“I wasn’t aware this was a democracy.”
“Well, now you are.”
“As long as you understand that when we leave this room, or any room, I’m in charge. You look to me. You learn from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it, Risina.”
“I know you do. And I answered you that I understand.”
She sleeps peacefully, as though this is just another night in the fishing village. Maybe she’s going to be okay in this world. Maybe she’ll learn quickly and take direction and thrive. Maybe if I keep telling myself that over and over, I’ll believe it.
Chicago is warm but stale, like a mausoleum releasing hundreds of years of trapped air after the front stone is rolled away. It must be the exhaust from the traffic in the city or the wind off the lake, or maybe the smell is just in my head. My temples throb like someone is tapping my head with a hammer.
Risina sits next to me in the rental sedan-a dark blue economy car-staring out the window, smiling absently.
I let her come. She insisted, but the decision was, is, mine. I could have blown off Smoke, protested I was out, truly out, that Archie’s problems were Archie’s problems, taken Risina and fled to another isolated country, but the truth is… I didn’t want to. I’m like Eve staring at the picked apple, but that’s not quite the right metaphor. I’ve already tasted the apple and instead of facing banishment, I’ve been offered passage back into Eden, or into my definition of paradise anyway. But at what price? There is always a price.
“I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to protest or argue or answer. Just nod your head that you agree when I finish.”
She waits, and I can feel her eyes.
“This is my decision to have you with me. To teach you what I do. To bring you into this world. Okay? I take responsibility for it. I own it.”
She waits until I turn my head her way before she nods. Whether or not she agrees with me, I think I see understanding in her eyes. Regardless, I had to say it.
I’ve never had a charge before, and I want it defined and out in the open, as much for me as for her. I have to teach her, protect her, and lead her all at once, and I will not take these obligations lightly.
Straight from the airport, Smoke leads us to Archie’s apartment. I check the side-view mirrors, looking for patterns in the traffic behind us, but I don’t think anyone knows about our arrival. If the plan of the kidnappers was to tail Smoke and strike as soon as he found me, then they’ve done a lousy job. There’s no tail from what I can see, and I didn’t clock anyone back at the bookstore or restaurant before we left our hiding spot.
I’ve been inside Archie’s building a couple of times before, once after killing a couple of his rival fences, and another time after I was shot in the ribs in a Chicago Public Library. Grant hired a private surgeon to stitch me up, and his sister Ruby took care of me until I got back on my feet. That was years ago, before I quit and before Ruby took a bullet to the face and died in front of a church in Siena as I stood next to her.
The apartment is as I remember it and as Smoke described. There’s dried blood in the bedroom, the color of rust, and several pieces of furniture-a lamp, a nightstand-are overturned.
“I didn’t touch nothing,” Smoke says. “This is just as I found it.”
I scan the room, then zero in on a chest of drawers and put my finger in a smooth hole.
“Shit. Is that a bullet hole? I didn’t even see that.” He hits the word “even” to make sure I hear the truth in his voice.
“Can you help me move this?”
The back of the chest and the wall behind it have the same hole. Risina watches, fascinated.
“You got a little knife on you?” I say to Smoke.
He immediately shakes his head, but then thinks. “Hold on a second …”
He scampers back to the kitchen and Risina smiles and nods, rocking forward on her toes. “I’m impressed.”
“In this job, you have to look at a scene of violence, the aftermath, and read it like a book. I want you to try to visualize what happened in this room. On your own, no help from me.”
I hear Smoke rummaging around in kitchen drawers, but I focus on Risina. Her eyes trace the room, drinking it in, and I can see her gears turning.
“I don’t know. There was a fight, and someone was shot.”
“Not shot. I don’t think so. We’d see a different blood pattern on the floor, on the walls. When someone takes a bullet, a part of his insides usually comes out. So you’d see some other matter besides blood.”
“Then what do you think? He was stabbed?”
Before I can answer, Smoke returns holding a small kitchen knife, a screwdriver, and a letter opener, presenting all three items like a kid excited to please his teacher.
“The opener,” I say. A few minutes later and I fish the bullet out of the wall, then toss it to Risina. “That’s a. 22 slug. Look at the size of it and try to commit it to memory. It’s a low caliber round out of a small gun. An assassin’s weapon. I’ll get ahold of some other calibers so you can compare them.”
I turn to Smoke. “Archie have a. 22?”
“Yeah.”
“He keep it under the mattress?”
“Yeah.”
I lift it up, but the gun isn’t there.
“Well, he got one shot off before they fought over the pistol. I’m saying ‘they’ ’cause I’m guessing it was at least two guys.”
“Why?”
“Well, I could be wrong, but I think one held him up while the other one went to work on his face. That’s why you have the blood here, in a circle, after they broke his nose and most likely knocked him out. They held him up while his head hung. It’s hard to hold an unconscious guy still, and his head lolled a bit. That accounts for why there is so much blood on the floor. A stab wound would pour straight down and soak the victim’s clothes. A broken nose? That’s a gusher, and if they’re holding him upright, it’s just going to get everywhere.”
It’s Smoke’s turn to ask a question. “Why would they do that?”
I shrug. “They wanted information on me and the muscle went too far? They wanted to beat on him for putting up a fight, pulling a gun? Who knows? But they were careful not to step in the blood, which means the fist work happened after the initial fight. Anyway, none of this matters all that much until we figure out who’s holding Archie and why they want me.”
Risina turns the bullet over in her fingers and holds it up close to her eye like a jeweler examining a diamond. “But we know now it was more than one guy.”
“We know it was more than one guy here in the room. But maybe they were only hired muscle… not necessarily the guy looking for me. Either way, the person who wanted Archie snuck two or more guys into this place, which is no easy feat, I know from experience, and got them out of the building while transporting an unconscious resident.”
“They’re professionals. Like you.”
I nod and chew my lip. I had come to that conclusion within five seconds of entering the room, but I wanted Risina to arrive at it on her own.
“So what now?”
“Now we bang on a door.”
Bo Willis is a big man, not quite forty, who looks like his monthly trip to the pharmacy includes a permanent prescription for Lipitor. He was a Chicago cop for twelve years but quit when he didn’t make detective the second year in a row. Being a cop means taking a lot of ribbing from your fellow officers, and I’m sure he received his fair share after failing his detective exams or getting passed over. Bo joined a private security firm, the kind that requires short-sleeve blue uniforms and patches with names on them. He was content to punch the clock and collect his sixty-five a year, though he did it with a scowl on his face. His first couple of years he spent on a bench at an airport warehouse. The last three, he held down an Aero chair behind a security console in Archibald Grant’s building.
We didn’t have to knock on his door; Bo eats breakfast each morning at a place called Willard’s Diner, occupying a booth near the front where he can spread out his newspaper. He looks up for a moment when Risina walks by, and follows her with his eyes until she passes. I want her to hear my conversation with the security guard, but I make a mental note that I’m going to have to talk to her about her appearance. In a business where invisibility is a weapon, I can’t afford to have Risina turning heads by simply walking into the room.