No Show of Remorse (23 page)

The Electra was way more confortable, too, and—rust notwithstanding—it drove like a dream. I went west to the Edens and then headed north.

Barney and his wife had taken the demolition of the LS400 pretty well. There was insurance coverage, of course. And, although Trish had loved her Lexus to death, it
had
been nearly a year old, after all. She'd been looking at a new Mercedes, maybe one of those cute little SUVs. Barney and Trish were a perfect match. They were both good parents, thoughtful, generous to a fault, and easy to get along with. On top of that, Barney loved to work his ass off twenty-four hours a day, and Trish loved to buy stuff.

I drove all the way to Lake Bluff, parked on the street, and walked about a mile to Inverness Clinic, where no one gave me any trouble at the guard house. The nurse let me peek through the door at Yogi, to prove he was there. “He's asleep and you can't talk to him,” she said. “He's had a setback, but he's much better today. I'm sure by tomorrow you'll be able to visit with him.”

“You tell him I'll be here tomorrow,” I said. “Tell him he has my word on it.”

*   *   *

A
T FOUR O'CLOCK
I was downtown again. I'd checked for messages and there was nothing from Maura Flanagan. The only call had been from Lieutenant Theodosian. He wanted a meeting.

It was a clear, warm afternoon and Theodosian was sitting on a park bench near Buckingham Fountain, reading the paper in what was left of the sunlight as the shadows of the tall buildings west of Michigan Avenue crept toward him. We were less than two blocks, actually, from where Yogi had intervened when the masked goon was pounding on me.

“This seat taken?” I asked. I was carrying two coffees and a paper sack and I set them down beside him on the bench.

He closed up the
Sun-Times.
“Feel free,” he said. He reached for one of the coffees. “Got any sweetener?”

I sat down at the other end of the bench and took a couple of packets of sugar from my pocket. “This natural stuff will have to do. And I couldn't carry three coffees, so your friend Uh-Smith is out of luck.” I nodded toward another bench, about twenty yards away, where Theodosian's state-cop partner was pretending to study his little notebook.

“He's got a name,” Theodosian said. “It's Frick. Which rhymes with
prick.
Which is what he is. But he's a good copper. He started this cooperative task force thing, ICOP, five or six years ago. I'm just on loan, temporarily. Except for Frick being such an asshole, it's interesting, a good break from the same old bullshit.”

“Always things involving bad cops and narcotics?”

“It's confidential. I won't say yes and I won't say no,” he said. So it was yes, the first piece of information he'd given me so far.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked.

“Frick thinks we oughta touch base every few days. So … anything new?”

“Nothing.”

“Haven't heard from anyone? More threats, beatings, whatever?”

“No such luck,” I said. I pulled the package of day-old sweet rolls out of the paper bag and tore it open. “Hungry?”

“Uh … sure.” He took a roll and bit off half of it, then made a face and tossed the other half on the sidewalk, where it was immediately pounced upon and fought over by about a hundred ravenous pigeons. “Kinda stale,” he said.

“The sticker on the package here says they're only a day old. The birds sure seem to like 'em.” I washed down my second roll with some coffee. “They
are
a little dry, though.”

“You're taking Jimmy Coletta's deposition Friday.” I must have looked surprised, because he added, “You filed a notice. It's a matter of public record.” He paused. “I thought we agreed you'd keep us up to date on anything happening.” So that was the reason for the meeting—to let me know they didn't like being left out of the loop. “A deposition's a pretty significant thing,” he added.

“Maybe
you
agreed I'd be an open book,” I said. “But I didn't. Besides, depositions never go forward on the day they're first set for. This one's no different. Meanwhile, I'm trying to talk to Jimmy informally to see if he plans to testify against me. He hasn't exactly told me to go screw myself, since that's not in his new vocabulary. But he won't talk to me, either.”

“Jimmy's one of the things I don't like about this investigation. I can't help thinking those four guys—or some of them, anyway—were rotten. And if he was in on it … well, shit.” He shook his head. “It's not just the wheelchair and all. I mean, I think he's for real. Him and his wife are struggling just to keep the boat afloat and still, except for when he's working out, he spends most of his time on that youth program of his.”

“I was out at that gym in Englewood,” I said. “Last week, Thursday. He wouldn't talk to me then, either.” I didn't mention my second visit, just two nights ago, or the car bomb. I'd have had to answer a lot of questions about that. And for what purpose?

“He's got another site, too, on the West Side.” Theodosian sipped his coffee. “It's not just wheelchair basketball, but helping kids get back in rehab who got discouraged and quit. He's got a few back in school. He's started a nonprofit corporation.”

“I know,” I said. I finished off another roll. “He really believes helping those kids is the work the Lord called him to do.”

“That's why I don't like it. Because if Jimmy Coletta was part of some deal to buy or sell dope, or rip off Lonnie Bright or kill the cocksucker, we're taking him down with the rest. What do we have if we don't have a police force people can trust?”

“That's five years ago. Old news to most people.”

“Five years ago or last week, it's all the same. It's an open case and—” He stopped short, and nodded at me. “This ICOP thing, it's confidential, you know?”

“Who would I tell?”

“The thing is,” he went on, “that other shooter, up in Lonnie's apartment, your client mention him?”

“Nice try,” I said. “But what my client said is—”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, someone must have been helping him. Otherwise, why couldn't we find him? Scumbags like that aren't exactly famous for being geniuses.” He shook his head. “This incident's sure not old news to someone. They're worried, which is why your petition is stirring up so much oppposition.”

“Maybe it's simple. I want my license back, but I still won't say what Marlon Shades told me. Maybe people aren't
worried;
maybe I've just reminded them how I wouldn't cooperate back then—and still won't—and they don't like it.” I looked at him. “Makes
you
mad as hell, doesn't it?”

“Damn right it does,” he said.

I chugged down the last of my coffee. “Frick have a first name?”

“Yeah. Warren. Warren Frick.”

“What does he think about Jimmy?”

“He thinks Jimmy's a lying, phony-assed piece of shit. He thinks everybody he targets on is a lying, phony-assed piece of shit.” Theodosian shook his head. “And you know what? In the time I been with him? The prick's been right every goddamn time.”

“Yeah? What about me? Does he think—”

“Hold it.” Theodosian stood up. He was looking at Frick, who was on his feet now, too, with a cell phone to his ear. “Gotta go. Talk to you soon.”

I watched the two of them stride off, apparently in a hurry. I broke the last roll into four pieces and threw them toward the pigeons who'd been hanging around, beady-eyed and hopeful. Theodosian and Frick walked straight west, across Columbus Drive toward Michigan Avenue, until I lost sight of them. Then I walked in circles for a while before heading back to the Electra, hoping everyone had lost sight of me.

Interesting. I'd once gone through the police reports and listed everyone shown anywhere who had anything to do with the Lonnie Bright investigation. One name had appeared just once, on a case report filed by one of the first investigators to arrive. He noted that he'd been approached on the scene by a man in plainclothes whom he didn't recognize. He'd asked for identification before he referred the man to the lieutenant in charge. The man had shown him an ID issued by the state police. The man's name was Warren Frick.

CHAPTER

37

I
STILL HADN'T TOLD
T
HEODOSIAN
about Maura Flanagan. I'd given her until noon the next day to respond and—whether she called me or not—if by then she hadn't had me thrown in jail, I'd know I was on the right track. If she was smart, she'd call me. If she wasn't smart, she'd call the person she got the money from.

I used a phone at a gas station and checked my answering machine. Two messages. One was from the Lady. It was Wednesday and she hadn't seen me since Sunday and wondered how I was doing. The other was from Stefanie, asking “how things went with the wicked witch.”

Two callers. One was a woman old enough to be my mother and, though I felt closer to her than anyone else in the world, I'd just learned she had a life I knew nothing about. The other was a bright, attractive, available woman—who hoped to God I'd help her get out of town and far away.

I left a message with the Lady's voice mail. I told her I didn't realize I had to report to her on my whereabouts, then said I was kidding and not to expect me for a few more days. I called Stefanie and told her machine that I'd know by the next afternoon how the meeting had gone.

I walked back to the Buick, thinking it might be nice on occasion to have someone to tell the whole truth to. Then, taking side streets all the way, I went to church.

*   *   *

W
ELL, NOT EXACTLY
to church, but to the rectory, the priests' home. The church itself—Saint Ludella—was next door, a hulking mass of soot-grayed stone that I'd seen the inside of just once. That was a couple of years ago, when I was keeping my eye on a priest named Kevin Cunningham and it turned out he'd needed way more help than the little bit I'd been able to give.

Saint Ludella parish was on the West Side. The neighborhood hadn't changed for the better as far as I could tell. In fact, it made the streets around the community center in Englewood, where Jimmy Coletta coached basketball, look good. Englewood had its share of gangs and graffiti, rundown housing stock, and boarded-up storefronts. Around Saint Ludella's, though, they had all that, plus rubble-strewn, vacant spaces which still remained after whole blocks had been burned to the ground in the fallout from Martin Luther King's assassination, more than thirty years ago.

Many of the worst housing projects in the world were there; some being emptied out now; some already torn down. Here and there—standing out like a shiny new car in a yard full of junkers—a supermarket had appeared, or a Walgreen's. There was money to be made even on the West Side. But good times never really trickled down very far here. Brutal gang warfare and the drug industry still gobbled up nearly all the young men and spat them out into the grave or, maybe worse, into prison. Kids scrambled over too many stripped, abandoned cars that slouched on their axles at the curbs in front of too many frame houses that leaned too far to the right or the left. There wasn't much grass, there weren't many trees, and there was very little hope.

You had to start somewhere, though, so planting trees around the senior citizen housing across the street from the church was one of the latest projects of Casimir Caseliewicz, the priest who opened the rectory door when I rang the bell. He made me walk across with him to look at the trees. He called himself Casey because—or so he liked to joke—he'd long ago forgotten how to spell his real name. He was the pastor of Saint Ludella's. If he had his way he'd be the pastor there until he died, or until gentrification—still far to the east, but looming up like a cloud of locusts—finally arrived to rehab the few houses worth saving and row-house the rest of the land.

“Hell yes, I'm still here,” Casey said, once we'd settled down to coffee in the rectory kitchen. “I'll stay until those damn blood-sucking developers—God have mercy on 'em, they know not what they do—drive out all the poor people.”

Not your typical priest. Although … how would I know? I just knew his way of speaking always caught me off guard. It was rough and coarse, yet sprinkled with pious phrases he really seemed to mean. But then, Casey himself was rough and coarse. He was built in the shape of a Wheaties box, six-foot-five in his stocking feet and in the house he never wore those big black boats he called shoes.

Wherever Casey went, he nearly always wore the same outfit—faded black pants, a faded black short-sleeved shirt—with a slip-in roman collar for dress-up occasions—and black shoes and socks. Even his crew-cut was faded black. I asked him once if he wore the same shirt and pants every day, or if he had spares that were identical. “Don't ask,” he said, “don't tell.”

So we drank coffee and reminisced about past times, like how he'd gotten shot that night outside Kevin Cunnigham's summer cottage, and the time he was tied to Lammy Fleming's kitchen chair when the building went up in flames. We laughed a little, and finally he looked at his watch. “Well,” he said, “I gotta be leaving pretty soon.”

“Oh, sorry. Maybe I—”

“One of those police community relations meetings. You know, where the police get up and scare the hell outta the old people about how things are getting worse all the time and everybody oughta stay home with their doors locked day and night.” He reached to his shirt pocket but it was empty, so he must have been trying to quit smoking again. “So what's up, anyway?”

“Well,” I said, “I was wondering if I could move in here for a few days.”