by Ian K. Smith
He’d lined us up along the pool’s concrete perimeter and began lecturing us about following orders and not causing problems. The camp office had already booted two campers who’d walked into the girls’ bays, stolen their swimsuits and underwear, and thrown them in the trees over by the pond. The head office had scolded the counselors for not having control of their tribes. Since that incident at the beginning of the summer, zero tolerance for mischievous behavior had been declared. Regardless of how much he liked all of us, Marco was the boss, and he was not going to be embarrassed by a bunch of unruly campers who made his leadership look weak and ineffective.
That was when he walked over to me and told me to take my shoes and shirt off. I did. I trusted and liked him. In fact, I admired him. He was olive skinned, handsome, athletic, and a favorite of all the girl campers and female counselors. He dated the camp owner’s teenage daughter, so that gave him even more status. He was a rule breaker himself, but he could do no wrong, because Robin Smyglar was his girlfriend, and her father owned the camp. Marco had free rein, because Mr. Smyglar treated him like he was his son.
Years of classes and free swim at the local YMCA and several years of camp had made me comfortable and agile. I had mastered all the strokes, even the difficult butterfly. I could dive forward and backward, flip and somersault—I was fearless. It made sense Marco had chosen me to demonstrate something to the other campers. It was an honor to be singled out.
I jumped in the water, then held on to the side of the pool. Marco told me to swim out to the middle and doggie paddle. I did as he had instructed, then waited. He took off his shirt, then told the other campers that he set the rules and we were to follow them. Not following them would bring consequences. That was when he dived in from the side of the pool. I could see the rage in his face before he hit the water.
I turned quickly and began swimming toward the other side of the pool. I was almost there, cutting the water as hard as I could with my arms. I could see the blue paint along the side of the pool under the water. Just a couple more strokes. That was when I felt the grip on my right ankle. I tried to kick but couldn’t. Instead of going forward, I was being pulled backward. I moved my arms, trying to thrust myself up on top of the water, but I couldn’t move. He was too strong for me. I panicked and did the one thing you shouldn’t do when struggling for air. I opened my mouth, and the water came rushing in. The flurry of arm movements and twisting exhausted me. I was losing. A place that had brought me my happiest moments had now become my hell. How was I going to make it out of the water before he drowned me?
The sound of my phone vibrating across the coffee table woke me up. The caller ID was blocked. It wasn’t even five o’clock yet.
“We got a body, and it ain’t good.”
It was Burke.
My shoulders fell forward. I immediately felt the sting of failure. I had taken too long to find her.
“Where did they find her?” I asked.
“It’s not a her,” Burke said. “It’s a him. And that him is Chopper McNair.”
“Did you just say Chopper, as in Ice’s nephew?”
“I didn’t stutter, hotshot. It was called in about an hour ago. We just identified the body.”
“Where is it?”
“Over in Englewood, in some alley underneath the train tracks. The street is called South Wallace. It runs north-south between Sixty-Ninth and Seventieth. Halsted is the biggest street to the west.”
“You sure it’s him?” I said.
“Face matches the photo on his driver’s license.”
I felt like someone had landed a pretty good shot to my gut. I had never expected something like this. I was angry as much as I was surprised.
“How soon can you get here?” Burke said. “The ME wants to get the body back to the icebox.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes,” I said.
I heard a long sigh. “Hurry up and get your ass down here already. There’s real work to do.”
I WAS SEVERAL BLOCKS away from South Wallace, racing through the dark, quiet streets. I knew I was close when I saw the portable lights surrounding the crime scene. It was as if the entire district’s cruisers had responded to the call. There was an organized chaos to all the commotion. Three of the local news stations had their live trucks already set up on the other side of Seventieth Street, close enough to see the yellow tape but too far to capture the body. The overly made-up reporters talked seriously into the cameras, intermittently reading notes from their pads. I recognized the reporter from the ABC affiliate. Cheryl Britton.
I crossed the street, cleared a couple of checkpoints, then made my way into the alley. I spotted Burke’s hulking frame in the middle of a small crowd. He was in his crisp white shirt and the only one without a jacket. Those standing around him were listening attentively, and some were taking notes. I quietly took my place in the audience.
“The first question is whether the shooting happened here or was he dropped here,” Burke said. “Timing is also gonna be important. He’s stiff as a board and ice cold. He didn’t just get here.” He pointed to two plainclothes. “You guys work with the ME to get a time of death. Make sure you comb every inch of the alley. I need some of you to find a way to get up on the train tracks to see what’s up there.”
He turned and saw me and jerked his head away from the others. I followed him farther into the alley, where no one else could hear us. Several more unmarked cars pulled up. The canine unit had its dogs walking through the vacant lots on the west side of the alley.
“Might be gang related,” Burke said.
“How’s that?” I said. “This kid wasn’t in a gang.”
“No, but his uncle just happens to run the biggest gang in Chicago. Collateral damage.”
“There’s gotta be more than that to go on.”
“Markings on the body.”
“If this is gang, it could start a nasty war.”
Burke folded his thick arms across his wide chest. “With Ice Culpepper’s kin the casualty, it could be the biggest this city has ever seen.”
“Fitzy must be chained to his toilet.”
Kevin Fitzpatrick was the superintendent of police. He was already hanging on to his job by a thread. Several cop beatings of young black boys had created a backlash that cut through the city like a hot razor. On a weekly basis Jesse Jackson and his army of civil rights activists were demanding that either Fitzpatrick step down or the mayor do the right thing and fire him. So far neither had happened. A full-blown gang war with lots of casualties could force some action in city hall.
“Timing couldn’t be worse for Fitzy or Frenchie,” Burke said. Frenchie was the nickname everyone called Mayor Bailey, but never to his face. It had to do with his obsession with everything French that had developed several years ago after a trip he and his wife had taken to Paris. He wanted Chicago to look clean and beautiful and European like Paris. Millions of dollars had gone into renovating and restoring the lakefront, downtown, and the parks. Slowly, this sleepy midwestern city had been transformed into a breathtaking network of open gardens, sweeping vistas, and artistic ambition.
“This is an election year,” Burke said. “You know how it works. All they’re worried about right now is saving their own asses come November. Nothing takes a chunk out of your poll numbers like a spike in violent crimes.”
“If this was a direct message to Ice, somebody will have to answer for it,” I said. “Who found the body?”
Burke nodded toward the scrum of police cars at the south end of the alley. A small dark-skinned man with a matted Afro and tattered clothing stood next to a shopping cart stuffed with boxes and plastic bags. He gestured wildly to the officer asking him questions. The second officer took notes.
“He sleeps in the third building,” Burke said. “Was heading out to collect cans. Says he does it early in the morning to get a jump on the others in the neighborhood. He normally doesn’t come down this end of the street, but he wanted to get some
thing from the convenience store over on Seventieth.”
A helicopter from one of the news stations buzzed us and Burke looked up angrily. We both knew that more would be on the way.
“C’mon, let’s take a look at the body,” Burke said.
Chopper’s body was about seventy-five feet into the street, which was no wider than an alley. He was sprawled out closer to the viaduct at the corner of Seventieth and South Wallace. The embankment of the elevated train track was to the east, and directly across to the west was a line of vacant lots with knee-high grass and a few dilapidated buildings unfit for anyone to live in. What most struck me was the remarkable isolation and how the area was completely devoid of any indications of active human life. A body could be here for weeks before anyone found it.
Several techs walked around in circles, looking and pointing at the ground. A web of police tape had been carefully hung to create as wide a perimeter as possible. Two uniformed techs were on their knees, searching for shell casings. Chopper was lying on his back. His shirt had been pulled up over his head, exposing the sinewy muscles of his athletic build. He wore a pair of deep-burgundy jeans and a pair of sneakers that were so white they looked fluorescent. His gold bracelet still hung on his wrist. His eyes were softly closed as if he had gotten tired and just fell asleep.
Burke took out a Maglite and flashed it on the body. It wasn’t until he stopped on the head that I saw the bullet wound. It was but a small dot perfectly located in the center of his forehead, almost as if someone had drawn it with a marker. Probably a 9 mm.
“Execution style,” Burke said. “In close. The kid didn’t have a chance. He knew he was gonna die.”
I looked at the body for any signs of struggle, maybe a scratch or cut, anything that might indicate he’d fought back. I couldn’t see anything. “It’s also possible he knew the person who did it,” I said. “He let them up close, and they surprised him. No time for him to fight back or run.”
I looked at how peaceful his handsome young face looked and couldn’t help but wonder what his last thoughts had been before the bullet hit. Did he beg them to let him live? Did he think of Butterfly?
Burke flashed the light on Chopper’s left hand. I thought maybe it was the way his hand was lying on the ground that made his fingers look strange. But then I moved around to get a different angle. His ring finger was definitely missing. The bone where his knuckle had been had turned grayish. It was a very clean cut. Whatever tool they’d used, it had an extremely sharp blade. What struck me as odd was that there wasn’t any dried blood covering his hand or pooled in the street. A cut like that would’ve bled like a fountain, especially if the person was alive when it happened. Why was everything so clean?
“Turn him on his right side,” Burke ordered.
Two techs in sterile uniforms carefully turned the body over. Burke flashed the light along the flank. There was a mark on his side just underneath the left side of his ribs. It was about the size of a poker chip and very flat. I knelt next to the body to get a closer look. It was a three-pronged crown. The letters LW had been drawn in red marker in the middle of it. I looked for dried blood or other bullet wounds. Nothing. The waistband of his Hilfiger underwear rode up on his narrow hips above the belt line of his jeans. If he had been dragged here or assaulted on the ground, I would’ve expected to see scuff marks on his shoes or dirt patterns on his jeans. Other than the crown marking, his body and clothes were pristine.
Burke looked at me as I stood. “Latin Warlords,” I said. “The missing finger and the crown. It’s their signature.”
In the late eighties the Latin Warlords had migrated from their origins in South Central LA to the struggling neighborhood of Pilsen on the West Side of Chicago. They had started out smuggling illegals across the border, then that grew into drugs, prostitution, and anything else that could generate revenue. The Gangster Apostles didn’t take them seriously in the early years, but as the Warlords’ numbers swelled and their penetration into other communities deepened, they began to threaten GA’s dominance. A guy by the name of Alejandro Rivera was the top Warlord. Everyone called him Chico. He was a lifelong thug who had notoriously climbed the ranks by killing anyone who stood in the way of his rise. Many believed he was the one who put the lethal bullets in his predecessor, Pablo “Tin Man” Gomez. Still, no one had been able to prove it, and those who knew the truth weren’t stupid enough to talk.
“If it’s them, this might be more than a message,” Burke said, concentrating on the body. “This would be personal.”
“What does OCD say?”
“It doesn’t make sense to them. Their people on the inside say there haven’t been any real beefs between the gangs for almost a year. Everything’s been quiet. Everyone’s making money. This seems random and unprovoked.”
“Because they probably didn’t do it,” I said.
Burke and I stepped away from the body and let the techs go back to work. As we stood there silently, I looked down South Wallace in both directions, then up toward the elevated train tracks. Had anyone seen anything that night? I turned and faced north. South Wallace emptied onto Sixty-Ninth Street. Behind me was Seventieth Street to the south. The vacant lots and decrepit houses were to my left, while the train tracks were to the right. There was nothing worth coming back here for, at least nothing that was good. Anyone who ventured into this part of Englewood had a specific reason for doing so.
“Explain,” Burke said.
“The motivation and timing don’t work. OCD says there’s been no recent action between the GA and Warlords. I mean they’re rivals, so a skirmish here and there, but nothing that would rise to the level of taking out Ice’s nephew, who everyone knows was like a son to him. They execute him and then dump him over here in the middle of nowhere? Why start a war now when everyone is making money?” I looked around the desolate buildings and vacant lots. Inanimate objects couldn’t speak, but they still had a way of talking.
“Whoever killed him wanted us to think it was the work of the Warlords. But the Warlords wouldn’t do it now and in this way. There’s a code in these streets, and this breaks it. Big time. Trying to finger the Warlords was a miscalculation by the real killer or killers. Question now is what other mistakes they made.”
Several unmarked cars rolled up to the tape. More white shirts from high up the food chain coming to stick their noses in it so the cameras could see.
A second helicopter had joined the first. They looked like dragonflies flirting with each other on a hot summer day.
“Has anyone told Ice yet?” I asked.
“I drew the short straw on that one,” Burke said, shaking his head. “Gonna be a bitch of a notification.”
I took one last look at Chopper McNair and remembered how tough, yet vulnerable, he had been in my office several days ago. Full of hopes and dreams one minute, now nothing but a minuscule footnote in Chicago’s notoriously rising murder count. The inescapable clutches of street life. Even when you tried to do right and get out, it always found a way to drag you back in.
I’d liked Chopper. There was something about him that made me root for him. I looked at the softness of his face and could hear him quoting that line from Othello. I needed to know who killed Chopper McNair and why.
19
I HAD A PLAN. Calderone & Calderone was located at 680 North Lake Shore Drive. To most of Chicago this was known as the address of the Playboy Building. When it had been completed in 1926, the building was the largest in the world and home to the American Furniture Mart. As business tides changed, it was converted into condominiums and offices in the late seventies. In 1989 Playboy moved into the building and requested an address change, and it’s been known as the Playboy Building ever since, even though the company had long since departed for the sunny landscapes of Beverly Hills.
Many of the offices now belonged to doctors who were affiliated with nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I took the elevator to the ninth floor and walked through the glas
s doors of suite 910. It was packed mostly with women blossoming through various stages of pregnancy. There was a sprinkling of men playing up their fatherly roles. They held hands, fetched glasses of water, switched out magazines when the expecting mother was finished, and valiantly carried out an assortment of other trivial tasks that soothed and comforted.
Still standing just inside the door, I surveyed the long reception desk to the left of the waiting room. It had eight or more cubicles with women sitting there quietly talking to administrators and filling out paperwork. Each desk had a vase of fresh flowers. This was where I was hoping to hit pay dirt. It took me a few minutes, but I found my target. She was a well-dressed black woman with a generous amount of makeup, black shoulder-length hair with red frosted bangs, and enormous gold hoop earrings. She was probably somewhere south of thirty-five. She chomped on her gum while typing intently on her keyboard.
I waited until her cubicle was free.
“May I help you?” she said as I sat down.
“I certainly hope so.” I smiled, putting all the charm I had into it. I leaned forward so that she would know it was important. “You are the one I’ve been looking for. I’m gonna make you a star.”
She put her hand across her ample chest and blinked her eyes shyly as if to say, Who me? Heavens no.
“You ever done TV before?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Never,” she said. Then she thought some more. “Well, once I was on the evening news. They interviewed me about the CTA bus fare hike. Does that count?”
I shook my head. “It’s a start.”
She looked around to make sure no one was listening. When she was satisfied, she leaned forward and said, “My mother always told me I had a face for TV. For some reason I just never thought to pursue it.”
