I walked down Michigan Avenue, trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling that Marie Perry drank a couple of pints of blood for dinner every night and crawled into a coffin when she needed some shut-eye. I stopped at an afterthought of a bar on the corner of Michigan and Monroe and ordered a Jim Beam, rocks. My phone buzzed and I ignored it. Then I punched in a number and waited.
“Kelly?”
“Vince, what’s up?”
Vince Rodriguez was a homicide detective with the Chicago PD. He was also a friend. It wasn’t like I had a lot of friends. Some of that was by design. The rest just came naturally. Rodriguez, however, was a constant. Someone I could count on even when it wasn’t in his best interest…which was often.
“Where you been hiding?”
“Laying low. Working.” I hadn’t talked to Rodriguez in three months. I hadn’t talked to anyone significant in three months. Except for my dog. And I was pretty sure she was getting sick of my act as well. “What’s been going on?”
“Same old bullshit. Still dealing with the West Side. People hate the cops, lining up to file their lawsuits. Lawyers running around with their hands out.”
It had been four years since the West Side had been the target of a bioweapons attack. Five hundred people had died and Chicago still hadn’t fully recovered. Physically, emotionally, or psychologically. The city would survive. A little scratched and dented maybe, but that was Chicago. Algren put it best—“like loving a woman with a broken nose.”
“You got a little time to talk?” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“Not on the phone.”
“Goddamnit, Kelly.”
“It’s nothing. Just a conversation. One drink and a conversation. You’ll like it.”
“I won’t like it.” A pause. “Where are you?”
I told him. Fifteen minutes later, the cop slid onto a stool and signaled for the bartender.
“What are you drinking?”
“Beam, rocks.”
The detective nodded. “Same.”
The bartender went off to pour Rodriguez’s drink. He pointed his chin at a TV hung from the ceiling. “You see the news yet?”
“No. Why?”
“We found an infant up in Lincoln Park this morning.” The bartender returned with the drink. Rodriguez took a sip and sighed. “Damn, that’s good.”
“What’s it about?”
“Someone told us they saw this guy leave a baby in the trunk of a car. I happened to be nearby and rolled on it. Turns out the car was using phony plates and had been stolen in Toronto.”
“And the kid?”
“Who knows? Could be just some lousy parents who like to steal cars. Could be they were looking to sell the kid.”
“Black market?”
“We’re seeing a lot more of it. Word is they might be running an operation out of Chicago. Anyway, the kid was cute as hell. Latino. A news crew got a shot of him as we pulled him out of the trunk. Bingo. Fucking story blows up. All of a sudden I got five cameras looking for another shot of the kid. We shipped him off to the NICU at Northwestern Memorial, then held a press conference.” Rodriguez rattled the ice cubes in his glass and studied me under the barroom light. “You all right?”
“Never better.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Seen who?”
Rodriguez shook his head and glanced again at the TV. “Hey, can you put on the news? WGN.”
The bartender came over with a remote and changed the channel.
“Thanks.” Rodriguez turned back to me. “You want to talk? Or you just gonna stew in it?”
“It” was a woman named Rachel Swenson. She was a federal judge and had been my girlfriend until she sold me out to the feds. We’d tried to put it back together a couple of times over the past year and almost got there…until we wound up making everything worse. Now there was nothing left but hurt. And hope. That was the thing that got you in the end. The hope.
“Think I’m gonna stew,” I said.
“Course you are. What else would you do? So…and I know I’m gonna regret this…why did you call me down here?”
“I’ve got a new client.”
“I’m thrilled for you.”
“I don’t know his name.”
“Really?”
I took out my phone and pulled up the e-mail that had hired me. Rodriguez read it once, then read it again before sliding the phone back across the bar.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come.”
“Raymond Perry?”
“Told you it was interesting.”
We’d taken our conversation to a booth. The TV was still on, but my cop friend had lost interest in himself.
“How long has it been since he skipped out?”
“Two years,” I said.
“Feels more like ten. Last I heard they’d spotted him on an island somewhere.”
“He’s been ‘seen’ in the West Indies. Before that it was Paris, British Columbia, and Bangkok. All in the past year and a half.”
“Our own little Whitey Bulger.”
“More like a ghost.”
“You ever meet him?”
“Once. At Kustok’s wake.”
Walter Kustok was a Chicago cop. He’d been on the job less than six months when he knocked on the front door of a South Side bungalow. An estranged husband fired three times through the closed door and killed Kustok where he stood.
“What did you think?” Rodriguez said.
“Ray came in by himself. No limo, no entourage, no speech. Just paid his respects to the family. Then he went to the bar and drank with Kustok’s buddies until close.”
“I heard about that.”
“He was a politician, but I liked Ray. At least that night I did.”
Rodriguez grunted and took a sip of his bourbon. “Who’s dropping all the cash to find him?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did they deposit the first hundred?”
“It’s sitting in an account with my name on it.”
“You touched any of it?”
I shook my head.
“You gonna?”
“Why, you need a loan?”
The detective fed me a grin. “Depends on what you want me to do.”
“I was thinking you could get someone in Financial Crimes to put a trace on the account.”
“As it happens, I have someone down there who owes me a favor. Thing is, these people aren’t likely to have left any tracks.”
“I know, but I figure it’s worth a shot.”
Rodriguez shrugged, then sat up in his seat. “There we are. Hey, turn it up.”
The bartender hit the volume, and we watched as Rodriguez stood behind his boss who was droning on about how the baby they’d found was healthy. No ID as of yet, but the Chicago PD was working on it.
“I look like a fat fuck,” Rodriguez said.
“I heard TV does that to Latinos.”
“You ever watch Telemundo? We were made for TV.”
“The Irish were made for TV.”
“The Irish were made for a coffin. It’s called the sun, Kelly. Give it a try sometime.”
The news package ended, and a tall brunette began talking about the investigation.
“I thought they interviewed you?” I said.
“Must not have made the final cut. What else is new? So, let’s get back to all that money.”
“Will you have your finance guy look at it?”
“Sure.”
“He won’t make any waves?”
“Nah. This guy’s good. If they left any fingerprints, he’ll find ’em.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you know about Ray’s wife?”
Rodriguez frowned. “Marie Perry? Not much. She’s Billy Bones’s daughter. High society, charity type. Ran around Springfield like a queen until they slapped the cuffs on Ray.”
“And now?”
“Now? Expiration date’s long gone.”
“She’s not that old.”
“It’s not the years, Kelly. It’s the miles. I don’t think she’s even in town anymore.”
“She’s got an office two blocks from here.”
“No kidding. Who cares? Better yet, why do you care?”
“Marie Perry was with the governor when he disappeared.”
“Actually, she wasn’t with him. That’s the whole point. Listen, the wife is a pariah. When Ray skipped, he left her flat. No one wants to touch her. No one wants to be seen with her.”
“How about her father?”
“Bones? Hell, he’s deader than she is. Besides, from what I hear they hate each other.”
“Why’s that?”
“Don’t know. Some family bullshit or something. Any way you look at it, Marie Perry’s not in a position to be advancing you a hundred G’s.”
“I didn’t say she hired me.”
“Then what? She helped Ray disappear? Please. Since the day he skipped, her life’s been fucked. And that’s a fact.”
“She thinks I’ll never find him.”
“She’s right. So take the money, wherever it’s from, and run.”
“You remember Eddie Ward?”
“No.”
“He was the electrician who took the elevator down twelve floors with Ray.”
“How could I forget?”
“Eddie was in the federal building that morning to work on a Dippin’ Dots machine. That’s freeze-dried ice cream.”
“I know what Dippin’ Dots are.”
“The machine was licensed to a corporation named Double D Entertainment. I looked up the registered agent. It’s a guy named Paul Goggin.” I wrote the names out on a napkin and pushed it across the table. Rodriguez wasn’t impressed.
“So what?”
“Eddie’s disappeared. I got a funny feeling Goggin might be right behind him.”
“When you say ‘disappeared,’ what exactly do you mean?”
I glanced at the detective’s glass. “Maybe I should get us another one before we get started?”
“I already opened up a tab. It’s in your name.”