She saw his hesitation, shook her head. ‘It’s okay. It was nice to meet you.’ Then she opened the door and stepped out, giving
him a little wave using just her fingers. The walls were thin, and he could hear her heels click all the way down the hall.
‘Shit.’ Jason scooped the container of noodles from the table and tossed it in the trash.
He made his bed, pulling the sheets tight and tucking the corners. Ready to bounce a quarter off. Then he stretched, and hit
the deck for push-ups. Normally he did a hundred neat snaps with hands beneath his shoulders, followed by fifty arms-wide.
But he thought of Jackie, the way he hadn’t had the balls to tell her yes, and forced himself into another fifty of each,
no break. He was panting by the end, shoulders and chest sore, the mop of bangs he’d let grow since his return sticky against
his forehead.
Standing, he spotted his cell phone. He thought about dialing Michael, apologizing for getting worked up. Guy was an asshole
sometimes, but they were still brothers.
Instead he went to the bathroom and showered off his sweat and the smell of the girl’s perfume.
The chrome on the Beretta was shiny, but the works were filthy. Besides not knowing how to hold a weapon, Soul Patch obviously
didn’t have a clue how to maintain one. Jason ejected the magazine and set it
on the table, then checked the chamber for rounds. When he was sure it was clear, he held down the disassembly latch and
removed the slide, then the recoil spring and barrel. He set each piece on the kitchen table, enjoying the feeling of the
routine. Maintenance was a simple, methodical process. It was something you could do without thinking, the way some people
painted models or knit sweaters. Just a way to defocus the mind. And it felt good to hold a weapon again. After years of having
one in arm’s reach every moment, he felt naked without. Silly, really; his need to be armed had died months ago, when he walked
out of the Administrative Discharge Board.
The thought made him grind his teeth.
Enough, he thought, and blew at a speck of dust. So his old life was over. So it had ended badly. So what? People moved on.
They forgave themselves, rebuilt their lives. Managed, somehow, to be happy again. It happened all the time. Right?
Jason gave the barrel another buff with the cloth, then slotted it back in place and tightened it with the spring. Fit the
slide back on, then inserted the magazine.
It was no wonder he pictured his guilt as a Worm, thin and segmented, blind and pale. Like some foul eel from the ocean’s
darkest chasm. With razor teeth it was slowly eating him, a bite at a time. Would it eventually die?
Or just feast until there was nothing left?
He hoisted the Beretta and reversed it. Pointed it
dead center of his face, in that spot where his eyes fought for focus. A shiver ran down his thighs. It would take so little.
Just the smallest squeeze of his thumb. A short dance of muscles and a fire exploding in his brain, and then gone. No more
Worm, no more memories. Just blackness cool as the shadow inside the gun barrel.
There was a knock at the door.
The sound jerked him from his trance. In the two months he’d lived here, he couldn’t recall anyone knocking. He was halfway
to the door before he realized he still had the Beretta in one hand.
What was he, the freaking Unabomber? Moping around alone and cleaning a gun?
The knock came again.
‘Just a minute.’ He looked for a place to stash it. Furniture hadn’t been a top priority. He grimaced, then locked the safety
and tucked the gun in his pants like a Tarantino gangster. At the door, he peered through the peephole. Nothing but the neighboring
door.
Then he heard something that stopped his heart.
‘Uncle Jason?’
The dead boy wouldn’t shut up.
So far, Officer Elena Cruz’s day had been lousy, and she didn’t have a sense it was likely to improve. She’d spent a good
chunk of the night trying to tune out the thumping music of the club downstairs. By the time her radio kicked on with the
latest casualty figures from Iraq, news of a bombing in a mosque, and the President’s monotone promise to stay the course,
she’d managed barely three hours of sleep. Mint Nicorette tasted better than the regular stuff, but couldn’t compare to that
first drag off that first cigarette.
And now the dead boy.
Talkers drove Cruz crazy. In the movies, victims whispered a crucial clue, gasped out a name. Then they coughed two dots of
blood and politely rolled back their eyes.
Her years on the street didn’t match. Instead, mostly the talkers wanted to tell you how much they loved they mama. Twenty
minutes ago, she wouldn’t have heard anything about his mother. She’d have gotten cold eyes and hard posture. A glance fixed
on her crotch, maybe a lick of his lips.
To transform him into a good civilian and dutiful son, all you had to do was kill him.
Of course, he didn’t realize he was dead. But Cruz knew better. After five years in a South Side beat car, another three kicking
in doors on the tactical team, and eighteen months with Gang Intelligence, she’d gotten pretty good at reading the faces of
the paramedics. This had been called in as a shooting, but she gave it ten minutes to graduate to a proper homicide.
‘Can you hear me?’ She leaned over the boy. Judging by the zits pocking his face, he was about seventeen. She repeated the
question in Spanish, and his eyes focused.
‘¿Como te llama?’
‘Teo.’ His voice was faint.
Not Six-Pack, or Choco, or T-Dog, or what ever his street name was. Now that it was too late, his name was Teo. She’d’ve laughed
if it were funny. ‘Teo, I’m here to help.’ She put a little extra accent into her Spanish, let him know they were of the same
blood. ‘Who did this?’
He stared back. ‘Where’s my mother?’
‘She’ll meet you at the hospital. Right now, I need you to tell me what happened.’
He shook his head and coughed. A lot more than two drops of blood spattered his lips, the copper smell strong.
‘Officer.’ The paramedic was young, his hands fast on the gurney straps. ‘We’ve got to roll.’
She nodded and stepped back, took in the scene.
A typical Crenwood corner. Rows of sagging two-flats dotted with brick bungalows, metal security gates covering the front
doors. The sign for the
elementary school on the corner read ‘Believe and achiev !’ People gathered on the stoops and porches, enjoying the show.
Business as usual in the ’Wood.
‘You know what I’m thinking? Suicide.’ Sergeant Tom Galway ran his hands through his neat salt-and-pepper hair. ‘I’m guessing
our boy had been pondering the inequities generated by geopolitical gamesmanship, got so depressed he went and shot himself
in the back. Four times.’
She rolled her eyes at her partner. ‘Geopolitical gamesmanship?’
‘Heard it on NPR this morning.’ He looked over her shoulder. ‘Uh-oh.’
‘What?’ She glanced, saw the detective in charge of the scene walking toward them. ‘Shit.’
‘Go easy, partner.’ Galway put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be starting anything.’
‘
Me?
’
Galway shot her a look that said,
Yeah, you.
Then he straightened and smiled.
The detective was a veteran with a gut and too much aftershave. He stepped around a pool of Teo’s watery vomit, folded his
arms, and looked at her coldly. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be driving a database?’
She decided to take it in good humor, pretend he was being playful. ‘I wanted to get some air. What’s the story?’
He shrugged. ‘Victim was walking with his girl, kid rounds the corner, opens up. Weapon’s a nine-millimeter. Nineteen shell
casings, clustered, with four hits.’
‘Four for nineteen?’ Galway shook his head. ‘Lousy shooting.’
Cruz ignored him. ‘
Nineteen
casings from one weapon? Somebody’s got an Uzi.’
‘Or an MP-5, or a MAC-11, or Christ knows what else.’ The detective dug in his ear with one finger. ‘Remember the good old
days when kids killed each other with knives and baseball bats?’
‘The girl have anything to say?’
‘Nah.’
‘Neighbors?’
‘I’ve got uniforms knocking on doors. But you know,’ he made the hand signal for jerking off. ‘Nobody –’
‘– saw nothing.’ Cruz finished the mantra. Old story. If Teo had gotten popped in Lincoln Park, they would have had twenty-five
people lining up to share every detail. But down here, everybody had vision problems. ‘You mind if I look around?’
‘You mind blowing me?’
Her eyes went wide, and she felt her pulse kick in her chest. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I said,’ the detective curled one lip, ‘go back to playing with your computer, and leave case work to people who earned their
jobs without spreading their legs.’
Fire flowed up her neck, and her fingers bit into her palm. Unthinking, she started forward, cocking one hand back, ready
to lay this tubby chauvinist flat on his ass.
Galway moved fast, stepping between them and grabbing her shoulders. ‘Easy, Elena.
Easy!
’ Over Galway’s shoulder, the detective winked. She bucked against her partner, knowing he was right but not caring, just
wanting to deck the guy so badly she could taste it. But Galway’s grip on her arms was steel. ‘You’re already in the shit.’
He hustled her back, met her eyes. ‘Hitting him isn’t worth losing your job over.’
He was right, and she knew it, but that didn’t make her like it more. Cruz shook her arms free, then spun on one heel. Behind
her she heard the detective laughing, but just squeezed her fingers into her palms until her arms trembled. Galway followed
her.
‘Goddamn boys club
bull
shit,’ she said, stomping toward the car. ‘One mistake,
one
, and ten years don’t mean anything. Like I’m some secretary who got promoted.’
Galway sighed. ‘You don’t make it easier on yourself.’
‘What ever.’ She patted her pocket for her smokes, remembered she’d quit. Cursed and tore open a piece of gum, flicked the
wrapper to the curb. ‘He’s an asshole.’
‘That comparison,’ Galway said dryly, ‘is unkind to your average asshole.’
She snorted and dug for her keys.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘don’t let it bother you. It’ll pass.’
‘Easy for you to say.’ She glanced down the block to where a ghetto roller vibrated with bass. ‘It’s been a year already.’
Galway shrugged, smiled at her. ‘It’ll pass when somebody
else
gets caught doing something stupid.’
He was right, as usual. Cruz took a deep breath, then shook her head and laughed through her nose. ‘Tell them to screw up
quickly, would you?’
‘You got it, babe. Need be, I’ll do it myself.’ Galway took a napkin from his suit pocket and mopped the sweat on his forehead.
He folded the tissue, then squinted up at the sun. ‘You saw Teo’s ink?’
She nodded. ‘Latin Saints.’ The set had been feuding with the Gangster Disciples for a long time now, with bodies dropping
on both sides.
‘You know who didn’t?’
It took her a minute, but when she got it, she smiled. ‘A certain overweight detective.’
‘Yep. A day late and a dollar short. Close the case out from under him, it’ll hurt more than your right hook.’
Her smiled broadened. ‘I feel like chatting with the Disciples. You want to come?’
‘This one is all you. I got a date.’ Galway patted his stomach. ‘Pompeii, bowtie pasta with garlic.’ He made a pistol of his
right hand and shot her.
The department’s Ford smelled of cigarettes. She rolled the windows open and jammed the AC on, hot breath blasting in her
face. What she
should
do was go back to the station and put in another couple hours of data crunching. This was only a gang-on-gang shooting, and
closing it wouldn’t matter enough to anybody to get her out of her chickenshit assignment. But revenge was its own reward.
She turned up her police radio as she pulled away from the curb. There was something comforting about the steady tones. It
felt like the voice of Chicago itself, like the city was speaking to her. Cruz sometimes left it on in the background at home,
when she was reading or making dinner.
Right now, all Chicago had to say seemed routine: a domestic call where a woman was threatening her husband with a broken
bottle; a noise complaint from Oak View Terrace; an accident at Halsted and Sixty-fourth.
Then, just as she was about to turn it back down, another item came on. The voice didn’t change, spoke in the same measured
voice as always.
But before it had finished, she’d spun the Crown Vic in a squealing turn and jammed on the gas.
Eddie Murphy is killing him.
On the screen, the comedian is talking about grandmothers, how they’re always cold, always asking what time it is. This may
be the funniest thing Jason has ever heard. He’s only met his grandmother once since he was old enough to remember, on a trip
to Spokane, two weeks of Mom and Dad fighting in the car. But he can picture her crabbed up in a shawl, telling him he’s nasty,
then asking what time it is.
There is sick fire in his belly.
Michael nudges him, passes the near-empty bottle, red label with black domed buildings, somewhere in Russia. Jason wonders
if the vodka actually comes from Russia. Wonders if there really even is a place called Russia, if there’s anywhere but fucking
Crenwood. Crenwood and Spokane. This strikes him funny too.
He twists off the red plastic cap and drinks. The liquid is warm and thick, and scours his throat. Acid curdles in his stomach.
He fights a grimace, fakes appreciative noises. Turns to hand the bottle back to his brother, feeling a strange lightness
inside.
Turning, he explodes.
Fire pours out of him, bile spilling up through his nose, a spray of wet heat across Michael’s chest and lap. It spatters
and soaks and drips. The sick is bloody with the fruit soda they used to chase the Popov, and as he looks at it, Jason thinks
of the old expression, puking your guts out, and then the world tilts to black.