Then I put on my coat and headed for the door.
As I reached for the knob, someone knocked.
Maybe Rafael had changed his mind about the money. Maybe he hadn’t saved enough for subway fare.
I opened the door. Bill Gubman, sitting in his wheelchair, stared up at me.
I invited him in, closed the door, and went back to my desk. My coat stayed on. His visit would be quick if I had any control over it.
His voice was calm, gentle, concerned. “Sooner or later we all step in shit. It’s part of living.”
I had no idea where he was heading, so I said, “Sure.”
“But I’ve never seen anyone else dance in it the way you do.”
I shrugged. “You heard about last night?”
“There were eyewitnesses at the construction site, Joe. One of them, a sixty-four-year-old woman who writes a column in a little paper called the Pleasant Prairie News, recognized you from TV coverage of the Southshore shootings. She said she was certain she saw you. She said you waved at her. Is that true, Joe? Did you wave?”
“I might have.”
“Do you know how much trouble it takes to quiet down the Pleasant Prairie police and their beloved columnist?”
I shrugged. “How much?”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Too much, as it turns out. They’ve put a warrant out for your arrest. The Chicago department will try to execute it.”
“What are the charges?”
“Felony burglary, criminal damage to property, a little of this, and a little of that. You’re looking at ten to twelve years in prison, so you’ll be out in time to enjoy retirement.”
“Are you taking me in?”
“Me? Hell, no. I’m giving you a heads-up.”
“Thanks, I guess. What do you think I should do?”
“You might want to call your lawyer.”
“Of course.”
“And then you need to make yourself hard to find.”
“You think?”
“You do if you want to stay in this investigation.”
“I never wanted in to begin with.”
“Right now you don’t have a lot of choices. You either can stay out of sight and keep working or you can go to jail.”
“How about putting my tail between my legs and hiding in a faraway corner where no one can find me?”
“That’s a third choice, I guess, but as much as you talk about running away I don’t see you doing it.”
I had nothing to say to that. So I said, “Those FBI guys who saw us at Daley Plaza have been following me. They pulled me into a van yesterday and came by my house this morning. They want me to inform for them.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said I wanted total immunity.”
Bill shook his head. “They’ll never give it to you.”
“That’s what they said.”
Bill smiled a little.
“Why don’t you just pal up with them?” I said. “It would make your investigation easier and your life simpler. Mine too.”
He shook his head. “There’s a key difference between them and us. They want to expose Johnson’s crew and all the ugly ways it ties to the department. They figure that’ll clean up the city. We want to get rid of Johnson and his crew without exposing them. We figure that’ll clean up the city too and also save a lot of heartache. The FBI wants headlines. We don’t.”
“I figure the FBI would call it justice, not headlines.”
“They can call it what they like. If they bring this out in the open, everyone from the superintendent to the cop writing parking tickets suffers.” He looked me in the eyes. “I prefer to do this quietly.”
“You’re taking a lot of risks to bury Johnson.”
“He won’t be the first bad cop the department has buried.”
“That doesn’t make me like it any better.”
He stared at me over the desk for awhile. “Can I count on you?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“I hear you’re drinking again.”
The comment felt like a test but I saw no reason to lie. “A little.”
“That’s a mistake-slippery slope and all that.”
“How about you?” I said. “Can you drink with the pain meds?”
“Strictly prohibited.”
“I don’t suppose you want to get one, then,” I said.
He gave me the smallest smile. “How about a cup of coffee?”
“You know how sad that is?”
He shrugged. “It’s where we are.”
I thought about that and shrugged too. “Sure, let’s go.”
We rode the elevator to the street. Bill had parked a police van in a no-parking zone in front of the building. He pulled out a set of keys attached to a remote unit and hit a button with his thumb. A side door panel slid open. He hit more buttons and an electric wheelchair lift dropped like a drawbridge and lowered to the sidewalk.
“Get in,” he said.
I did, and, after the lift raised him into the van, he got himself behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
“Very impressive,” I said.
He shifted the van hard into Drive. “I hate every moment of it.”
As we pulled into traffic, I glanced toward the sidewalk. A man with a butterfly bandage on his face was staring at me through the windshield.
Raj.
He looked terrified that I’d gotten into a police van with a man some knew as my friend, more knew as the first police officer who’d gotten shot in my company, and every cop in the city knew as the new police liaison to the Chicago Board of Ethics-the man who would be most interested in destroying a group like Johnson’s.
TWENTY-ONE
WE WENT TO THE Deluxe Diner on Harrison, and when we got back Bill dropped me off at my building. The afternoon sky had turned gray and weighed heavy on the city.
“Don’t get picked up,” Bill said.
“I’ll try not to.”
“You know where you’re going to stay?”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Probably not. But check in, okay?”
I said I would.
His eyes got emotional. I’d seen that happen to other hard men who’d taken a bullet or come close to dying. Now and then, they teared up easily. Their voices choked in their throats. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
He pulled from the curb and I watched him go. I didn’t know why but I felt like he’d given me a Judas kiss.
I rode the elevator to my office. The envelope of fake documents that Bill had given me sat in a file drawer. I got it out and put it in a canvas duffel bag. The duffel bag still had plenty of room. I put in the bottle of Jim Beam, the Baggie of coke, and the vinyl sack of money that Rafael had delivered. Then I rode the elevator back to the street and walked to my car.
A POLICE CRUISER WAS parked in front of my house. Two cops sat chatting in the front seat. They looked like they were on patrol and taking a break but I knew better. They undoubtedly had a copy of my arrest warrant. I drove past, went around the block, and parked in front of a three-flat that backed against my yard. A concrete path ran alongside the building. I took the path and hopped over the fence that separated the properties, then jogged across my yard, climbed the porch steps, and let myself in through the back door.
I left the lights off, went to my bedroom, pulled a suitcase from the closet, and loaded it with clothes and the stuff I kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I made a quick tour of the house and returned with some CDs, a couple of books, and my laptop. They went in on top of the clothes. I left my checkbook behind. Johnson had handed me a pile of cash when we’d sold the copper and transformers that we stole from the Wisconsin worksite. I went to the kitchen and looked around. I felt like taking a drawer and emptying the kitchen knives into my suitcase. I got a glass of water and left the drawer where it was. The Ruger.38 would be enough or it wouldn’t.
Ten minutes after I came in through the back door, I went out again, unsure when I would return, or if.