Chicago at the witching hour. Agent Hahn behind the wheel, driving me toward the crossroads to sell my soul. Robert Johnson did it; shook hands with the devil and learned to play the guitar like no one had before. Robert died at twenty-seven, howling on his hands and knees.
Neon dreams flash the passenger window. In a matter of minutes Chicago’s River North will feel very different. After the throbbing, vibrant nightlife has finished and the revelers sent home, the city goes into a kind of shock for an hour. Block by block these bars and diners close, the hum of their a/c quits, and the neons blink out, the colorful splashes replaced by gray and steamy July heat. During this hour the streets quickly lose their possibilities; silent shadows rise, the alley air sours, and the playground becomes nocturnal. Every night on the job we watch it happen, and wait with our handguns and handcuffs, cups of coffee and gallows humor. Humor helps because this next hour—not night, not morning—is when the really strange shit happens. Robert Cray’s “Night Patrol.”
Hahn’s Pontiac feels dirty, like germs you can’t see, like infections that start small and take you over. She’ll have me do Robbie Steffen first, then take what he says and go after Buff. Then who knows, I’ll have sold my soul to Agent Hahn, I should be capable of anything. Won’t be a cop anymore, that’s for sure.
Maybe that’s what happened to Robbie. Maybe Buff saw stuff in Vietnam that thirty-plus years of ghetto failure finally convinced him to take money. Shit happens, stars align—Furukawa’s Dr. Ota hits the front page with the Olympic rebid, White Flower Lý digs out her vials of plague, enlists Buff from the good old days, and bingo, they’re all there with the devil at the crossroads.
But why drag Bobby Vargas into it? I’ve been on the good-guy side of the witching hour all my life. I don’t harm children; I don’t cruise for kid prostitutes pimped from doorways or troll for the runaways finding each other like magnets, grouping up for safety in the alleys nobody will want till the sun comes up. I don’t roll drunks or mug girls who parked brave.
I was a good guy. Arleen needs to know that; I deserve one last little victory before I tape on the wire. I’m me, not the Bobby Vargas who puts his hands down little kids’ pants.
I dial instead of text. Arleen answers a sleepy “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s Bobby … Vargas, I—”
Dreamy, sorta Southern “Hi,” warm and soft.
“Sorry to call so late.”
Sleepy, like she’s hugging her pillow. “That’s okay. I’m glad.”
“I just wanted you to know, you know, ah, it was great seeing you today. Better than great. Been thinking about you all day.”
“Me, too.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Feels good, Bobby, so good I don’t know what to say.”
I smile into my window. “Good luck, you know, at the theater.” Pause. “And, ah, don’t believe anything you hear about me, okay? I’m chasing bad people who are trying to put me together. It’s a cop thing, but it isn’t true.”
Silence, then: “I know Bobby Vargas; I told you, heart to heart.” Muffled sounds of sheets I wish I was under. “You’re not the only one in trouble.” Her voice strengthens. “After the Shubert, win or lose, maybe we could sit down … like before when it was just us.”
“I’m in. Promise not to believe what you hear.”
“After the Shubert, then.”
“Remember, the stuff they’ll say or print isn’t true.”
“I already know that.” A breathy “Bye,” and Arleen hangs up.
I sit back in the Pontiac’s seat and feel the smile. Somebody important trusts me. Someone who sounds like Anita Baker on a happy day, smells like Sunday-morning cinnamon rolls, and vibes so good you think about her instead of the crossroads you’re approaching.
Hahn says, “Ground control to Bobby.”
My smile dies. “Your deal with Robert Johnson didn’t work out too well for Robert.”
She nods. “Always better someone else braves-up and does the work for you.”
“Robert wasn’t enough? Gotta get me, too?”
“Hero time, Bobby. Time to walk it like you big bad Chicago cops talk it.”
Face rub, eyes shut, exhale into my hands. Sure, I remember Bobby Vargas, the rat, that spic Mexican who gave up his team. Candy-ass motherfucker.
“No wire. And I’m no hero. Tell me what you want from Steffen and I’ll go get it.”
Mercy Hospital is drab faded cubes stacked in the elbow of two rumbling eight-lane highways. Not the best neighborhood, but now advertised as walkable from Chinatown since the State Street projects were torn down or converted to “apartments.” Bad, dangerous motherfuckers don’t live in “apartments.”
Hahn eyes me, sensing I may fold. She removes a handful of change from her pocket that she drops on the console between us. The fingers of her right hand line up the coins while she talks. “In Europe, before they had mega-dense populations centers like we do here, a strain of the plague less potent than the Unit 731 strain killed seventy-five million people, every third person on the European continent. Fleas, same as Dr. Ota tested in rural China, brought the germs from Asia by accident on wooden ships. Since then, the plague has been weaponized—first by Dr. Ota in World War II, then by us, then by the Russians.
“The ‘modern’ plague includes a highly effective airborne dispersal system, as witnessed by Dr. Bill Patrick in 1968 upwind of the Johnston Atoll one thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. At the time, Dr. Patrick was a top biological combat scientist attached to the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick. While Patrick watched, a U.S. Marine Phantom jet overflew a series of barges loaded with hundreds of caged rhesus monkeys. Patrick says the laydown killed half.”
Hahn organizes her coins into stacks. “He concluded that a similar jet doing a modest laydown over Los Angeles would produce the death rate of a ten-megaton hydrogen bomb. Dr. Patrick said that forty years ago. Lotta scientific water under the bridge since then.”
Hahn’s fingers move the coin stacks together. “Downtown Chicago, twice the size of what L.A. was then.”
My eyes drift to our skyscraper skyline. Two days ago I was fine. I turn to her. “Are you making a Roger Corman movie?”
“And your sergeant, Buff Anderson, helped White Flower Lý bring it here. And at least one of your fellow cops is threatening to use it.” Hahn extends an envelope with “731” handwritten in the upper left corner—my credentials “proving” I’m a player, an unknown silent partner—and drops the envelope in my lap. She says, “Robbie Steffen is our first answer. Anything we can get from him is worth the risk.”
Stare. “Assuming you’re not full of shit. Assuming I like trapping policemen.”
Her voice hardens. “Somebody, probably one of his partners, tried to kill Robbie thirteen hours ago. He’ll think you were part of it so you better be convincing … or he kills you. Or worse, his blackmail crew, or Furukawa, make a mistake and we have to get biblical to clean it up.”
Robbie Steffen has a private room adjacent to ICU but not in it. The guards on his door are uniformed Chicago cops; one I know. The uniform I don’t know jumps up, pointing me back down the hall. “Nah, nah; get the fuck outta here.”
“Robbie wants to see me.”
The cop shoves me backward. “Ain’t no little kids in there.”
“Fuck you.” I shove back. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know you’re a spic, fucking greaser we shouldn’t have let in our country in the first place.” He shoves again.
I knock his hand away, pivot, and half trip. “You’re positive, huh? ’Cause I’m not an American? Or ’cause you’ve seen the evidence they don’t have?” I spit in his face.
The cop I know jumps between us—Steve, Rita, and I played his wedding last year at Park West. We both stumble to the hallway wall, his face in mine. “Easy. Bobby, you must want to go to prison. We have to write down everyone who comes up here.”
Behind him, his partner wipes at his face. “Spic motherfucker. Let him go, Dave. I’ll kick his ass to Mexico.”
“Yeah, Dave. Let me go.”
“Stop talking, turn around, and somehow I didn’t see you.”
We dance, but no closer to Dave’s partner. “Can’t do it. Here to see your patient.”
Dave keeps his hands up between me and his partner and barks back over his shoulder. “Pauly, calm the fuck down. Get on the door.” Dave turns back to me. “Cool?”
I nod, glaring at Dave’s partner glaring back. Dave pulls out his notebook. “What’s your badge number?”
I tell him. Dave stays between me, his partner, and the door to Robbie Steffen.
“Can’t just go in. Steffen’s bodyguards have to agree. And it’s four thirty in the morning, in case your watch is broken.”
“Steffen wants to see me.”
Dave stays with me, then tells his partner to find out. Dave’s partner taps the door five times. A voice asks him something and he steps inside. Thirty seconds pass. The partner returns with a serious fellow in a black suit and a wire in his ear. Toddy Pete’s bodyguard at the Levee Grill could’ve been this guy or his twin. The suit eyes me carefully; he probably heard the commotion. “May I see an ID?”
I show my wallet, sans badge, and tell him I’m on suspension. He nods, then backs up into Robbie’s room. A minute passes. The suit returns. Politely, he says he’ll have to frisk me. He’s thorough, professional, and dead serious in his movements. My cell phone is in his hand when it rings. He pops it, decides it’s okay, and hands it to me still ringing.
Tania Hahn says, “When you hear your brother’s name, act like Ruben sent you.”
“Ruben sent you.”
Hahn clicks off. The black suit says something. I stare at my phone. Ruben sent me?
The suit says, “Understand?”
“Huh?”
“In the room, don’t step past me. Any move forward and I’ll respond at full capacity.” The suit doesn’t seem to care that I’m a child molester. “Are we clear?”
“Right. No problem.”
The suit backs through the door and motions me to follow. Behind him, Robbie is in his bed bent thirty degrees to sitting. A second guard steps out behind me after I pass the bathroom; I’m now sandwiched, speaking to Robbie over the first bodyguard’s shoulder.
Bandages crisscross Robbie Steffen’s chest; his right hand grips a Glock automatic. With difficulty he says, “If you intend leaving Mercy’s parking lot alive, this better be the best story I ever heard.”
Ruben sent me?
I ease out Hahn’s Unit 731 envelope and let Robbie see it. He has the bodyguard facing me read the inscription, then tells me to drop the envelope on the foot of the bed. Robbie pushes himself up under the sheets, Glock tight in his hand, eyes the envelope and says: “I’m listening.”
I nod at the black suits sandwiching me. “Don’t think you’ll want witnesses.”
Robbie doesn’t want witnesses, but he doesn’t want to die, either. “We frisked him?” The suit nods. Robbie grips his Glock. “Wait outside.”
They hesitate. One points me to the wall under the TV. “Shoulders on the paint.” Then tells Robbie, “Up to you, but if he comes off the wall I’d shoot him. We’ll put a cold piece in his hand and call it self-defense.”
Robbie aims the Glock at me. I flatten against the wall and both bodyguards leave. Robbie eyes me and the envelope. “So?”
I offer the envelope. “Not going on tape.”
“Ruben think that’ll keep him alive?”
Gut punch. My brother’s name. “Read it. We got business.”
“Business? All of a sudden I know you?”
I offer the envelope again. “You wanna get paid, read it. You wanna die, shoot me.”
Robbie lifts the Glock with both hands and aims at my heart, then tells me to step forward and open the envelope. I do both, extracting a page sealed into a tight, see-through plastic letter holder. The page appears old; it has a government seal at the top and bottom that may be Imperial Japan circa World War II. There are two paragraphs of what Hahn said are Japanese characters; the letter is signed and dated. I extend him the page.
He points the page to the bedsheet covering his legs, his eyes and the Glock on me. “That it?”
I drop the signed page on his sheet, then pull out four four-by-five photos. The first photo is of a metal-and-glass receptacle being attached to the fuselage of an unmarked vintage plane. At the bottom of the photograph it reads “infected fleas” in blue ink. I show it to Robbie, who does not want to touch it.
The next photo is an aerial shot, looking down past the same receptacle to the ground below flooded with soldiers aiming their rifles upward. A plume of smoke trails the receptacle. The same blue ink reads “October 27. Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, Chinese Army.” The third photograph is the same plane on the ground, a tall thin Japanese man in uniform stepping out. At the bottom the blue ink reads “Lt. Gen. Shiro Ishii, Director, Epidemic and Water Supply Unit.” The fourth photograph is the front page of a Chinese newspaper. A large headline roofs a photograph of bodies littering a village. The blue ink reads “Results.”
I toss the last photo to the others piled just below Robbie’s knees and retreat to the wall. He bends, winces at the pain, then falls back with a deep exhale. He breathes until he’s steady, then uses a pencil to move one photo after another close enough to view. When he’s done, he studies me. Thinks about where we are in the crime, what I’m doing here, what he knows that I don’t.
“Talk.”
“Furukawa.”
Robbie blinks, breathing with his mouth open, then stares, reading me for the trap. “Assuming you know what the fuck you’re talking about—” He stops, squints. “Pull up your shirt.”
I pull up my shirt. “Furukawa won’t pay.”
“Bullshit. They have to pay.”
I shrug and roll out the lie. “White Flower wants to use one vial … at the 10K this afternoon. Lý does that, we’re facing feds, not corporate criminals.”
“Fucking psycho Vietcong. Her and his Irish bitch put a bow on me for the Koreans. Set me up in that fuckin’ alley. And your brother let ’em.”
“Wasn’t Ruben. I wouldn’t be standing here hoping you don’t shoot me.”
Robbie glares. “Not Ruben and Lý? Some cocktail waitress put the whole thing together?” Robbie’s face is gray-red and blotchy; he can’t take much more anger. “Tell your brother”—breath—“I want my full share.” Wince. “And if he thinks he can fuck me like he did the Koreans”—Robbie tries to push himself farther up in the bed but can’t—“then he’s dead.” Wince. “And so are you. Two less child molesters for Chicago to worry about.”
“I came here to tell you it wasn’t Ruben. And that we have to rein in White Flower.”
Robbie stares, hand tightening on the Glock. “Am I missing something? ’Cause I’m not a fucking Mexican? White Flower is your brother’s squeeze. How do we figure I can run her?”
“We thought maybe Toddy Pete could help.”
Silence. Robbie goes a hundred percent wary. “You did, huh?”
The stairwell on Mercy’s east side feels like the morgue. I steady into the concrete wall and cue up Ruben’s number. Three times he doesn’t answer. Sweat stings my eyes. I call a Yellow Cab, tell them to pick me up outside the emergency room.
Ruben. My brother.
My eyes squeeze shut and I vomit down the stairs.
The railing keeps me upright. I vomit again, stumble back sucking fouled air, and my shoulders bang the wall. The heels of both hands wipe my cheeks and eyes. I spit bile, breathing short. My jaw clamps. I twist and kick the shit out of the metal door. Kick it again. “NO. JUST FUCKING NO.” The echoes beat back at me and I kick again. My stomach cramps me to half.
Ruben can’t be part of Hahn’s horror show, can’t be Robbie and White Flower Lý’s partner, can’t be willing to kill people for money. Sweat wipe. Ruben’s my brother. He can’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t do that. Just fucking NO. Maybe, hopefully, they tricked him, or if they didn’t, they don’t have Hahn’s Hokkaido package; they’re scamming a mass murderer and his corporate protector. Ruben would be a crooked cop, but he wouldn’t be a murderer. ’Cause he can’t be.
And Robbie never said Buff’s name. And he would’ve if Buff was part of the blackmail, wouldn’t he? Bile burns in my throat. I start down the steps. Who knows? But Robbie damn near shot me after I said Toddy Pete’s name, that’s damn sure a fact. Robbie smelled me fishing; I could see that in his eyes, even clouded with painkillers. Had we been in an alley with no witnesses, I’d be dead.
Ground floor. Hallway, movement, nurses, orderlies, business as usual. I semi-sleepwalk through the halls, buy a Coke from a machine to rinse out the bile. Outside the emergency room, a Yellow Cab idles with his windows up. I get in and tell him, “Wolfe City on Halsted.”
The cab drops me at my car across from Wolfe City. The limos are gone, the curbs clear other than my Honda and empty King Cobra forty-ouncers. Above the door, the WCRS neon is dark. The door lever rattles in my hand. The great, life-changing, good things have quit happening. I press the doorbell just in case, then the intercom button and lean into the speaker … to say what?
My phone rings, Hahn’s number on the screen. By now she knows I ran; knew my car was here. I’m not ready for her plan to crucify Ruben. Don’t want to hear it, believe it, know it. I point my car north toward Ruben’s condo and call him again. “Call me, Ruben. Now. I just left Robbie Steffen. You gotta talk to me.”
I turn onto South Michigan at Cermak. Have to find Ruben. Now. Before—
Hahn calls again. For twenty-five blocks, I call Ruben everywhere I can imagine him being at five AM on a Sunday. City workers are already out stacking street barricades on the sidewalk, prepping Grant Park, downtown, and Millennium Park for this afternoon’s Furukawa 2016 Olympics 10K fund-raiser. Right turn on Randolph. Ruben’s building is at the far east end overlooking the lake. He could watch the 10K from his fifteenth-floor windows. I park in Ruben’s drop-off circle, tell the doorman and then the deskman/security I’m Ruben’s brother. One recognizes me. They let me in. I elevator up, pound Ruben’s door, get nothing, then elevator down to his parking place. No car.
If just half of this stuff is true, Ruben could be in serious jeopardy somewhere. His partner White Flower Lý, Hahn, the Koreans, Robbie Steffen. Ruben’s dancing in the big time with forty million on the table. Find Ruben. He’s gotta be somewhere.
I bail downtown for Lawrence Avenue, no idea what or where to search other than Koreatown. But it’s five AM on a Sunday, and even if mob guys were wearing signs, they won’t be out now. Hahn keeps calling. Three trips up and down Lawrence Avenue yield nothing. Maybe I could modify her plan, use what she knows to … to what? Warn Ruben? Save him? My stomach rolls. Stop him? I need a gun.
Really need a gun. Ruben has partners who won’t want to be saved or stopped.
I have a gun at my apartment, ten minutes northeast. Sneak in, turn on the a/c, grab a gun, touch things that prove I’m me. Risky—I’m already out on bond—exhale—for child rape. Any hallway confrontation with the little Irish girl “victim” or a 911 call from her mother and I’m either shot or in handcuffs doing a TV perp-walk to the street. I punch Recall on Hahn’s number and head toward my apartment to sneak in.
Hahn answers on the second ring. “Taking big chances, Bobby, hoping these folks don’t do something stupid while you do.”
“Tough night.”
“Today will be worse. Tell me you didn’t warn your brother.”
“Can’t find him.”
Her voice hardens. “I can help Ruben and you, but it has to be now.”
My head throbs. “If you knew about Ruben from the beginning—assuming it’s true—why drag me in? Why not—”
“We’re about to lose control of the plague, Bobby.”
“If they have it; if you aren’t full of shit.”
Hahn takes a breath. “Had I told you about Ruben, you wouldn’t have believed me.”
“And I’m supposed to now? Because Robbie Steffen says so?”
“If it wasn’t Ruben’s name, you’d be kicking in their door already.”
“You say you’re gonna help Ruben. How?”
“Tell me—in person—every word Robbie said. While we’re talking, we’ll find your brother. You’ll save him by helping me trick him and Buff Anderson and anyone else who has their hand in or out.”
“Me. Trick my brother, for you?”
“That’s why I involved you. Why the CIA and the mayor let me involve you. You’re the one person right next to both suspects, and the one person we could trust to do the right thing. Fast.” Pause. “And you will do the right thing for two reasons—save you and maybe your brother, and save innocent civilians if Ruben and White Flower Lý do have the Hokkaido package.”
“I didn’t hear you mention the U.S. attorney on your team.”
“She’s on her own team. Best we keep her and the FBI dark.”
No lights on at my apartment building. I pull into my parking space and kill the engine. “How can you find Ruben?”
“Trust me.”
“Trust? Somebody—probably you—makes me a child rapist so you can save me? Just give you my brother because you say he’s guilty. He knows Robbie Steffen, big deal.”
Pause. “What if they have it, Bobby? The Hokkaido package—”
“I’m not giving you my brother.”
“Running out of time, Bobby. Maybe Ruben’s crew uses some this afternoon. At the Furukawa 10K.”
“Not doing it.”
“I’ll give you one last chance to save your brother. Meet me at the bottom of Chinatown in an hour. I have someone for you to chat with. Maybe you and Ruben can have it both ways.”
I flip the phone shut. I can’t be talking about … what I’m talking about. I climb the stairs, creep the hall—my hall—past the door of my Irish neighbor and her “sodomized” nine-year-old daughter. Jesus, that sounds awful.
I key my door and shut it behind me. Bobby Vargas lives here, the Bobby Vargas who returns every night after policing the city the best he can.
A wave of safe harbor washes over me. Me is an accumulation of the things I’ve done, not charges and innuendo and TV cameras and disgusted, angry glares.
A cleansing wave, affirmation, proof that I could line up if the media and courts will let me. My very first guitar leaning against the wall, signed by Ruben on the back and Howlin’ Wolf on the front. A Wolfe City poster framed in scrap wood from 2120 South Michigan, the Chess Records building that Willie Dixon has now. Dreams regular kids have, regular grown-ups have. My parents’ pictures; Ruben and me as kids; Gang Team 1269—me, Jason, Buff, Jewboy playing softball, fishing for lake coho we never caught, sunburned stupid in Jamaica at Eggy’s Bohemian, drinking parasol drinks with both hands. Ruben in uniform, receiving his first of nine meritorious service awards.
I reach for the smallest photograph. It’s in a soft plastic wallet holder I carried till I was twenty-five—me and Arleen on her stoop, heads together, shoulders touching, both of us with sidewalk chalk in our hands. For years, and at the oddest times, I’d think of her, us. Boyfriend-girlfriend, but way beyond—we were promise partners, a big colorful life outside the gray violence of the Four Corners, happy ever after. So absolutely real … then winter came and she was gone. Everything we were and were going to be, was gone.
My guitar stares at me. The best but saddest songs I’ve ever written are about us and the death of that dream, sad enough I don’t play them. Then suddenly today, as the threats and accusations mount, there she is, five foot seven and smiling. Joan of Arc walks through the fire and kisses my cheek, tells me she believes me. Me and her, one more time. Makes me dizzy. Proof I guess that God does, in fact, work in mysterious ways.
The sun’s up. Neighbors getting ready for work will see my car. Horrified neighbors who know I’m guilty, know I’m John Wayne Gacy up there in his window staring as their little girls walk to school.
I take a fast shower to wash off Gacy and wake up. I don’t look in the mirror, or at my pictures, or at my couch. I grab clothes and the gun I’ll need more than happy ever after to meet Tania Hahn, and leave.
In the hallway, my neighbor’s door stops me. I want to walk past, but don’t. I stare, visualizing the door splintering as I kick it in. Mrs. McKenna and daughter Katherine terrified at a real threat. I rock from heel to toe, twelve inches from mother-and-daughter’s door, the daughter I raped and sodomized and threatened to kill if she talked.
Policeman bubbles up in the rage. Who does this Irish mother and daughter know that I know? Hahn? Danny Vacco? The U.S. attorney? The Korean mafia? Dr. Ota at Furukawa? What are Mrs. McKenna’s sins? What or whom does she fear so much that putting me in prison as a child molester is a better option?
She’d tell me if I put a gun in her face. Oh, yeah, she’d tell me, because if I had to, I’d look at her daughter like she says I did. We all have family to protect, no? Why is theirs better, more important than mine?
Kick the door down, let’s find out.
I leave before the rage and filth overcome the last of my judgment.
The drive south toward Chinatown doesn’t help. I keep calling Ruben and get no response. I want to cry, to pound the dashboard into powder. Call Arleen Brennan and just fly away. Jenny and Forrest, Arleen and Bobby—we will save each other just like we promised. The sun glitters the lake on Lake Shore Drive. I dial Arleen’s number, but don’t finish the call, don’t know what to say, finally typing a text message wishing her luck with her Streetcar audition.
Except Arleen doesn’t need to be saved, she’s about to become a star, and a Vargas around her neck would be the end of that dream. The Vargas brothers are from the Four Corners in every possible way, and we’re never leaving.
Chinatown’s still dirty from Saturday night. Hahn pulls up to my car just west of Wentworth and says, “Get in.” She’s wearing last night’s clothes, drives a block on Twenty-sixth, and turns left on Wells before she gets to Ricobene’s. “I said I’d help you and your brother and I will, but you gotta get with the program.” She nods at me. “Before Ruben buries our chances. The fight between him and Buff Anderson—”
“What fight?”
“The two of them went at it early this morning in the lot at Area 4. Twenty cops broke it up. Your pal Jewboy Mesrow hit Ruben from behind, knocked him over his car.” She jerks a sudden hard left veering through a chain-link fence that’s been recently knocked down. Instantly, we’re under the elevated Dan Ryan access lanes, avoiding the tall columns and concrete bridging that blocks the eastern sunlight into checkerboard shadows. Her tires ricochet gravel and something rustles behind my seat. Hahn hits the brakes. Her Pontiac slides to a stop as dust clouds engulf us. A blanket sits up in the backseat, then half falls away. I cough, have to blink twice to see what I’m seeing.
Danny Vacco, La Raza street king, handcuffed in the backseat, naked to the waist. Duct tape over his mouth—
Commotion in the dust cloud. I twist to the windshield. Hahn has stopped us just short of two homeless men, one of whom staggers away; the other falls back over into the trash. She puts the Pontiac in Park, reaches across her hip, digs out a 9-millimeter Beretta, and tosses it in my lap.
“As promised.”
Danny Vacco eyes me, then Hahn, then me again.
“All yours, Bobby, shoot him, gun’s cold. Don’t worry about the upholstery, car isn’t mine.”
I dig the Beretta out of my lap, drop the clip, check it full, then rack the slide—loaded—replace the clip, but don’t lower the hammer.
Hahn says, “My word’s good; for this and your brother.”
I stare at Danny Vacco, the brown pockmarked cheeks and forehead. The faded blue Twenty-Trey tats circling his neck. Danny’s pushing thirty-five, has poisoned my neighborhood for years. Ruben and I had a chance to kill him in a confrontation years ago and didn’t. My decision that day has come back to haunt or destroy a lot of people in the Four Corners.
I stare at him. “Little Paul?”
No answer; wary eyes.
My hand squeezes the Beretta he can’t see but knows I have. The headache hardens my tone. “Little Paul’s mom? The girl in my building?”
No answer. Danny Vacco’s street-king piece-of-shit face is twenty-four inches away.
Harsher. “I rape children, right?” Louder. “Sodomize them? You know what that means?”
No answer, no expression, but full attention. His eyes dip to the seat back between us, a silencer of sorts. I stare, hate clouding my eyes. My finger tightens on the trigger.
Danny Vacco shows nothing but street armor.
I keep staring, hoping he’ll do something that will help me commit my first murder. “This spic right here is a gutless cocksucker coward, that’s a hundred percent positive, but I’m not murdering him. Not today.”
He and Hahn and I wait to see if I mean it, then, seemingly surprised, Hahn waves for the Beretta. I hesitate at a second opportunity lost, then drop the hammer and give the Beretta to her, afraid that if I keep the gun I’ll use it. Hahn points the Beretta over the seat. With her other hand she rips the duct tape off Danny Vacco’s mouth and slaps it on his shoulder.
“Here’s the deal, Danny. I have some bigger business to do.” She taps her watch. “So you tell me where Little Paul’s mother is, and she better not be dead. Then we go see her and you tell her to get her kid back from Child Services. Two, you tell Little Paul to say he lied. Three, you get the two debs who think they’re witnesses to recant. Four, you tell me who gave up my girlfriend and me in the red Toyota.” Pause. “We do this right now and real fast. Any questions?”
Danny eyes me, then our location, then the little blonde pointing the 9-millimeter at him. “Esta puta loca.”
Hahn blinks, then thin-lines her lips. “I work in Miami. Cuba, too, sometimes.” She pulls her ID and shows it to Danny. “We have different rules than cops.”
Danny smirks.
FLASH; EXPLOSION. The Beretta kicks in her hand. Danny bounces into the door, a hole smoking above where his left shoulder was.
“Jesus.” I reach for my door handle and miss. “There’s a gas tank back there.”
The car’s air is cordite. Hahn drops the hammer and holds up one finger to me, asking me to sit tight. I do, sort of frozen.
She speaks street Spanish to Danny. “Bro, not fuckin’ ’round. My dog here has to focus on my business, you know? Big business.” She waits, then slides back into English. “Give me what I want or I will paint my backseat with your little Mexican heart. Then I’ll give your two debs five grand each to recant. Then I’ll give your two street captains ten grand each to say it’s okay, tell ’em to get Little Paul to do the same.” Pause. “ ’Cause that how it work, homes, in CIA land.”
Hahn glances me, waits, then shakes her head at Danny acting unafraid. “Bro, you’re dead, right now, right here at breakfast time, instead of walking tall, selling rock, killing Latin Kings. I’m out thirty grand, but to my bosses that’s lunch money. Then—and here’s the good part—after you’re dead and your two captains roll for me, get my dog here cleaned up, I’ll grab both your captains, put ’em in the very same backseat you’re in, and ask, ‘Who gave up the Toyota?’ They won’t want to tell me, so I’ll shoot one. The other one talks, but I’ll shoot him, too.” Smile. “My dog’s clean. I know who to kill for the Toyota, and your hated rivals, the Latin Kings, now own the Four Corners and chicken-fuck all your girlfriends.”
Danny’s listening, adding up if it could happen. For sure he’s only seen the CIA in movies, but Danny’s a Twenty-Trey, stone-killer street king, and he didn’t get there by birth. If he’s in any way responsible for Sheila Lopez dying, Danny Vacco isn’t showing it. He cocks a one-inch smile. “Soldado ain’t doin’ none of that.”
“See, the Latin Kings can’t fuck my girlfriend ’cause she dead.” Hahn un-cocks, then re-cocks the Beretta, looks at it, then Danny. “We both know this 9-millimeter is double action, but cocking it is what they do in the movies to say ‘last chance.’ And since you’re a cold-rolled, twelve-inch dick who gets his life lessons from rap videos, I thought I’d give you one last chance. Comprende, amigo?”
Danny smooches at her.
Hahn fires twice. Danny’s heart explodes through his shirt. His handcuffed hands flap once in the cordite smoke. Hahn already has her door open.
I yell: “What the fuck!” and jump halfway out the other side.
Hahn drops the Beretta in an evidence bag held by the now-standing homeless man. She peels almost-invisible gloves, gives them to him, and turns to me. “I know Danny deserved it, but you shouldn’t have shot him. And all that stuff I told Danny I was planning for your witnesses? It’s already done. That’s the good news: Bobby Vargas just bought two slices of public redemption—you’re no longer Little Paul’s child molester and Danny Vacco’s too dead to throw any altar boys at you. Bad news is, you’re Danny Vacco’s killer.”
Dan Ryan traffic rumbles overhead. I’m backing away from the car, into bridging and deep shadows on three sides. The homeless man disappears with the murder weapon. Hahn loops the Pontiac and stops ten feet from me. “Now you help me corner Ruben and your sergeant—”
“Are you crazy! You just murdered a guy!”
She squints like she doesn’t understand. “Not me. I didn’t shoot him.”
I scan one-eighty for her phantom partners, at the very least the other homeless man who has to be watching. A Mrs Baird’s bread truck slow-rolls outside the fence on Wells. My prints are on the gun. I told at least two people I was going to kill Danny Vacco. Hahn’s face has no expression. I step forward. “How’d you get Danny in your car? Danny Vacco’s a gangster, street smart times a hundred. You didn’t grab him, he got in your car … because you and him were already doing business.”
Hahn shrugs, but doesn’t step back. “That’s a stretch, but possible.”
“You put him up to Little Paul. Conned Vacco into your car today and—”
“And I had him shoot my girlfriend and me in the Toyota?” Hahn’s eyes harden. “Your brother’s in way over his head, Bobby, screwing with people who aren’t street, who aren’t stupid, and who have all the money in the world.” She points toward downtown. “Furukawa’s 10K starts in eight hours. I’m not privy to your brother’s blackmail negotiations, but I know I’d threaten it.”
I glance at Danny dead in the backseat of her Pontiac. “That how Ruben finishes?”
“Not if he gives me a choice. Dead cops cause a lot more heat than dead gangsters.”
“Tell me where he is. I’ll talk to him first, then you can—”
Hahn shakes her head. “We go together. You wear a wire, if he doesn’t cooperate, we grab him.”
SIREN.
Red, blue, and white lights careen onto Wells a block north at Twenty-sixth Street. I spin into the deep shadows and concrete bridging. Hahn yells, “Bobby!” Tires squeal and crunch the gravel as I sprint down a chain-link fence line crowded with wrecked cars. The siren quits. The fence turns ninety degrees. I slam into it, bounce big, land on one foot and fall. I crawl between cars to a far concrete column, climb twelve feet of chain link, teeter, bear-hugging the column, twist over, rip my pants from knee to hip, and jump.
I land hard, roll, jump up, hear squad cars, then sprint west, running three blocks of Twenty-seventh—all-out, past kids, cars, trucks—to the Norfolk Southern tracks, jump the fence, and flatten in the trash and overgrown grass.
More sirens. Gasping. Dogs bark, flies buzz. Hundred-degree air.
Maybe Tania Hahn is the devil. My heart slows to gunfight, then twenty over normal. Sirens, but no squad-car lights over here. Window curtains pull back in a third-floor six-flat and a head sticks out. The dogs won’t shut up.
My car’s a mile away in Chinatown. Can’t stay here. I crouch, then tramp weeds north, hugging the tracks’ embankment. At the first cross street viaduct I have no choice but to climb to the tracks and walk silhouetted against the sky. In this neighborhood I’m a transient the barking dogs know shouldn’t be here. At the viaduct’s other side I drop and skitter down the embankment.
My phone beeps that I have a message. I duck to my haunches. The phone is bloody and slips in my hand, a long cut on my leg. The message—finally—is from Ruben: “Buey, where you been? Took some magic, but Barlow’s straightened out; he’ll take care of that little girl in your building. But, vato, hey, we gotta talk about who you seein’. These people fillin’ your head; sendin’ you places you gotta stop arriving. Call me. We can make what’s chasing you stop, but you have to help.”
I punch Ruben’s number; it rings through to voice mail. My phone beeps call-waiting. I answer, “Ruben?”
Jason Cowin says, “What in the fuck are you and Ruben into?”
A squad car turns northbound onto Stewart Avenue, nothing between me and their handcuffs but a low fence and high grass. The cop eyes the grass that hides me, then the embankment as he rolls north.
Jason barks, “Bobby?”
“Yeah. I have to find Buff and Ruben.”
“What the fuck is goin’ on? Buff and Jewboy fighting Ruben? Little girls pointing at your dick? Federal judges bailing you out? You ain’t talking to us. The truth, for chrissake.”
I watch the squad car turn. “Is Buff at work? There’s something chasing him and me.”
“No shit. He was looking for you. Went to meet somebody and some psycho Asian bitch shot him four times.”
“What?”
“Still alive, but barely.” Breath. “Jewboy was in the car with him.” Jason chokes, breathing short in the phone. “DOA when they got Walter to Mercy.”