The voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel. Marcus sneaked a peek. The man was tall. White. He wore a long brown leather coat, carried a rifle, and had a black mask covering part of his face. From where he sat, Marcus thought the man couldn’t see him. Until the man brought the rifle up to his shoulder and pulled back on the trigger.
CHAPTER 16
A hard wind whipped over the West Side, scouring the streets and covering everything else in a fine layer of grit. A cloudburst of cold rain followed, turning the grit to mud and sending people into doorways and bus shelters until the squall blew itself out. I flicked on my wipers, cruised past the United Center, and kept going.
This stretch of the West Side had been my beat for almost two years. As I drove, the memories tiptoed in. A sexual assault here. A couple of bodies over there. A rape and murder made to look like a house fire two doors down from that. In Chicago, the West Side was known as the worst side, and there was a reason. Lately, however, things had begun to change.
I pulled up to a stoplight just gone red. Kitty-corner was a condo development with units starting at three hundred K. The building was brand-new and half empty. It sat on a piece of ground that had once served as the neighborhood’s de facto garbage dump. In 1998, it was known simply as the Lots. My thoughts ran back to the spring of that year and the bodies I’d found there. Nine dead faces. Nine soft bags of flesh.
A car beeped, and I jumped. The light had turned green. I shook off the past and hit the gas. Western Avenue flashed by. Then California. And Kedzie. The whitewash of gentrification began to blister and peel, and the old life reemerged. Currency exchanges fought for storefront space with Mexican diners that served menudo on weekends. A couple dozen whole chickens turned on a spit in the window of Harold’s Chicken Shack. A man carrying a thirty-pack of Keystone Light stopped in front of the shack and watched the birds turn. After a while he sat on a bench, popped a beer, and had a talk with himself. All of that, however, was a tangled sideshow to the main piece of business in this part of town-the cash-and-carry drug trade.
Kids in oversize coats and baggy jeans hung their shingles on every corner, touting rock and blow to customers in cars, hustling orders and giving directions to pickup points for product. Their bosses, maybe a year older, sat on stoops and huddled in doorways-keeping track of inventory, counting cash, and watching their corners. Another level up, captains drove SUVs, whispered into cell phones, and cruised the territory. It went on that way for a good thirty blocks-a business that generated tens of millions of dollars a year, launched more than a few political careers, and probably helped to finance the half-empty condo developments rising up a mile or so due east.
Such is the circle of life on the West Side. NPR loved talking about it from a distance, which was where NPR did its best work. I didn’t have that luxury. So I slipped my gun from my holster and put it on the seat beside me. Six blocks later, I found the address I was looking for. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t a Korean grocery store. I got out of my car and read the handwritten sign stuck in the front window.
PARK PLACE FINE FOODS OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, UNTIL IT GETS DARK JAE LEE, PROPRIETOR
It was just past six. The day was almost gone, and the place looked deserted. There were iron bars set in concrete over the front windows, a sliding steel gate covering the door, and probably a couple of Dobermans inside guarding the twenty-two dollars and whatever else Jae Lee kept in his till. I walked down an alley that ran alongside the building. Lee was out of either money or common sense, because the side door to his place was covered by nothing more than thin steel mesh. I peeked inside and saw a display of Bacardi rum next to a lottery machine.
At the back of the alley sat a lopsided truck with the words SILVER LINE TRUCKING printed on the side. I took another look up and down the alley. Nothing but cracked blacktop and blank brick walls. I walked around the truck. The rear door was unlocked, so I rolled it up. The inside was empty.
I sat down on the curb and pulled out the piece of paper Rita Alvarez had given me. On it was Lee’s name, the address, and the words “Silver Line Trucking.” It was all I could get out of the reporter, and it didn’t seem like half enough. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and went back to the store for another look through the glass. This time I noticed a foot sticking out from behind a counter. I took out my gun and put a shoulder to the door.
The man I guessed to be Jae Lee lay on his stomach, with at least two bullets in the back of his head. Out of habit, I squatted and felt for a pulse. The skin was still warm. Lee hadn’t been dead long.
The store was tiny to the point of claustrophobic, especially with a dead body in it. There was an interior door to the right, partially open, and a light beyond. I eased the door open a little farther with my foot and stared down a flight of stairs. That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone.
“What you doin’, five-oh?”
Whoever he was, he moved like smoke, a presence more felt than seen in electric light from the alley. The gun was a big one, but he carried it easily, casually, finger comfortable around the trigger, muzzle tickling my ear.
A second shadow slipped in from the street. His body was stripped to bone and muscle, his skull, shaven. All in all, he looked like a black ball-peen hammer.
“Where’s your badge?” the shooter said.
I couldn’t see his face yet, but could hear my death in his voice. I figured I had twenty seconds before anticipation became fact.
“No badge,” I said.
The shooter eased into a shaft of light. His eyes traveled to the dead man on the floor.
“You pop the Korean?”
I shook my head. “Check my gun.”
The shooter nodded to his pal, who took my gun and pack.
“You a cop,” the shooter said.
“Used to be a cop.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kelly. Michael Kelly.”
“Ray Ray.” The second man had dug around the Korean’s body and come up with a package of dope. Looked like a kilo bag. The man named Ray Ray took it in one hand and tested its weight.
“What you know about that, Michael Kelly?”
“Nothing.”
Ray Ray’s eyes floated over to the basement door, still ajar. “Why you here?”
“Got nothing to do with a bag of dope.”
Ray Ray pressed the gun to my temple. I could feel the other behind me and knew this might be the killing moment. Then Ray Ray motioned to the open door.
“Let’s go downstairs.”
CHAPTER 17
They sat me in a chair in the middle of the room. Ray Ray sat across from me. Three more had joined us. All kids. The first was heavy lidded, with a long mane of dreadlocks held together by a green rubber band and decorated with white beads. Another was tall, thin, and tentative. The third was the youngest. He was wrapped in a Sox hoodie and carried a gun half the length of his leg tucked into his belt.
“Marcus.” Ray Ray turned his head, and the kid in the hoodie came down off the stairs.
“You want to shoot him for me?”
The piece looked like a howitzer in Marcus’s hand. He wrapped a skinny brown finger around the trigger. I could read the DNA of a killer in his smile.
“How old is he?” I said.
“Thirteen.”
I let the baker’s dozen hang in the air between us. Ray Ray studied my face.
