by Ian K. Smith
“What about the dog?”
“They didn’t have it with them.”
Of course they didn’t. Something told me it was Tinsley’s dog. They left it at the house. But why would Patel have had Tinsley’s dog? Was she in contact with Tinsley?
“How are they acting?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did they seem tense?”
“They were smiling at each other.”
Trying to make sense of all this was starting to give me a headache. The mistress dropped off the daughter’s dog, picked up the wife; then they went out for a ladies’ lunch at a French café on the Gold Coast. The husband of the mistress was at some under-the-radar abortion clinic in Wicker Park. Where the hell was Randolph Gerrigan while all this was happening?
“Want me to go inside and see what they’re up to?” Mechanic asked. “My French is still pretty strong.”
“Stay put, monsieur,” I said. “Wait till they come out for their next adventure before you make your move.”
“Which will be?”
“I have absolutely no idea. Let me think this through a little; then I’ll call you back.” The last sound I heard was Barefoot Contessa’s calming voice saying Jeffrey would be home soon with the radishes.
I WOKE UP to my phone jumping on the floor and Stryker barking as if ten intruders were trying to rob us at gunpoint. Barefoot Contessa had already served her dinner party, and everyone had gone home. Mechanic’s number flashed across the screen.
“Where the hell are you?” he said. “I’ve called you ten times.”
“I’m in my apartment dreaming about Jeffrey’s radishes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Never mind. What’s the latest?”
“They left the restaurant about thirty-five minutes ago.”
“Sounds like a nice long lunch,” I said, looking at my clock. It had been almost two hours.
“But they left in separate cars,” Mechanic said. “I wasn’t sure which of the three you wanted me to follow.”
“Three?”
“Another lady left with them. White, middle aged, uptight. She walked out at the same time, and they all embraced each other.”
“Then what?”
“Valet brought the doctor’s car around, and she got in and left. A Bentley sedan came and picked up the Gerrigan woman. She left. The third woman got into a sporty little BMW convertible, pulled a U-turn, and drove off heading south. You weren’t answering, so I took some pics for you.”
“Who did you decide to follow?”
“The doctor, of course. She’s the prettiest.”
I went up to my office and turned on my computer. I found a street map of Englewood and spent the next ten minutes looking around the area where Chopper’s body had been found. I used the functionality on Google Maps that allowed me to move through the streets and see the various buildings and businesses that were in the vicinity. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was hoping something would jump off the screen.
My computer chimed. I had email notifications. I minimized the Google browser and opened my email box. Mechanic had sent me three emails. I opened the first. Dr. Patel and Violet Gerrigan stood in front of a bright red building, carried away in conversation. There was no sense of urgency in their faces. The second email had a photograph of them hugging each other in front of Patel’s Audi as the valet stood with the door open. Mechanic had said that Patel had left on her own and that Gerrigan had been picked up in a Bentley.
The third email also contained a photograph. This was the third woman who had been driving the sporty BMW. She stood behind Patel and Gerrigan with oversize sunglasses covering most of her face. I knew I had seen her before. I moved the mouse and zoomed in. It was Cecily Morgan, Hunter’s mother.
I knew that Violet and Cecily knew each other but never expected that Cecily knew Patel or that both women found it all right to socialize with Randolph Gerrigan’s mistress. The mistress angle was starting to make less sense as things unfolded. All that bullshit Patel had given me about patient-doctor confidentiality was nothing more than a shield.
She was part of the team. Which meant it was more than likely she knew what these two families were hiding and why.
45
BURKE ASKED ME TO meet him that afternoon and suggest a place where we could stay under the radar. All that he would say over the phone was that it was urgent. I suggested Peaches at the corner of Forty-Seventh Street and Martin Luther King Drive. Cedric Simpson, who ran point on my high school basketball team, had opened it with his girlfriend a year ago. The no-fuss southern home-style cooking had made it a local overnight sensation. No one from downtown would venture this far south for lunch.
Burke was seated in the back of the restaurant at a table not visible from the door or the windows. He sat by himself with his cap off and his arms bulging out of his crisp white shirt. One of his plainclothesmen sat by the front door, pretending to blend in. I had spotted him the second I entered.
“Coffee’s damn good here,” he said as I took a seat. He had already ordered a freshly squeezed orange juice for me.
“Better not let the Dunkin’ Donuts Association of America hear you say that,” I said. “They’ll file a class action lawsuit and terminate the universal cop discount.”
“Don’t get all high minded with me,” Burke said. “You seem to forget how long those shifts can be now that you spend most of your time swinging at some yellow flag with a hole underneath it.”
The waiter came to take our order. Burke selected peach bourbon french toast with biscuits and gravy and two sides of bacon. I ordered a waffle and asked that they make sure it was still warm when it arrived at the table.
“So, why are we off the radar?” I asked once the waiter had left.
“In my official capacity, I’m here to instruct you to stand down. Stay away from the Gerrigans and anyone or anything that has to do with them.”
“Is this an order?”
“I can’t give you an order. You don’t work for me. It’s a strong and carefully worded suggestion.”
“Suggestion duly noted,” I said with a nod. “Now what do you want to tell me in your unofficial capacity?”
“This total thing is a shit show,” he said. “Lots of high-paid cooks in the kitchen and no one even knows how to boil water. We’re spinning our wheels on Chopper’s murder and not coming up with much but dead ends. We looked into that protest kid. He’s a nutjob. Comes from some rich family in South Carolina that disowned him after he went to college in Boston and started to get involved in protests and the school’s socialist party. We looked into the charity he mentioned. Preliminary check didn’t raise any red flags, but it’s gonna take some time to dig deeper. And to be honest, manpower is an issue. It’s a small team that works on this stuff, and they’re drowning in real shit that’s credible and already vetted. Tell me what the hell you’ve learned so far. Off the record.”
Burke’s homemade biscuits arrived piping hot, smothered with chicken sausage, green peppers, and onion gravy. He went right about his work as I brought him up to speed on all that I had learned.
“So, you think the church cameras got something?” he said, proficiently wiping the corners of his mouth.
“Could be our last hope, but if my theory holds up, then the church might have the exact shot we need.”
“I have to remind you—there is no we in this anymore,” he said. “We are officially stepping back.”
“Since when?”
“Since late last night. We got the call from the Fifth Floor.”
“So, the spider felt the quiver,” I said.
“What the hell does that mean?” he said, finishing off the second biscuit and first cup of coffee in record time.
“Inside joke,” I said.
Three waiters returned with our food, two carrying all his plates, one carrying mine. They asked if we wanted refills, then left us to feast.
�
��She’s not dead,” Burke said. “They wouldn’t pull us back if they thought she wasn’t alive.”
“Maybe she was never missing.”
“I don’t buy that. They wouldn’t have activated so many systems over a lie that would be figured out sooner or later. Stakes would be too high to take a chance on something that could come back and bite them in the ass.”
“Maybe it was all a ruse to eliminate Chopper.”
Burke cut the french toast into symmetrical squares, a sign of great practice, then shoveled about a pound of them into his mouth all at once. “I’d given that some thought,” he said, sliding the food to one cheek so that he could still talk. “Not far fetched at all. Opportunity is easy. With his money he could hire the National Guard to make his problems go away. Motive is a layup. I’m sure no one in that fortress up there was thrilled their beautiful daughter was smitten with a kid from the forbidden South Side of the city.”
“Smitten?”
“I read Shakespeare in high school too,” he said.
I said, “‘For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.’”
“Who the hell was that?” Burke said.
“Rosalind in As You Like It. Fifth act, second scene.”
“The school year must’ve ended before we got to that one.”
46
MECHANIC AND I WERE sitting in my office in our customary seating arrangement, catching up on the day’s excitement. We both had Amstel Lights in front of us and a brown, grease-stained bag filled with sugary beignets from Akirah’s on South State. The sun fell on the other side of the city, casting long shadows in the park. A lone sailboat slid across the lake, refusing to accept that the season was over. Rush hour traffic snarled its way in both directions, clogging Michigan Avenue. I was content to be above it all.
“The big one won’t be hearing out of his left ear for the better part of a year,” Mechanic said matter-of-factly. “The tall one won’t be able to get up and down stairs until he recovers from surgery.”
“Did you give them fair warning?”
“Twice.”
“Did you explain their disadvantage, them being two and you being one?”
“Twice.”
“Did they tell you why Gerrigan had sent them?”
“Twice. But only after they were both on the ground.”
We lifted our bottles, clinked a toast, then took a long swallow. The cold liquid felt good against the back of my throat.
“What did you tell them after they delivered Gerrigan’s message?” I asked.
“If they came back around here, they’d be going home in an ice truck.”
“Clarity has always been one of your strong suits.”
Darkness started making its way in through the window. A plane inched toward us from across the lake. It would keep traveling west until it reached the city, then travel north along the coastline before veering off to O’Hare.
“Did she spend the whole night?” Mechanic said.
“No, but I wanted her to.”
“And what did she want?”
“I’m hoping the same thing.”
“You’ve gotta get over Julia. It’s been over almost two years. Life goes on. There are plenty of other great girls out there. Carolina is one of them.”
I knew he was right, but I considered his words anyway as I watched the boat sliding out of view.
“I’m a lot better than I was,” I said. “I’ve been told it’s a process. But I don’t feel whole enough to give her what she deserves.”
“You really like her.”
“Since the first day I met her. Not sure I can do it the right way.”
“You won’t know unless you try.”
“There are known knowns and known unknowns,” I said.
“What the hell is that—Confucius?”
“Rumsfeld. US secretary of defense. The thirteenth and twenty-first.”
We sat there silent for the next five minutes, the sugar beignets delightful with the cold beer. It was a perfect sequence, almost as good as doing it in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
My cell phone chirped. Carolina had sent me a text.
That tag you sent me belongs to a Hertz rental car.
I texted back, Dinner at Cut in an hour?
Hour and a half. I need to glam up a little for you. That place is crawling with vultures.
47
CAROLINA AND I SAT at an outdoor table at the Chicago Cut Steakhouse, overlooking the Chicago River and the wall of skyscrapers that magnificently shouldered their way along Wacker Drive. The evening was unseasonably mild, but the attentive staff had turned on the heating lamps just in case the wind picked up. The restaurant, full of swanky bankers, buttoned-up lawyers, and the occasional local celebrity, had a way of making every diner feel like they were more important than the next. Carolina looked ravishing in a snug black dress, with a puff at her shoulders that made her high cheekbones appear all the more regal. Other women had given her the side-eye as she cut her way through the dining hall. I enjoyed watching it all.
“What do you think those guys wanted?” she said. Even the way she held her glass of wine spiked my testosterone level.
“Mechanic said they were supposed to send me a strong message to leave the Gerrigans alone. They’ve already fired me, and they want the entire case to basically disappear. I have a strong hunch they know what happened to Chopper, and they finally figured out what happened to Tinsley and where she’s been hiding. They’ve been telling me half truths the entire time, and sometimes outright lies. I guess since I didn’t take Violet’s or Burke’s warning, they decided to send a third one I couldn’t ignore.”
“Will you listen this time?” she asked.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“You think that’s smart? Randolph Gerrigan owns half this city by himself and his friends own the other half.”
“I don’t look at it as being smart or not. I look at it as being what’s right and who I am. Chopper McNair is in the ground, probably for no fault of his own other than he fell in love with a girl whose family couldn’t come to terms with the color of his skin. His unborn twins are gone for probably the same reason.”
“You’re angry.”
“Not really. More like determined. I know it sounds old fashioned, but I really have this thing for justice. It starts with a nagging, then it just grows from there.”
“Where is it right now?”
“A full-blown ache that I can’t shake loose.”
“What are you gonna do if you find out what happened?”
“When I find out what happened, I’m gonna make sure Chopper gets justice. Truth will not be denied.”
“You could’ve done a lot with a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Like build a ten-car garage and try to impress you?”
“Or buy me diamonds and Chanel bags.”
“Then you’d have to be with me forever.”
“There could be a lot worse options.”
The waiters brought our appetizers with great flourish. She had roasted foie gras that looked like something you’d expect to be served at Versailles. I had the Nueske triple-cut bacon, thick as a leather sheath, the fat still sizzling.
“The irony of it all,” I said, looking over the water and across Wacker Drive. Gerrigan’s corner office suite was just visible from where we sat. “He sits up there forty floors in the sky like he’s ruling a kingdom, thinking that he’s untouchable. Backroom meetings, a private line to the mayor, favors exchanged between cronies at the country club. The average guy out here who’s just trying to make ends meet really has no idea how badly the cards are stacked against him.”
“All of them act so damn entitled,” Carolina said. “The system creates men like Gerrigan. It always has. I don’t see it changing anytime soon.”
Men like
Randolph Gerrigan defined how the political machine in Chicago operated. Corruption was undeniably the engine that drove how the city did business, whether it was an alderman getting kickbacks for allowing a zoning change or the water reclamation commissioner accepting bribes in McDonald’s bags stuffed with cash. To do business in this city meant you either had to be corrupt or you had to turn your head the other way when you saw corruption.
One waiter cleared our plates; the other brought our entrées. Carolina faced a delectable Chilean sea bass perfectly cooked in a miso glaze, yuzu cream sauce, and spinach. I went with the filet cooked medium with truffle scalloped potatoes and asparagus. I had finished my second glass of wine and opted for a tall glass of lemonade. I watched as Carolina quartered the fish, then sliced it further into eighths.
“Ice wants blood,” I said. “And there’s a part of me that feels like feeding Gerrigan to him, see who comes out standing.”
“And the other part?”
“I don’t want Ice to interfere with me finding out what happened to Tinsley and how she fits into all this.”
“What if she’s dead too?”
“She’s not,” I said. “But I’ll go wherever the truth takes me.”
“I brought you something,” she said, making sure her nibble of sea bass had disappeared before she spoke. She opened her tiny sequined handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “You didn’t ask me to do this, but I thought it might help,” she said, handing it to me.
I polished off the last piece of bacon, wiped my hands, then studied the paper. A neatly organized three-column table had been divided into time stamp, location, and activity.
“When you mentioned the hole in your timeline, I took it upon myself to do the tower dumps on Chopper’s cell phone,” she said.
“A little enterprising detecting.” I smiled.
“Learning at the knee.” She winked.
I studied the table, matching it up with what I recalled about the CDRs from Tinsley’s phone. Everything made sense except for one entry. Two nights before Chopper’s body was found, his last hit was on the Hyde Park cell tower.
“What do you think?” Carolina asked.
