The Blade Itself

by Marcus Sakey

  She looked away, the world going smeary in front of her eyes. Shot and dumped in the river. “Did you know him, too?”

  “Yeah.” He looked away. “A little.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Nolan nodded brusquely. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “At dinner. I think it was the Saturday before last.”

  “He came to your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you were close.”

  “Yes. Well, really, Danny was. Patrick was practically a brother to him.”

  A look flickered across the detective’s face, like she’d said something important, and it put her on her guard. Why would Danny’s relationship with Patrick matter?

  “Did Patrick ever talk about his business?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, not sure how to answer. It was a complicated sort of simple question. Did they know that their friend was a car thief, a bar fighter, a hijacker of trucks? If so, well then, what kind of people were they? It was part of the reason that no matter how much she liked him, even loved him, she always felt uncomfortable around Patrick. Danny assumed it was because she was afraid of him backsliding, but it was more than that. She was afraid being close to Patrick meant that nothing fundamental had changed.

  The detective seemed to read her mind. “Karen, I know that Patrick wasn’t an altar boy, and I’m sure you do, too. I’m not trying to bust him – or you – for anything. I’m just trying to find out who might have killed him.”

  “We knew what he did.” She paused. “That he stole things. But he never really talked about it.”

  “Not to Danny either?”

  She shrugged. “I doubt it. They were old friends, but Danny’s in construction. I can’t see Patrick talking about what he did.” Neither her voice nor her conscience quivered. Calling the detective to find out what was going on was one thing. Inviting him to search their closets for skeletons was another.

  Nolan smiled, his lips thin. “How’s construction working out for him?”

  “Fine.” She kept her tone cool. “Busy.”

  “I’ll bet. Harder work,” he paused, locked eyes, “than his old life, huh?”

  The sudden transition scared her. He was after something. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that he wasn’t always in construction. Did you know that? That he wasn’t always in construction?”

  She fought back the urge to throw her orange juice on this cop who had appeared from nowhere to mess with their lives. Instead, she made herself smile sweetly. “I know everything I need to know about Danny, Mr. Nolan. And I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.” She reached for her bag on the seat beside her.

  He nodded. “Sure, sure. So you know he came to see me last week, then?”

  “I… he told me that he had been talking to you about some vandalism, something at one of the construction sites.”

  He shook his head slightly, his eyes never leaving hers. “Danny called me last Monday, asked me to meet him for breakfast.” The friendly Irishman look had been replaced by an analytical stare. “I hadn’t seen the guy in years. Not since I was a beat cop.”

  Last Monday. The day Danny had inexplicably taken off from work. She caught her hands shredding a napkin under the table, a nervous habit from when she was nine.

  “But he says it’s urgent, so I meet him at this diner on West Belmont. When he gets there, he hems and haws for a while, then finally says he has a problem.” He hesitated, looked at her. “He didn’t tell you any of this?”

  She felt off balance, like she needed air, or a drink of water. But she kept her expression neutral. “Any of what? I don’t tell Danny about every breakfast I have.”

  He smiled slightly, just a flicker, like throwing a salute. Then his hard expression resettled. “He told me that Evan McGann had come to see him.”

  The room warped. Her knuckles went white on her purse straps.

  Something laughed from her dark place, the one that reveled in car accidents and natural disasters. It laughed, and its laugh told her that she had been right, that the suspicion she hadn’t let herself acknowledge was 100 percent dead-on. She saw a flash of a woman’s face, bruised eggplant purple. “That’s not possible. He’s in jail.”

  “Not anymore. Walked from Stateville about a month ago.”

  The booth fell out from beneath her. “But – he was sentenced to twelve years.”

  “Welcome to the American criminal justice system.” He stabbed a piece of cinnamon roll, the cloying smell making her stomach roil. “After Danny came to me, I checked with McGann’s parole officer. The PO said that after the guy was released, he disappeared. Never called in, not once. Do you know what that means?”

  She shook her head.

  “It means that he has no intention of trying to get clean. It means he’s staying a criminal. But that’s not the interesting part. The part that gets me is that the first thing he did,” his eyes drilled into hers, “was get in touch with his old partner.”

  The air in the café seemed sticky. Her pulse was pounding, and she felt a reckless disconnection from things, like an alcohol buzz. Danny had seen Evan, and he hadn’t told her about it. His old partner, the guy he’d grown up with, robbed people with, the one who had shot a man and beaten a woman half to death. And Danny had smiled, and told her it was a busy season in construction.

  Oh God.

  “There’s more,” Nolan continued. “Yesterday we searched Patrick’s house. There was a message from Danny on the answering machine. A message about a job.” The detective leaned back.

  “I don’t – I…” She stared at him, feeling the room contract around her. Her thoughts piled up like a car crash in the movies, each tearing and cutting and wrenching at the one before, and she knew that when it all ended, when silence fell at last, nothing would ever be the same.

  “Karen?” The detective’s voice was level and calm, his eyes lasers on hers. “What’s Danny up to?”

  She stared at him, wondering the same thing, the last weeks coming into focus. The late nights. Danny’s distraction, feeble excuses, and in ability to discuss anything. Last night’s promise that it would all be over soon. That suggested a task, a goal. A specific job to complete. All the things the detective wanted to hear, wanted to know. The detective with his South Side patter and easy smile hiding the knife he used to shred their world.

  Fuck him.

  “I’m sorry.” She slid out of the booth, her purse trailing behind. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I can’t help you.”

  The move startled him, and she used the momentum to escape, let it block out his voice, his last question, the one that in the movies would have stopped her in her tracks, but in real life she didn’t even hear. She stepped past the hostess and out to the open air and noise of Belmont. The sunlight startled her. A cab honked as it went by, but she shook her head and began walking.

  In the whole of her years with Danny, she’d made only one unretractable promise. It was after going to court for him, listening to a nasal prosecutor in a brown suit explain that in the photographs the jury was examining, the bloody boot marks on the body indicated where the victim had been kicked after he’d been shot. She’d only met Evan once before then, but she knew how much he had meant to Danny, and she watched him, wanting to see some remorse, some regret. It wouldn’t undo what he had done, but it would put it on a level she might understand. But Evan had looked perfectly at ease, his calm unruffled.

  It had made her want to vomit.

  She’d sat like a statue, teeth clenched, through the whole trial. Then she’d come home and made her one and only ultimatum to Danny.

  If he ever backslid, ever fell back into the life, she was out of there.

  Gone.

  31

  Whatever Followed the Truth

  Even having been here before and lacking the time now to appreciate it, even with a federal crime on his conscience and a detective on
his trail, even with his girlfriend furious and his life upside down, Danny couldn’t help but find Union Station’s Great Hall breathtaking. Pillars lined the mammoth room, gracefully vaulting upward to support Beaux Arts alcoves and balconies. Eighty feet above, the domed glass ceiling cut the twilight sky into neat blue-gray geometries. The room had the echoing quiet of a church. The benches dotting the floor even looked like pews, though instead of a gathering of the faithful, the benches held a congregation of the unwanted, men and women with a pallor of dirt that couldn’t be washed away by a thousand showers, whose hacking coughs and newspaper shuffles bounced incongruously around the airy space.

  Danny walked down the marble steps, conscious of the bored watchfulness of the homeless. The Great Hall was out of the question for his purposes. He nodded briefly at a staring old man with a scraggly beard. The guy didn’t acknowledge him, just swiveled his head to trace Danny’s path across the floor. Hallways led in several directions, and he went left at random, following a gentle ramp into a more modern section, all fluorescent lighting and corporate plants.

  As he wandered, he found himself thinking about last night. Dinner with Karen. He’d rarely seen her so mad, the anger simmering just beneath the surface. She obviously knew something was going on. When she’d asked if it was her fault, something she’d done, he’d almost told her everything. Almost spilled the whole foul mess out to steam on the table between them. But the quiet voice inside had whispered, Steady on. Told him that he was nearly safe. That this would all be over in a few more days, and then he could devote all his energy to making it right with her.

  He’d spent his whole life listening to that little voice. Listening to it had saved his butt plenty of times. But he was starting to wonder if it was the best source of relationship advice.

  Not to mention that in a few days I’ll have bankrupted my boss and cost forty men their livelihoods, all in commission of a felony that could land me in a backwoods super-max prison.

  The thought put him in mind of Nolan, of the phone message that had shaken Karen up. Shit, shaken him up, more than he’d dared show.

  “Danny, this is Detective Nolan. We need to talk. Some things have come up I want to ask you about. Call me. ASAP.”

  What did that mean, things had come up? What things? His first thought was that Richard had panicked and gone to the police. But he couldn’t figure a way that made sense. After all, Richard shouldn’t have been able to connect the crime to Danny. And if he somehow could, then Nolan wouldn’t be calling his house – he’d be waiting outside it with two squad cars as backup.

  Danny took an escalator up one level to the ground floor and found himself between a newsstand and a McDonald’s. Glassy-eyed commuters milled in all directions. Definitely a no-go. He stepped off the up escalator, turned, and hopped on the down. Glass doors ran across the opposite wall, with signs pointing to Metra trains, Amtrak trains, more food and convenience stores blocked by throngs of people. It was five o’clock, rush hour, a good bit earlier than they would be working. But that was the point. Better to scope it out at its worst. If he could find the right spot under these circumstances, then he’d have confidence for tomorrow.

  Even if Nolan’s call didn’t have anything to do with Evan, with what they were doing, he wasn’t sure he wanted to call the detective back. He didn’t need another factor confusing things. It was complicated enough trying to stay a step ahead of Evan and ensure that everybody got through this disaster unscarred.

  Except Richard and every honest man that works for him. Every man just like Dad.

  In the movies, ransom exchanges always went down in a parking deck, or out in the country somewhere. Two cars parked thirty yards apart, pleas to see the hostage, brusque orders to show the money. But he’d seen the way Evan acted in a private space. He’d pulled a gun on a startled twelve-year-old – how could he be trusted to keep cool faced with a murderously angry father holding a million in cash?

  Hence Danny’s current errand. He needed a place that was public enough that even Evan couldn’t shoot anybody, yet private enough they could do the exchange. And it had to offer enough escape routes that they wouldn’t accidentally find themselves gridlocked on the Dan Ryan next to Richard and Tommy. They needed street exits, multiple levels, cabs, trains, and lots of people. The best place to hide a needle was in a needlestack.

  All of which added up to Union Station.

  It took him another hour of wandering and watching. At first he liked a quiet hallway off the beaten path, but a sudden crowd debarking a train blew that one. Finally, he came on a dull antechamber at the top of a stopped escalator. An abandoned gift shop flanked one side. The other connected to an adjacent office building. In the twenty minutes he waited, only one person came through, a harried-looking guy in a blue suit, who rushed from the office building, letting the door slam behind him. By ten tomorrow, the office would be cleared out – the odds of anyone coming through weren’t nil, but they were acceptably slim, and wildly preferable to anywhere that might give Evan the privacy to go kill-crazy.

  The only problem he could think of was how to conceal their identities. He didn’t dare leave the exchange to Evan, and of course he couldn’t walk up to Richard himself. But then, you could hardly wander around Union Station in a mask, could you?

  The answer hit him like a slap, and despite everything, he found himself grinning. Sure you could.

  One day a year.

  After all, tomorrow was Halloween.

  Danny picked up his truck from the parking deck at the Sears Tower – speaking of robbery, twenty dollars for a couple of hours – and headed west. His day was nearly over. A final stop at the office to keep up appearances and drop off the updated work schedules from the job site he’d visited earlier, and then it was time to go home.

  What he would do when he got there was a bigger question.

  The way Karen had stormed out on him last night, leaving him sitting alone at the table – she didn’t act that way normally. It had made part of him smile – what a woman, like an old-time movie star – but still, it was a problem. She’d had an intuition that something was wrong before Nolan called; now she was clearly sure of it. Worse, even if the call had nothing to do with the kidnapping, it had inadvertently pointed her in the right direction. She must be wondering if he had gone back to his old ways.

  If he had backslid.

  And she’d be right.

  Danny almost heard the voice out loud. He looked over to the passenger seat where his father sat, a cigarette smoldering. As a kid, Danny had always tried to convince him to quit, saying it would kill him. He’d been wrong about that. About so many things.

  “It’s only two more days,” he told his father. “Then I go back to the truth.”

  His father stared at him, his face craggy and hard as stone, his eyes judging. Danny didn’t need to imagine him talking. He knew what the words would be.

  “I know,” he said aloud. “I know. Gold statues with clay feet. Can’t build truth on lies, right?”

  Still. With a little care, couldn’t he get through the next day without Karen ever finding out? Once the job was done, Evan would be out of their life. He’d have protected Karen and Tommy both. Things could go back to normal.

  “Tell the truth. Do the right thing. Be a man. It was always so easy for you to say.” But even as silence swallowed his words, Danny knew them for a lie. Nothing in his father’s life had been easy. An eighth-grade education and no skills in anything but construction. A twice-mortgaged tract house with a wife and child inside. There had been no blinders on his eyes, no visions of financial ease or early retirement. But every morning he’d gotten up, squared his shoulders, and done what was needed. His life had been a monument to doing things anyway.

  Danny turned left, heading for the office, past hot dog joints and pawnshops with signs that glowed against the dying sky. For what had to be the ten thousandth time, he asked himself the question.

  What if he went home and
told her the truth?

  Would she understand?

  Would she leave?

  There was no way of knowing, not really. As much as she loved him, he knew her terror of that old world was strong. Maybe stronger. Telling her could go either way.

  Only suckers played even money. Even money meant you won as often as you lost. With stakes this high, the smart play was to lie low.

  In the passenger seat of his imagination, his father snorted with disgust and looked away.

  And suddenly Danny realized that the question wasn’t what she would do if he told her. It was whether he could live with himself if he didn’t. Whether he wanted to be the kind of person who could live with that.

  Was he content to be just a thief with a better address?

  “Okay,” he said. “You win. I’m going to drop these papers off, and then I’m going to drive home and bet everything that matters on your principles. Happy?”

  His father was as silent in death as he had been in life. But as Danny pulled into the firm’s parking lot, he felt something in him loosen, like his chest had been wrapped with bands of steel that suddenly gave. He took a deep breath that filled him to the soles of his shoes.

  Screw the smart play. He’d tell her the truth.

  Danny stepped out of the car, grabbed his bag, and started for the back door. Overhead, the sky glowed an imperial violet, the city light stretching to bounce off the clouds. Dry leaves crunched under his shoes, and the air smelled clean, crisp with autumn and its promise of winter. Five minutes here, and he’d be on his way home, toward whatever followed the truth.

  “Danny?”

  The voice from behind him was female and scared, and the moment he heard it he knew something was terribly wrong.

  32

  What Was Left

  He’d been thinking of Karen, and so some part of him was surprised, when he spun around, to see Debbie. She looked lousy, her back slumped, eyes raw, cheeks a slapped red. There was little trace of the rock diva pose she usually affected. His first instinct was primal, a male urge to comfort a female, to put his coat around her cold shoulders and make everything okay.