Start Shooting (6 page)

Headshake.

“Funny, a Japanese-controlled company backing a U.S. city against Tokyo …”

Hadn’t thought of that. “Makes sense to somebody big or Furukawa wouldn’t be doing it.” I drive us a block east on Twenty-first Street toward Dvorak Park, slowing into the intersection to take the bump. “You never answered Jason: boys or girls?”

“That some of his business? Or yours?”

I glance. “Just making conversation.”

Hahn studies the corner as we pass. “Girls, in the odd year a special one shows up; one of the reasons I’m no longer an FBI agent.”

“So it’s true; only J. Edgar could go both ways?”

Frown. “And we all have helicopters in our pockets.”

Her verb is present tense. If I was undercover I’d be a ton more careful. Undercover cops die for much lesser mistakes. First, she offers that she was G, now she reinforces it. Makes no sense if working here matters.

“How long were you in?”

“Five years, nine months, sixteen days.”

“Liked it, huh.”

“All I ever wanted to do.”

“Would you go back?”

“On the next plane.”

“Any way they’d let you?”

Headshake. “Someone would have to admit a mistake, and that doesn’t happen. I wanted to be a fed more than I wanted to win a sexual discrimination lawsuit, so I retired, went with the DEA.”

“You stop bin Laden midair and the FBI wouldn’t let you back?”

She thinks about it and tightens the knot on her shoe. “Yeah, they probably would. They’d say I was undercover the whole time, the whole girlfriend thing part of my story.”

“Like now? Playing a part …”

“Real similar.” She pulls out what appears to be breath freshener and spritzes. “Except there’s no federal statute on murder. So if you and your brother did rape that little girl to death, it isn’t
our
business.”

“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

She pockets the breath freshener. “Never hurts to make a good first impression. Even with assholes.”

“ ‘Our’ as opposed to ‘their.’ Present tense as opposed to past.”

“What’s the diff? You’ll think whatever you want anyway.”

Pause. “Yeah, but I might be nicer, until I can let one of these bangers cap you. Speaking of which—” Five La Raza soldiers are on the corner at Racine.

Behind us a voice yells: “Five-O! Five-O!”

The five gangsters don’t move when they see us. I jerk the wheel to block the corner. Three drift to run; Hahn’s out before me, pistol aimed, and yells: “POLICE.”

Three shorties run between buildings.

I aim at the two adults on my left, “Get your ass back here,” and fastscan for their gunmen—shorties like Little Paul carrying the weight till it’s needed.

Hahn yells behind her two-handed Glock. “Show me hands.
Now
.”

Ten dangling palms open up flat to us. I herd the three back to our car, glancing ground for the rock they either spit or dropped. I don’t know Hahn, so I glance her, too. She’s braced, like she means it.

A La Raza tests her with Spanish.

She insults him back, saying his dick better stay in his pants if he wants to use it tonight.

I scan again for gunmen I don’t see. No visible gunmen doesn’t mean they aren’t aiming at us right now. Or this corner’s gunmen could be these very guys, their guns hidden in loose building bricks, or trash, or the wheel wells of parked cars. Open-air drug markets have systems, all variants on the same theme: profit and survival.

I scan for the cameras. Whoever has a video camera or cell-phone camera has it on—neighbors and gangsters hoping for that Rodney King money.

I tell the gangsters, “On the car,” then chin at Hahn. “Search these bitches.”

She balks. “We calling in?”

She means for help since it’s five against two not counting the windows. I show her my SIG. She frowns, holsters her weapon, and tugs Gangster One farther up the fender by his belt, then gently kicks his feet apart. I remind the other four, “Gentlemen, do not take your hands off the car. Clean or no, if you get lucky and I don’t shoot you, you’ll go to lockup, spend tonight fending off dirty brown dicks.”

Hahn pats down Gangster One but doesn’t shove her hand down the back of his jeans. Butt crack is a suitcase for rock. My pal Patti Black would’ve had the guy naked. Hahn gets to Gangster Two—a shirtless six footer with prison muscles and recent neck tats of the old Twenty-Treys; she pats him, pulls a roll of bills from his front pocket and tosses the money on the roof. Wind blows the wad apart. He’s maybe twenty-five, twenty-seven, out-of-place older; I make him a serious felon, want to search his ride but don’t see one that fits him. Hahn keeps patting, strips a gold watch and heavy neck chain, then moves up the car to stand behind Gangster Three. His head turns and he eyes her over the shoulder strap of his wifebeater. Instantly, Hahn’s arm extends her torso away from his back. She says, “Wassup, homes?” Her other hand has gripped her pistol.

He stiffens, decides not to do whatever he had in mind, then focuses straight ahead at the car roof not her. She slaps his ass, half cotton jockeys, half jeans. “Too tight, my man. You get it or I get it.”

No response.

Hahn makes sure I’m paying attention, then steps forward and strips Gangster Three’s jeans to his ankles. “If it’s rock, homes, you’re jail-ready, you know that. If it’s reefer, no biggie … unless you make me put my white-girl fingers up your ass. Make me do that, then you’re on the bus.”

His head and eyes go left to his homeys, then right; deciding.

“One hand, pull it out slow, and drop it.”

He does.

One dime bag of ghetto-shit ditch-weed.

“That ass better be loose, homes. Not holding anything else up there, are we?”

Slight headshake.
“Nada.”

Hahn squeezes his glute muscle; her other hand is again gripped on her pistol. She one-fingers the waistband of his jockeys, peers over the edge, then allows the waistband to snap back.

Other than their IDs and change spread on the car, Gangster Four and Gangster Five aren’t holding, either. That means the rock is on the ground or they swallowed it or this was a community-service project we’ve wrongfully accosted.

We run all five sets of IDs and none have warrants, a surprise. Four have court dates pending, the charges range from possession to attempted murder. Attempted murder is Gangster Two, the convict with the heavy-gold accessories and the old-school Twenty-Trey neck tats someone inked recently. I nod Hahn back; she draws her weapon and I move around the car to stand behind him.

“Turn around.”

He does.

“Where’s your ride?”

He answers in Spanish.

“English, asshole. That’s the last time I’m telling you.”

“No ride.”

“Where you from?”

“Here.”

“Fuck you.
I’m
from here. You’re from
elsewhere
.”

He gives me the stare.

“Street name?”

“Cop Killa.”

I stare, maybe just shoot him now, general principles. “Attempted murder’s pretty heavy. Where’d you catch the case?”

“Morseland. Say I did a bomb.”

Morseland is a bar in Rogers Park, way north where I live, almost to Evanston. “You the Unabomber, huh? Danny Vacco bond you out? You somebody special? That shit on your neck?”

The eyes go empty, back to nowhere.

I lean in under his face and squirrel him up straight. “Hey, bitch, I’m talking to you.”

His head flattens on the corded, Twenty-Trey neck. He eyes me sideways, silently saying the old-school mantra:
Wide ’n’ tall, got it all
.

“Oh. So you the
bad motherfucker
riding these youngsters? Want nine cars here, we search every inch of Danny’s corner? His whole fucking neighborhood?”

The flat nostrils widen, raising the tattoo under his eye, two tears for prison murders.

“That what you want?”

Cop Killa thinks about it; probably knows I can’t get nine cars. “No. I don’ see him.”

“Fuck you,
no
. I got fourteen of Danny Vacco’s rocks in my pocket. Rode his sister all afternoon.”

The brown eyes flash at “sister,” a display Cop Killa wouldn’t have wanted; a small victory for me and polite society.

“What, you doing her, too? Right in her little cherry brown ass, I bet. Better than the joint, huh, all you Twenty-Trey wannabes bustin’ each other’s cherry.”

“Mejor que la niña muerta.”
Better than the little dead girl.

“What? Was that Spanish?”

Cop Killa squints in the direction of Coleen Brennan’s building.

I don’t follow his eyes. “Do me favor, tell Danny Vacco you learned how to read, saw my name in the
Herald
this morning, and now you wanna be boss. In fact, I’m making you boss.”

Cop Killa blinks, not sure where this is going.

“Danny Vacco gives Little Paul one more fucking rock—one more—the police shoot Danny dead.” I finger-punch Cop Killa in his forehead,
notice the
A
cut into his eyebrow for the first time. “We make you boss, then we shoot you.” I lean in to his nose and prison-murder tattoos. “I promise.”

Hahn says, “We taking any of these guys?” She’s interrupting, like I might have a problem of some kind. The
A
is for
asesinos
, “assassins” in Spanish, a shadowy subset of the old Twenty-Treys—cold-eyed sociopaths who in their day were a new breed of street killer and as frightening as any ghost story a Four Corners kid could conjure.

I step back and tell the air between me and the five gangsters: “From this day forward, Little Paul ain’t in your gang. He’s in mine. I take him.”

None of the five nod. I feel Hahn watching me, wondering what I’m talking about. I explain for her and them, in case they want to argue later.

“Me and these gentlemen just made a binding street deal. Little Paul becomes a taxpayer, these felons keep on keepin’ on.” Pause. “Anybody who wants to go to lockup instead, say so.”

None of the five want to keep Little Paul that bad.

“Done. All of you’ll be dead by twenty-six anyway.”

Hahn smiles but keeps her pistol out. The gangsters don’t move.

I tell them, “Get your shit off my car.” Now they move.

Hahn and I get in. We make the block on all four sides without speaking or seeing the gangsters again. She says, “The Little Paul kid mean something to you?”

“When I lived here you had a chance.”

“You lived here?”

“Right there.” I point at the third floor, two windows facing the street, two facing the alley. Out front, plastic bags and papers are blown against the low chain-link fence, empty 40s lean near the gate. “Looked better—my mom didn’t allow the trash, and no drinking on her stoop.” The whole neighborhood looked better. “My dad and my brother could drink at their friends’ or inside, but not on her stoop. She let me play guitar out there, though, and I did.”

Hahn turns from her window. “Flamenco? Spanish?”

My tone drops. “Yeah, I’m a mariachi; my outfit’s at home.”

Hahn pulls her head back. “Something wrong? I say something?”

“No. I pick lettuce on the weekends, too.”

While she’s staring, I stop at 2116, slap the transmission into park, and tell her I’ll be a minute. Halfway up the short walk I hear Hahn’s door. Little Paul is on the stoop; his mother is, too, hand-washing clothes in a tub. She stops, wary. I hand him a guitar pick that he takes, not quite sure what it is.

“Guitar pick. Stay outta the life for one day, I’ll show you how to use it.”

Little Paul looks at me, then the street where his world begins and ends.

“We’ll go by Wolfe City, see how the big dogs make their records.”

I hand Little Paul’s mother ten dollars. “Sorry about the pockets.”

She hesitates, eyes me like we don’t know each other all of a sudden.

“Little Paul had rock in his pockets. Danny Vacco’s rocks. Take the money, okay? Make me feel better I did something.”

She’s no older than me but could pass for sixty. Part of that’s
árbol de bruja
—the witch culture—and part of it’s four jobs, a dead husband, dead sons, and no hope.

“Take the money or I take your son to Child Services.”

She pulls Little Paul to her then takes the money, whispering to him in Spanish, “Don’t be afraid. The police is afraid. The dark has him.”

I know I’m the police but I’m not the devil … then I get it: the
Herald
. Me and Coleen, a girl not a lot older than her son stolen off these streets and … I start to explain, stop, and wonder why the fuck would I explain? What,
exactly
, would I say? I didn’t kill Coleen? I didn’t rape her? I’m not a midnight monster, the chupacabra?

“I’m the police, Mrs. Cedeneo. We ain’t afraid of Danny Vacco and we ain’t afraid of the dark.”

She pushes Little Paul inside and shuts the door. In Spanish she tells me, “The light will not have you. An’ you are afraid, no? When hell is the only place left to go.”

I turn for the car and she keeps talking, telling me my future according to the
árbol de bruja
. Officer Hahn watches. I shrug; Hahn smiles at the ten dollars and Little Paul in the doorway giving me the finger.

“That’s me, hero of the neighborhood.”

We exit the curb and I turn us onto Cullerton facing a Crown Vic
coming our way. The headlights flash and I stop. When we’re window to window, my brother Ruben punches my hand.
“Eh, buey, como’sta?”

“What’s up, Homicide?”

Big-brother smile. “Nothing but you, baby. Who’s your girlfriend?”

“Officer Tania Hahn. New, direct from the commander … via Miami, the DEA, and the F-B-I.”

Ruben keeps his grin, doesn’t show what we’ve all been thinking. “That a fact? Timing’s interesting.” Ruben cranes past me. “Hello, Officer Hahn, welcome to the West Side of Chicago.”

She tips a hat she doesn’t have on.

“Take care of my little brother. He can play guitar, make you weep, but this police thing we do …” Ruben winces. “Send ’em to school, they chew the covers off the books.”

Hahn smiles.

Ruben says to me, “Where you having dinner?”

“Wherever you want.”