The old man rubbed one ancient hand over the other. “Let’s make it clean between us. You help me. I give you a picture of the man you’re looking for.”
I sat up. “A picture?”
DeLuca nodded.
“What’s it gonna cost?” Rodriguez said.
“Another shipment out of the police lockup. Johnny will tell you how much. Delivered into the quarantine zone. We can’t get in there until fuck knows when. And no one has any product.”
“Business goes on,” I said.
“Addicts gotta have their fix.” DeLuca tapped Rodriguez on the forearm. “You get the product. Deliver it to the West Side. And… ” DeLuca held up a misshapen digit. “Give us a one-year grace period to sell in K Town. No more undercover stings. No more busts.”
“Can’t do it,” Rodriguez said.
“Sure you can, Detective. First of all, we’re only gonna sell to niggers and addicts, two groups of people your bosses wish were fucking dead anyway. Second, you’ve been looking the other way across half the city as it is. Like I said, no schoolkids, no rich suburban fucks getting their blow off the corner. None of that shit. Just feeding dope into the sewer.”
“How do we know your information is any good?” I said.
“You don’t like what we have, we don’t do business together.” DeLuca drained his cup and stretched. “I’m gonna go outside and take a walk. You call your bosses. Let me know if I can help make Kelly here a hero.”
Footsteps followed him back into the darkness. A door opened somewhere, a rectangle of light flashing for a moment, and then we were alone. Rodriguez swore softly under his breath.
“Can’t do this, Kelly.”
“How many dead so far on the West Side, Vince?”
“They haven’t given us a number.”
“I was down at Cook County Hospital. They got ’em stacked up in the hallways. Bringing in refrigerated vans to store all the bodies until they can burn ’em.”
Rodriguez glanced at his girlfriend, who was smoking a cigarette and staring at the light drifting overhead.
I dug out my cell and slid it across the table. “I’ll take the drugs in.”
“And then we all look the other way for a year?” Rodriguez said.
Rita leaned in. “DeLuca’s right. Gangs have had carte blanche to sell down there forever. So what’s the difference?”
“The difference is I’m a cop, Rita.”
“Your brothers in blue are the ones providing the dope, for Chrissakes.” She stood, her chair scraping violently along the cement floor. “These are lives we’re talking about, Vince. Thousands of people, maybe, piled up dead. And you’re gonna sit by and watch? For what? The honor of the badge? Please. Swallow your pride and help Michael if you can.”
Rita walked off. Rodriguez and I watched her lit cigarette pace back and forth in the darkness.
“You’re a real pain in my ass, Kelly.”
“She’s right and you know it.”
Rodriguez sighed. “Motherfucker.” Then he picked up my cell and dialed.
CHAPTER 48
We were back around the table, me, Rita, and Vinny DeLuca, drinking coffee and trying not to look at one another. Rodriguez had been on and off the phone for an hour, first with his boss, then the mayor, explaining why the city needed to become a dope dealer. It wasn’t a pretty conversation. It wasn’t supposed to be. But it worked.
“I got you a final shipment,” Rodriguez said, returning to the table, “and we look the other way for six months. But the cops involved go down. And the pipeline into our evidence room is finished.”
“So we’re left to find a new supplier?” DeLuca said with a grimace.
“Only way this happens.”
The crime boss tugged at his lower lip and tried hard not to chuckle. Up until now, they’d paid bent cops for their dope. Now the city was going to give it to them for free. And protect them. Nice deal if you could get it.
“Who will bring the product into the quarantine zone?” DeLuca said.
“I will,” I said. “I’ve been down there once. Can get in and out without a problem.”
“You’re not afraid of this fucking virus or whatever it is?”
“All due respect, that’s not your problem. I’ll get the stuff wherever it needs to be. Now if we have a deal, I’d like to see what we just bought.”
DeLuca curled a finger. Johnny Apple came forward and slid into an empty chair.
“My boys got to the Korean’s shop around three on the day Lee got shot,” Apple said. “Waiting for the cops to show up with the stash.”
“But they’d already made the drop,” I said.
“The Korean misinformed us about the timing,” Apple said with a wince and threw a photo on the table. “An hour or two before Kelly showed, this guy came out of the Korean’s alley.”
I looked at the picture. The man was tall, wearing a long leather coat. He had a black duffel bag with gold trim slung over his shoulder.
“My boys didn’t know whether he’d been in the store,” Apple said. “And didn’t know the Korean was already dead.”
I pointed at the bag in the photo. “You think that’s your shipment?”
“What the fuck do you think?” DeLuca said, and I feared for whoever had made the decision to let the man in the picture walk.
“And you don’t know him?” I said.
“You think we’d be talking to you if we did?”
I slid the photo over to Rodriguez.
“That’s our bag of dope,” the detective said.
“What about the guy?”
Rodriguez shook his head.
“Rita?”
She took a look. “Never saw him.”
I tapped the smudge of a face on the photo. “So this guy pops up out of nowhere. Walks into the Korean’s store. And hijacks your product.”
Johnny Apple nodded, leaving unsaid that two of his men had sat across the street and watched it happen.
“We still don’t know for sure this guy’s involved with the body bags,” Rita said.
“There’s more.” Johnny pulled out two more photos-blowups of the same man walking out of the West Side alley.
“This one here,” Johnny said. “When we blew it up, we saw something hanging from the guy’s coat pocket.”
“Looks like a piece of leather,” Rita said.
“It’s the binding from a gas mask,” I said. “What’s in the other picture?”
“His jacket slipped open right as he stepped off the curb,” Johnny said and pointed. “You can see the outline of a rifle he’s got tucked under there. Looks like it’s hanging from a strap, maybe.”
The three of us pored over the photos. Vinny DeLuca put it together for us.
“The man was prepared when he went into Lee’s store. He had a mask with him, and a rifle.”
“So he knew there’d been a release,” I said.
“Hours before it was announced to the public,” Rita said.
