‘Figured I’d drop by, see how things were going. You know, shoot the shit. See if you’d finished the assignment I gave your
black ass.’
The gangbanger straightened, narrowed his eyes. He poured cognac into the snifter, threw it back, poured another. ‘You want
one?’
‘Sure.’
Dion turned the bottle upside down so the brown liquor poured out in a ropy stream, glug glug. Smiled. ‘Just ran out.’
Anthony shook his head. ‘See, that’s what’s wrong with you people. Trying to come off hard, but all you did, you poured booze
on your nice white carpet.’
‘Carpet don’t mean shit to me,’ tossing the empty bottle aside. ‘I got the bank, have new stuff down before I’m even home
tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, but see, it didn’t do any
good
. You ruined your carpet for nothing. I mean, if wanted to use the bottle as a weapon, that I could understand. Of course,’
gesturing with his left hand while his right jerked the Smith, like a magician distracting his audience, ‘a bottle would be
a little outclassed. But at least it would suggest some, what do you call it, proactivity.’
Dion glanced at the pistol, then into Anthony’s eyes. ‘What you want?’
‘I want you to close your damn robe.’
The man moved slow, insolent, his eyes heavy-lidded, showing this weren’t nothing but a minor annoyance. Anthony waited till
he had the sash tied, then holstered the Smith, smiled like they were buddies. ‘Now, tell me what’s happened with Jason Palmer.’
‘I got crews out all over the place. His crib, his brother’s, even watching the bar y’all burned down.
He pops his head out anywhere, I got a hard-eyed brother ready to take care of business. Boy’s a corpse, he just don’t realize
it yet.’
‘That so?’
Dion nodded, took a sip of cognac.
‘So then, I gotta ask, how did he and his little cop girlfriend show up at Lower Wacker, screw up a deal I was making?’
Dion coughed, lowered his drink fast. ‘What?’
‘All of a sudden, there he is, like he don’t have a care in the world. Not acting like a man got a hundred angry niggers on
his tail.’
‘Lower Wacker.’ The drink slipped, spilling a few drops before he caught it. ‘You’re shitting me.’
Anthony felt his eyes narrowing. This wasn’t the reaction he’d anticipated. Something unexpected was going on here. ‘That
ring a bell?’
‘Motherfucker.’ Dion drank the rest of the cognac. Shook his head. ‘Martinez.’
‘Martinez?’ What was this? DiRisio replayed the conversation in his head. Lower Wacker. The jig had reacted to Lower Wacker.
Now why would that be?
It hit. ‘Oh, you stupid monkey. You made a deal.’
‘Shit no.’ The words coming too fast.
‘Yes, you did.’ Pussy-assed
amateurs
. ‘You talked to Palmer, didn’t you? He offer you money or something?’
‘Nah, man, I ain’t seen him.’ His eyes edgy, glancing at the night table. That would be where he had a weapon.
‘So who’s Martinez?’
‘Just some cop, white dude. Came into my crib running game, you know? Said it was like cowboys and Indians.’
Anthony stared at him. ‘I don’t speak Ebonics.’
‘This Martinez said the cavalry was waiting, gonna roll us all up unless I gave him something. I didn’t have no choice. But
I didn’t give up shit he could use, no names or nothing. I figured you’re a man who can take care of business. Handle hisself,
you know?’
Who was this Martinez? He could be a friend of the woman cop’s. But why bring Palmer? And why hadn’t Galway heard about it?
It didn’t make any sense. If the police had known about the buy, they wouldn’t have sent just Cruz and Palmer. It would have
been a circus of red and blue lights. But if Martinez hadn’t told them, how else could Palmer have gotten there? Unless… ‘You
said this cop was white?’
‘Yeah, just had a Latin name.’
‘Was he by any chance about six foot? Built, surfer hair, drove a Caddy?’
Dion stared. ‘How you know?’
Oh, the fucking humanity. Anthony laughed. Jason Palmer had some sack, no doubt about it. Some serious swinging sack.
Good. Better that way. More fun.
‘This Martinez, what did he do to get you to talk?’ Savored that sweet tingle. Spoke slow, contempt in his voice. ‘He get
up in your grille? He dis your hoopdy?’
‘Man, what you talking about?’
‘Nothing, Dion. I’m talking about nothing at all.’ He did his magic trick with the cop’s Smith again.
The first shot hit just above the cheek, ripping the skin up and back, and for a split second, just before it tore off a sizable
chunk of his head, the bullet made it look like Dion Wallace really got the joke.
Jason hadn’t realized how hungry he was until they’d walked in the diner and the smells hit, bacon and coffee and grease.
‘The X-Factor,’ Cruz said.
‘Yes.’ He spoke around a mouthful of tuna melt.
‘I entered a lot of data. I mean, you wouldn’t
believe
how much data I’ve entered. And every now and then, it started to seem like there was a pattern. You know, something moving
behind the scenes. Only I could never put my finger on it.’
‘Right.’ He gestured at her untouched fries. ‘You going to eat those?’
She pushed the plate across the Formica tabletop. ‘And then yesterday, something you said made me look at it differently.’
‘Something I said?’
‘Yeah. You said something about how in Iraq, people just got used to living in a world that was burning. It made me think,
shit, sounds like Crenwood. The arson stats are really high – much higher than they should be. I’d noticed that before, just
in the course of entering data. But I didn’t realize what it meant, because I hadn’t found my X-Factor.’
‘Galway and DiRisio.’
‘Exactly.’ She held a fork in both hands, spun it, staring at the tines. ‘It’s funny.’
‘What?’
‘I hated this assignment. The database. You know, I thought, this is no kind of work for a cop. They put it on me to keep
me off the streets. Only it turns out that the cops working the streets are bad, and that the database is the weapon we need.’
He nodded. ‘I think they call that irony.’
‘Yeah,’ she said and stiffened.
Jason followed her gaze, saw the blue-and-white out the window. Two men inside. She turned to face him, put a hand up to play
with her hair, hiding her profile. Her eyes darted. ‘Are they watching?’
Jason popped a fry in his mouth, looked out the window, just a guy having breakfast. Ready to move if he had to, thinking
a sprint through the kitchen and out the back exit would probably be the best route.
The light changed, and the cruiser pulled away.
‘They’re gone.’ He reached for the Tabasco, shook till the fries turned crimson.
She glanced out the window, glanced back. Shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe this is happening.’
‘I know that feeling.’ Thinking of Michael, of Billy. This dirty little conspiracy had cost his brother’s life, had saddled
him with responsibility he wasn’t prepared for. That he hadn’t even had time to think about. But now wasn’t the time either.
First he had to make sure his nephew was safe. Then he could figure out the rest of his life. ‘You’re sure it will have what
we need?’
She nodded. ‘My computer at work is basically an abacus. You wouldn’t believe the equipment we have to deal with. So I always
work on my personal laptop, then just upload the database to the CPD system every day. I’ve got data on every recent gang
incident, from graffiti to homicide to arson. Somewhere in there we’ll find what we need. Then when we go in to IAD, it’s
not just us talking. We’ve got facts and stats. Maybe not exactly proof, but enough to get a good cop’s attention.’
‘Sounds pretty thin to me.’
‘That laptop is the closest thing we have to evidence,’ she said. He started to argue, but Cruz cut him off. ‘Look, you know
how you were talking about trust? Goes both ways.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah.’
The waitress came by with the check, telling them to stay as long as they liked, no rush. Jason nodded, took a slug of the
coffee, lukewarm now, forked a Tabasco-soggy fry. Chewed slowly, trying to steady his tingling nerves. For the moment they
were all right, but he knew it was a temporary respite, like ducking under an awning against a storm. It didn’t stop the rain.
Cruz reached for her tea, took a sip, set it down with her lips curling. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Eat. My stomach is completely off.’
‘First rule of soldiering. When there’s food, eat.
Never know how many miles you’ll have to run before chow.’
‘I wouldn’t make it. I need food every two hours or my body shuts down.’ She paused. ‘Did you like it?’
‘Being a soldier?’ He thought of the feeling of pride he’d had when he made sergeant, the thrill of walking with his unit,
the camaraderie and faith. ‘Yeah. I liked it a lot.’
‘So why leave?’
He wiped his lips with the napkin. ‘What about you, you like being a cop?’
He could tell she noticed the evasion, but she didn’t call him on it. ‘Yes, I like it.’
‘Good at it?’
Cruz opened her mouth. Closed it. The condensation from her water glass had dripped into rings on the table, and she dipped
a finger in one, traced wet lines. ‘I used to think so.’
‘Hey,’ he folded the napkin and laid it atop the remnants of his meal, ‘don’t let this get to you. There was no way you could
have guessed what was going on.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What then?’
She paused. Said, ‘No one trusts me.’
‘Why not?’
‘They think that I got assigned to the squad as a PR move.’ Her cadence slow, like she were picking her words. ‘Or that it’s
favoritism. No one believes that I belong there. How can I be a good cop if no one trusts me?’
‘Prove them wrong.’
‘It’s not that simple. There are a lot of… issues.’ She sighed, shook her head. ‘Can we talk about something else?’
‘Sure.’ He waited a beat. ‘Cubs or Sox?’
Cruz looked surprised, and then laughed. She had one of those honest laughs, rich and good, and he grinned back at her. Realized
he didn’t think he’d heard her laugh before, and liked that it was his doing. It felt normal, a man and a woman sitting in
a restaurant booth, talking, joking. No guns, no gangbangers.
‘I didn’t leave the Army,’ he said, the words just kind of coming out. ‘I was discharged.’
She cocked her head, but didn’t say anything.
‘They call it an “other than honorable” discharge. What they give when you don’t merit a formal court martial.’
‘What happened?’
He looked out the window. Everyday people, coming and going. The sun shivering the concrete. Girls on blankets in the park.
In all, a perfectly normal morning in Chicago. Even now, months back, he still sometimes had moments when he couldn’t believe
it existed. Bikinis and billboards, neon and green grass.
‘We were on-mission, guarding a house. The brother-in-law of somebody’s nephew, one of those things. There was a lot of that
stuff there. Still is. Anyway, it was just another mission, nothing special.’
The squad bulky with body armor under desert gear. The acrid smell of sweat and the way the clinging
dust itched. A silent head count, his hundredth of the day, terrified, always, of leaving a man behind: Jones, Campbell,
Kaye, Frieden, Crist, Flumignan, Borcherts, Paoletti, Rosemoor, and Martinez, ten men. His ten men. Martinez clowning, saying
that to really guard the house, they ought to be inside, where the owner was watching the Red Wings on his satellite television.
Joining in the laughter, feeling good, the air soft with the approach of sunset, already tasting the ice-cold Gatorade that
would be waiting in the chow hall.
Then the sound of the engine. The joking vanishing instantly, replaced by operational paranoia. They’d moved as a team, weapons
fixed, positions good, covering the entrance to the courtyard. He’d led from the front, the first to step onto the winding
alley that fronted the place.
‘It was an ambulance, an old diesel job with black smoke coming out the back,’ he said. ‘I heard a loud pop, sounded like
a blown tire.’
More real than the street outside the diner was his memory of that moment. The comforting weight of his weapon against gloved
palms. The taut pull of the chin strap of his helmet. Dinner smells, cumin and black pepper and smoke.
The ambulance had stopped a hundred yards north, in the center of the alley. Jason could see the doors wing open. Two dark-skinned
men looked around edgily. One vanished around the back, then returned with a tire iron, squatted beside the front right of
the truck while the other kept a nervous watch. Knowing,
as Jason did, that in the center of a back street in insurgent territory, with no protection, with medical supplies and possibly
drugs on board, they were only one thing.
A target.
Jason’s orders were clear: guard the house. Stay put until relieved. But there could be wounded in back. Maybe women, or children.
‘You never know, is the thing. Over there. One minute somebody is smiling and waving, the next they’re aiming an AK-74.’ He
shrugged. ‘But it was an ambulance.’
He’d ordered the squad to stay put, taken Paoletti and Martinez. Moving carefully, not hugging the sides. In a firefight,
bullets rode the walls. Dark eyes watching from windows, always gone when he turned to look. The ambulance drew nearer a step
at a time. A long hundred yards. He watched the men working on the truck, saw one of them stop, shade his eyes with his hands,
wave them forward. Yelling something in Arabic, fast and guttural. Jason ignored him. The previous week a truck disguised
as an ambulance had been loaded with bathtub-brewed dynamite and detonated amid a crowd of men applying for positions in the
Iraqi National Guard.
‘Funny, but you remember the littlest things. The sun was setting, and I remember thinking how someday I would miss those
sunsets. It’s all the dust. Makes it look like heaven is on fire.’
The man squatting beside the tire had a thin dark
mustache. A perfect bead of sweat hung at one end. He’d looked up and smiled, pointed to the spare beside him, said something
unintelligible.