After twenty minutes of walking around Logan Square, I see an old friend. And by ‘old friend’, I mean a person with whom I want nothing to do with, who is a drug-dealing snitch, and who will tell me anything I need to know for the right price.
“Harry.”
“Shit.”
That’s the usual reaction I get when I say hello to scum. My reputation precedes me.
The last time I saw Homeboy Harry, I put him in the hospital. He had given me information about an investigation I was doing, and I paid him well for his time. It was a mutually profitable deal.
But then as a teenage girl walked past us, no older than fourteen, he slapped her on the bottom and told her that he had money for her.
I broke Harry’s nose. I didn’t appreciate his actions.
“Harry, we’re going to have a chat.”
“Yeah, you’re lucky I can talk after last time,” he snapped back.
“You’ll be lucky to still be talking next time if you keep up with that attitude.”
I feel like I’m talking to a child. In some ways, I am.
Homeboy Harry just managed to finish high school five years ago and had been making his living on the streets ever since. With an impressive ability to remember even the smallest details, his name was well-known on the streets, in the police department, and with every PI in town.
For the right price, Harry was anyone’s.
But his criminal activity wasn’t why I was looking for him—he had attended the same school as Alfie Rose, and I wanted the inside scoop. When Casey dug up Alfie’s yearbook, I glanced through the photos, and immediately saw Harry’s cheesy grin. He looked happier in that photo, calmer, and he had a lot more weight on his bones.
The white powder that he took daily sure was an effective substance for weight loss.
“Let’s talk over here,” he looked up and down the street before turning down a tight alleyway.
Harry Lance cast a shadow over most people he met. His pants were a size too short, his beard was patchy, and his hair dangled over his wide shoulders. But Harry Lance looked more like a rake than a telegraph pole. He didn’t look like he’d eaten an ounce of protein in years. I guess that happens when your diet is mostly drugs.
Harry stopped halfway down the alley, under an old fire escape, and leaned against the wall. A few feet from us were a collection of trash cans, a puddle of water, and I’m sure I saw a rat the size of a small dog.
“Could do with some air freshener around here, Harry.”
“Can’t smell much these days,” he commented, sniffing like he had just done another line of crack. “But I’ve got a joke for you, Jack. I’ve been waiting to tell you this one for a while.”
“Go on,” I humored him. “What’s the joke?”
“My friend says he’s a private investigator, but I went to his office, and the sign on his door said ‘Gynecologist.” He roared with laughter. “Get it, Jack? Private?”
“I get it.”
“Private.” He shook his head and continued to laugh to himself. “Alright, alright. My girlfriend tried to cut off my pecker the other day. Luckily, she missed, and the cops charged her with a mis-d-wiener! Ha! Misdemeanor, mis-d-wiener! Get it, Jack? Get it?”
“For you, it would’ve been a small crime,” I said. “And if she did cut it off, then the evidence wouldn’t stand up in court.”
He practically wet himself after that. It took me another five minutes to get him to stop laughing. This guy was clearly high from his own supply.
When he finally calmed down, I turned his attention to the reason I was there.
“Harry, I need you to tell me everything you know about Alfie Rose.”
It took him a while to compose himself, and finally, he sighed, “You don’t want to hear some more jokes? I’ve got a whole lot of them.”
“Alfie Rose. What do you know?” I responded firmly.
“What’s it worth to you, Jack? My time is valuable, you know. I’m a busy man. I have a business to run, people to see.”
I took out a ten-dollar-bill from my pocket. His eyes lit up at the sight of money. This man just loved money. He was addicted to gathering it, just as much as he was addicted to wasting it on drugs.
“Double it, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Criminals are so easy. With educated people, you have to trick the information out of them. You have to outsmart them. But with men like Harry, men with a love of money and no other skills to obtain it, you only have to put the right price in front of them.
I took out another ten.
“I went to school with Alfie. He got into trouble a lot, so we were close in those early years. I was a year older than him, but we were friends, I guess because I got into trouble a lot. We sort of spurred each other on, but Alfie was smart. Really smart. He just wasn’t book smart like the teachers wanted him to be. He couldn’t read, you see. Dyslexic. So, he failed most classes.” Harry raised a finger. “But I guess the question you want to know is—could he have done it? Could he have killed the newscaster?”
“That’s what I want to know, Harry.”
“Yeah, he could of. Absolutely. When he was young, he had a mean streak, our Alfie. He could snap,” he clicked his fingers, “in a heartbeat. A lot of it was frustration at the teachers. He knew the answers to their questions; he just couldn’t get the information out.”
“Did he fight much?”
“He tried, but he always lost. He was a late bloomer, and he didn’t really start growing taller until he was fifteen, maybe sixteen, and he was a skinny kid. He got picked on a lot. Beaten up. Had his lunch stolen. That sort of thing. Easy target. I guess that after he grew into the man that he is now, he wanted revenge. He wanted to get revenge against the bullies. That newscaster sure was bullying him. Maybe it was all too much.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t so much about Gates, but all those years of torment?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, tell the guy that I could do with some money. Give him my number. I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“No chance, Harry.” I turned and left him to his own entertainment, walking back to the main road to catch the train. “But I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.”
I was due to meet Alfie in a few hours, and I had to mull over my approach. If he did it, did I feel comfortable getting him off the charges?
Maybe, because the kid wasn’t paying me to have morals, but as much as I tried, as much money as Alfie offered, morals always had a way of guiding my actions.
Must’ve been all those Sundays that Grandma dragged me to church as a kid. Something they said must’ve sunk into my big old brain.
I liked Alfie, there was something about him that was magnificent, but that didn’t mean a killer should be set free.
Homeboy Harry had provided good information.
But it only confused the situation more.
Chapter 7
A woman’s scream broke the silence of the packed “L” train, creating chaos among the passengers onboard.
“They’re going to kill him!” exclaimed a man in a pinstripe suit, staring wide-eyed out of a rain-streaked window at something down below at street level.
The train was stationary, waiting to enter the station, and from my position it was impossible to see what was going on.
“Oh, please no!” cried an elderly woman, glancing out of the window for the first time, recoiling a moment later in revulsion.
Others began to stare. And panic surged onboard like an electric charge.
I pushed through the crowd, but the crowded conditions slowed my progress, with people packed in tight around the window. Only when the train finally rounded the corner and we crept towards the platform did I get my first glimpse.
Down below someone was taking one hell of a beating.
An enraged mob of six or seven men were laying into a helpless man in a brown hoodie sweatshirt
, who stood, hunched over in the pouring rain, desperately clinging to a lamppost like a drowning man to a lifeline, in a vain attempt at avoiding the unforgiving sidewalk below. The blows were relentless, landing hard on his face and the back of his head, rocking it from side to side like something out of a cartoon; but somehow, he still clung to that pole. Finally, one of his attackers pried first one, then the other hand free, and dragged him by his hoodie down onto the concrete, yanking it up over his head, exposing his stark white torso underneath.
They started in on him with their boots, the flesh around his ribcage reverberating in sickening ripples as kick after kick dug deep into his bare rain-soaked gut and chest.
A soccer kick to the head, followed by a stomp, and the victim slumped into a puddle like a limp piece of meat.
The attack was fifty maybe sixty feet away, but I’d say that one of the kicks broke his jaw.
Suddenly, the train doors sprang open.
I leapt out, sprinting along the platform with critical urgency, barging past people as I went. There was no time for apologies. I powered on, my heart pounding in my chest, as I shoved my way down the cold metal steps to the sidewalk below.
There, face down in the rain, was the lifeless body of the victim, his blood mingling with the rain and seeping into a miniature waterfall off the curb into the gutter, where it sloshed about among old candy wrappers and a couple of lipstick-stained cigarette butts.
His attackers had gone. My priority was first aid.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and heaved, the dead weight of his unconscious body heavy in my arms as I rolled him onto his back.
A hideous bloodied pulp was where his face had once been. He was cut above and below both eyes which were grotesquely swollen shut and resembled a couple of juicy dark-purple plums, his lips were huge and split top and bottom, but the deepest laceration was on his forehead, which had leaked a sticky mask of blood all over his face.
As the rain poured down, the worst of the blood began to wash away.
And that’s when the cold realization hit me.
I recognized what was left of that face—it was Alfie Rose.
The rain continued to fall with a brutal intensity, soaking me throughout as I knelt on the sidewalk, pumping hard on Alfie’s sternum, compressing his chest up and down while his mouth emitted little wheezes, as stale air escaped from his lungs.
I searched for a pulse.
Nothing.
The rain intensified; liquid bullets exploded around me, mocking my futile attempts at resuscitation.
From out of nowhere the high-pitched wail of a siren cut through the torrent.
An orange and white van with its flashers going came skidding to a halt, swerving sideways and throwing a vile wave of dirty water in its wake.
I continued compressing Alfie’s chest, while two paramedics, a male and female team, jumped from the van.
With practiced efficiency the woman thrust two fingers onto Alfie’s carotid artery.
“No pulse.”
Using her thumb and forefingers, she pried his painfully swollen eyelids apart, revealing one massively dilated pupil.
“Left pupil blown.”
“Request back up,” stated the male paramedic into his radio. “Cardiac arrest.”
“Monitor,” said the woman, matter-of-factly, yanking Alfie’s hoodie up above his chest.
With two hands and an almighty heave, she unceremoniously ripped Alfie’s expensive shirt underneath, sending mother-of-pearl buttons into the gutter.
Her colleague grabbed the defibrillator.
One electrode pad above Alfie’s right pec, the other below his left pec, and they checked the screen.
“He’s in VF.”
“Keep compressing, Sir,” she instructed me, hitting the charge button on the machine, while I continued pumping Alfie’s chest. “Charging to 200 Jules!”
Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
“Hands off!” she ordered, then pressed a big orange button with an icon of a lightning bolt, delivering a two and a half thousand-volt punch to Alfie’s limp carcass.
He spasmed on the ground.
Nothing.
She took over the chest compressions.
“You’ve done a great job. If he’s got any chance, it’s because of you.”
I imagined she said that to everyone, whether it was true or not.
Her colleague placed more equipment on the sidewalk and knelt in front of Alfie’s head.
“No sign of breath. We’d better get some oxygen into him—I’ll start bagging.”
Placing a face mask connected to an inflatable silicone bag over Alfie’s nose and mouth, he began pumping oxygen into Alfie’s lungs.
His chest started to rise and fall then suddenly stopped.
There was a gurgling sound.
“I’m having trouble here. He’s regurgitating vomit. He needs suction!”
Quickly whipping the mask off his face, he stuffed a plastic pipe into Alfie’s swollen and bloodied mouth.
A sound akin to a high-powered vacuum cleaner hummed, as blood, filth and vomit was sucked from Alfie’s clogged airway.
Once more he placed the mask on Alfie and pumped hard on the silicone bag, working it like a bellows.
“He’s got a terrible airway!” he yelled, whipping off the mask again and grabbing another piece of thin flexible 6-inch pipe, which he rammed into Alfie’s nostril.
‘Bagging’ commenced again, and Alfie’s lungs started to inflate.
“We’ve got an airway, but it’s still not great.”
“Give him some adrenaline.”
“How much?”
“The max!”
Time spun by in a whirl: another tube here, an injection there, more oxygen and a second shock from the defibrillator, but still no response.
Back up arrived: a second van with two male EMTs.
Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
“Hands off!” ordered the female paramedic, as Alfie received his third two-and-a-half-thousand-volt payload to the chest.
Suddenly the defibrillator’s screen beeped to life with the spikes and dips of a heart’s electrical activity.
“We’ve got a pulse! VF to sinus rhythm.”
“He’s taking breaths.”
“Get him into the van.”
With a rigid spine board, the four responders heaved Alfie into the ambulance.
“Check blood pressure,” said the female paramedic, wrapping a cuff around Alfie’s upper arm as one of the backup team jumped into the driver’s seat.
I jumped onboard too. The doors slammed. The sirens screamed. And we were off.
A motorized pneumatic sound struck up as the cuff inflated.
“85 over 48. He’s low. Give him some fluid, 500cc, and 50 micrograms of adrenaline.”
As we hurtled our way to the hospital, the paramedics fought frantically to save Alfie, pumping him full of liquids, drugs and oxygen in a desperate attempt to preserve his teetering life.
Suddenly, he began gagging violently.
There were signs of life, he was waking up with a great big tube down the back of his throat, inserted for clear access to his lungs so the oxygen bag could take full effect.
In an instant, “bagging” stopped and the tube was whipped from his throat.
Alfie lay distraught and confused, wailing in pain like a wounded beast.
“Give him five milligrams of morphine.”
If it looked like good news, it was fleeting.
Lying supine, he began vomiting forcefully. His mouth filled and he started to choke.
“We’ve lost control of his airway!”
The monitor’s alarm rang out.
“We’re losing him!”
More frantic suctioning and bagging.
“O2 stats are dropping… down to 85.’
“Blood pressure dropping. 70 over 40. Heart rate 122.”
“O2 stats down to 82!’
Tubes, injectio
ns, more fluid, adrenaline and some anti-nausea medication followed in a bewildering, high-speed succession.
I looked on helplessly as they worked.
One of the EMTs grabbed his radio.
“This is EMT Richard Logan. We’re ten minutes away with a priority 1 post-cardiac arrest patient. He’s been badly assaulted; head, face and chest are in a terrible state. Looks like a blow to the chest might have put him in VF arrest. He was in VF arrest when we got to him but got ROSC after three shocks. He’s now hypotensive at 70 over 40 and we’re having trouble keeping his airway clear. Currently O2 stats are 88 percent and we’re giving him some assisted ventilations through an iGel. We checked his pupils and the left one is dilated, so it looks like he’s got a bad head injury as well…”
A lot of this I didn’t understand but his last words were clear enough.
“…Not sure if he’s going to make it to the ER.”
Chapter 8
Laura called again.
This time she was checking on me. When she asked, ‘Are you okay, Jack?’ I almost fell off my chair. It wasn’t often that Laura had shown any sort of care towards me—mostly she spent her time saying that I, a tattooed brute, wasn’t good enough for her very smart, very witty, and very beautiful, princess.
Most of the time, I think she was right—Claire was way out of my league. She was too nice, too kind, and too loving for a lump of hardened muscle like me.
Laura had seen me on the news trying to save Alfie’s life.
Of course, while I was trying to revive the kid, there were numerous people standing around with their phones recording the moment. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why they would’ve wanted to record it. Videos used to be about recording a moment that you wanted to remember, a moment that you wanted to live on past the worn memories.
Who in their right mind would want to remember the moment that a kid almost died on the sidewalk?
In the end, I figured the answer was fame. One kid that videoed my actions said that the news networks could use his videos, and he boasted that he received an extra thousand followers on social media after that. Good for you, kid—you’ve got people who’ve you never met following you because you took a video of someone almost dying. What a hero.
Gates of Power Page 5
