by Julie Beard
After his escape, Mike could have returned to the Shaolin temple, but he’d felt that his imprisonment was such a bad omen that he had brought dishonor to his fellow monks. So he stayed with me, employing his fighting skills on my behalf, teaching me the kung fu style of martial arts. I’d been studying tae kwon do, the Korean style, since I was a kid.
So while Mike was a fighter, he still had the heart of a monk and often spat out cryptic sayings and insightful diatribes that had vaguely ominous, spiritual overtones.
“I had a dream,” he said darkly.
I swallowed. “Oh?”
“While you slept with that thing, I dreamed your fate.”
“Look, Mike, I didn’t ask you to do that, and he is not a thing. Bogie is a…a…” My voice trailed away. I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t even know what to call him. Truth was, I should be making love with a real man. Maybe Lola was right. I heaved a sigh. “So what happened in the dream?”
“A blue dragon…she rose out of water and…”
“Yeah?” I prodded when he frowned down at the astrology chart. “So?”
“You are so impatient, Baker!” he snapped.
I was stunned into silence. I’d never heard Mike lose his temper before. I slowly put my cup down on the table. “I’m sorry.”
He frowned and nodded, not looking at me. “Blue dragon must fight two-headed eagle.”
I waited, afraid to interrupt.
“Something has happened, Baker. A storm gathers. Our time together may be at an end.”
He looked at me as if for the last time. I shivered with foreboding. A sudden wind blew up, rare in the north side of the city. The skies opened and warm rain descended unannounced. Big, fat dollops hit the roof, the sidewalk, cleansing them, leaving behind a humid, silver scent. Mike and I exchanged looks. He’d once told me blue dragons had power over rain.
Jeez. I was getting downright superstitious myself. I took my coffee cup and left without saying another word. I didn’t need to. Superstition aside, I had a funny feeling the Chinese gods were about to fling some ox pies our way.
Chapter 5
To Lola with Love
Irony sucks.
At least it did when I went to see Lola on Howard Street in the Rogers Park neighborhood to make sure she was okay. I arrived thinking I understood the extent of my mother’s shenanigans and left realizing I didn’t know the half of it.
Two blocks east of the public transportation station, Lake Michigan lapped on the sandy shore in the glare of the moonlight. I couldn’t hear the waves, but I remembered them from my childhood—remembered intrepidly diving into water that was cold even in July.
Back then I’d wanted to be a mermaid when I grew up. I used to practice holding my breath under water so that one day I could live in the lake, but I always had to come up for air. That was my first clue that I might be destined for something else.
I was six, and the lake was an oasis from Lola’s parlor, where mobsters of every ethnic origin came to have their fortunes told or, more likely, bets placed. One year later, when Lola went to prison for bookmaking, I was yanked out of there by the Department of Children and Family Services. Since I didn’t even know who my father was, D.C.F.S. plunked me into foster care, if you could call it that, in one of the sprawling suburbs, a concrete oasis known as Schaumburg. I didn’t see the lake again for two years. By the time I returned I didn’t believe in mermaids anymore.
I brushed the memories aside as I exited the superconductor platform onto the grimy street. I turned left and walked one block until I saw the red neon Fortunes Told sign blinking outside Lola’s second-floor window. The T had shorted out so it read Fortunes old. That was for sure.
More childhood memories came flying at me, and not all of them bad—Lola and I holding hands as we walked to the corner ice-cream shop, trying not to step on cracks; laughing together when she tried to curl my hair and it ended up looking like she’d put my finger in an electric socket; lying in my lumpy bed at night, listening to the sounds of traffic and gunfire, so grateful I had my mother to keep me safe.
Even then I must have known it wasn’t going to last. I’d cherished the chaotic and neglectful life I had, not knowing it could be better. And later, when I knew it could have been, I yearned for it still. You never stop missing a mother when she’s gone, even when you can’t stand to be near her.
I picked up my pace. I’d been worried about my mother ever since her visit and Mike’s ominous dream. I felt guilty about blowing her off. Why I worried about a woman who could outsmart the devil himself, I didn’t know. That is, not until I drew close enough and saw that the police had cordoned off the sidewalk in front of her brick apartment building. The cops had used old-fashioned yellow police tape. They didn’t waste decent laser barriers in a neighborhood like this. Not when they’d probably be stolen. There were a couple police aerocars hovering on the street outside.
I ran the last few feet and ducked under the police tape, fully intending to dash up the crumbling concrete steps to the second-floor apartment.
“Hey!” shouted a patrolman from his car. He turned off the engine and the squad car sank a foot to the pavement with a hiss. He climbed out. “You can’t go in there!”
“I’m a relative!” I shouted over my shoulder.
Just then an older cop came out of the door. By the time I met him on the small porch, he had drawn his taser. “Stop right there. Who are you?”
I looked up into his deeply lined face and my mind sizzled with a long-forgotten memory. It came like the flash of a July Fourth sparkler. I recalled the night the police had arrested Lola for bookmaking twenty-one years ago. The officers who handcuffed her had been placing bets in her parlor for years. I hated the hypocrites. For a long time I loathed the sight of a police uniform.
“Who are you?” the big, square-framed cop demanded as he hoisted up his sagging pants.
I no longer felt like explaining. I pulled a trick Mike had taught me.
“Follow the bouncing ball.” I put two fingers like a fake gun to his forehead, arm extended, and threw every ounce of chi I had into his third eye. I don’t mean that literally, of course. In eastern religions, the place in the middle of the forehead is considered a portal to the soul—a third eye. The cop in front of me didn’t know that. Nevertheless, he froze and closed his eyes. I turned and jogged up the stairs three at a time until I reached the apartment.
The first room I saw was the kitchen. An overturned table lay in the middle. There was blood everywhere. There were times when I had been ready to murder Lola with my own bare hands, but I wasn’t prepared for this. I hesitated just long enough for the patrolman to break out of his trance and come barreling up the stairs after me.
“Hold it right there!” he ordered.
Just then a detective stepped in my line of sight.
“It’s okay, Officer. She’s family.”
It was Detective Marco. He guided me in with a soft touch to the elbow. When the older cop left, I stopped and pulled my arm away and glared at Marco. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Is she dead?”
“As far as we know, your mother is alive. The lady in there wasn’t so lucky.” He spoke low and calmly. It was an intimate, soothing sound, and I was grateful, even though I knew it was the voice he doubtless used with his psych patients.
I looked in the family room area, where a couple of detectives were collecting evidence, and saw a body covered by a sheet.
He followed my gaze. “We’re identifying her now. A neighbor says the victim came here regularly for readings. The neighbor also says she saw two men taking your mother away out the back entrance of the building. It was an apparent kidnapping.”
“Don’t call her my mother.” My eyelids fluttered at the hard sound in my voice, but I wouldn’t give an inch on this. I’d learned to accept her, but only on my own terms. “Call her a suspect. A perp. A victim. Lola. Whatever you want.”
Curios
ity had replaced his suspicion. He still didn’t like me, but now he was trying to understand me. “Okay. Lola, then.”
“I only lived here until I was six. Then I went into foster care. I hardly remember my childhood.” My voice was the same monotone I’d adopted during the two years I’d spent in an abusive foster home right after Lola went to jail. The numbness faded when I’d landed with a nice, suburban couple who raised me as if I were their own.
Marco had been staring at the bloody mess but turned his focus back to me. God, I had to put an end to this blubbering. The last thing I wanted was for him to have insight into my psyche.
“So what are you doing here?” Marco asked. “Do you know anything about this?”
“No. I came because I was worried about her. Right before you came to see me, she said she was in some kind of trouble. But she didn’t get a chance to elaborate.” I didn’t let her, I thought with a sigh. “What I want to know is why you’re here. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence you’re handling my mother’s kidnapping case at the same time that you’re investigating me.”
He slipped his hands into his pants’ pockets and briefed me like the cool professional he was. “Two undercover detectives were in a car outside. They saw the assailants enter and heard a commotion, but by the time they got up here she was gone. I had assigned the men to keep an eye on Lola.”
“As part of your investigation of me?”
He nodded.
I should have been angry, but the truth was, I didn’t feel much of anything. I was too good at numbing myself. “I’ll look at the body. Maybe I can identify her.”
“I doubt it,” he said but didn’t stop me.
I understood what he meant when he led me to the body and pulled back the bloodstained cover. All that remained was a trunk and limbs—no head, hands or feet. The victim wore one of those nebulous, sleeveless paisley frocks women wear when they give up all hopes of being glamorous.
“The R.M.O.,” I whispered. The Russian Mafiya Organizatsia was notorious for ruthlessly dismembering victims. No wonder the apartment looked like someone had put blood in a blender without a lid. “I see what you mean.”
“We’re running a quick DNA test now. We should know who she is later this evening.”
I nodded. My stomach twisted with regret. Lola had come to me for help. Said she was in big trouble. Now this. I should have listened. “Do you mind if I go into Lola’s parlor and look around?”
“Fine. That area has already been scanned and logged.”
While Marco and the death scene investigators finished up with the bloodbath, I wandered to the front room where Lola did her scrying. That was the fancy word she liked to use for reading her crystal ball. She claimed she could see scenes from the future reflected in the glass. What a crock. All she could really see was the money she was conning out of her unsuspecting victims. My guilt morphed into anger. She wouldn’t be in this trouble—whatever it was—if she didn’t hang out with lowlifes and thieves. That wasn’t my fault.
The perfectly round grapefruit-sized crystal sat on a small pedestal in the center of the table. I eyed it warily. I hated that thing. To me it represented all the painful lies my mother had told to me, to clients, and to D.C.F.S. when she was trying to get me back after her four-year stint in prison. I tore my gaze away and strolled around the room. With flocked wallpaper that was antique three times over and beaded fringe lamps, it looked like a Victorian whorehouse. Like the madam of a bawdy house, she had pictures of her most famous clients on one peeling wall.
Photos displayed the smarmy grins of a few lounge lizards who played in northside synthesizer bars. There was also Juan Villas, the Cubs’ star pitcher. I was impressed. When I saw a signed photograph of the mayor, I paused. She had to have bought that one on the Internet. I looked closer. It looked like the real thing. Or was that a forgery? Knowing Lola, it was forged.
The last baffling photograph was of Vladimir Gorky. I’d seen him in the news. He was head of the R.M.O. here in Chicago and a top lieutenant in the national neo-Russian mob. While he was a known mobster, he was so high up on the food chain that the cops could never tie him to the crimes committed by his underlings. And since he had been smart enough to launder his money in legitimate businesses, he was somewhat of a society celebrity. He was like a white-collar criminal who never does time in a luxury prison and just happens to have invisible blood on his hands.
Wow. Lola was either knee-deep in syndicate crime or she’d really improved her fortune-telling act.
I looked closer and saw scribbled in ink, To Lola, the best fortune-teller outside of Chechnya. With love, Vlad. I nearly stopped breathing. Lola had been scrying for Gorky himself. She’d done a lot of bookmaking for low-level mob types when I was young. But this was big-time. Unless this whole wall of fame was just another one of her scams.
I glanced at the crystal ball, then did a double take. Before it had been dark. Now it glowed orange. I snorted at my own superstition. Of course it couldn’t glow. It was just the reflection from the neon light outside the window. To reassure myself, I looked out the sullied window at the “Fortunes old” sign. It was set to blink on and off, on and off. I looked back at the ball. The glow was steady, clearly not a reflection.
I walked toward it, stopping at the edge of the round, velvet tablecloth where it sat in a black stand. Curious as hell, I reached out and touched the glass globe.
“Ouch!” I yanked my hand back. It was hot. Not enough to burn, but enough to surprise me. Hell, did Lola have this thing hot-wired to impress her clients?
I reached out again, this time letting my hand smooth over the ball. It was definitely warm. I sat down and pulled the ball and its small black tripod stand closer. No wires. I put both hands on the globe. Suddenly I heard her voice. Help me. I didn’t mean it. Her voice was in my head. The glass burned hotter in my palms. I looked down and saw Lola’s face in the ball. She was crying. Then someone hit her. I heard words I couldn’t quite understand. English, Russian, French, Chinese? All or none of these? Or just words played in reverse, comprehensible in a different direction.
I recoiled and pulled my hands away just as Marco entered the room. He drew back the curtain with a whoosh. Light from the living room flooded the parlor.
He looked damningly from me to the ball. “Does fortune-telling run in the family, Baker?”
Short of a snappy comeback, I was momentarily speechless. What if it did? No, I thought as I wearily rubbed both hands over my face, collecting myself, no it couldn’t, because Lola was a fake.
“What if I did inherit psychic abilities?” I finally managed to reply sarcastically as I stood. “You’re a shrink. Aren’t you supposed to appreciate the powers of the mind?”
“I’m also a cop. I appreciate the ingenuity of grifting in all its forms.” He cocked his head over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. The body has gone to the morgue. The evidence has been bagged. We’re the last ones out.”
“Look, uh, Marco, would you mind if I took this home with me?” I motioned nonchalantly to the crystal ball. “You know it…well, it has sentimental value.”
His mouth tugged in a cynical line. “Yeah, sure, what the hell. It’s against the rules, but you bend them all the time, don’t you?”
That stung, but I smiled sweetly. “Think whatever makes you happy.”
“Go ahead. Maybe you’ll actually be able to see your mother in that thing and tell us where she is.”
“Ha, ha,” I said, forcing a laugh. That would be a hot one. As hot as a crystal ball burning beneath my hands. I had no idea what just happened to me, and I might never know. But one thing was sure. I was going to find out who had kidnapped Lola and murdered this poor innocent victim. If I didn’t take a stand, who would?
Chapter 6
Wicked Witch of the East
Let me tell you something about the Russian Mafiya Organizatsia. The foot soldiers in the R.M.O. are some bad, bad asses. While they call themselves Sgarristas, an I
talian word for foot soldier borrowed from the Cosa Nostra, they make other Chicago mobs look like wimps.
Capone had his tommy guns, John Gotti had cement shoes, but these guys had unrivaled ruthlessness born of relentless suffering in a failed communist economy.
Efforts by U.S. politicians to rein in the R.M.O. largely failed because no campaign finance reform laws were strong enough to keep mob money out of the democratic system. Not that the police are eager to go after the R.M.O. Not only are such encounters usually fatal for Chicago’s finest, but the arrests made rarely end in convictions, at least not for the mob kingpins, because the Mafiya maintains a careful balance of legitimate businesses and criminal activities.
I’ll never forget seeing the R.M.O. slaughter four Chicago police officers who’d thought they were invincible with their SMART uniforms. Sgarristas torched the officers. The flames danced right through the cops’ invisible bulletproof shields. They had all died of burns. And that was old technology. The Sgarristas were said to have new weapons not even the military had yet.
I was thinking about the Sgarristas when Marco and I left Lola’s building. In fact, I was doing more than thinking. I knew someone was out there.
“Hold it,” I told Marco just before he opened the foyer door to the sidewalk. A weird feeling made my shoulders quiver with a chill.
He looked at me. “What?”
I swallowed hard before I said what I couldn’t possibly know but knew nevertheless. “Someone’s out there waiting to nail us.”
Marco’s eyes glittered unkindly. “Is that what Angel the Soothsayer says?”
I was too spooked by the hair standing on my nape to be irritated by his sarcasm. My heart banged like a drum pulled too tight. I could almost feel death waiting for us beyond the door. What was going on here? I’d always been the intuitive type, but this is ridiculous. Someone is out there.
Where could we go? The inside door that opened to the tenants’ mailboxes had already closed and locked behind us. Marco didn’t have a key. The only place for us to go was outside this ten-by-ten-foot outer foyer.
