| |
––––––––
THE BROKEN PLASTIC sign in front of my lodgings read Turnberry Terraces, and, for a mere $850 per night, I could recline on a reeking, yellow-stained mattress in a room smaller than the Huateng freight elevator. I mean, if I swung my feet out of bed too carelessly, they whacked the wall. This little slice of heaven was located so deep in the South Side, the Homeland cops traveled in up-armored squads, and the cockroaches carried blades.
It was nasty, dangerous, and cramped, but at least it was monumentally inconvenient to everything.
I missed the ghostly deserted atmosphere of Ding’s place, but a crew of meth cookers had occupied the first floor and turned it into an explosion waiting to happen.
Three nights after my aborted robbery, I rode the Metro from the Ptomaine Terraces Hotel, boarding the bus at Washington Park and—two transfers later—got off a block short of Lincoln Park. Elapsed travel time from presidential park to presidential park, one hour forty minutes. Long enough to damned near reach Canada.
Fifteen, twenty years ago, the Dive In bar on Wells Street would have been part of a trendy neighborhood filled with boutiques and stores called shoppes. Clean, maintained streets filled with urbanites mingling over coffee. The bones of that neighborhood remained, like a picked-over turkey at Thanksgiving. Iron bars had replaced the coffee bars, and dress shoppes had morphed into head shops. A few small businesses held on by grim determination. Squatters had invaded some of the vacant spaces, selling whatever they could scrounge or steal, the landlords either out of business or too afraid to evict.
The folks with money stayed in guarded high-rises, well above the stinking stew, or in gated communities so far into the suburbs, even mass transit wouldn’t reach them. These were not circles I traveled in, but I’d seen the pictures.
On the gritty streets, the new urbanite—known as the Homeless—wandered the streets in droves, about as lively as the occasional Revivant shambling by on its programmed task. Were the Revvies dead, or Gen Five? I couldn’t spot the difference.
Walking from the bus stop, I imagined myself the only living person in a bad zombie flick.
This was Tuesday, making it my third attempt to spot one of the Children of Liberty. I claimed my favorite corner stool at the Dive In and ordered a beer. While in jail with Millie and her pals, I picked up a whispered reference to this bar that made me think they met here on a regular basis. It wasn’t much to go on, but I had to start somewhere. Ramirez’s threat squeezed my throat with invisible hands. If I didn’t bring him something tomorrow, Ding’s life would be the first penalty, and mine would be the second. Deandre and Signe would continue to be sex slaves for as long as they lived, or until their bodies wore out.
From my stool at the corner of the L-shaped bar, I had a good view of the room while remaining inconspicuous. Dim light helped, as did my fellow barflies hunched on their stools, and the waitresses and patrons who came between me and the main floor to place orders. I could hide in plain sight and practice my detective impersonation.
“’Nother beer there?” The bartender watched me like I’d steal his hoarded supply of stale pretzels without constant vigilance. Made of grease and black hair, the guy resembled one of those cartoon characters who gets hit in the head with a frying pan, compressing the hairline into the eyebrows.
“Beer?” I considered the suds in the bottom of my glass. “That what this is? Hmm. I thought it was fermented goat piss.”
“Hey, you don’t like the beer, go take up space somewhere else, big spender there.”
I motioned for another. In fairness, the guy had a right to get snippy; three nights running I’d taken up a stool and had two beers in three hours. I was a lousy tipper too. And if I didn’t find a clue, or a lead, or whatever the detective types called it, I’d have to crawl back to Ramirez and beg for more time. And money. More humiliating than wetting my pants in third grade while giving a presentation in front of Ms. Webster’s class at Rahm Emanuel Elementary School and having Tamesha Davis point and shout, “Look, Joey peed hisself!”
Not that anything like that ever happened. I’m just saying, if it did—
Oops. I spy something hairy. Bushy beard at the two o’clock position. I’d seen the guy before, at the Children of Liberty protest march, holding a sign with the words Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness crossed out. Ran across him while in jail too, though he kept to himself. Medium height, medium build, and enough thick black hair he could be stunt double for a bear. He must have slipped in while I bantered with the flat-headed bartender. His name was... Tony? Tommy? Something like that. In jail, he stayed in a cell at the far end of the row from mine, and he was one of the first released, so I never got to know the guy.
But he was one of them. A Child of Liberty.
Beardboy huddled across a table near the door with a dark-skinned guy, one who had been there earlier, a bald man with hoop earrings the size of hubcaps and a bone through his septum. I couldn’t decide if he was going for pirate or Zulu warrior, but either way, the guy could scare a freight train onto a dirt road. The pair of them had their heads close together, all serious and sincere, and anytime a server or patron passed too close, they would go quiet and watchful.
Intrigue smoldered.
My original stakeout plan involved me “stumbling” upon my jailhouse companion and leading off with, “Hey, I know you! It’s Joe, from jail. Remember me?” and from there working my way into the group. I scrapped that idea two minutes after spotting Beardboy and his pal. If ever two guys were involved in skullduggery, it was these two, and I sensed dropping in on them unexpectedly would end badly for me.
Plan B: Follow Beardboy when he leaves and see where he goes.
I didn’t have long to wait. The waitress, in tan super-short-shorts and a mesh top (I checked her out meticulously for concealed weapons) brought him an amber drink in a shot glass, collected payment, and swivel-hipped away. Beardboy knocked back the drink, and his face twisted in disgust. His companion flashed yellowed teeth in a laugh and slapped palms with the CoL member, who pushed back from the table and made for the door.
I chugged my beer and followed.
Beardboy headed south on Wells. I hung back under the awning, amid the outdoor tables occupied by the pot and tobacco smokers, risking a contact high while I waited. My guy wore navy trousers and a white-and-blue striped shirt, which showed up nicely under the rare streetlight. I let him get half a block away before I left the hazy atmosphere in front of the Dive In and trailed after him. I figured he shouldn’t be too hard to follow; the guy probably left a trail of hair everywhere he went.
At an hour before midnight, many of the homeless had gathered in doorways and sheltered alleys, like human snow drifts. The weight of their watchful eyes pressed against me as I passed. If Ramirez hadn’t slithered into my life, I’d be one of them about now, huddled with my back to a solid surface, prowling for a meal... Maybe I should thank the half-pint prick, next time I saw him.
A bundle of rags with scarecrow hair vaulted out of a dark nook. My heart seized, and I flinched back.
“Hey, sugar,” the tatterdemalion rasped, “a hunnert bucks and you can use any hole.”
“Ah, no, thank you.” I hurried past her and nearly choked on the smell while she complimented my parents, my manhood, and my love of small animals. Seconds later, I had a panic attack when I failed to spot Beardboy, who had disappeared while I was occupied with the harpy hooker.
I hustled to the corner and picked him up again, strolling west along Evergreen Avenue, acting without a care, hands in his pockets. I turned up the collar on my lightweight jacket, stuffed my hands in my pockets, and trailed my subject with the guile of a highly trained secret agent.
The streetlights gave out once we passed under the L, pitching the sidewalk into near-darkness. I had to pick up the pace to keep Beardboy in sight, closing the distance to twenty meters while trying to keep quiet and not scuff my shoes on the ground, or kick a bottle in the dark. The guy never looked around, not once. He kept up a brisk but not hurried pace, ignoring the street people, moving at a steady cruise.
Beardboy crossed to the south side of Evergreen, and I kept pace as he turned left on Sedgwick. It wasn’t until I passed the dead body hanging from an old-fashioned light pole that I realized where we were.
Cabrini Territory.
Oh.
Fuck.
Me.
I stopped in my tracks. To hell with Beardboy, to hell with Ramirez, to hell with Ding. There wasn’t enough incentive in the universe to make me stroll into Cabrini-held turf without air cover and a battalion of homicidal maniacs at my back.
The schools closed in 2030, after the rape and murder of an eighth-grade teacher... by her class. She was the fourth teacher in the area killed that year. The union had called a strike, and the administration had no choice but to pull out. Ten years later, the authorities—from the city to the national level—had washed their hands of about ten square kilometers surrounding the area where the Cabrini-Green housing complex once stood.
Nowadays, the kids ran feral, and order was maintained by the Gangster Disciples, who sold everything from drugs to heavy weapons. They were fiercely opposed to anyone not-black entering their area. Unless you could prove at least one black parent, you ran the risk of being strung up like this poor dumb fuck hanging from the light pole. How in the hell did a white man like Beardboy stroll so casually into an area patrolled by the most vicious gang in Chicago?
And how fast could I run away?
A throat cleared behind me, and my blood chilled.
I turned to find a gathering of shadowy figures materializing from the depths of the night. Two, then four, then six. They shuffled into a loose ring around me. All of them were armed, holding everything from handguns to wicked-looking rifles with extended magazines. I found myself unable to swallow, a cold sweat washed over me, and I needed to pee.
“Uhhhh,” I stammered, “one of... one of you guys order a pizza? I gotta pepperoni-extra-cheese for Tyrone. Is Tyrone around?”
“A pizza?” the banger directly in front of me asked. Taller than Stonehenge, with oiled coal skin, he had a gold coin embedded in his sternum and wore a satiny-black shirt open to the navel to show it off. “You got it in yo’ pocket?”
I patted my jacket. “Damn, I knew I forgot something.” I made as if to edge past Stoney. “I’ll go back and get it. No wonder my tips are always so—”
“Hold up, Pizza Man.” No less than three firearms were pointed at my face. I didn’t check behind me, but I suspected those were as well. Nothing as quaint as my (former) Smith & Wesson, these weapons were matte black with levers and buttons and bores big as subways. “You wanna ’splain why you followin’ my boy?”
An aircraft passed overhead, winking red and white lights, the muted roar of its engines rumbling across the sky. One of the bangers behind me had a bad case of allergies, or was in the latter stages of cocaine-related rhinitis; he sniffed more than a church full of mourners.
“Your boy?” I spread my empty hands in a show of good faith. “I didn’t know he was your son, but now that you mention it, I see the resembl—No! Wait!”
Next thing I knew, I was on the pavement, tasting blood from where Stoney hit me in the face. He loomed over me, grim as Stage IV cancer, a malignant darkness blotting out the midnight sky.
“What you want we should do wit’ him?” He wasn’t speaking to me.
“I know this guy.” Beardboy leaned over next to Stoney and squinted. “Joe? Joe Warren?”
“Hey, Tony!” I gushed. Never was I more glad to see someone so hairy. “How’s it been, man?”
“It’s Tim.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Sorry, my head’s a little rattled.”
“Why were you following me?”
“Following...?” I let my mouth gape open. “Why would you...?”
Stoney screwed the muzzle of his pistol into my left nostril. He cocked the hammer. “Say goodbye, muthafucka.”
“Wait-wait-wait! Okay, yeah, I saw you in the bar, and I wanted to see, uh, see Millie again, so I thought you’d lead me to her. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear. I just... I just got to like you guys in jail and all—”
“Lead you to Millie, huh?” Beardboy—no, Tim—jeered. “So why? You could let the cops know where she lives?”
“Doe, mahn.” Stoney had driven his pistol barrel even farther into my sinuses. “I sweah, I jus’ wanded do see hehr.”
“You a lyin’ scrotal sack o’ shit,” Stoney said. “I bes’ kill you now.”
“Hold on.” Tim frowned, making his bushy eyebrows twist together like a fuzzy, black caterpillar. “Millie needs to decide what to do with this guy. He was in jail with us, so he’s probably been chipped. Can you wand him and find out?”
“Easy.”
The gun left my nose, and one of the other bangers produced a device the size of a chapstick tube. He ran it over me from head to toe. Rough hands grabbed me and flipped me onto my belly. A few seconds later, a high-pitched beep sounded.
“Yep. Chipped.”
“Best cut it out. Domino?”
“On it.”
A third banger knelt beside me and removed something from an inner pocket. Snick! A bright surgical steel blade popped out, longer than a woman’s memory and three times as sharp. My shirt split with one long rip.
“Hey,” I said, “what the hell—”
They stabbed me in the back.
Irony’s a bitch.