“I know, but you won’t.”
Robles flicked a wrist and buried his knife a half inch into the wal. He’d done his first kil ing for his country-as a Ranger with the Eighty-second Airborne in Mogadishu. Upon his return to the States his taste for blood only deepened, and trouble began to tick. The military knew something was wrong, which would have been okay if they could have turned it to their advantage. But they couldn’t. So they hit him with a general discharge. After that, he wandered up and down both coasts. Hunting, Robles liked to cal it. By his own count, he’d kil ed maybe a half dozen women before coming to Chicago. Taken a few kids along the way, as wel. Nelson put a stop to al that. He replaced common lust with calculated bloodshed and succeeded where the army had failed, harnessing the violence, molding Robles to suit his purposes. The ex-Ranger was a dangerous, if mostly wil ing, pupil. And even brought his teacher a very special gift.
“You stil got the case I gave you?” Robles said.
“Never mind about the case.”
“But you stil got it.” Robles’ gaze found the cover of the binder Nelson had been reading. It was a classified Pentagon report titled “Terror 2000.”
Robles reached for it, face lit from within. “What’re you thinking about, old man?”
Nelson pul ed the binder away. “That’s not your concern.”
“Who’s the one done the kil ing here?” Robles’ eyes chal enged, and Nelson could feel the anger simmering between them. His mind edged toward the gun in his pocket. Not now. Not yet.
“We don’t have time for this,” Nelson said.
“Tel me about the binder.”
“No.”
“It has to do with the case I gave you. With the lightbulbs.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Fuck complicated.” Robles pul ed his knife from the wal. The blade flashed between them, and Nelson drifted his hand toward the gun.
“You gonna use that thing, you better make it count,” Nelson said.
Robles looked at the knife like he’d never seen it before, then shrugged. “I get it, old man.”
“Maybe you do.”
“Dying’s not a problem.” Robles spun the knife in his hands and sank it into the wal a second time. “Just don’t let me see it coming.”
“That’s it?”
Robles pointed at the locked door. “And let me do what I want with the girl.”
“Actual y, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk about.”
The two men walked over to a window covered in sheer plastic and looked down at what remained of Cabrini-Green’s once-notorious nightlife. In a breezeway, a solitary figure huddled against a stiffening wind, waiting for someone to drive up and buy his drugs. Half a block down, a woman stamped her feet against the cold and smoked a cigarette while a second walked smal circles under a streetlight. After a while the men moved away from the window and made their plans. Then Nelson left. Robles smoked his own cigarette down and looked up at a starless sky. When he was finished, he got a length of rope, some tape, and his knife. He went over to the locked door and opened it with the key. The girl screamed, but only for a minute. After that Robles had al the time in the world. Or at least until Nelson returned.
CHAPTER 13
Evergreen Park never changes. Row after row, block after block, the brick bungalows march on, each a story and a half high, each featuring a Post-itsize backyard, each identical to the next save for the number on the front that tel s the mailman where to leave what. I parked at the corner of Albany and Ninety-fourth and walked a half block until I found the house I was looking for. The shades were pul ed tight, and there was no answer when I rang the bel. I took out a card and slipped it under the door.
I was almost back to my car when the curtain I’d been waiting for twitched next door. It’s the way things work on the Irish South Side-from the cars people drive to the newspapers they tuck under their arms; the cut of their clothes and the length of their hair; the shape of their faces, and, of course, the color of their skin. Al of it is filtered through the curtain that covers over the South Sider’s front window. Tel s people everything they need to know before they ever open their door and bid the stranger a cautious hel o.
I walked toward the house with the nervous curtain and hoped I’d passed muster. The door cracked its seal even as I reached for the buzzer. I could smel mothbal s and peppermint. A smal pink face peeked out and a pair of bright blue eyes blinked.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for your neighbor, Jim Doherty.”
The door opened another three inches to reveal a head of white hair.
“You looking for Jimmy?” the old woman said.
I nodded. “He’s an old police buddy of mine. Thought I might catch him in.”
The woman moistened her lips at the new morsel of information. I was now a cop, which helped a lot in this neighborhood.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Michael Kel y.”
The door creaked al the way open. “Peg McNabb. Come on in.”
She walked back to a yel ow couch covered in plastic. I sat in a matching yel ow chair, also covered in plastic. A TV ran WGN’s news in the corner with the sound muted. A clock ticked on one wal, and a couple of crucifixes framed a picture of JFK on the opposite wal. Underneath the picture was a smal table, with a Bible and some holy water in a glass bottle. Peg had her dinner, a sliver of gray meat, potatoes, and peas, on a metal tray in front of her.
“He’s not home,” she said and gummed down a mouthful of spuds.
“Any idea when he might be back?”
“Not sure.” Peg cut off a smal piece of meat and chewed it up in quick bites. Then she raised her head and howled, “Denny.”
Her voice summoned forth two creatures from the darkness beyond the hal way. The first was an old man, long and alabaster white, wearing a blue T-shirt and red pajama bottoms. He had a toothpick in his mouth, thick dark glasses perched on his nose, and a can of Old Style hanging loose in one hand. The second figure was an echo of the first, right down to the plastic glasses and beer, except he was thirty years younger.
“This is Denny and Denny Jr.,” Peg said. “Junior’s just visiting.”
I nodded at the pair of them. Life sometimes moved in a closed and curious circle on the South Side.
“He’s looking for Jim.” Peg’s duty done, she turned up the volume on the TV. Tom Skil ing was tel ing us it was stil warm for this time of year, but probably going to get colder. Peg grumbled at Tom under her breath. Her husband took a seat on the couch. Her son wandered back to the kitchen and, presumably, dinner.
“You looking for Jimmy?” Denny McNabb wrinkled his already wrinkled forehead.
“He’s an old cop buddy of mine,” I said.
“Chicago cop?”
“Yeah. I was on the force with Jim just before he retired.”
“I was gonna say, you’re kind of young to have been working with old Jim.”
Denny grinned at his own cleverness and looked over to his wife for a bit of silent applause. Peg ignored him, as the five-day forecast was on. The old man found some solace in his can of beer and returned to our conversation.
“Jimmy comes and goes. We always say he’s retired, but you’d never know it. On the go, al the time.”
I nodded. “Any idea when he might be back in town?”
“I didn’t say he was out of town.”
“Is he in town?”
“Saw him this morning, didn’t we?” Peg bobbed her head in confirmation, and Denny Sr. continued, “He
