The Red Book, Page 2

  “There’s nothing the press likes more than a fall from grace,” he says. “A hero cop who turns out to be a fuckup.”

  That’s two things I already knew.

  “That line-of-duty pension’s still on the table,” he says. “Walk away with some bucks in your pocket, move on with your life.”

  “And get out of your hair,” I add.

  “That, too.”

  Yeah. Driscoll’s the type who throws dead weight off the boat without a moment’s hesitation. He’d take the first opportunity to burn me if it suited him. And for all I know, that’s what this whole thing is—I’m being set up to fail.

  So I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fail.

  I give him a wide grin. “I accept the assignment, Mr. Superintendent, sir. Your Excellency.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “Oh, you’re gonna last a real long time with that attitude, hotshot. Your boss is going to love you.”

  I knew about the creation of SOS. But I never heard who’d be running it.

  “Who’s my boss?” I ask.

  Chapter 4

  MEET THE new boss. Same as the old boss.

  “Don’t look so happy to see me, Harney,” says Lieutenant Paul Wizniewski, working the unlit cigar stub in the corner of his mouth. The Wiz has a melon face, a salt-and-pepper mustache, and one finger always testing the political winds of the department. He has a knack for predicting curves in the road and always makes sure he’s in the correct lane of traffic. That was always a problem between us when I used to work under him. I tended to lead with my chin; he always wanted to know whose ox was getting gored, map out the whole thing first, before making a decision.

  He also once arrested me for murder, so there’s that.

  “I’m speechless,” I say, deadpan.

  “That’d be a first. Listen,” he says, leaning back in his chair, looking at me over his chaotic desk—he couldn’t have been in this assignment more than a week, in this shiny new space at North and Pulaski, and already the papers are piled so high they topple over onto each other. “It sure as shit wasn’t my idea to bring you here.”

  “I’m getting a lot of that today.”

  “Well, you’re gonna get more. If you have the smarts I think you have, you already know that.”

  “I think that was a compliment.”

  He scratches his stomach, something I wouldn’t recommend watching. “Look, the past is the past. You thought I was a lowlife. I know you did; it’s okay.”

  “I wasn’t going to deny it.”

  He chuckles, shakes his head. “Harney, what, you think cuz you got shot in the head and charged with murder—”

  “By you,” I add.

  He pauses on that. “Well, I didn’t shoot you in the head.”

  That’s true. Just the murder accusation.

  “Okay,” I say, “well, thank you for not shooting me in the head.”

  “You’re welcome.” He comes forward, elbows on the desk, nearly knocking over a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “I know you’re a good cop, Harney. I might’ve had my suspicions about you once upon a time, and they might’ve been wrong—”

  “They might’ve been wrong?”

  He looks up at the heavens, exasperated. “I’m trying to, you know, make peace on this.”

  “Turn the page?” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “A new chapter?”

  “Right. Because here’s the thing, my friend. You know what SOS stands for?”

  “Yeah, Lew, I do,” I say, using the nickname we all called him. “It stands for ‘no fuckin’ around.’”

  He points at me. “That’s exactly what it stands for. The supe is this close to losing his job over the shootings on the West Side. The blacks out there are howling, and our new mayor is a very sensitive-type guy. The SOS is supposed to start getting solves and getting solves quick. And I got a cop standing before me right now who, all things being equal, is the perfect guy for this assignment. One of the first people I’d choose, to give you the God’s honest.”

  “But all things aren’t equal,” I say.

  “Right. You’re a parasite around here.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is pariah.”

  He glares at me, even allows a smile. “That’s the one, yeah. Okay, Mr. Word of the Day, so listen up. I’ve got a good team here. Some of the best in the city. Every one of them’s looking at you wondering if you’re going to screw it up. So don’t.”

  “I won’t, Lew.”

  He removes the cigar from his mouth, which usually means he’s about to say something serious. “The only way we’re going to stop the carnage out there is to solve murders. We solve murders, then the gangbangers don’t think they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. The police stop being a joke to them. Witnesses start talking to us again. All that shit on the West Side’s gonna stop. Because Special Ops is gonna make it stop. You hearin’ me?”

  He’s probably waiting for another wisecrack. But that corny stuff? The stuff about how we’re here to protect the good people who just want safe streets? That’s what gets me every time. Every day that I was on paid leave, staring at my star, wondering if it was worth coming back to the force with all the baggage I’m carrying—every single time, all I had to do was think about why I wanted to be a cop since the day I could walk.

  “I hear you, Lew. I won’t let you down.”

  He stares at me until he’s sure I’m being straight with him. “Okay, Harney, good. So get to it.” He looks down at his desk, miraculously locating the file that had held his attention before I walked in. “Oh, and, uh…” He waves a hand absently, not looking up. “I apologize in advance for your partner.”

  Chapter 5

  THE SUV is curbed along Cicero just north of the expressway, near a long brick building with the word FURNITURE stamped across the window, the store all boarded up and caged. “Turn that shit off,” says Disco, alone in the back seat, to the men in the front, playing obnoxious dance music. “Or…move it to the front of the car.”

  “I don’t know how to move it to the front.” The two men in the front seat, dressed, like Disco, in shabby clothes and baseball caps, fiddle with the dashboard, trying to figure out how to transfer the music from the rear of the vehicle.

  “Then turn it off!” Disco snaps, bowing his head, tapping his finger to his earpiece.

  “The last customer just drove away,” says the voice in his earpiece. “It’s been a busy morning. They were lined up six cars long an hour ago.”

  “And everyone’s outside?”

  “Yeah. Shiv’s on the porch with the girl.”

  “And you’re ready with the backup?” he asks.

  “Ready.”

  Disco glances at the men in the front seat. Do we look like three dopeheads? Close enough, he figures—three white guys in casual clothes. They come in all shapes and sizes these days. Addicts wear business suits and turtleneck sweaters and trendy clothes and torn shirts and sweatpants. They are lawyers and accountants and housewives and students and homeless junkies.

  Do they look too much like they’re trying to look like dopeheads? Disco, for his part, is wearing a sweatshirt he bought in a sporting goods store yesterday that he slept in last night, so it wouldn’t look too nice and fresh.

  He stretches his arms, shaking out the nerves. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The men in front straighten up, check their weapons. One of them kills the music. The SUV—an eight-year-old model with a dented fender—pulls off the curb and turns onto Van Buren by a convenience store littered with spray-painted graffiti. The signs advertise two-liter bottles of pop for ninety-nine cents and lotto cards and Marlboros and an ATM.

  “They have lookouts past the alley by Kilpatrick, north side.”

  “Okay. Boys,” Disco calls out, “say something to each other and laugh. Look like you’re not worried.”

  Disco sits back, playing it calm, seeing three African American girls jumping rope on a sid
ewalk, eyeing the SUV as it passes. Otherwise, Van Buren is quiet this time of day, shiny and bright from the noon sun, almost tranquil in outward appearances despite the dilapidated homes, the vacant lots littered with garbage.

  His partners in front are doing as he asked, joking around, trying to smile—pulling it off better than he would’ve expected—as the SUV turns north onto Kilbourn.

  “Backup is ready?” Disco whispers into his earpiece.

  “Ready.”

  Here we go.

  Disco removes his earpiece, throws it to the floorboard.

  The SUV rolls northbound on Kilbourn. The men in front grow quiet. Disco’s pulse thumps like a bass drum inside him. They pass an alley, a row of brick flats, a Dumpster. The vehicle pulls over to the left side, near a two-story brick walk-up where Shiv sits on the porch with the girl. A man idles by on the sidewalk, or pretends to be idling by, in an untucked Chicago Bears jersey. He glances up at the porch, at Shiv, who nods back. Then the man ambles over to the SUV.

  “Roll down your window,” Disco tells the driver, bracing himself.

  “How you fellas doin’?” says the man, standing a few feet away, bent at the waist.

  Disco slowly moves his head in the direction of the porch. Shiv, wearing a tight black shirt, long basketball shorts, and high-tops, sits on a step up to the porch. The girl, wearing a T-shirt too long and drooping over her shoulders, sitting next to him, arms wrapped around her knees.

  Wait till the cash changes hands.

  The driver hands over the cash. The man sweeps it away, tucks it into his pocket, and turns and tells them where to go, up the street and around the corner, to pick up the heroin.

  While the man gestures up the street, the cash transaction already completed, Disco’s right foot lifts up, raising the AR-15 at his feet. He grabs hold of it without moving his head or shoulders, tipping off nothing. Tucks his finger under the trigger.

  He rolls down the window, sticks the barrel out the window, and starts firing.

  The bullets rattle the front porch, splintering the wood, ripping across the chests of Shiv and the girl before they have a chance to react, shattering the window behind them and spraying the house’s interior.

  “Go! Go!” he hears himself shout as the SUV peels north.

  Chapter 6

  I WORK my way through the squad room, well lit, high ceilings, shiny new laptops at each station, one for each of the detectives brought in from all our twenty-five districts over the last month. There is a little bit of a first-day-of-school feel to it, as I look around and see some familiar faces. Some of them nod to me but show no inclination to do anything more. Some of them avert their eyes. A couple of them purse their lips or raise their eyebrows.

  Not the warmest of receptions, but not unexpected. I’m a cop who took down other cops and exposed a scandal. Cops are a tight-knit bunch generally, an us-against-them bond that’s never been more tangible than it is now, with the press routinely questioning our practices, citizens with cell phones trying to goad us into doing something stupid for the YouTube crowd, consent decrees requiring us to fill out reams of paperwork every time we frisk someone or remove our sidearms from their holsters. It’s bad enough when the shit comes from outside our band of merry brothers and sisters, but when the damage is caused by one of us—by me—the instinct is to expel the Benedict Arnold from the circle. Or at least give him the freeze-out.

  Whatever. I always lived by the motto Just do your job. Keep it simple.

  “Excuse me, sir, only cops are allowed in here.”

  I smile before I turn my head as Detective Lanny Soscia wraps a beefy arm around my neck and threatens to knock me over. I’ve known Sosh since we were cadets in the academy. We worked patrol together, got our first detective’s assignment in the same branch. He stood by me when all the walls came tumbling down on me. Both times, actually. First, when my wife and daughter died, four years ago, then this last year, when I got caught up in the spiderweb—nearly killed by a gunshot to the head, then charged with murder, with high-ranking officials falling like dominoes in my wake.

  “Look at this detective in this elite new unit,” he says after he lets me go. “I’m referring to myself, of course. How’d you get in here?”

  “I have to shine the supe’s shoes once a week,” I say.

  “That all you’re shining?”

  Someone calls out Sosh’s name. He gives me a forearm shiver to the chest, then points at me. “Drive the speed limit for a while, right?”

  I nod. It’s good advice. I’ll watch my step around here until I get the lay of the land.

  I find my desk near the back, passing other people who eyeball me before finding themselves engrossed in conversation or fascinated by their phones. The woman dropping a box on the next desk over is around my age—midthirties—with kinky dark hair stopping just short of her shoulders, dark-complected with a spray of freckles across her cheeks. Biracial, I’m thinking. Or maybe Latina? There’s no way in hell I’m going to ask her.

  “Detective Harney,” she says, turning to me.

  “Hey, that’s my name, too.”

  She blinks, swatting away the innocuous joke. No smile. “Detective Griffin,” she says, sober as an undertaker. “Carla Griffin.”

  I shake her hand. “I was just…kidding around. Call me Billy.”

  “Fine,” she says.

  And should I call you Carla? No? Nothing?

  “I look forward to working with you,” she says with a level of enthusiasm that tells me she’d look forward to a root canal more. I’ve seen statues with more animation.

  “You, too. So…where you come from?”

  “The second,” she says. “Wentworth.”

  “Nice.” When I see she’s not seeking any return information from me—probably because she already knows it—I clap my hands together. “Well, let’s make the most of this assignment. I think we can really make a difference out there.”

  “That’s my plan,” she says. “I hope it’s yours, too.”

  She holds her stare on me.

  “It is,” I say. “I just said that.”

  “But I hope you mean it.”

  “You got some reason to think I don’t?”

  Down, boy. You knew this might be the reaction.

  She goes back to her box, pulling out framed photographs and supplies and placing them carefully on her desk. A young boy is prominent among the photos. No man, though. Maybe she isn’t into men. Something else I won’t ask her.

  “Let’s just…try to get through this as best we can,” she says.

  Oh-kay.

  I don’t have a box of stuff. I didn’t know where I was getting assigned. I thought, by this time of day, I’d be on horseback, or with a whistle in my mouth at the corner of Clark and Huron, or inventorying evidence behind a cage door.

  All I have is a bottle of ibuprofen. I still get headaches from the bullet to my brain. No seizures yet, though they’ve been promised to me—Could be a year or so after; you never know—but headaches on an almost daily basis, yeah.

  She’s putting everything just so on her desk, a little extra thud on every item she drops down, indicating her state of mind.

  “Let me ask you a question,” I say. “How many times you turn this down? Partnering with me?”

  She shakes her head, a smirk on her face, but doesn’t look at me. “Nobody asked me my opinion.”

  “But you gave it anyway,” I say. “How many times?”

  She shoves the drawer closed with a bang, turns, and faces me, her expression hotter.

  “Harney! Griffin!” Lieutenant Wizniewski, standing outside his office, wiggling his fingers toward us.

  I look back at my new partner. We hustle to the Wiz’s office.

  “Three times,” she says to me before we enter.

  “A shooting in K-Town,” says Wizniewski. “Four victims. You two will take the lead. Harney’s the senior.”

  “Got it, Lew,” says Griffin.

&n
bsp; “This one’s bad,” he says. “It’s gonna be very, very bad.”

  Chapter 7

  WE SPEED to the crime scene over the pockmarked streets of the West Side, its wide boulevards where commerce once boomed now lined with boarded-up buildings, payday-loan and dollar stores, fast-food joints and liquor stores and gas stations, nothing big box or upscale. The West Side was once an enclave for the wealthy—then came the immigrants, then came the black migration from the South—before it was beaten down by one economic downturn after another over the course of decades, by the flight of professionals and the highly educated, leaving behind a skeleton of poverty and desperation, crime and unemployment.

  K-Town is among the most violent of West Side neighborhoods, the gangs feasting like vultures, the summer nights a shooting gallery.

  Though this shooting happened in broad daylight.

  We park on Van Buren, just east of Kilbourn and short of the squadrol barricades. It’s already a zoo, the residents spilling out of their homes to see the spectacle, a few reporters I recognize already on the scene. Okay, those media types will be saying, let’s see how good this SOS unit really is.

  Not that we needed more heat; it has to be in the mideighties out here, everyone wilting under the afternoon sun. In other circumstances, I’d probably lose the sport jacket.

  A supervisor with Patrol, a woman named Bryant, grabs us as we walk under the yellow tape. “Hey, Billy,” she says.

  “Hey, Mary. Detective Carla Griffin, Mary Bryant,” I say by way of introduction.

  Forensic Services is just getting here, placing down evidence markers.

  “It was a drive-by,” says Bryant.

  Right—so there won’t be much in the way of evidence at this crime scene other than bullets and casings. We walk under a tree on the east side of Kilbourn that provides some relief from the heat. When we emerge on the other side, we cross the street and reach the house where it happened, a brick two-flat. We duck under the tape and stop, get a big-picture view.

  A dreadlocked African American male in a Bears jersey and long shorts is facedown on the sidewalk amid a pool of blood, his lifeless eyes oblivious to the flies buzzing around him. He’s wearing number 22, the one worn by our old running back Matt Forte, but bullets have ripped six or eight holes in it. Peeking out of his shirt, on the back of his neck, is a serpent coiled around a machete.