“He’ll do it,” the gang leader said.
“I believe you.”
Ray Ray touched the kid at the shoulder. He melted away.
“You got two minutes,” Ray Ray said. “Tell me what you doin’ here.”
I nodded to a door Ray Ray’s crew had discovered at the very back of the basement. “Does that lead to another room?”
Ray Ray shook his head. “Tunnel. Probably hooked up with the Korean’s safe houses.”
“So Lee was bringing in your dope?”
“You got one minute.”
The cellar was filled with flat brown boxes, stacked to the ceiling and shoved against a wall. I gestured to one of them. “What’s in the boxes?”
There was movement behind me, but I kept my eyes on Ray Ray.
“I’m guessing Lee was getting his product from a cop,” I said.
The lift of an eyebrow told me I’d bought myself another minute.
“How you figure that?” Ray Ray said.
“The kilo you found upstairs. Still had a scrap of orange on it. Evidence sticker used by Chicago PD. Someone lifts it out of the locker. Brings it to Lee. He sells it to you.”
Ray Ray nodded. “Probably something like that.”
“And today the Korean was getting cut out. Except someone beat you to it.”
“Maybe you?”
I shook my head. “You know I used to be a cop. Not sure how, but you know. So you figure I came down here to hijack the dope. Maybe steal it back for the cops who sold it to you in the first place.”
“My man over there.” Ray Ray motioned with my gun to the lean one with the shaved scalp. He held an iron shovel in his hands. “Jace getting ready to dig a hole in that tunnel. Dig it special for you.”
“Why would I shoot a man, steal his shipment of cocaine, then wait for you guys to show up?”
“People do stupid shit every day.”
“If you thought I took the dope, I’d already be dead.”
There was a low groan as a furnace kicked on somewhere.
“How do you know me, Ray?”
He thought about that, then waved a hand. Jace went into the tunnel and began to dig. Ray Ray nodded toward the stairs. The other three drifted up until they disappeared. We were alone.
“Nineteen ninety-eight,” Ray Ray said, studying a long, winding crack in Lee’s basement floor. “I was just a kid. Seen you at the Lots.”
“I drove by there on the way in. Someone’s turned them into condos.”
“I’m talkin’ ’bout back in the day.”
I knew what Ray Ray was talking about. I’d gotten the tip in April of ’98, just as the weather was starting to soften. I showed up with a forensic team and some shovels. We taped off the Lots and began to dig. I uncovered the first body under a pile of black and green plastic bags. I didn’t know her, but her lips were peeled back to the gum line and turned up in a permanent rictus. We dug some more and found a second body, then a third. There were nine in all-women, some strangled, most beaten to death with what the coroner guessed was either a sharp- bladed shovel or an ax.
“Hot for April that year,” Ray Ray said, his voice approaching the past with the respect it deserved. “First time I really smelled dead people.” A pause. “Lot of reporters. Watched you talk to ’em.”
We met the press every afternoon at three in a parking lot owned by a funeral home. I picked three o’clock because it was the warmest time of the day, the funeral lot because it was downwind from the dig. Ten minutes into the Q and A, the TV guys would wrap things up, hauling their cameras into the shade and watching from a distance that smelled a lot better. The print reporters were tougher. A couple would usually stick it out, but that was okay. No one gave a shit about print. It’s the pictures cops worry about.
“You were good, Kelly. Treated the thing with respect.”
I remembered that first day most of all. We had pulled out two bodies and tried to cordon off the area with a couple of squad cars. First the locals came, rubbernecking. Then the media. Pretty soon there were Mexicans, some on foot, others on bikes, selling corn dogs and soda out of blue and red coolers. Everyone crowded close, eager for a peek, treating the carnage like an early summer street festival. Back then, that sort of thing bothered me.
“You telling me that’s why I’m alive?” I said.
“My moms was one of the bodies they dug out of there. So yeah, I guess it is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. She was nothing but a crack ho.” Ray Ray got up from his chair and walked. Ten feet one direction. Ten feet back. “She was one you never identified.” He stopped by my shoulder so I could feel the weight.
“There were three of them,” I said.
“That’s right.” Walking again. Boots cracking on the hard floor. “Three hookers no one put a name to. But I knew it was my moms. She been off the street a week and a half. Besides, I got a look at her dress when they pulled her up.”
Somewhere, the shoveling stopped.
“You shouldn’t have seen that,” I said.
Ray Ray crouched, face level with mine, voice carrying the stain of a child’s memory. “Don’t tell me what I shouldn’t have seen.” Up and walking some more. “Not sure where they buried her. But I know the man that killed her.”
I had worked the case the entire summer and into the fall. Never got a solid lead.
“Name in the hood was Creeper. Paid five dollars for a blow job and cracked ’em in the back of the head while they was bobbin’. Don’t know how he got ’em into the dump without anyone seeing.” Ray Ray snapped his fingers. “I always figured he took ’em in the bedsheets.”
“You sure it was him?”
The gang leader sat down again. “Tracked him to his house one night. Fucking teardown shack maybe two miles from here. Waited until he was gone, then I busted in. Found four more girls in the cellar. Dead a long motherfucking time. So I waited for him to come home. Tied him to a chair and skinned his face with a kitchen knife. Then I stabbed him in the throat and buried him with the girls. Lit the place up and left. Firemen never figured a goddamn thing. Fourteen years old and my cherry was popped. But good.”
“I could’ve taken care of it,” I said.
“You would’ve skinned him for me?”
“No.”
“All right, then. People like to take care of their own shit. You Irish, right?”
I nodded.
“IRA do the same thing. Belfast. Falls Road. Police their own. Keep the fucking English cops out.”
Ray Ray thought he saw what he wanted in my face and grinned. “You look surprised. Dumb gangbanger nigger talking ’bout something he should know nuthin’ about. But that’s the rest of the story, ain’t it?
“Fours took me in after I killed Creeper. Gave me a family. Money. Respect. Then they found out I was smart.”
Ray Ray tilted back in his chair, relaxed now that the part about his mom was out of the way. “Not just a little smart, either. BA in economics, with honors. Two years ago, MBA from Kellogg.”
“Fours paid for your education?”
“Every dime.”
“And now you run their business-selling rock where you grew up. To kids.”
“You don’t like that?”
“Do you?”
“Fours been putting young ’uns through college for years. Shit, I’m paying for three niggers out of my own pocket right now. Tell ’em when they go in. Don’t flunk out. Don’t fuck up. And if you don’t want to go into the business when you graduate, we cool.”
“How many come back?”
