Chicago Stories: West of Western (31 page)

“Mario's got a sister? What sister? When did he tell you this?” Marko had his notebook ready.

“What were you doing with Mario?” said Terreno at the same time.

They were Gang Squad, she knew they didn't care about where who or Maria was, just Mario's claim that the Duques had nothing to do with either shooting. Seraphy told them about meeting Mario in the park, his attempts to see Maria, her story, about Sister Ann and Brother Edwin.

“You get around. And you believe him? He's El Duque, not Mother Teresa. I never heard Morales had a sister.” Markowicz finished making his notes and looked up. “Okay, half sister. Her name's Aconto, right? Sounds to me like Mario had plenty reason to off Tito. And that asshole Aconto, too, for that matter.” Seraphy shrugged. Terreno pointed to the bathroom, his eyebrows raised? She nodded.

When he returned, Seraphy and Marko were quiet. “You ever consider he's trying to con you?” Terreno asked finally. Did she? She thought about that.

“Of course I was suspicious. At first, and I asked around about Mario. Everybody says Chico's crazy, but not Mario. I don't think he was trying to con me, I think he's just desperate to see his sister,” she said, certain in her own mind.

“No point asking where he was, they all got forty-three guys swear he was with them watchin’ TV all night or something. We got to find out who killed the assholes, soon.” Terreno sagged back in his chair.

“On another topic,” Seraphy said, “what can you tell me about Mischa Dankovich? I mentioned him to George and he about bit my head off for talking to him.”

“Now, gee, Marko, why would that be?” Terreno's voice dripped sarcasm.

“I dunno, Terreno. One big strong bohunk and one big strong beaner and a pretty girl between them?”

“Crap. Get serious, guys. Mischa told me he's a contractor and made a bid for me to recommend him to my clients, so I'm wondering if I should.”

“Depends.” Markowicz looked up from the rings he was making on her table with drops of coffee.

“Depends on what?”

“Depends on how you feel about illegals, for one. Nobody works for Mischa ever seems to speak English.”

The family in the alley, she remembered, Katya and her baby. Katya's husband, maybe. “Not a problem for me. Mischa does.”

“Look, we got no problems with Mischa. That's not to say ICE and maybe ATF don't, and the trade unions. Maybe there's some other stuff, stuff falls offa backs of trucks, like that. That said, for this side of Western, Mischa keeps his folks in line and looks like a pretty decent guy.”

“He said he'd crush anybody that got in his way.” Flashback to big hands pantomiming wringing a neck, size fourteen boots shaking the boardwalk.

“Wouldn't be surprised. These guys, they come from a tough place. We heard stories about the Ukraine. Executions, maybe. You think Tito got in his way? How come?”

Good question. She wondered if Tito liked young blondes as well as young Latinas. She shrugged.

The detectives finished their coffee and left.

This
time she'd take her knife, she thought, glancing out the window at skeleton branches thrashing in the wind. And a heavier jacket. What she needed was an insulated motorcycle jacket, something like that. Something she could move in, something to keep the wind out. Not something new. She almost changed her mind as she pulled the boxes out of the back of the closet.

It wasn't in the first box, the box she had already opened to get the binoculars. The bomber jacket lay on top in the second, still wrapped in a blanket. Joe's jacket. The blanket from their bed. She unwrapped it before she could change her mind, stroked the scarred leather, like satin under her fingers, and buried her face in the lining. One breath was enough. Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she pulled it on and zipped it up, rotated her shoulders. Still supple, and since she and Joe had been nearly of a height, it fit well enough. The sleeves were a little too long, but that was good; the cuff slipped easily over the knife strapped to her left arm. She didn't notice the difference in her stance or the way her stride lengthened as she left the room.

Chapter 27

The north wind
chilled her neck, the old leather creaked as she pulled the jacket tight and was struck by a flash memory: walking with Joe through a late winter storm. Memory and jacket wrapped themselves around her, old, familiar, comfortable. Her knife, a relic from a more recent time, lay nestled against her arm. She was foolish to go out, maybe, but staying inside, waiting for something, anything, to happen, was worse. She'd think of her expedition as reconnaissance, as good an excuse as any.

Like rats from a culvert, Chico's soldiers glared from under the hood of their car, and for once, failed to chirp as she appeared. On the opposite corner, Mario's Duques stood sentry. Her shoulders prickled, she hadn't felt that since she crossed the border from the Green Zone into Baghdad and picked up her pace.

Another block, to the corner of Thomas and Rockwell, where two Lobos slouched half-hidden in the entry of a bodega on the northwest corner. Mario's sentries sat opposite on the steps of a Section Eight townhouse. On the next corner, on the Lobos’ lot on the west side of Rockwell, a handful of plastic flowers and three votive candles marked the place where Cholo, Hector and Juan had died. There Lobos’ sentries balanced on battered wooden chairs and kept an eye on a pair of Duques lounging across the street.

Curious to see if the gangs had mounted a watch on cross streets inside their territories as well as along the Rockwell border, Seraphy turned up Haddon to Washtenaw and found a single Lobo hunched against the wind trying to light a cigarette. The next corner south, Thomas, was covered, and at Cortez, Berto nursed his arm in a sling and watched over the play lot across from the school. So Chico covered all the corners in his territory and it looked like he was spread pretty thin. After all, three of his gang were dead and Berto pretty worthless.

A blue and white patrol car cruised past, protecting and serving, both officers sitting high, eyes flicking from side to side.

Aside from the lookouts, the streets were deserted. No old women on the way to market, no gossipy neighbor on his porch, no children, not even a dog. As she passed, shadows moved in second-story windows and once she saw a hand pull a red curtain aside. The streetscape had become foreign, hostile. Her senses grew sharp and she felt the air move, heard it, tasted its bitterness. Objects shimmered, their edges hyper-clear.

Stopping for a Coke at Jaime's bodega, she was greeted by familiar rank odors and this time, accepted them with gratitude. But the three narrow aisles were empty and this the first time she'd seen the
tienda
without at least two or three women gossiping as they shook avocados and sorted through mangos.

“Where is everybody?” she asked Jaime, waiting at the checkout counter. No smile today, she'd never seen him look so dejected.

“Nobody out. Bad day.” The storekeeper's good spirits had abandoned him, his depression deeper than the sadness she remembered from the park. His skin was gray and his eyes drooped. “Is bad,
muy
malo
,” he said, shaking his head. “Go home now, no good on streets.”

Not wanting to carry the Coke bottle around, she stayed to finish her drink in the store, watching Jaime rearrange fruits and vegetables, then rearrange them again, and again. When she had finished the bottle, still no customer had come through the door.

“Vaya con Dios
,
amiga
,” Jaime said as she left.

Turning east on Haddon toward home, Seraphy jogged the two blocks through Lobos territory to Rockwell, then decided to cross the street and check out Duques. She nodded to Mario's sentries, ran on east to Campbell, on around the block to Western, and back down Thomas to St. Mark's Church, passing Duques on each corner.

Mario hunched over a paperback book on a concrete bench in the leaf-drifted plaza in front of the church. Hearing her scuffle through leaves, he looked up, smiled, and waved her over. She smiled back. After her expedition through no-man's-land, he seemed like an old friend.

“Out for a stroll?”

“Not exactly,” she said, joining him on the bench, “What're you reading?”

Mario flipped the book shut so she could see the cover.
The Art of War.
Somehow she wasn't surprised.

“Nice jacket,” she said. She was as bemused now as she had been the last time they met at his clean-cut J. Crew look, and wondered what his gang members thought about his preppy style.

“Yours, too. Can I see?” He ran his hand lightly over the sleeve, bent for a closer look. “Nice, goatskin . . . God, is this an original A-2? Do you know how special these are?”

“WWII, Army Air Force aviator's jacket, yup.” She nodded. “And all original. You want to see the inside?” She unzipped and started to slip the jacket off, then almost changed her mind when the damp wind bit through her shirt.

Mario saw her face and laughed. “I promise I'll be quick.”

“That's what they all say.” She shrugged the jacket off and dropped it in his lap. And shivered when the wind sliced through her shirt. “Jesus. Mario—”

“Just a second.” Cradling the jacket on his knees, Mario ran his hand over the scratched and rubbed leather, then carefully folded it open. She heard air whistle through his teeth as he bent to examine the lining printed with a color map of Europe, provided for a pilot shot down over enemy territory who might have to find his way home. Mario devoured the map, tracing pathways from German territory to the English Channel, until Seraphy tugged on his arm.

“Mario, hurry it up. I'm freezing.”

“Sorry,” he apologized, straightening and holding the jacket for her. She saw him frown as her knife caught the sleeve lining.

“It's wonderful, a real treasure. Do you know anything about the pilot? Could I look at it sometime when you're not freezing? Where did you get it?”

“It was Joe's. His father was the pilot. He died a few years ago when Joe was in the Marines overseas.” Joe. With the name came the image. Joe's head in her lap, the jacket he'd been carrying on the concrete beside her. Just one quick image and he was gone, leaving a familiar black hole in her soul. For a moment she forgot where she was and with whom and her lungs fought for air. Thoughts came crashing into her head from all directions, from that September night and all the black days and nights since, and she struggled to force them back into the cage from which they'd escaped.

“Are you all right?” she heard Mario ask. She felt his arm around her, holding her from falling off the bench.

“Sorry about that.” Seraphy jerked herself upright, searching for something, anything to say. A breeze ruffled her hair and chilled the back of her neck, forcing her attention to concrete things. She sucked in freezing air and fought to push unwanted feelings away. Mario. Why had she been looking for Mario?
Was
she looking for Mario?

“I'm just a bit tired from moving and trying to get used to the neighborhood and all.”

Mario laughed. “Just a bit to get used to? Like death threats, MAC-10s spraying your windows, four bodies in a week? That all?”

“Pretty much sums it up.”

“But I think it's more than that, right?” he asked. “Something tells me you could handle all that. There's something else, and that's not surprising. We're all on edge right now, old stuff comes sneaking back when we're vulnerable.” Mario looked away across the street, giving her space. “So, you want to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Run, her body urged. Don't talk to him. Not him. He's a gang leader, for Christ's sake. You don't even really know him. Run, go home. Now.

“Tell me why this jacket—Joe's jacket, did you say?—makes you lose your cool. Who is Joe? And why do you have his jacket, anyway?”

“Joe was my fiancé,” she blurted the words without being able to stop. The street dimmed before her eyes. “He had the jacket with him the night he was shot, a long time ago, ten years. I don't think about it anymore.” Liar. She felt her stomach lurch and fought the desire to vomit. Where was her control? She never talked about Joe. Why couldn't she stop telling this gang leader, this man she hardly knew, about Joe?

“Yeah? Coulda fooled me.” His voice was soft.

“I get flashes, fragments of memory,” she said, a flood of quick images flickering through her mind. “I'm on the sidewalk under the El, the concrete's cold and I want to get up, but Joe's head is in my lap and I don't want to hurt him.” She took a breath, her eyes shut. Her throat hurt. “He was dead and my lap was full of blood and I knew that. But all I could think was that I didn't want to hurt him. Fucking stupid.” Instinct made her pull the jacket tight and she crossed her arms against the cold inside her. Furious with Joe for leaving her. Furious with herself with herself for remembering.

“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I can never get away from it.” She was sobbing now and angry with herself for it. Mario put his arm around her, pulling her against his chest to keep her from falling.

“You kept his jacket all this time.” He was looking away across the plaza. “You kept the faith.”

“I couldn't give it up,” she gasped between sobs. “Sometimes, I even slept with it, hiding my face against the lining, his scent . . . .” Seraphy shook herself loose and pushed Mario's arm away, concentrated on evening her breath. She'd never told anyone that. “I packed it away and got on with my life,” she said, her words coming fast now. Looking away, hunting for a Kleenex in her pockets, she took the package he handed her without looking. “Sorry, it's not your problem.” Embarrassed, she sat rigid, but couldn't stop her tears.

“Don't say that, Seraphy,” Mario shook his head, still not looking at her, his voice soft. “You've seen my failure and you found Maria for me, you saw her. The smell, how she looked, and you still cared for her. You sent me to Brother Edwin who took me to see her. For all of that I owe you. You can talk and I can listen, at least.”

She blew her nose, afraid to try to speak.

“You know,
amiga
, if you deny the past, try to lock it away, it will fester and eat away at you forever,” he said.