Authors: Charlie Newton
I smile and don’t answer. I know better than to start saying "yes" to the easy pitches. He notices and continues to look at pages that aren’t fearful to me, not that they can’t be criticized if you’re looking to do that, but spending his time on this stuff would be a blessing I can’t hope to get.
"You’ve been in District 6 for…seventeen years?"
Nod.
He grins over the pages. "You can speak, Officer Black, it’s within reason."
I don’t.
He continues to check me out with a bland expression, then returns to the file, rustling through pages he doesn’t read. The new CRs are next to his left hand and he glances at their top page. Those would be the two CRs filed by Watch LT Kit Carson. Under them would be the criminal complaints filed by Alderman Leslie Gibbons.
The detective taps a mechanical pencil on the CRs then returns to page 1 of my personnel file, sits back as if confused, and says, "We’re missing significant information." He looks at me after he says it, like I’m guilty of not providing.
Which I am. He wants me to ask,
What information?
But I don’t; I stone-face him and force my hands calm.
"We’re missing significant information, Officer Black." He adds emphasis, like it’s possible I didn’t hear him in a ten-by-ten room. "Where were you born?"
Some questions you have to answer…and that’s how they do it. You begin by answering questions that can’t hurt and stop answering when they can. That’s the spot where they slide out the dental drill, turn on the motor, and say, Open wide, honey.
I check my watch, look at him, and tap the plastic lens.
He’s unmoved and asks me again.
"You can read and I’ve got a case, then the FBI interview. If we’re covering the CR numbers or the alderman’s complaints, let’s."
"I’d like to cover those, plan to, but it strikes me as interesting that a significant portion of your file is incomplete. It’s—"
"Save that for Records; I’m here to answer the CRs and—"
"You’re here to answer whatever I ask."
He looks no less friendly, put off, or blustered. Just matter-of-fact, other than the pencil still tapping, now between two fingers like a seesaw. There’s a wedding band on the widow finger and a button missing on his jacket cuff.
He stops tapping. "All right, have it your way, we’ll start with the CRs. Tell me your version. We have Lieutenant Carson’s."
"Which CR?"
"Gilbert Court."
There is a god. We can talk about the shooting three ways from Sunday and I can’t go to hell or prison unless they make a violation of civil rights prosecution out of two Gangster Disciples trying to murder policemen. But instead of burning an hour of IAD time retelling the story, I get angry, because I get angry when I’m scared. "Maybe you
can’t
read." I glance at my personnel file that for sure has my birthplace and date in it. "I wrote reports after the interviews. It’s all there."
He nods, again without expression, and clicks his pencil. "Tell me or refuse to tell me. Simple—one or the other."
So I tell him about Gilbert Court. For thirty minutes. He nods a lot, but always small and occasionally looks at me. I get the feeling he’s bored. His pencil never stops tapping, slow though,
tip-tap, tip-tap
. When I finish he says,
"The building across the alley? Have you been in it before?"
"No."
"Not in seventeen years?"
I feel my heart rate change but don’t move in my chair. "No."
"And the woman," he looks at the CR numbers, "Annabelle Ganz?"
I shrug.
"Sorry, Officer Black, I didn’t hear your answer?" He’s looking at the spot where his pencil will record my answer.
"Didn’t hear a question."
He nods. "Do you know or did you know Annabelle Ganz?"
Pause. "No."
He looks up from the pages. "You don’t?"
None of this is relevant to the CR numbers. I shrug small with pursed lips, then a headshake. Too many movements if he’s paying attention. And he is; he keeps staring at me.
"You don’t know Annabelle Ganz?"
"Nope." No pause. Just the lie, as big a lie as a girl can tell.
"You’re aware that Superintendent Smith lived in that building?" Before there’s time to answer he adds, "You just met with him, didn’t you, before coming here?"
"Yes to both."
He writes that down, but with too many words. "Are you acquainted with the mayor’s wife?"
"No."
"Never met her?"
Now I can shift in my chair. "Met her, yeah, but don’t know her."
"How did you meet, and where?"
I frown and check my watch again. "Who gives a shit? I’m not a politician; I don’t care who wins the election. Let’s cover the CR numbers or call it a day."
"Tell me or refuse to tell me."
"I don’t remember. Could’ve been at both Officer of the Year awards. Maybe a third time when the
Herald
wrote us up for the dogs in the river."
"That was you alone, not
us,
who saved the dogs in the river."
"Whatever."
He checks a page, then checks it again and wrinkles his forehead. "And your relationship with the mayor’s wife?"
"None. I told you."
"None?"
He’s pissing me off and knows that too. So I don’t answer. Fuck him.
"Officer Black…? Are you refusing to answer?"
"Yeah, I’m refusing. Happy? You got something to cover that matters, ask it."
He blinks and tries to read my face. "This does matter, Officer Black."
The door opens behind me and neither of us bothers to look. A larger version of the seated detective loops behind him and sits on my right six inches from my elbow. There’s no introduction other than the glance we share. He has a spiral notebook and a manila file under it with the title tag hidden. The first detective pushes a note to the new guy, who cranes to read it, shows nothing, then resumes his military posture at my elbow. The first detective continues talking as if we’re still alone.
"Danny del Pasco—"
"There’s no CR number on Danny del Pasco or the mayor’s wife."
"Danny del Pasco—"
"I’m not lying to you. Focus this shit on something that matters, something in those CR numbers, or I’m back to work. I told you—"
"In my experience, Officer Black," the new guy’s voice is deep and condescending, "and likely yours, when someone says ’I’m not lying’ they most often are."
We share that special look. I say, "Try me."
He removes a printed form from his file instead, dates and initials the form, then pushes it to the first detective, who witnesses. It’s a notification waiver, one an idiot would sign or a cop who had no fear of talking without an attorney present. This one is called a Criminal Rights Waiver. The first detective pushes it along to me. The new guy explains.
"Please read the waiver of rights, then sign and date it at the bottom, there." He points at two boxes that I can check, one that is the beginning of a walk to the gas chamber when Illinois reopens it.
"Bye." I check the box that says "Do not waive," sign the bottom, and stand. "I’ll be going by the union; they’ll arrange for an attorney and we’ll do this again."
"We’re not finished, Officer Black."
"Fuck both of you."
As I turn just outside the door I hear one of them say, "If she takes a deal from the U.S. Attorney, we’ll never get her back."
Two Augusts ago a gentleman felon from Mississippi tried to blow up Alexander Calder’s 53-foot red flamingo. Had he not been stopped, his 5,000-pound fertilizer bomb would have leveled the whole block. Other than the Calder sculpture the block consists of two skyscrapers that resemble a reduced version of the World Trade Center in New York. The less imposing of the two structures is the thirty-floor Dirksen Federal Building. It houses the federal courts, the FBI, and all thirty-one Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the Northern District of Illinois. They’re on the fifth floor overlooking the Berghoff Restaurant.
Helen Holden,
the
U.S. Attorney, took the bomb personally.
Helen tends to take a number of things personally, rarely granting absolution to those she dislikes. And she absolutely hates the superintendent. Rumor has it that he and her had it out when he was chief of detectives and she was lawyering RICO cases for the feds, but not the big ones. Chief Jesse won and rose quickly to the top of his chosen profession; Helen spent eight years out in Rockford prosecuting guys who willfully removed their mattress tags.
As I’m passing the Berghoff, the sidewalk crowds up with coats-and-ties and I can’t help but consider the geography’s coincidence. Last Monday when I was here, I assumed that Chief Jesse had come from a dinner meeting, stepping out to his car after shaking hands and saying good-bye to his—
My feet stop. What if the meeting wasn’t at the Berghoff? What if it was next door where I’m headed? A nighttime meeting at the Everett Dirksen Federal Building? The courts would be closed, the post office would be closed. Getting in and out of that building at night would require an M16 no matter who you were,
or
an escorted hall pass from the FBI.
Chief Jesse’s car was pointed toward State, away from the Federal Building. Inside, the car was clean leather and a…cigarette trace? Odor that lingered, and he doesn’t smoke. Or was it a cigar?
And perfume,
there was perfume, wasn’t there? A woman bumps me with her briefcase and I snap back to today, looking for an SUV. Adams Street is buses and cabs.
Heat fills my face.
Chief Jesse has done nothing but protect you, and this is how you repay him?
Above me the Dirksen Federal Building agrees, the ninth floor seems to be grinning. My next appointment has a suite of offices on nine.
To get there I have to actually go in, then successfully navigate the lobby, a process not unlike being slowly digested. Visit one of the G’s buildings where it houses its own and you get a real sense of its mind-set—the "us or them" fortress mentality is as strong as prison. And prison is what I’m thinking about in the elevator with my VISITOR badge and empty holster. My escort punches 9 and says, "Photos first" and nothing else.
The FBI has one agent assigned full-time to investigate the Chicago Police Department. Full-time, big budget, it’s all he does. And when you come to visit, voluntarily or by subpoena, they drop you into a room designed for crook shots—"Face the video. Feet on those spots, profile, face." Mind games before your interview. And they don’t answer your questions.
Their interrogation room looks a lot like IAD’s but larger. I get the feeling that I’m a bigger fish here and it’s not a good feeling. Special Agent Stone shares a ten-foot oval table with two black suits. The remaining chairs are empty; one has a small stack of folders in front of it, a coffee cup, and a roll of LifeSavers.
Special Agent Stone says, "Are we waiting on your attorney?"
I stare at him in lieu of answering.
He flat-lines a smile. "Then we’ll begin as soon as—"
The door opens and a tall, attractive woman in a severe suit enters. All three men rise and she pats the air down before they can stand. She offers me her hand, "Jo Ann Merica, Assistant U.S. Attorney," and her card. "You’re not represented, Officer Black?"
I examine her card and tell it, "Nope."
"Well then, let’s begin." Her smile is more of a reflex and only marginally brighter than Agent Stone’s. "You are currently a tactical officer in District 18 or on loan to the Superintendent’s Intelligence Unit?" The smile adds a lacquered inch. "We’re having trouble keeping up with you lately."
I don’t feel the levity. "What’s this about, counselor? Why am I here?"
"Excuse me?"
I stare; Assistant U.S. Attorney Jo Ann Merica does too. The FBI agents join her. She glances at her papers, then uses one perfect, pearlized fingernail to flick the LifeSavers across the table. We watch them roll until they reach my hands.
Cute. Actually Evergreen sounds good, so I open the roll and pop two while they all watch. Then we stare again. Finally Jo Ann Merica says, "I intend to charge you with obstruction of justice and complicity in the death of Assistant State’s Attorney Richard Rhodes."
"Really?"
My jaw snaps a LifeSaver. Everyone hears it as punctuation.
"Really." Jo Ann Merica has 32-degree eyes under long lashes and confidence she earned. "I can wait while you call the union."
"I’m not interested in waiting, Jo Ann, or talking."
She opens a second folder without any flourish, checks her watch, then Agent Stone, and says, "We have incontrovertible evidence of organized crime within the Chicago Police Department." She shows me a page clipped between two fingertips. "The old First Ward and the mayor’s office. Long-standing racketeering that I will prosecute under the RICO statutes. You can be a target or a witness. It’s up to you."
I can’t read the page from this distance and don’t try, although I’d love to. It’s not blank, but could be evidence against her dry cleaner. "Or I can be neither."
Jo Ann’s hundred-dollar haircut barely moves. "Sorry. You’re in too deep." She pauses for my benefit. "As are your friends. Some of whom have already come forward. You can guess which side they picked."
I pretend she didn’t say that and smirk. "Uh-huh."
"I strongly suggest you engage an attorney. She’ll help you—"
"Tell you what, Jo Ann. It’s the same thing I told Agent Stone at Joliet. I work for the superintendent. If you’ve got a beef, talk to him."
"We’re here, Officer Black, to talk
about
him."
I stand to leave. "Not with me." One of the FBI suits stands as if he intends to block the door. No one but me watches him do it.
Jo Ann Merica says, "You can corroborate what we’ve already been told, then wear a wire, or go to prison. Your days as ’Patti Black, Officer of the Year’ are over."
"Am I under arrest? If not, I’m leaving."
"Up to you. But know this, that missing file in Calumet City will turn up, and when it does,
everyone
in it will be going to prison."