could use your help.”
Roger, increasingly ill at ease, began, “I don’t—”
I held up a traffic-cop palm. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, in the year since Mike was killed. And one thing that’s occurred to me? Maybe you and Mike left the PD at the same time for more reasons than just wanting to enter the world of small business.”
Roger’s mouth twitched something that was neither smile nor frown as he returned his attention to his paperwork. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady.”
“What were you and Mike working on...mister? That you couldn’t work on from inside the department?”
He looked up, dropped the paperwork onto his desk with a sigh. He seemed about to speak, then stopped to think a moment. And sighed again, and loosened his collar with a forefinger.
I said, “What are you, Roger Freemont or Rodney Dangerfield? Spit it out.”
His expression was pained. “Look...Ms. Tree. I promised Mike I’d...that I wouldn’t....” Then that expression changed, melted into something I’d never seen on that normally sour puss: he seemed torn up.
“
“I
I sat forward. “That you wouldn’t endanger me? Well, Mike’s dead, Roger—and
Roger began to speak, and a coughing sound came out, or seemed to come out of him; only it wasn’t a human cough, rather a mechanical one, following by the sharp sound of breaking glass.
I straightened to see the frozen, open-mouthed Roger—a thick trail of blood oozing from an exit wound near his heart, spreading on his white shirt—try once again to speak, and fail.
Then he flopped unconscious onto his paperwork, breathing slow, loud, ragged.
Already on my feet, I got back behind his desk and ripped away the blinds to reveal the spider-webbed bullet hole in the window, a fire escape yawning beyond.
I touched Roger’s shoulder and said, “Hang in, Roge,” then shoved open the window and, getting the nine millimeter out of my purse, climbed out onto the iron grillwork.
On the metal landing, gun in one hand, cell phone in the other, I looked down as I told the 911 dispatcher, “Shooting at Axminster Building on Van Buren, Suite 714....” Then looked up and saw a skinny, dark-haired male figure in a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans and white running shoes scrambling up the fire escape, a silenced automatic in one latex-gloved hand.
“Freemont Investigations,” I told the dispatcher. “Sucking chest wound—I don’t know, just fucking
I slipped the cell in my trenchcoat pocket and aimed the nine mil skyward, but the guy had hopped up and onto the roof, out of sight.
But not out of mind—up I went, like Sheena of the Jungle on a goddamned tree, flying up six stories of fire escape, and then I was climbing onto the rooftop only to see Roger’s assassin, dark hair standing up in the wind and wiggling, as he ran hard and fast...
...
I took pursuit, but the bastard had a real lead on me. And when I got to the edge of the rooftop, where he’d leapt from, I stopped abruptly, looking down at my shoes—short-heeled pumps, but heels nonetheless.
“Shit,” I said, and kicked them off.
Then I backed up, breathed deep, and made a run for it.
I leapt for the next building, trenchcoat flapping, and landed on my nyloned feet, gracelessly but on them, and when I looked up to take my bearings, there the assassin was, still on the run, but glaring back at me now, aiming the silenced automatic in my direction.
I dove out of the way as several whispering bullets chewed up roofing tar around me, and I hit hard but not knocking the breath out of me.
And I was still down when I looked up to see all the way across the rooftop where the dark-haired assassin in running shoes was in the process of backing up, preparing to jump to another building.
“Fuck it,” I muttered.
And aimed the nine mil and fired.
The report was a thundercrack—even an El rumbling by couldn’t blot it out.
The bullet hit the jumper in the back, in mid-flight, and he dropped from sight, between buildings, his scream following him all the way down.
I sighed.
Got to my feet, slowly, shaking my head the same way.
“Probably won’t have much to say for himself,” I said to nobody.
As the shriek of an approaching ambulance belatedly echoed the falling man’s scream, I only hoped his target, Roger Freemont, would be luckier.
The last time I’d visited Cook County Memorial it had been to stop by the morgue to view a couple of corpses.
As pale as the unconscious Roger Freemont looked in his hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, a nearby heart monitor blipping, this trip didn’t feel all that different.
He hadn’t told me, before the bullet interrupted, but I knew. I knew that, after Mike’s death, Roger had exaggerated his already gruff exterior to honor his late friend’s wishes and pursue a sub rosa investigation, while keeping the little lady in the dark.
I leaned in at his bedside and told the impassive face, oddly vulnerable without the dark-rimmed glasses, “You
This was a room for two, but the bed next to Roger’s was empty, the dividing curtain drawn back. Patients came and went quickly on the Intensive Care floor.
I exited Roger’s room and, in the corridor right outside, found Rafe Valer and Chic Steele milling, both looking as anxious as expectant fathers, although this was the other end of that spectrum.
With Rafe’s black trenchcoat, Chic’s tan one and my dark blue, we looked like a detective convention. Maybe we were due a meeting at that.
Rafe’s eyes flew to mine as he asked, “Talk to Roger’s doctor yet, Michael?”
I nodded. “Touch and go.”
Face clenched like a fist, Chic said, “Tell me Roge isn’t in a coma.”
“He’s not.”
Both men were visibly relieved, but their heads were hanging.
I went on: “He’s sleeping, sedated. Hasn’t said anything. But he will. He will.”
Rafe offered up a humorless smirk. “For a dead guy, the hitter you popped told us a lot.”
“Oh?”
Chic picked up the thread: “Guy had definite ties to the old Muerta mob.”
I felt a spike of excitement. “Is this the link we’ve been looking for, finally?”
Chic shrugged. “Maybe.”
Chic held up a “take it easy” palm. “Ties to the Muerta family he definitely had, yes...but going back a lot of years—nothing connecting him to them since, hell, since Mike and me took Dominic Muerta out of the picture, and this new generation stepped in. Still...” His eyes went to Rafe. “...I may owe you an apology.”
“Yeah?” Rafe said.
“Maybe there
I said to both of them, “If so, then where does Dominique Muerta fit in? Like father, like daughter?”
