“Michael, you have to help me find this guy.”
We stood close, our bodies just a foot apart on the sidewalk outside of Cai’s office building. A cold wind had picked up while we’d been inside as a weather front moved in, and a stream of pedestrians was navigating around us. But my attention was on Michael’s face, needing to see reassurance in his eyes.
“We can’t wait around for these vague threats to become something real,” I said, my eyes locked on his, hearing the urgency in my own voice. “Cai can’t get hurt because of some ridiculous interpretation of free speech buried in Twitter’s official handbook by some legal tribunal only looking out for the company’s financial liability.”
Ugly images were filling my head whether I wanted them there or not, as my mind went to the worst possible outcome. There was no room for “I should have” or “I told you” or any of the other words of lament grieving parties railed after the worst happened.
“Hey, don’t go there.” Michael took me by the shoulders, his gaze confident. “He’s probably just some impotent blowhard trying to make himself feel better. You know how guys like this work. All bark and no bite.”
“And if he’s not?”
Michael said nothing. What was he going to say? That I was overreacting. Promise me that nothing would happen to her? We both knew he couldn’t. We’d seen enough in our respective careers to understand platitudes wouldn’t suffice. Not this time. We knew all the ugliness human beings were capable of inflicting on each other and that my fears couldn’t be swept away with promises neither one of us believed.
“I’m not going to be the person kicking herself later for not trying hard enough or not taking this seriously enough. And you can’t be either, Michael. Women die every day because they weren’t listened to, or they felt foolish and reactionary when they called out the jackass. Please, take this seriously.”
I stared at his face, oblivious to the pedestrians streaming past us. Willing him to understand. Willing him to be as concerned as I was.
He stared back, then shook his head. “I know you’re worried, but the guy hasn’t broken the law. He gets to say ugly things if he wants to. It’s awful, but we don’t get to shut people down because we don’t like their language. You know that. If he makes a specific, imminent threat, I’ll be all over his ass.” He paused, waiting for my reaction. “I promise I’ll watch his account, but I’m not sure what else I can do right now.”
His voice was soft, as if he were speaking to a child or an elderly aunt who didn’t understand big words any more.
I straightened my spine, my jaw set, and looked deep into his eyes. “There are the rules of your job and the rules we follow when protecting people we care about. Don’t forget the difference.”
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A dump truck the size of a Chicago bungalow rumbled past me, nearly missing my front bumper and shooting gravel at my windshield, as I pulled into the rutted parking lot at Rastello-Marcetti. I would have expected a commercial paving company to have paved their own lot, but this was no asphalt jungle, more like a pockmarked mess now becoming a minefield of puddles. The rain had begun during my hour-long drive on the Kennedy to the western suburbs, dampening my mood even further.
Michael’s response still gnawed at me. This was Cai who had a creep threatening her. My friend. And, I thought, his friend too. I knew he couldn’t pull out all the cop tools, but I expected urgency and concern at a minimum, even if it was just because she was important to me.
Michael had promised eyes on the account, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t ready to leave this completely in his hands. Racking my brain for sources I could tap, connections I could suss out, my mind was on overdrive. I had to find something, anything, to get a jump on shutting this guy down before his hazy threats became action.
At the moment, Panici was the only half-assed lead I had. Panici and Elmwood Park. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, the man was also somehow connected to Selciatto Holdings, the company Judge Reynolds owed a cool half-million dollars. Adding even more weirdness, there was Panici’s friendship with the King of the Chickens, Orlando Gaetano. Like attracted like and all that, but this was one way-too-cozy coincidence for all these guys to have an association without it meaning something. I just couldn’t fathom what it was.
A metal-sided vanilla box of a building sat in front of me. Functional and nondescript, the building screamed construction. Four posts marked visitor parking, and a large unlit sign hung above the unadorned utilitarian door. I slid my car in, grabbed my bag, and exited, attempting to step over the water-filled pothole but hitting clay-colored mud instead. “Damn,” I said, looking down at the dirt-caked suede on my feet.
About thirty yards to the right of the office building sat two additional structures. Huge multi-bay garages with tall, open rolling doors. Inside, graders and steel-wheeled rollers, and dump trucks of all sizes and shapes dotted the bays as well as the areas on the perimeter of the structure. A road from the parking area continued past the garages and around the back of the buildings, and the oily, petrol smell of asphalt assaulted my nose, apparently too stubborn to have been washed away with the rain.
As a plane from nearby O’Hare roared overhead, I pulled open the metal door and stepped into a small reception room. Scuffed linoleum was marred by the treads of dozens of dirty steel-toed boots, and a couple of cast-off hardback chairs sat waiting. To my right, a woman was parked behind tall stacks of papers that built a wall at the edges of her sturdy wooden desk. She looked up at me over the top of her lipstick-red reading glasses.
“You lost or somethin’, honey?”
I gave her a light laugh. “Is there someone I can talk to about a paving project?”
She removed her glasses and gave me the once-over stare. “We aren’t normally a drop-in kinda place.” She seemed to be expecting me to explain my impromptu visit. When I didn’t elaborate, she shrugged and asked, “Commercial or residential?”
“A small commercial project, I guess. It’s an apartment building,” I said, searching my memory for the address of a small six-unit building my sister, Lane, owned, intending to use it as a ruse. It wasn’t a big enough property to reach into the six-figure invoice range, but I couldn’t exactly pull off a fake shopping mall project.
“More than ten units?” she asked, still giving me a suspicious look.
“Six units, in Ravenswood.”
“We’d put that under residential.”
I ran my eyes along the wall behind her head as she pawed through a stash of forms mounted to a wall organizer. Tacked to an oversized bulletin board was a list of clients needing follow-up, a staff vacation schedule, and a site map for a large project that appeared to be a new housing development on West Belmont Avenue.
“Here, can you fill this out?” She pulled a couple of sheets off the wall-mounted organizer, tucked them into a clipboard, and handed it to me. “I don’t know if anyone is around to speak to you, but give me the basics and I’ll have my estimator call you.”
I smiled, still trying to play the role of an aspiring customer, then took the paperwork to a chair. The form was a list of basic questions related to the location and scope of the project, nothing that would give me any understanding of the operation of the business. As I jotted down the address of Lane’s investment property, angry male voices filtered through from somewhere down the hallway, getting louder as they moved closer.
A moment later, Edmund Rastello stomped into the reception area. His pudgy face was florid above his thick neck. I dropped my head back to the clipboard instinctually and ran the evening at The Chicken Shack back through my mind. He’d seemed preoccupied with the guys in his circle last night, and I couldn’t recall a moment where he might have looked closely at me and Brynn, but I couldn’t be certain.
I stole a glance at the equally agitated man behind him. That block-like head and misshapen nose screamed, “I was a boxer back in the day.” Alderman Reggie Farnsworth, who’d earned his nickname through brute-force knockouts, was still known for his punch, although they were typically verbal these days. The Elmwood Park connection was rearing up again.
“We had an arrangement, Striker. You told me not to worry. That I could ‘take it to the bank.’ Those were your words.”
Rastello had his back to me as he shot his venom at Striker. I turned back to my clipboard, pretending indifference, hoping the intensity of their argument would keep me invisible while I jotted their words on the last page of the form.
“It’s just a minor setback,” Striker shot back, his voice indignant. “You know I can make this happen. Have I ever not come through for you? Look, I’m just as invested in this outcome as you are. Come on, I always deliver. You know that.”
“You’d better figure out how to make good on that promise, because, one way or another, this is going to go my way.”
“I’ll make this happen. I got that fucking office park handled for you last year, didn’t I? And that piece-of-shit blowhard who thought he could renegotiate and stand in your way. I handled him too. Do I need to pull out my résumé and refresh your memory on the deals we’ve done?”
If a beat-the-crap-out-of-anyone former boxer could look like a misbehaving puppy begging for love, Striker was there. He eyed Rastello, waiting for the man’s nod of grace.
I couldn’t see Rastello’s face, but he was letting Striker dangle like a mouse about to be dropped into the snake tank. My gut said these men had a long history and a hell of a lot of mutual dirt between them.
Rastello leaned in, saying something I couldn’t make out to Striker, who nodded, gave the man a fist bump, then headed toward the door. I waited for a beat until Rastello was out of sight, removed the final page of the form and slipped it into my bag, then returned to the desk, handing over the clipboard with the cover page.
“The estimator can call me when he’s back in the office,” I said, then hustled after the alderman.
So what promise was an alderman making to a man who owned a construction company? The list of possibilities was endless. This was Chicago, after all. A zoning change or a city contract were the first options that came to mind. Zoning was less likely. That would have to originate with the individual responsible for the project, and Rastello was a service provider. Although I supposed he could be playing intermediary, using his influence with Farnsworth to ensure a contract for a business associate. Nothing new there. But I saw no logical connection to Judge Reynolds’s murder or to Cai, unless there was a case in her background that she hadn’t connected in her mind yet.
I scanned the lot for Farnsworth, seeing him standing next to a black pickup near one of the garage bays talking to someone on his phone. I slow-walked toward my car, watching the man and racking my brain for any recent reporting on him. Ordinary construction projects and zoning changes weren’t something I typically paid much attention to unless they sparked community outrage or were attached to a known offender. Nor were the inner workings of Elmwood Park.
As I reached my car, a Suburban roared up next to the alderman, splashing muddy water on Farnsworth’s feet.
“What the fuck!” he yelled. “These are eight-hundred-dollar shoes.”
Engine still running, the driver stepped out of the car and barreled toward Farnsworth.
“So buy yourself a new pair. You’ve been paid enough to afford a closet full of the best Italian leather. Stopping being a fucking pussy and do what you’re paid to do! And this better go the way it needs to.” He shoved a thick envelope into Farnsworth’s hand, then walked toward the office.
I was staring at the same man who’d interrupted Cai’s hearing, the one with the widow’s peak.