by Pascal Marco
“Admirable. Very admirable. Sanitation workers are the backbone of our city. Some of my most loyal constituents are—”
“Senator? Mister Kobe, sir?”
Unflustered by the cop’s interruption, Clayton answered him. “Please tell your Commander Abbatti not to be concerned. Mister Kobe left for the airport a few minutes ago. Said he had a flight to catch. I had my personal driver take him. Get him there much faster.” He winked at the cop. “He must have just forgotten to tell the cabbie.”
Walking back down the hallway to his office, assured the police were satisfied, Clayton asked himself why James would have done such a thing. He couldn’t believe his long lost friend gave the cabbie Prairie District Commander Sal Abbatti’s personal cell phone and, evidently, with instructions to call Abbatti.
Why would he do that? What was that fool thinking? I’ve gotta find out what this man’s agenda is.
Opening the door to his office, Clayton discovered James had disappeared.
“Where the hell did he go? What’s with this guy?” He picked up his phone. “Janeequa, did you see Mister Kobe come through the lobby? Well, if you do, please ask him not to go anywhere and ask him to take a seat. Well, if he refuses, call me.”
He hesitated for a moment and his pulse quickened as his thoughts welled in panic. He made another call.
“Yes. It’s me. I need to see you right away. Thirty minutes. Yes. The usual place. Thank you.”
CHAPTER 37
Clayton’s revelation that several of the former Oakwood Rangers were now on the senator’s payroll was beyond anything Stan ever expected to hear. It was incomprehensible, making it impossible for him to stay in Clayton’s presence any longer. Not waiting for him to return to his office from the lobby, Stan exited out of the back of the building. He strode down the alley behind the senator’s office building, constantly checking over his shoulder. After aborting the meeting with his old friend, Stan’s mind went at a quicker pace than his feet as his brain worked to digest what he’d just been told.
How will I ever be able to convince him to turn against them now? Especially if I’m suggesting bringing conspiracy charges against guys he’s still in cahoots with and weak conspiracy charges at that?
Before finally coming out of the alley and onto 43rd Street, dozens of thoughts ran through Stan’s mind as he wondered what to do next. He needed time to regain his composure; time to be alone.
In one way, the corner of 43rd and King Drive looked and sounded much the way it did to him as a boy a little more than three decades earlier: heavily congested with traffic, thick air stinking of exhaust fumes, drivers impatiently blowing their car horns. One horn in particular repeated an incessant pattern. The blaring of the persistent driver’s beeping tested Stan’s frayed nerves. On edge, he looked to the street to see what could possibly be so urgent for someone to blow his or her car horn so unremittingly.
Thank God people don’t honk their horns like that in Arizona.
“Sir. Sir. It’s me!” the cabbie yelled from his car. “You okay? You need cab?”
Stan could barely hear the cabbie’s shouts over the din of the street. He quick-stepped to the side of the car.
“Come, sir. Come. Get in.” The cabbie hopped out of his car and opened the back door for Stan. “I take you wherever you need to go.”
Stan climbed into the back of the cab not knowing what to do or where to go next. He nervously cracked his knuckles. His meeting with Clayton taught him a lot about what had transpired all this time with his best friend, who, according to national polls, had become the Democratic Party’s front-running candidate for president of the United States.
Clayton Thomas’s climb to the top was meteoric by any standard. It started by winning the Chicago alderman’s race in his own 3rd Ward while still attending the local Kent Law School. His star then rose within City Hall when he staunchly backed Mayor Harold Washington during “Council Wars,” the moniker given to the period by the news media for the first two years of the administration of the city’s first black mayor. White and black aldermen unabashedly took racial sides as they faced-off in city council sessions after Washington won the mayoral election in 1983. Each faction desperately struggled for control of the City Council, their actions making national headlines. Presumably at stake: the future racial makeup of the City of Chicago.
“Burnham Park,” Stan directed the cabbie. “Take me in through the Oakwood Boulevard entrance.”
“Yes, sir. No problem, sir. I really happy to see you. I call number on paper you give me. I still wait, even when police come. When police come out, they tell me you leave with senator’s chauffeur.”
“The police said what?” Stan asked, talking through the small opening in the double-thick Plexiglas window that separated passenger from driver.
“Police tell me you leave in senator’s car,” he yelled back at Stan. “They say his driver take you to airport. Me confused. I tell them ‘I no move from curb. No see senator’s limo.’”
The cabbie drove east on 43rd Street to Vincennes Avenue then north on Vincennes to Oakwood Boulevard. Once there, he made a right turn, heading directly toward Burnham Park, now less than one-half mile away. As the car began its slight ascent approaching the Lake Shore Drive overpass, Stan unsuccessfully tried to roll down his back window. He knocked hard against the Plexiglas to get the cabbie’s attention.
“Yes, sir?” the cabbie replied, throwing his words over his shoulder.
“Unlock the windows and roll them all down,” Stan shouted. “Hurry. Hurry.”
“Yes, sir. No problem. Beautiful day. Yes, sir. Beautiful.”
The obliging driver motored down the windows. Stan immediately leaned his head out and closed his eyes. He let the scented air wash over him—part air, part sky, part fish, part newly mowed grass.
It smells exactly the same. Exactly.
“Pull over here.”
Stan stuck his hand through the Plexiglas opening and pointed to a small gravel area just past the park’s main asphalt parking lot, immediately to the south of the entrance. The driver wheeled his yellow cab to the spot where Stan pointed.
“Wait here.”
“No problem, sir. Meter not running for you. I got number. You not back in fifteen minutes—?”
“Give me thirty, my friend. Okay?”
Stan walked out onto the main bike path that dead-ended at the edge of the gravel. Heavy construction equipment surrounded by chain-link fences stood between him and the lakefront. Work crews moved large, smooth, white boulders along her shoreline, replacing the jagged rocks he once played on as a boy so many years before. Except for the current work, the area looked exactly the way he remembered it.
Stan continued south along the path for about a block before veering off and heading east over a large berm of grass, which separated bike path from lake. As he climbed to the top of the grassy knoll, Lake Michigan’s expanse came into full view.
There you are. I missed you, ol’ girl.
He had thought about this day from the moment Cook County deputies whisked him and his family out of Chicago into the suburban safe house prior to the trial of the murder of Manny Fleischman. Seeing and being at the lakeshore again had never left his mind. The thought became the only thing that gave him hope while he felt displaced and abandoned all those years in Arizona.
“Thank you, God,” Stan whispered. He pulled his jacket close to protect him from the cool, brisk air coming in off the water.
“Figured I’d find you here.”
Stan snapped an about face. Clayton stood behind him, alone, clutching a stub of a cigar between his fat fingers.
“What do you want?” Stan asked.
“So. What. No goodbye? Is that the way to treat someone you haven’t seen in over thirty years?”
Stan didn’t answer. He turned away, staring out over the open blueness, toward the vastness of the undulating water that extended as far as he could see. He turned away because he wanted to hi
de his displeasure, not only in Clayton finding him here and ruining his blissful moment, but to conceal his anger from hearing earlier that Pick and his gang were now employees of his longago friend.
“You might think you know all about me, but you don’t,” Clayton said. “You think you’ve got this all figured out. Don’t you?”
Puzzled by Clayton’s remarks, Stan still didn’t answer him. He wondered what the senator meant, though, and why he came to the park to find him.
How did he know I’d be here?
“Maricopa County’s most ruthless prosecutor. That’s what they call you, right? You’ve never lost a case. Ever wonder if you judged a man guilty before you even tried him? Ever sent an innocent man to jail?”
Stan still didn’t answer Clayton’s questions nor turn around to look at him again, but the senator’s words did intrigue him, wondering where his probing questions were leading.
“Remember this place? Remember how it used to look before they put all these silly fuckin’ steps in here?” Clayton stepped down in front of Stan and swept his arm back and forth in front of them. Stan watched him, his eyes following Clayton’s gesture. “There were hundreds of those big, beautiful jagged rocks all along here. I used to love to watch the waves crash against them. Go looking for frogs in the nooks and crannies with you. You showed me how to jump from rock to rock. It was you, James, who taught me how to balance myself and not be afraid of falling in the water.”
Stan resisted but gave him a small nod of affirmation.
“Pick’s still scared shitless of the water, ya’ know. Still frightened of stepping out on those rocks.” He paused a moment. “He hated that about you, James. Hated the fact that the water and the rocks didn’t scare a little shit like you. Didn’t scare you a bit.”
So that was Pick who shouted—”Crazy nigger!” —at me all those years ago!
“I ran here when Pick started to beat him,” Clayton said, pointing to an area on the current rock steps, which led to the water below them. “I sat right here and cried like a baby. I knew if Pick found me he wouldn’t come out onto those rocks because they were so close to the water. I couldn’t believe he actually did what he said he was going to do to that old man. I was so afraid of him.” He paused and took a breath, shrugging his shoulders. “Still am.”
Stan sat down on the rock step and stared out at the lake, listening intently to his boyhood friend’s confession.
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth when I called you on the phone the day they jumped Fleischman. I had told you the reason I had joined Pick’s gang was because the Rangers had caught me alone in the park and threatened to kill me if I didn’t join them right then. They said they’d also get my brother, Eldridge, too.”
“And that wasn’t true?”
“Not exactly,” Clayton replied, turning his eyes to the ground. “What really happened was that I found out about a week or so before they jumped you in the park that Pick’s older cousin, Julius, had killed my father.”
“What?” Stan gulped.
Clayton looked right at Stan. “You heard me right. It’s true that the gang did catch me alone in the park. I was waiting to meet up with you and play ball. But what happened was that Pick told me my brother, Eldridge, was the one who had come to him and asked him to do it, to kill our daddy, to put an end to the beatings our family was getting. He then told me Julius was the one who had shot my father and dumped his body in the lake. I didn’t believe Pick. I didn’t believe my brother could do such a thing.
“Pick didn’t care what I believed. And he told me their deal with Eldridge was that if the gang killed our daddy, then he’d have to join the Rangers. He told me Eldridge agreed but never showed up at Pick’s gang initiation. Pick told me to tell Eldridge if he wasn’t at the cemetery that night then the Rangers couldn’t be responsible for what happened to anyone in our family from that point forward, including my momma.
“Pick let me go but told me to take that message home to my family. I did and my momma locked us all up in our apartment. That’s why we never answered the knocks at our door anymore. But after a while I knew we couldn’t live like that. So I snuck out and went to Julius and Pick and told them I’d join the Oakwood Rangers if they’d leave my family alone. Julius and Pick agreed to my proposal and I joined them. That’s why I couldn’t help you when they trapped you in the basket. That’s why we never traveled together out here any more.”
Clayton pointed up and down the lakefront with a sweep of his hand, stumpy cigar still stuck between his fingers.
“But then after they killed Fleischman, I told Pick I wanted no part of his gang. I wanted no part of killing. Pick told me leaving the gang meant leaving this world. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. I told my brother, Eldridge, everything. He told me not to worry, that he got me into this mess and he’d straighten it out, and that everything’d be all right. Later that same night, he went out to the store for momma. He never came home. The police found him the next morning, shot in the back of the head.”
Stan’s heart ached with sorrow, hearing his old friend’s poignant tale, making it difficult for him to speak his next words. “Clayton … I … I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? My heart doesn’t know the meaning of sorrow no more. Been closed shut too long. Too many years.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone the whole truth about what happened? About Pick admitting that his cousin, Julius, killed your father.”
“Who could I tell?” Clayton replied. “Who’da listened? Who’da cared? Niggers in the projects was all we were. Who gave a rat’s ass about us? Just niggers killin’ niggers is all it was to white cops.”
“You coulda told me.”
Looking ashamed, Clayton paused and took a deep puff on the remainder of his stogie. “When you didn’t ID me as being one of the boys in the attack that day, I didn’t know what to do, what to think,” Clayton said, lowering himself and sitting down beside Stan. “After the trial, I felt so bad that you got the raw end of the deal. I never forgave myself for not coming forward and helping you. Same way I felt the day they put you in that basket when I stood there, afraid, and did nothing to help you.”
He took a last puff on his cigar and tossed it into the lake below. “I decided to come back to the neighborhood after all those years I spent away. I wanted to give something back, help the youth of my old community, help keep them out of gangs. I decided to run for city council from the Third Ward. What I didn’t realize was that Pick was still around, still active, still doing his crime thing. He had become one of the top enforcers of the P. Stone Rangers. Ruthless is what everyone called him, and always one step ahead of the law.
“He got word I was back and paid me a visit. He threatened me, saying he would leak my involvement in the Fleischman thing. He said he’d ruin my career. Ruin everything I had worked so hard for. He’d stay quiet, though, he said, if I helped him while I was in office.”
Clayton paused momentarily, stared out at the lake, and then continued. “I really didn’t care about the job or my political future, but I had just gotten married. He told me if I didn’t cooperate he’d kill my wife. I believed him. The gang killed my father and most likely my brother. Pick helped make the decision easier by welcoming me back to the ‘hood with a beating given to me by his old sidekick, Tyrone. From that point forward, I did whatever he asked.”
The senator hung his head. “There’s an old saying and I know its meaning now. I sold my soul to the devil. And the devil’s name is Pick Clarke. Lord help me.”
“Clayton,” Stan sighed, “I had no idea.”
“No one did. When people asked me those first few days I was back what happened to me when they saw my punched-up face, I just kept my mouth shut and went about my business. But I’ve looked over my shoulder ever since. Pick keeps close tabs on me. Guess the saying’s true, huh? Keep your friends close but your enemies closer?”
“I’ll take that cigar now you of
fered me back in your office,” Stan said. “Matter of fact, I think I need that Scotch too.”
Clayton smiled and pulled back the lapel of his coat, grabbing a hand-rolled Cuban from the inside pocket of his tailored silk suit and handed it to his friend. Stan lit the cigar, its gray smoke dispersing in the gentle lake breeze. Lulling waves splashed against the limestone rocks about twenty feet below them. It was a perfect late fall day. As he puffed on his cigar, sitting there next to the lake, Stan felt a sense of calm flow through his body, even with Clayton’s revelation that Pick had added blackmail and extortion to his long list of crimes.
Stan took a deep inhale of his stogie. After an equally long exhale, he said, “It’s Turner and DeSadier I’ve got under arrest in Arizona.”
Clayton turned to him, looking stunned. “Say what?”
“The two I told you about in your office that we nabbed on an Indian reservation. It’s Pokie Turner and Bobby DeSadier I’ve got locked up. They were planning to smuggle guns into Mexico and methamphetamines and cash back out. A federal task force down there got tipped-off—” Stan stopped mid-sentence. He shook his head back and forth and continued. “—that’s how it went down. It all makes sense now. That task force is funded by the Department of Homeland Security, isn’t it?”
“What task force? Government’s got a lot of those. Hundreds,” Clayton replied, turning away, staring back out onto the water.
“You know perfectly well what task force. The Arizona Border Initiative Task Force. Those are the guys who nabbed Turner and DeSadier, who probably work for you too now, right? Along with Witherspoon, Rhodes, and Pick, like you told me in your office. Do I have the picture about right?”
Clayton didn’t respond.
“Was it you who tipped-off the task force? Leaked them information those guys would be down there to conduct their little transaction. Question now is, where’s all the money they’ve been bringing back into the U.S. been going all this time? To Pick? Or to your presidential campaign’s war chest?” Stan got up and stood directly in front of Clayton. He pointed his huge cigar in the senator’s face. “It’s time for you to level with me. Whose side are you on?”
