Authors: Charlie Newton
"Technically, yeah." I try not to smile. Julie’s very good at this for a big blond saloon keeper.
"So? Practice for BASH or just show up Saturday and cripple your teammates?"
Cripple? Maim? I can’t help but glance at Tracy sparkling in the lights. Julie laughs. I start to answer and she drapes her arm over my shoulder, "Come with me, stay upstairs, have a pizza. Be a Northsider for the night. You can borrow a good shirt for work if you don’t get any blood on it."
A one-night vacation across the river in yuppie land. Won’t have to worry about the locksmith or phantom B&Es that make no sense.
"Can we ride in your BMW and wave at the poor people?"
The L7 is a "women’s bar." Take a look at the L and the 7 and you’ll figure it out. Julie’s version is brick-wall retro, a Beat generation coffeehouse combined with a full bar, behind which is a long mirror centered by a twenty-foot grainy photo of Julie and her Ducati café racer splattered into a sidewalk bistro in Nice. Four years ago on the anniversary of the crash she got drunk and autographed ten feet of photo in aerosol orange.
The music is usually loud and bluesy—Bessie Simone, k. d. lang, Billie Holiday. The ceiling’s high and serpentine with flex A/C ducts painted like snakes that only get that big in your nightmares. Julie’s walls are covered with autographed rugby jerseys and pictures of her heroes: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey. At the back there’s a small stage, in front there’s a loyal clientele strange enough to be in a John Waters movie. Actually, there’s a picture of him too, autographed by Johnny Depp and kissed bright red by Traci Lords.
We do not have this type of spot on the Southside, nor do we have the asshole comedian up there doing deaf-guy humor. He’s reading something, mimicking Lou Ferrigno’s impediment, and nobody’s laughing—at least you gotta give these Northsiders that. Guys like Cisco and Mr. Ferrigno deserve better; it’s got to be hard wearing your weakness for everybody to see and still having the balls to press on anyway.
The TV above the bar is on but soundless, and I focus on it instead of the comedian. The running lines are the reporter reporting on the assassination attempt backed by video of the mayor and his wife. Julie leans across the bar, glances at the stage, then refills my water.
"So?"
I shrug.
"Talk, sweetie. You don’t miss practice. Ever. Other than your fish, we’re the only life you have."
"Thanks. I miss one day and Ms. Moens is playing my position?"
"She and I
are
the sponsors."
Tracy and Julie are partners in the L7. They were lovers once, but no longer, at least that me and the public know about. I shrug, not wanting to get into my day, the stuff I did and saw.
Julie says, "Don’t make me come over there."
She’s much bigger than me, but I have a gun and mention that.
"Seen it, sweetie." She grabs my hands. "Is this about the mayor? Talk to me. No kidding."
So I do. But not about the body in the wall. I talk about the Gangster Disciple shooting, about knowing the kid, knowing his mom. All the shit you don’t want to know, don’t want to share, and don’t want to relive after seeing it firsthand and then reporting it for eight goddamn hours to the wrinkle-free blazers.
The comedian finishes about when I do, and now the small crowd applauds—so much for my new faith in the Northside. Better still, he pulls up a stool next to me, smiles so warm I almost blush, and stays with the deaf guy impression, talking directly to me from too close. I notice a cell phone on his belt and consider shoving it up his ass, then turn back to Julie because I missed what she said. The guy puts his hand on me and I’m off the stool before he can finish, my hand close to my pistol, eyes hard in his.
"
Do not
put your fucking hands on me." I seem a bit on edge.
Julie tells my cheek, "He can’t hear you."
"He can hear a .38." I’m still glaring at him.
"He’s deaf, Patti."
I glance at Julie. "He’s a deaf comedian?"
"He’s a poet. The comedian’s going on now."
I glance at the stage; there’s a girl with a bad haircut mounting it. The deaf poet is walking away, his back to me. I start to yell an apology but realize that won’t do much good. Julie’s eyes are burning my cheek. I look. Her frown’s bigger than before.
"
Shit
. I’m sorry."
Julie spoon feeds guilt across the bar. "
Men,
thinking they can compliment a single woman sittin’ alone at a bar."
My phone vibrates my hip. It’s the superintendent of police. He wants to see me, at the Berghoff Restaurant, State and Adams. NOW.
Eleven p.m. at the Berghoff Restaurant is a strange place to meet the superintendent of police. Then again, somebody doesn’t take a shot at the mayor every day. And in Chicago, the mayor appoints the superintendent of police, who appoints all our big bosses, from the captains to the chiefs. So, if the mayor goes, by bullet or ballot, so does most of the brass.
I’m a patrolman, a ghetto cop. Why talk to me?
The homeless man facing me at Adams and Wabash doesn’t answer. I’m in the Loop and completely out of my element. The Loop is the financial district where all the rapid-transit trains come together overhead in a—you guessed it—loop. If you saw the car chase in
The French Connection,
that’s how it looks. Except better, since we’re in Chicago, not New York.
At my back two lions guard the Art Institute; tonight they’re animated, peering through the banks and insurance companies at my ass and licking their lips. Like most civil servants I’m a little leery uptown: I owe mortgage payments to one of these skyscrapers and car payments to another. It takes two more blocks of imposing buildings before I figure the superintendent’s summons: This is about Kit Carson. Lt. Milquetoast phoned his golfing buddies at IAD and I’m about to get—
I stutter-step to avoid a second homeless man dressed similar to me. I apologize and he demands money or "some pussy." I decline both and continue west. Maybe the superintendent uses the Berghoff to avoid the reporters camped at HQ 24/7. The Berghoff’s basement dining room would be a good spot to meet with outsiders. Could be he just wants to chat when his dinner’s over.
Right
.
Much more likely this is about—
much more likely?
Who’re you kidding? There isn’t one thing about this summons that’s "likely." Or it could be the superintendent just wants me to mow his lawn.
Our superintendent is…how do I say this…a bit unusual, a nice fellow who could easily have been a professional wrestler or governor of Minnesota. His name is Jesse too and his close friends still call him Chief. Chief Jesse Smith is of distant Native American extraction. He’s a Hohokam, so the "Chief" part works both ways and you gotta be careful. The other 85 percent of him is the standard mix of white European and not all that happy.
He’s also childless and thirty years divorced from an upwardly mobile woman who’s now married to the wealthiest radiologist in Illinois. Other than the chief’s marital choices, I like him and he likes me—I’m sort of the daughter he never had; he was my boss in 6 before becoming the fearless leader of our 13,500 blue uniforms. Unlike Lieutenant Carson and the
little dicks
in the department—
dick
is short for detective;
little dick
is a bit less flattering—Chief Jesse does not think I’m a grandstander. Chief Jesse has, however, made the occasional comment on my attitude. I think "therapy" was mentioned in one heated exchange; it was off the record, but not real far. Other than this lapse in judgment, he is an astute judge of character. Definitely a man I listen to when he has something to say, especially when it’s prefaced with my name.
Nine feet before the Berghoff’s basement door Chief Jesse’s uniformed aide steps into my path and points me toward an idling ’05 Town Car. A driver is standing against the rear fender waving traffic past, pretending he can’t see me or anything else.
Inside, most of the leather backseat is the superintendent. The windows are up tight. Someone smoked in here then tried to deodorize it, that or it’s a hooker’s perfume. We’ll call that nervous humor—a very strange day is getting stranger. The superintendent of police is staring at me. So I ask.
"Hi." Not much of a question, but I’m a bit off balance. There’s a personnel file in his lap, and my name’s on it. He nods at me, a habit when he’s displeased; his thick fingers drum on my file. "An interesting day, Officer Black."
Our meeting doesn’t seem to be about our Democrat mayor or the Assassination Task Force formed
very publicly
yesterday by our Republican governor and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. So this meeting
has
to be about Kit Carson and his chickenshit CR numbers. Instead of anger I feel a shiver that I shouldn’t, a feeling that doesn’t fit, same as when you know there’s something behind the shower curtain but still need to get in naked.
The highest-ranking police officer in Chicago says, "Our
Republican
governor and his State’s Attorney’s office believe the attempt on Mayor McQuinn is connected to next month’s mayoral election, not an attempt to interrupt the casino license vote…as if the two aren’t interrelated." Chief Jesse shakes his large head and it’s not hard to imagine a headdress. "Either they don’t teach ’follow the money’ in law school or the professors have never been in a casino."
I sigh relief that I don’t show. Evidently this
is
about the mayor and the casino license, a license that will significantly alter the city’s balance of power.
"Should there be another attempt before the election, and the assassination is successful, Alderman Leslie Gibbons will become our new mayor as well as our Democratic incumbent in the election." Chief Jesse glances away, investigating Adams Street beyond his window. I follow his eyes and can’t tell any difference from last year, other than Adams is dark and none of my drunk teammates are with me.
"Alderman Gibbons is black."
Black
hangs against his window; and it should since the alderman’s racial make-up is not new information. "Gibbons would then run against this year’s extremely well-financed Republican challenger. And although there is no assurance that a black candidate cannot be elected again, our Republican opponents believe Gibbons would be significantly easier to defeat than Mayor McQuinn."
I do the political math.
"The governor hired Rush Limbaugh to hit the mayor?"
Chief Jesse returns from the window with a frown that flares his nostrils. Obviously I have missed a crucial bit of information. That, or once again, my mouth has outpaced my command of city politics.
"Republican malfeasance is one possibility." The superintendent’s tone isn’t good, although the picture of Limbaugh on the radio trading his prescription dope for hitmen is pretty funny. I notice no such fantasy on the superintendent’s face and don’t describe the vision.
"Another possibility is Alderman Gibbons. Alderman Gibbons is from District 6, your district. As is Louis Farrakhan and his bow-tie army of Muslims. While the State’s Attorney’s Office stumbles about with their high-profile task force, would you mind terribly if you were asked to do the same?"
"Sir?" I’m not following him. I’m still riding the rush, enjoying that this isn’t about Lt. Kit Carson’s hard-on for my
hero move
or the manacles in the wall.
"My office would like to know,
quietly,
what, if anything, the citizens of your district think is going on. There’s been strong opposition to the mayor’s casino plan throughout the black community. Are members of the black community making a move against Mayor McQuinn? An effort to place their spokesman in the chair at a crucial point in the city’s future?" Pause. "Can you accomplish a quiet, informal investigation, Officer Black?"
"Absolutely, yes, sir."
"Should there be participation or collusion on the part of those in your district in the attempt on the mayor, you and the unwounded members of your team would be capable of discerning same?"
I’m recovering a bit. "It would be our pleasure, sir. To serve and protect.
Quietly,
of course."
"You understand that this means no formal channels, no written reports, no accusations later that the mayor’s campaign strategy or his support of the casino license was racially motivated."
Knowing the climate and the players,
my
participation in this clandestine fact-finding mission makes less than perfect sense to me, given that Alderman Gibbons is at the moment rallying the ghetto against the GD shootings my warrant and raid caused. The first pickets were already in front of 6 when I finished writing my reports four hours ago.
I say I understand even though I don’t. Chief Jesse nods, looking away again, then adds, "They ID’d your skeleton."
"W-what?"
"The body in the wall. Annabelle Ganz, Calumet City."
My hands go prickly and pin-lights flash in my eyes. I block most of the name, trying to focus on "city," the only word that doesn’t hurt. It’s been twenty-three years, not nearly enough. I reach for the armrest, try to steady.
That’s not a name you can say out loud in the dark.
Annabelle Ganz was my foster mother.
My cell phone vibrates and I pat blind until I find it.
I’m under a blanket. Cisco’s talking—I think—still high on painkillers and young blond attention. His voice turns into Sonny Barrett’s—either I’m dreaming or Sonny’s at Cisco’s bedside. I rub my eyes. My room’s curtains are sheer; moonlight silvers the end of my single bed. Where am I? I glance at the door; it’s double locked. My hand bumps my pistol…under the pillow?
Sonny’s voice says, "Whas up wid da what up?"