by Marcus Sakey
One twist of the rotary switch, and the engine woke with a sexy purr.
Anthony smiled. Any car built past about 1985 wouldn't have been so easy. And most from the last decade had an RFID engine immobilizer to keep them from starting without the key. Bless the homeboys for choosing style over substance.
He turned the radio back on, the volume at a Caucasian level. A CD started immediately, and he punched the button to eject it. Checked the title out of habit – know your enemy – saw it was DMX, "It's Dark and Hell is Hot."
"Amen, brother," he said to himself, and chuckled.
He tossed the CD in back with the air freshener, spun the radio dial till he found real music, Phil Collins singing how he could feel it coming in the air tonight, hold on. The shoulder holster dug into his side, and he removed the pistol, a Swiss-made SIG-Sauer P-226, and lay it on the seat next to him.
Out on the city street, he leaned back in the leather, feeling good. Always struck him as funny, the things gangbangers cared about. Their sneakers couldn't have a speck of dirt. Their rides had to be pimped and shining. But they'd happily live in crumbling shitboxes, the kind where when you moved the furniture, a colony of roaches scattered for the walls. In a drug crib, they might have forty grand in cash stacked beneath a fifty-inch flat-screen TV, and a bucket half-filled with piss by the end table, because the toilet didn't work and they couldn't call a plumber. Anthony hated going into the houses, hated the stink of them. Hated the posturing of teenagers who hadn't put in their work and become affiliated, hated the attitude of the O.G.'s that ran the set. Hated the monikers and dope and rap and bling and bandannas and brutal rivalries none of them could explain and demand for respect none of them had earned.
Nights like this were more fun.
He rolled west, watching the numbers climb and the buildings change. Bodegas began to crop up, little urban markets with bright fluorescent light spilling into the night. The graffiti changed, too, crowns and stars, the occasional number thirteen. In the parking lot of a taquería, the cars had Latin beats playing and cholos leaning: the men in chinos and work shirts, the women with that full-to-bursting lushness. Say what you like about the Mexs, and Anthony could say plenty, but their senoritas did have something.
He slowed to a crawl, letting them get an eyeful of the Monte Carlo. Menace coalesced. The men straightened, and a few stepped forward. Most were beefy, their shirts ripped to show muscles ringed with tattoos, some the faded black of prison tatts. He wondered if any of them knew the car belonged to Brillo, or if they just saw a ghetto roller that wasn't theirs. Either way.
Two minutes later, he'd reached the street. Tract houses ran down both sides, a few abandoned, all looking like shit. The night was hot, and people sat on porches. "Angel of the Morning" came on the radio, the original Merrilee Rush version. He turned it up a little, liking the way her voice rang out clear and strong. Halfway down the block he killed the headlights, the car a black shark, a predator in dangerous waters.
To an untrained eye, the house looked the same as all the rest. Chipped brickwork, faded siding, metal gates. But every window had a security screen, all of them welded or secured with case-hardened locks. The front door was dented above the handle, where a police ram must have tagged it at some point. The yard was bare, not even the scraggly bushes that fronted the other houses. Thick shades masked all the windows.
Anthony put the car in neutral. Play time. He took the SIG from the passenger seat, the black plastic grip made for his hand. Merrilee was getting into it, singing she was old enough to face the dawn. Anthony hummed it with her, rolling down the window and aiming along the barrel, the SIG's white dot-and-bar sights clear.
Just call me angel of the morning, angel.
A blast of fire spat from his hand, the crack rolling out across the darkened street. The upstairs corner window exploded in a sparkling rain.
Just touch my cheek before you leave me.
Down the street someone screamed. Anthony moved to the next window, squeezed again. He'd blown a third window before the glass from the second hit the ground.
Just call me angel of the morning, angel.
He shifted down, the pistol an extension of his arm. Exhaled and then squeezed twice, blowing out the porch lights in a shower of sparks. He paused, forearm resting on the window, waiting.
Then slowly turn away.
Someone yanked at the front door, and before they'd cleared it by more than a couple of inches, Anthony triple-tapped it, a nice cluster near the handle that kicked it all the way open. A silhouette suddenly exposed jumped back into hiding. Anthony heard cursing in Spanish, someone calling him a son of a whore.
Not a wise thing to say to a guy who grew up south of Taylor.
He swiveled half an inch, bringing the SIG to bear on the left side of the door frame. Squeezed twice. The 123-grain full-metal-jacket rounds punched through the tired siding and rotting wood like they weren't there. There was a difference between yelling and screaming, and the man on the inside demonstrated it.
Anthony grinned, tossed the gun on the passenger seat, then neutral-slammed the Monte Carlo, sending it lurching forward, the engine revving crazy as he squealed away.
In the rearview, broad figures boiled out of the house, guns in hand. Anthony whooped and mashed the accelerator. Sharp cracks sounded from behind. He reached the corner and jerked the wheel without touching the brakes, tires squealing, and then he was in a long clean straightaway, and he let the Monte Carlo run, the roaring engine mimicking the roaring in his ears. He cranked the radio as he wove back and forth, pops and screams dying in the background.
And as the good burned smell of gunpowder filled the car, and Merrilee screeched over the speakers in full ghetto bass, Anthony DiRisio burst into laughter, and leaned forward, beating the wheel like a jockey whipping his horse to death.
CHAPTER 13
Slam Dunk
Cruz had woken from a dream of fire. She'd wanted to slip back to sleep, and had tried a cop version of counting sheep, trying to remember as much as she could of various arrest sheets. Street tags and priors were easy, but height, weight, addresses, those were tricky.
She'd gotten up to the gangbanger from yesterday's shooting – eighteen years old, two priors for assault, known affiliation with the Latin Saints, street name Ratón, a Crenwood address that was probably his mother's – when she gave up. She wasn't any closer to sleep, just more depressed. After a while it got hard to think of bangers as people. One went down, another was always ready to step up. Shorties recruited out of junior high, a ghetto assembly line. Each model younger and nastier than the last.
She rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and socks. Darkness pressed the glass to the east, and the skyline blazed to the south. Might as well do some work, make up for the time she'd spent yesterday talking to Jason Palmer. As she booted the computer, Cat jumped purring into her lap. She scratched his ears, then sighed, opened the topmost of a stack of manila folders, and started typing.
The Gang Intelligence Unit was the CIA of the CPD, their mandate to track the gangs, their members, alliances, and rivalries. Information came in a hundred different ways: street interviews, graffiti, suspects that flipped on friends for a lighter sentence, arrest photos, tips from confidential informants. When combined, the information was invaluable not only for closing cases, but also guiding decisions on beat-car rotation, preemptive arrests, even budgetary discretion. Gang Intel was a special unit, a plum assignment, and she'd worked her ass off to be the first woman to make it.
The only problem was that instead of gathering info, she'd been saddled with inputting it.
It hadn't started that way. For the first ten months she and Galway had ridden hard, leading the south side in the development of CIs and the amount of useful tips. Even the boy's club had started to accord her a certain grudging respect.
Then the thing with Donlan last year, and it all went to shit.
How everyone came to know, she wasn't sure. But it
started with jokes – condoms left on her desk, advice columns about interoffice affairs tacked to the bulletin board. Then some clever prankster had called IAD and suggested her position had to do with favoritism. Total bullshit that they had no choice but to investigate. And it hadn't helped when she found out who the prankster was and took him apart in the boxing ring. So now here she sat, on a "temporary assignment" any secretary could have handled, inputting data other cops collected.
It was the kind of job meant to suck, and it did. But knowing that there were a lot of people who wouldn't shed tears if she quit gave her the strength to stay. Besides, lemonade from lemons. She now knew more about what was happening in Crenwood than anyone. Every tip, every scuffle, every murder, if it had gang overtones, she knew about it. Like a spider in the center of a web, aware of any twitch. The strands ran out in all directions, and every now and then she felt she could see the larger pattern.
It helped a little to think that way. But only a little.
When her phone rang, she answered without looking at the caller ID. "Morning, partner."
"Rise and shine," Galway said. "There's bad guys need busting, and huevos rancheros that need eating. You up for breakfast?"
"Can't."
"Hot date?"
She sighed. "Donlan called last night to schedule breakfast."
There was a long pause. Then Galway said, "You and he, you're not-"
"No." She spoke fast. "Definitely not."
"So what is this?"
"I don't know. Sounds like something is seriously chapping his ass. I gotta tell you, breakfast with him is about the only thing sounds worse than the data entry I was doing."
"I hear you." He sucked air through his teeth. "Look, be careful, all right? Things are bad enough for you as is. Don't need Captain Hollywood messing with your head."
"Sergeant Galway," she said, smiling. "Are you trying to protect me?"
"Hell no. I just don't want to have to listen to you whine anymore than I have to."
Cruz laughed. "Who says chivalry is dead?"
The restaurant off the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel was done rustic European style, like the kitchen of somebody's grandma, provided Gramms lived in a five-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel. Donlan looked right at home, sitting at the antique table in a tailored suit and knockoff Rolex.
"Elena," he said, flashing teeth like a Crest commercial. "Good to see you."
She felt that weird ripple, remnants of attraction mingling with anger and shame. They had agreed to be adult about the whole situation, which meant that she usually felt anything but. "Morning, Chief. How's your family?" She sat carefully, straightening her skirt and her smile.
He looked like he was deciding whether she was insulting him. "When it's just the two of us, you can still call me James."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
She was saved from answering by the waitress. They ordered, a danish for him, a quiche for her, the closest she was getting to huevos rancheros this morning.
She'd come to Donlan's attention six years ago. An offender had been strangling prostitutes, leaving the bodies in burned-out buildings and abandoned parks. Whore murders were notoriously hard to solve: no fixed address, few close relationships, plenty of opportunity. Nobody else was excited about the case, but she'd seen it as a chance to make her name. Worked it off the clock for months, finally catching a break when a Forty-seventh Street 'tute she'd given a card called with the license plate of a suspicious john. Cruz had asked what she meant by "suspicious."
"White," the girl had replied.
"Lots of white johns."
"Not on Forty-seventh Street, sugar."
When they busted him, Cruz had earned her first newspaper ink, a commendation for her file, and the friendly interest of then-Lieutenant James Donlan. He was a politician, with a spotless record and a bright future, and Cruz knew the score. As a Hispanic woman, every success of hers translated into good PR for him. In return, he could give a little guidance, a reference when she needed one. In the CPD, it never hurt to have friends in high places. Everything was clean and above board.
For a while.
"How have you been?" His voice soft.
"Fine, Chief. Just fine. You?"
"You don't sound fine."
"How do I sound?"
He shook his head. Brushed a piece of dust off his shirt, starched white broadcloth that shone like armor. "What are you working now?"
She picked up her coffee, leaned back. Through the haze of steam, his features warped and shifted. "You don't know?"
"I asked, didn't I?" He spread his hands in exasperation. "Can't we just have breakfast?"
No. No, we cannot. Adult, she reminded herself. They were going to be adult. She sighed. "I'm the official typist of Gang Intelligence." She told him about IAD's investigation, about getting pulled off the street to work the database.
He winced. "I heard about the IAD thing, but not about the demotion. I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"Anything I can do?"
"No." At this point, nothing could hurt worse than help from him. She sighed. "You know the frustrating thing? I just want to do the job. These guys, it's like they think I'm after their livelihood or something. Which is crazy. It's not like I have political aspirations."
"Elena, this is Chicago." He shrugged. "Everybody has political aspirations."
She started to laugh, then saw he wasn't joking.
"Don't worry." He adjusted his watch. "It'll be forgotten before you know it."
She stared at him. Wondered if he could really be that dense. "You know what somebody asked me the other day? This beat cop trying to impress his buddies?" She leaned forward. "He asked if now that you'd been promoted you ranked a bigger desk, or if I was still banging my head against the bottom of the old one." Coffee slopped over the rim of her cup as she set it down hard. "Don't tell me it'll be forgotten, okay, Chief? You're not the one who has to listen to that and pretend it's a joke. You're not the one who got fucked here."
The waitress arrived with steaming plates, one eyebrow just slightly cocked, like she'd caught the end of the conversation. Cruz ignored her, picked up a fork, and cut off a bite of the quiche. Chewed without tasting, her pulse racing.
"You know," Donlan said, gaze steady, "no one forced you into that hotel room."
"I'm not pissed about the hotel room. I'm pissed about what happened afterward."
"We've been over this. I'm sorry it got out, but I didn't tell anyone."
"Neither did I."
"Elena," he shrugged. "Cops talk. They hypothesize, they bullshit each other, they gossip like old ladies. You know that."
"Is that why we needed to have breakfast this morning?" She felt sweat under her arms, set her fork down to hide the anger shakes. "So you could remind me cops talk?"
Donlan finished chewing, used the corner of his napkin to wipe his lips. "No." He straightened, put on his official face. "I heard one of your CIs bought it yesterday."
Her head jerked up. "What?"
"Somebody Palmer, died in a fire?"
"He wasn't a confidential informant," she said slowly. "Just a citizen I was working with." She paused. "That's a little small to make your radar, isn't it?"
"You like anybody for it?"
"Palmer was being taxed by the Gangster Disciples. And he volunteered with a community anti-gang group, the Lantern Bearers." What was this? Donlan had recently been promoted to Deputy Chief of the Area One Detective Division, the latest step in a meteoric rise. Him taking an interest in this case was like the mayor worrying about a broken stoplight.
"So it was a gang hit," he said.
"I'm not sure."
"Why not?"
"It's too simple." She hesitated, trying to choose her words. "I met Michael Palmer at a CAPs meeting. He came up afterwards, asked to talk with me later. When I came by his bar, he claimed he had some info on the gangs. Said it was something big."
"That sounds like motive."
"I know, it's just…" She shrugged. "He was really hush about it. Wouldn't even tell me what exactly he meant. But he said that it went beyond the gangs. That other people were involved." She paused. "Then his bar burned with him in it."
Donlan sighed, shook his head. "And you think it's a conspiracy."
"I'm just being thorough." Under the table, she laced her fingers and squeezed until the bones ached. "I knew the guy."
"You making this personal, Officer?"
She straightened. "No sir."
"This case is a heater. As long as the bangers are shooting each other, nobody gives a shit. But when they kill citizens, we act."
"I agree. I just want to make sure-"
"Enough," he said. "This was a gang hit. Homicide is going to wrap it fast. You want to be thorough, help us with intel. Don't go playing detective and screw up a slam dunk." He set his fork down precisely beside the plate. "You get me?"
She got him, all right. Donlan had knocked more than one person off the ladder to clear his own path. "I get you, Chief."
He nodded, stood up. "You're a good girl, Elena," he said, peeling a twenty from his money clip. "If you're careful, you'll go far." He dropped the bill and walked out without a backward glance.
Leaving Cruz sitting in the restaurant of a hotel where a room cost a week's pay, wondering what exactly she'd just been told.
July 11, 1975
"Sun Zoo? Who dat?"
"Sun Tzu. He a brother wrote a book called The Art of War." Swoop leans back, elbows flung on the step behind. "Chinese brother, long time ago."
"So?" Washington can't believe Swoop is talking about books at a time like this.
"Man said 'War is deception.' You feel that? War is deception." Swoop gestures out at the sunlit street. "See, that 'Rican dropped Eight Ball, and he your boy, so you wanting to go gunning for them, right, cuz?"
