the meter. The side yard was neatly kept, the grass sparse from the shade of a maple that had to be sixty years old. The garage windows had gauzy curtains, but Danny could tell it was empty. Perfect. When they reached the back corner, he stopped and peered around.

  Everything seemed quiet. The backyard was smaller than the front, with a line of evergreens marking the rear. A large deck jutted off the second story, and Danny had a sudden pang, remembering the company party last year, everybody on the deck, Richard playing Papa at the grill. Then he remembered that none of the yard staff had been invited. Besides, the man had asked everyone to bring their own beer. “Come on. Keep low.”

  Danny went first, fast now that they were out of sight of the neighbors, staying bent over so that hedges screened his movement from the house. He could hear Evan behind him, the crack of sticks as he stomped along. Thirty feet brought them under the wooden deck to a single door beside the air-conditioning unit, a big Trane that came up to Danny’s waist. He ducked to look at the lock. Evan came up and squatted beside the air conditioner.

  When Danny had left his old life, he’d dumped all traces of it. Except his tools. For some reason, he hadn’t been able to throw them away. In the movies, the bad guys always had a little leather pouch of lock picks, the kind locksmiths used, but he liked the ones he’d made. He kept them in the drawstring bag from a bottle of Crown Royal, hidden in a box of old junk in their basement. For the first time in seven years he unknotted the string.

  He’d gotten rusty. The deadbolt held for almost two minutes.

  “Jesus.” Evan’s coffee and cigarette breath came hard over his shoulder. “Took you long enough, Danny-boy.”

  Danny gave him the finger, then turned the handle gently, praying the door didn’t squeak. It was always the little things that got you caught.

  It slid open with only a whisper from the hinges, revealing what Richard called his mudroom, a slim, chilly space with a washer and dryer, laundry piles on the floor. He could hear the sound of the television turned up loud in another room. Heart pounding and mouth dry, he stepped inside. Evan followed, closing the door behind them.

  They stood in silence for a moment, Danny listening to the sounds of the house. Waiting for any semblance of alarm. When nothing came, he opened the duffel and took out two plain black domino masks, like the one Zorro wore. They limited peripheral vision, but tolerably. Danny had to stop himself from laughing when he saw Evan; his square jaw and evident muscles paired with the mask and jeans to give him the look of an underdressed pro wrestler. His partner adjusted the strap, nodded, and then took a step forward. Danny caught his arm and leaned in close to whisper. “Wait.”

  Evan looked at him quizzically, bounced on his toes, but didn’t move. Ten seconds, twenty, thirty, Danny staring at his boss’s dirty underwear, his palms sweaty. Evan gave him a what the fuck? look, his lips turned in a sneer, the waiting killing him. Danny shook his head, held a finger to his lips, hoping he hadn’t made a mistake.

  Then the phone rang, and he unclenched. Debbie had come through. They stood still and listened, two rings, the trudge of footsteps, three rings, four, and then from the kitchen, the sound of a sullen twelve-year-old voice.

  “Hullo.” The word dragged out, offered grudgingly. There was a pause, then the voice again, only different, excited now. “Really? I won?”

  Danny nodded his head toward the door, and Evan moved forward, kicking at a pile of laundry in his way, sending jeans flying across the floor. A button on one pinged against the hot water heater, and Danny fought an urge to shush him. Goddamn it. He picked his way over to the open doorway to stand by Evan, digging the plastic rectangle out of the bag by feel before he set the duffel down. The mold
ed grip fit his knuckles neatly. His thumb caressed the stud.

  From the other room, Tommy’s voice sounded like he’d just found out tomorrow was Christmas. “Awesome! What? Sure!” They heard his footsteps running for the TV room.

  Showtime.

  Danny stepped into the hall, Evan close behind him. A surreal sort of déjà vu swept over him in a wave as he looked at the polished wood floor and familiar photos on the wall. He’d never expected to be in this house wearing the clothing of a thief. Or in any house ever again, for that matter.

  Keeping close to the wall, he inched along the hallway. Through an open door ten feet down, the light of the TV flickered ice blue. He could barely hear Tommy’s voice over throbbing hip-hop. Debbie would be telling him that they were about to show his name on the screen.

  Danny’s heart was pounding, but he made himself step lightly, easily, the plastic rectangle loose in his hand. When he reached the door frame, he took a quiet breath and peeked around.

  A VH-1 logo flashed across the flat-screen TV. Tommy stood silhouetted against it, the cordless phone pressed to one ear. He wore jeans and a rugby shirt, and bounced up and down, crackling with energy. The shell of preteen world weariness had fallen away, leaving a little boy excited about the prize he thought he’d won.

  It was too much. The facts of what he was doing rattled through Danny like an El train. He was a thief – no, worse, a kidnapper – and innocents were at risk. Again.

  He’d thought that by coming, he could control Evan, make sure that Tommy didn’t get hurt. But now, standing here, he realized he couldn’t go through with it. No way. If they left now, no one would be the wiser. The worst consequence would be Tommy’s broken heart over a PlayStation that never arrived. Danny would find some other way of squaring up. He turned, intending to motion Evan back.

  And found Evan pushing past him into the room, making no attempt to hide himself or be quiet.

  Holding a gun in his hand.

  22