She rolled out of bed, pulled on sweats and socks. Darkness pressed the glass to the east, and the skyline blazed to the south.
Might as well do some work, make up for the time she’d spent yesterday talking to Jason Palmer. As she booted the computer,
Cat jumped purring into her lap. She scratched his ears, then sighed, opened the topmost of a stack of manila folders, and
started typing.
The Gang Intelligence Unit was the CIA of the CPD, their mandate to track the gangs, their members, alliances, and rivalries.
Information came in a hundred different ways: street interviews, graffiti, suspects that flipped on friends for a lighter
sentence, arrest photos, tips from confidential informants. When combined, the information was invaluable not only for closing
cases, but also guiding decisions on beat-car rotation, preemptive arrests, even bud getary discretion. Gang Intel was a special
unit, a plum assignment, and she’d worked her ass off to be the first woman to make it.
The only problem was that instead of gathering info, she’d been saddled with inputting it.
It hadn’t started that way. For the first ten months she and Galway had ridden hard, leading the south side in the development
of CIs and the amount of useful tips. Even the boy’s club had started to accord her a certain grudging respect.
Then the thing with Donlan last year, and it all went to shit.
How everyone came to know, she wasn’t sure. But it started with jokes – condoms left on her desk, advice columns about interoffice
affairs tacked to the bulletin board. Then some clever prankster had called IAD and suggested her position had to do with
favoritism. Total bullshit that they had no choice but to investigate. And it hadn’t helped when she found out who the prankster
was and took him apart in the boxing ring. So now here she sat, on a ‘temporary
assignment’ any secretary could have handled, inputting data other cops collected.
It was the kind of job meant to suck, and it did. But knowing that there were a lot of people who wouldn’t shed tears if she
quit gave her the strength to stay. Besides, lemonade from lemons. She now knew more about what was happening in Crenwood
than anyone. Every tip, every scuffle, every murder, if it had gang overtones, she knew about it. Like a spider in the center
of a web, aware of any twitch. The strands ran out in all directions, and every now and then she felt she could see the larger
pattern.
It helped a little to think that way. But only a little.
When her phone rang, she answered without looking at the caller ID. ‘Morning, partner.’
‘Rise and shine,’ Galway said. ‘There’s bad guys need busting, and huevos rancheros that need eating. You up for breakfast?’
‘Can’t.’
‘Hot date?’
She sighed. ‘Donlan called last night to schedule breakfast.’
There was a long pause. Then Galway said, ‘You and he, you’re not –’
‘No.’ She spoke fast. ‘Definitely not.’
‘So what is this?’
‘I don’t know. Sounds like something is seriously chapping his ass. I gotta tell you, breakfast with him is about the only
thing sounds worse than the data entry I was doing.’
‘I hear you.’ He sucked air through his teeth. ‘Look, be careful, all right? Things are bad enough for you as is. Don’t need
Captain Hollywood messing with your head.’
‘Sergeant Galway,’ she said, smiling. ‘Are you trying to protect me?’
‘Hell no. I just don’t want to have to listen to you whine anymore than I have to.’
Cruz laughed. ‘Who says chivalry is dead?’
The restaurant off the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel was done rustic European style, like the kitchen of somebody’s grandma,
provided Gramms lived in a five-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel. Donlan looked right at home, sitting at the antique table in
a tailored suit and knockoff Rolex.
‘Elena,’ he said, flashing teeth like a Crest commercial. ‘Good to see you.’
She felt that weird ripple, remnants of attraction mingling with anger and shame. They had agreed to be adult about the whole
situation, which meant that she usually felt anything but. ‘Morning, Chief. How’s your family?’ She sat carefully, straightening
her skirt and her smile.
He looked like he was deciding whether she was insulting him. ‘When it’s just the two of us, you can still call me James.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
She was saved from answering by the waitress. They
ordered, a danish for him, a quiche for her, the closest she was getting to huevos rancheros this morning.
She’d come to Donlan’s attention six years ago. An offender had been strangling prostitutes, leaving the bodies in burned-out
buildings and abandoned parks. Whore murders were notoriously hard to solve: no fixed address, few close relationships, plenty
of opportunity. Nobody else was excited about the case, but she’d seen it as a chance to make her name. Worked it off the
clock for months, finally catching a break when a Forty-seventh Street ’tute she’d given a card called with the license plate
of a suspicious john. Cruz had asked what she meant by ‘suspicious.’
‘White,’ the girl had replied.
‘Lots of white johns.’
‘Not on Forty-seventh Street, sugar.’
When they busted him, Cruz had earned her first newspaper ink, a commendation for her file, and the friendly interest of then-Lieutenant
James Donlan. He was a politician, with a spotless record and a bright future, and Cruz knew the score. As a Hispanic woman,
every success of hers translated into good PR for him. In return, he could give a little guidance, a reference when she needed
one. In the CPD, it never hurt to have friends in high places. Everything was clean and above board.
For a while.
‘How have you been?’ His voice soft.
‘Fine, Chief. Just fine. You?’
‘You don’t sound fine.’
‘How do I sound?’
He shook his head. Brushed a piece of dust off his shirt, starched white broadcloth that shone like armor. ‘What are you working
now?’
She picked up her coffee, leaned back. Through the haze of steam, his features warped and shifted. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I asked, didn’t I?’ He spread his hands in exasperation. ‘Can’t we just have breakfast?’
No
.
No, we cannot
. Adult, she reminded herself. They were going to be adult. She sighed. ‘I’m the official typist of Gang Intelligence.’ She
told him about IAD’s investigation, about getting pulled off the street to work the database.
He winced. ‘I heard about the IAD thing, but not about the demotion. I’m sorry.’
‘Me too.’
‘Anything I can do?’
‘No.’ At this point, nothing could hurt worse than help from him. She sighed. ‘You know the frustrating thing? I just want
to do the job. These guys, it’s like they think I’m after their livelihood or something. Which is crazy. It’s not like I have
political aspirations.’
‘Elena, this is Chicago.’ He shrugged. ‘Everybody has political aspirations.’
She started to laugh, then saw he wasn’t joking.
‘Don’t worry.’ He adjusted his watch. ‘It’ll be forgotten before you know it.’
She stared at him. Wondered if he could really be that dense. ‘You know what somebody asked me the
other day? This beat cop trying to impress his buddies?’ She leaned forward. ‘He asked if now that you’d been promoted you
ranked a bigger desk, or if I was still banging my head against the bottom of the old one.’ Coffee slopped over the rim of
her cup as she set it down hard. ‘Don’t tell me it’ll be forgotten, okay,
Chief
? You’re not the one who has to listen to that and pretend it’s a joke. You’re not the one who got fucked here.’
The waitress arrived with steaming plates, one eyebrow just slightly cocked, like she’d caught the end of the conversation.
Cruz ignored her, picked up a fork, and cut off a bite of the quiche. Chewed without tasting, her pulse racing.
‘You know,’ Donlan said, gaze steady, ‘no one forced you into that hotel room.’
‘I’m not pissed about the hotel room. I’m pissed about what happened afterward.’
‘We’ve been over this. I’m sorry it got out, but I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Neither did I.’
‘Elena,’ he shrugged. ‘Cops talk. They hypothesize, they bullshit each other, they gossip like old ladies. You know that.’
‘Is that why we needed to have breakfast this morning?’ She felt sweat under her arms, set her fork down to hide the anger
shakes. ‘So you could remind me cops talk?’
Donlan finished chewing, used the corner of his napkin to wipe his lips. ‘No.’ He straightened, put on
his official face. ‘I heard one of your CIs bought it yesterday.’
Her head jerked up. ‘What?’
‘Somebody Palmer, died in a fire?’
‘He wasn’t a confidential informant,’ she said slowly. ‘Just a citizen I was working with.’ She paused. ‘That’s a little small
to make your radar, isn’t it?’
‘You like anybody for it?’
‘Palmer was being taxed by the Gangster Disciples. And he volunteered with a community anti-gang group, the Lantern Bearers.’
What was this? Donlan had recently been promoted to Deputy Chief of the Area One Detective Division, the latest step in a
meteoric rise. Him taking an interest in this case was like the mayor worrying about a broken stoplight.
‘So it was a gang hit,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s too simple.’ She hesitated, trying to choose her words. ‘I met Michael Palmer at a CAPs meeting. He came up afterwards,
asked to talk with me later. When I came by his bar, he claimed he had some info on the gangs. Said it was something big.’
‘That sounds like motive.’
‘I know, it’s just…’ She shrugged. ‘He was really hush about it. Wouldn’t even tell me what exactly he meant. But he said
that it went beyond the gangs. That other people were involved.’ She paused. ‘Then his bar burned with him in it.’
Donlan sighed, shook his head. ‘And you think it’s a conspiracy.’
‘I’m just being thorough.’ Under the table, she laced her fingers and squeezed until the bones ached. ‘I knew the guy.’
‘You making this personal, Officer?’
She straightened. ‘No, sir.’
‘This case is a heater. As long as the bangers are shooting each other, nobody gives a shit. But when they kill citizens,
we act.’
‘I agree. I just want to make sure –’
‘Enough,’ he said. ‘This was a gang hit. Homicide is going to wrap it fast. You want to be thorough, help us with intel. Don’t
go playing detective and screw up a slam dunk.’ He set his fork down precisely beside the plate. ‘You get me?’
She got him, all right. Donlan had knocked more than one person off the ladder to clear his own path. ‘I get you, Chief.’
He nodded, stood up. ‘You’re a good girl, Elena,’ he said, peeling a twenty from his money clip. ‘If you’re careful, you’ll
go far.’ He dropped the bill and walked out without a backward glance.
Leaving Cruz sitting in the restaurant of a hotel where a room cost a week’s pay, wondering what exactly she’d just been told.
‘Sun Zoo? Who dat?’
‘Sun
Tzu.
He a brother wrote a book called
The Art of War.
’ Swoop leans back, elbows flung on the step behind. ‘Chinese brother, long time ago.’
‘So?’ Washington can’t believe Swoop is talking about books at a time like this.
‘Man said “War is deception.” You feel that? War is deception.’ Swoop gestures out at the sunlit street. ‘See, that ’Rican
dropped Eight Ball, and he your boy, so you wanting to go gunning for them, right, cuz?’
‘Straight up.’
‘But you run up in their hood now, what you think gonna happen? You all alone, they know you coming. Shit, they gonna kill
your ass.’
‘I’m bringing Crazy Dee.’
‘Dee don’t belong to me. He do as he like. But you ain’t going nowhere.’ Swoop stares hard.
‘Aww, c’mon man
–’
‘You ain’t going. You gonna let them think you too scared.’ He pulls at his beer. ‘Then when they let their guard down, next
week, next month, you and I, we roll over there together and do some damage.’ Pauses. ‘War is
deception
, yo.’ Then Swoop stands, nods at the sun, and vanishes with a squeak of the screen door.
Thirteen years old and hurting, Washington starts to rise. Then sits down again.
That night, Crazy Dee opens fire on a chili dog joint in Latin King territory. He gets off three rounds and breaks a window
before soldiers in the neighboring houses blow his chest onto the street.
When he hears, Washington locks himself in his bedroom and sobs his throat raw. Beats the pillow and thinks about how when
he’d told Crazy Dee he wasn’t going, Dee called him a pussy and a bitch and stormed away. And about how when they were seven
he and Crazy Dee, who was really Dennis, and Eight Ball, who wasn’t Eight Ball yet but William, how they’d made up a game
all their own. Started as handball but got complicated enough they named it, DWW or WDW or WWD, dependin’ who was throwing.
How they played it all summer long, the three of them laughing and loud.
And he thinks how war is deception, and how strange it is, that the power of a long-ago book by a Chinese brother is the only
reason he is still alive to cry for his friends.
Jason woke with the sun in his eyes and the Beretta in his hand. The first thing he did was disengage the pistol’s safety.
The second was check the room.
Billy lay tangled in the sheets, one pasty leg sticking off the edge of the bed. He was face down, shoulders in and arms tucked
under as if trying to fold inside himself. ‘Peaceful’ wouldn’t have been Jason’s first word for the boy, but at least he looked
unharmed. Physically.
Jason clicked the safety back on and set the weapon on the floor between his thighs. He rolled his head to either side, vertebrae
creaking and popping. After putting Billy to bed last night, he’d triple-locked the front door and slept with his back against
it. The position had taken a toll. His body felt thick and heavy. Flaming ants marched up his spine, and his legs had gone
numb.