Calumet City (37 page)

"2nd Floor" hits me—
John’s not crippled, retarded
—the message at his house, the childish handwriting, the Special Olympics trophy "Sports Person of the Year," the girl’s clothes and crutches in the other closet—
John’s a coach; his sister wrote the message
.

Tears well behind my eyes.
John’s okay

Was okay. Deep, sickening breath. Be a cop. The building’s beat to shit, same for the neighborhood, John’s probably in with a group of young guys pooling their money; they probably live in the building to cut costs. I hope to God they don’t, but they probably do.

I make two fast trips around the building’s block and see no lights on any floor, no movement, and…an SUV parked just off the street. The driver’s side headlight is mashed. Jolt. Roland’s here. He’s watching me. Waiting. It’s true; he wants to trade.

I hit a curb and park out of sight on Twenty-third Street, marshal the flashlight, and touch Tracy’s arm. She jerks upright.
"What! What?"

"Easy. Take a breath. We’re downtown. South Loop. Take a breath."

She does and stays pressed into the door. Her eyes flash the neighborhood, then me, then the car. "What’re we doing…here?"

Her tone knows. I feel the adrenaline coming, swallow it down, and eye the building while she remembers

"You’re…going in there? To kill him…"

"Listen. I called Sonny, my sergeant you met in 6. He’s coming. If this goes bad, he’ll call a 10-1. You stay out of it; go down the block by that Exxon station. But stay out of sight."

Tracy shakes her head.

"What?"

"Not out here…alone. And I’m not leaving. My story—"

I refocus on the building and hear her being stupid to the back of my head. "Get outta here. Now. I gotta go in alone."

"No."

I turn to her staring at me. "Now, Tracy. This ain’t a game."

"No." Tracy screws up in her seat. "No."

John’s life has no time for this shit. "Fine, then. C’mon. You know what’s in there."

She hesitates.

I draw and take three fast steps out of the car instead of hitting her. She follows, skirting the car like she does tacklers on the field. She’s not reporter-crazy after all, or rugby-crazy; she’s just plain insane and I never realized it until now. The building stops us at the sidewalk. Finding a way inside that isn’t a door Roland left open will be difficult. My hands are slippery. This is not…good…at all. Fifty feet down the long north side there’s a door. It’s locked. Another door, fifty feet farther east through the puddles. Up close the door’s rusted metal and locked. Further east I can’t see anything but bricks and boarded glass.

We retrace our steps two hundred feet back to the front. Next to an empty bottle and a urine stain a dirty face protrudes from dirtier blankets. I aim and splash with the flashlight. The man doesn’t respond. Ten feet south two more shapes are completely cocooned in their blankets. No bottles. No urine stains. A shopping cart separates them, empty, not full. I shove Tracy back, aim, and kick the first foot.

"Smana nanan bamma."

I kick the feet again and step aside, ready to put two in Roland’s head. A dog’s muzzle and another filthy face I don’t recognize uncovers and blinks at the rainy dark, then covers again and quits mumbling. I do it again with the second shape. It’s a she, and legit homeless too. The door past them to the south is locked, as is the next one. At the corner, the narrow bulldozed lot next door is being used as a wide alley. Its front is blocked by a twenty-foot trash container under a chute connected to the second floor. Tracy and I hug the container, sneak around, and see Roland’s invitation one hundred feet down the wall—a new, steel-door construction entrance that’s wedged open. I glance above the entrance at painted windows that run half the block to the east. Roland Ganz is watching us. Tracy senses him too and splashes back to hide tight to the building.

I flatten next to her, eyes on the construction door. "Get out of here. Dead’s forever."

She grits her teeth and shakes her head. Tracy is scared shitless and doing this anyway. I’d slap her if I didn’t have both hands on the Smith.

"Stay back, out of my way. I’ll be shooting…"

No response. Just the 200-mph face.

Deep breath, light the flashlight, duck, aim, and—Do the door—Everything’s fast—column, wall, floor, debris,
stumble, spin, twist
, column, dark, light, shadows—
there, there—shoot! Shoot him!

I squeeze but don’t kill him. He doesn’t move. Or speak. I jump left, aim at…nothing and pivot back. Still hasn’t moved. Or spoken. I duck, spin to the right, aim at columns that don’t shoot back, spin back to him, and…not a twitch.

He’s right there where I can’t miss him, in a chair. Head down. Could be John. Could be Roland. It’s a trap. For sure. A trap. My heart’s at max. Don’t shoot him. Look at his face. Don’t shoot him. Don’t…

Right behind me. I spin and FIRE. Tracy silhouettes in the flash and roar. The huge space swallows the explosion and the light. Night blind. I duck behind a column, spin back, and can see zero. Hard to hear, impossible to see.
Threat. Threat. Threat
. Who’s there? The room shadows. He’s still in the chair.

Is Tracy dead?

No. Yes. She’s crouched, not dead. I yell, "Stay down," no idea whether she’s hit or not. My vision improves to half. From the column I scan as much cavern as possible. Other than spaced columns, there’s nowhere to hide—the entire floor is wide open and abandoned. Other than the man in the chair we’re alone. What kind of trap is this?

I wait. So does Tracy. So does the man in the chair. My eyes blink out the last of the flash. I notice the man has a purse spilled at his feet. Both feet are manacled to the chair, as are his hands. Under his chin, a long screwdriver has been driven through his chest.

The purse has a gold buckle that matches his right shoe, a three-inch pump.

Maybe it’s not a man.

Tracy whispers,
"Schofield’s Too."

She’s okay enough to talk. I don’t get the connection to the 1920s houseboat where Delmont’s body parts are. But I now know whose face is hidden by the medium blond hair. Those are trademark shoes. Their owner isn’t John and it’s not Roland.

Tracy says, "I get it now, the flower shop. Schofield’s on State Street…famous."

Schofield’s is a Chicago crime landmark. Now I get it, too—this murder victim is who Delmont "thought I should meet." The houseboat was hers. Her grandfather, gangster Dean O’Banion, owned Schofield’s Flower Shop until he was murdered there in 1924. He also built the building at Gilbert Court in 1922, and he owned the houseboat from the same decade, his last.

I take a final, careful scan of the empty expanse and approach the chair.

It’s a long walk for fifteen feet. I lift the woman’s head by her matted hair. The face shocks me sideways. The makeup, not the face. The makeup’s the same as the photographs from the Calumet City crime scene—the murder of Burton Ottson—it’s Tammy Faye’s makeup.

I’m trembling, staring at the makeup, not the gray features of the once-radiant Mary Kate O’Banion, wife of Chicago’s mayor.

Why’s the makeup
here
? If I did it in Calumet City blackout drunk…I
know
I didn’t murder Mary Kate.

Mary Kate’s mouth has yawed open. A number of her teeth are broken and her tongue is missing. I hear Tracy say,
"Oh fuck,"
then feel her step forward. Mary Kate’s coat looks misbuttoned. And her shoes are on the wrong feet. There will be serious trauma under the clothes. Mary Kate was killed elsewhere, then repackaged here.

And since I didn’t kill her I couldn’t have done this makeup. It’s the sudden implications that has my attention, not the murder. Not Mary Kate’s murder, anyway.
And maybe not Burton Ottson’s makeup and murder nineteen years ago in Calumet City?
I release the hair and Mary Kate’s head drops slowly on a stiffening neck. It’s surreal, me still staring at a corpse reacting as if it has life. I hear Tracy stumble. I fan to shoot Roland Ganz swinging an axe.

Tracy is five feet from dying at my gun barrel, unhurt, and all alone.

She’s frozen. And in that instant I realize she knows about me and Calumet City or guessed—the part I didn’t tell, the part about Patti Black being a murderer. She’s known all along and now sees the Calumet City crime scene again with me and Tammy Faye’s makeup at its center. And sees my pistol in her face, one squeeze from ending her ability to testify.

"I didn’t do it." My words are whispers, a half-question, half-statement. Gradually, I lower the Smith.

Tracy doesn’t move.

I start to smile. There’s a dead woman with a screwdriver through her chest next to me and she’s not who I’m thinking about.
"I didn’t do it."
Calumet City wasn’t me. This time it’s a statement of fact and bathes me like a baptism. I nod with mounting enthusiasm.
"I didn’t fucking do it."

The Pink Panther can’t love her geography—we’re in the middle of a trap and have just taken the bait. But she can’t help herself and ekes out, "Ah…then who did?"

Noise. I duck, twisting to fire. A rat runs between two columns. Columns that hold up a high ceiling. I never looked up until now. Tracy does and begins to scream.

   Two fifty-five-gallon drums crash to the floor. Gasoline drenches us and everything in our vicinity. Tracy sprints for the door. I spit gas and suck fumes. A metal cube twinkles, falling in slow motion. Zippo lighter.

It lands open, then clinks on the wet concrete unlit and bounces.
Oh, shit
—

No spark. No fire.

I sprint half the building to an open elevator encased in concrete. The buttons are the only light; my finger jams at the 2. All I smell is gas.
Run. He’ll just toss in a book of matches.
I spin out of the elevator and cop-brace the adjacent fire stairs. The stairs leading up from me are crammed with lumber and Sheetrock. The down stairs aren’t. Dim light spills from below. On the first landing there’s a long bag, a stained painter’s tarpaulin tied with rope. It squirms. The bag is the size of a human.

It’s John.

Too small.

Gumdrops
.

Gumdrops. A trail. More bait, only now you’re a human candle, easy to control, easy to trap,
easy to have
. I jerk back from the stairwell, fanning pistol and flashlight at the open space behind me. No killers there, no Tracy, just Mary Kate in her chair.

A smaller rat scurries along the far wall. I hear a groan and look back. The bag squirms again. I inch down the stairs, my back to the wall, expecting an attack from below, or from above once I’m trapped on the landing. I have no knife; it will take both hands to untie the knot. Roland can toss his matches into the enclosed space. I stop inching. He’ll threaten that—tell me the bag is John, make me give up the gun…

Don’t do it
—listen and ease down three steps. The light’s dim but brighter, like it’s coming from the stairwell’s door into the basement. The bag hears me coming and squirms harder. It’s blotched with paint. Or blood? I jump the last three treads, land crouched, and swing my gun at the lower doorway, then back up the stairs. The bag rustles into my ankle. I one-hand at a knot, eyes on both doors. The bag stops. Two very bad thoughts bubble: What if the bag holds a bad guy with a gun? Worse, if I fire mine, will the back-blast ignite me?

I jump away from the bag and up the stairs two at a time, fan the entire floor again, then quick-strip to my bra. From the waist up I’m dry other than my face, hair, and hands. If I fire stiff-armed away from myself I might not torch. Back to the bag. I re-fan the stairwell, push the bag toward the lower stair, and rip at the knot until it comes loose. No motion. I prod with my foot and whisper, "Kick your way out," then climb the stairs to bolt or fire around the wall if the captive is a bad guy.

The bag does nothing at first, then begins to fight. The wrestling takes more than a minute. It’s a woman, younger than me, blond, on her stomach, hands tied, face painted, mouth gagged, and so scared I can see her eyes from here. I wave at her to stop moving. She does, but stays glued on me like her neck is going to break. I pat the air, trying to relax her but it doesn’t, then ease down two treads. I point at her feet and motion "Get up."

She tries and can’t. She tries again and reaches her knees. Total deer in the headlights. This must be Gwen. I keep waving her up toward me. "C’mon, you can do it. I’m a cop."

She notices my star hanging over my bra and tries harder. The wall helps her up. She’s taller than she looked in the bag, the blond hair matted like Mary Kate’s. The face paint is Tammy Faye Bakker at Halloween.

"C’mon, baby. Up here. You can do it." Her legs aren’t working well. "It’s me, Patti Black. C’mon, Gwen, seven steps and you’re safe."

We both hear a noise below her. She sprints up the stairs past me and hits a column that knocks her down and the gag partway out of her mouth. I aim, waiting for the downstairs noise to become an attacker. It doesn’t. I look over my shoulder. The girl is a pile. I ease back to her, eyeing the stair, and untie her hands.

She flinches into a ball, shivering like it’s ten degrees and mumbles, "My son. Has my son."

"I know, baby; I know." I have one hand undoing the gag and the Smith on the stair doorway. "We’ll save him."

She wide-eyes me and I remember the look; Gwen was a child then, but it’s the same look, just with way too many years of Roland’s torture built into it. Every inch of her is quaking.

"Get up, honey. You gotta get out of here. There’s a girl outside who can help you."

"My son. No. My son."

"I’ll find him. Run. Now," and I grab her belt to lift. She shies so hard it wrenches my elbow, then crouches to all fours to defend herself. She’s terrified, a mother fighting for her child but lost in Roland’s madness.

"I’ll find him, Gwen."

"But, but…I know where they are. I know where they are." She says it so fast her tongue can’t keep up. "Has your boy too. HE’S GOT US ALL."