“You should invest in some new cards,” she said. “Sometimes a bad first impression can be a last impression.”
I smiled and nodded.
“You say this young man was not from the neighborhood,” Reverend Thompson said, leaning back again authoritatively.
“No, he actually lived in Bronzeville.”
“Yet they found him all the way over here on South Wallace underneath the tracks?”
I nodded. “The murder most likely took place somewhere else, and whoever killed him dumped his body down the street from here.”
“Gang?”
“He didn’t belong to any. Life started out tough for him, but he got himself together, got accepted into DePaul, and graduated with honors.”
“Dear God,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Just no respect for life, and none in death either. These poor children need such guidance, precious Lord.” For a minute I thought she was going to break out in sermon. Instead, she said, “I want to know more about this young man.”
I told her as much as I knew, purposely leaving out the part about his having a pregnant white girlfriend. Racial politics for this older generation could best be described as tricky. I needed her sympathy to keep her cooperative.
“I noticed that you have two cameras outside.”
“Four, actually,” she said. “We had an incident here a few years back, and Bishop thought it best we invest in surveillance. We have two facing Seventieth, one that covers both Union and the north side of the building, and one overlooking the parking lot along Emerald.”
“I was hoping that I might get a chance to look at some of your footage from those cameras. More specifically the cameras facing Seventieth.”
“You said you didn’t think the young man was killed here,” she said.
“He wasn’t, but someone got his body here, and they didn’t carry it. I’m hoping there might be some footage of the vehicle that brought him here. Maybe I’ll be able to grab a tag or a description of the car.”
She folded her arms around her chest and considered my words. At that moment she looked more like a judge considering a lawyer’s argument during a sidebar.
“What about the police cameras?” she finally said. “Surely, with the drug activity in this neighborhood, they must have ample eyes in the sky.”
“They do, but not on this street. All of their PODs are on Seventy-First and Sixty-Ninth Streets. I’ve seen their footage. It wasn’t enough.”
“We’ve been asking the city to do something about that no-good alley for years,” she said. “Vacant property becomes a magnet for nefarious activity. The alderman is more interested in bringing a fancy grocery store to the ward that our people can’t afford than he is about improving our safety.”
“North Side or South Side, a politician is still a politician,” I said.
“Amen,” she said in her booming voice. “Especially here in Chicago. And you’re sure this has nothing to do with gangs? I don’t want to get us involved in something bigger than we can handle. The church isn’t what it used to be for many of our youth. They’d just as soon rob a Sunday service as they would a liquor store over on Halsted.”
“There won’t be any blowback,” I assured her. “The opposing gangs have already agreed that this has nothing to do with them, and I give you my word, I’ll be very discreet about my video source.”
She nodded softly, then called out to the church secretary, who quickly appeared in the doorway.
“When is Rayshawn in again?” Reverend Thompson asked.
“Not until Tuesday morning,” the secretary said. “He started back up taking classes at Kennedy-King.”
“Rayshawn runs our AV department,” Reverend Thompson said to me. “He’s the only one who knows about the cameras and computers. Come back around ten on Tuesday, and I’ll make sure he’s available to help you.”
“I wish I had that kind of time,” I said, trying not to be pushy. “As you can imagine, this is extremely urgent information. Any way to get him here sooner?”
Reverend Thompson weighed my words for a second, then turned to the secretary. “Ask him to come in tomorrow morning before he goes to class.”
39
ICE’S ESCALADE SAT ILLEGALLY parked in a loading zone in front of my office building. The back door opened as I turned the corner. I got in without fanfare. I sat behind the driver, and his football team squeezed into the rest of the seats except the one kindly left open for me. Ice was well appointed in a burgundy three-piece suit and matching alligator shoes.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said. “People will start talking.”
“That’s what you need to be doing,” Ice said. “I ain’t got no answers about Chopper, and it’s been damn near three weeks.”
“The answers I’ve gotten so far aren’t gonna make you happy.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I explained most of what I had learned, leaving out JuJu and anything else that might tempt him to take matters into his own hands.
“That rich woman paying you all that money, and that’s all you got?” he finally said.
“Technically, she’s not paying me anything, because I don’t work for her anymore. The family wants to handle this privately.”
“Ain’t that why they hired a private investigator?”
“My words exactly.”
“Shit don’t seem right,” he said, looking out the window. Ironically, a corner of Gerrigan’s office building was visible through the sliver of windshield between the two mounds of beef sitting in the front seat. “These white people hire you to find their missing daughter. I honor your request like a gentleman to talk to him, and two days later they find his body in some alley in Englewood.”
I continued to look at the Gerrigan building. Silence sometimes had its place.
Ice continued. “Now the white people who hired you turn around and fire you, presumably because they don’t need or want
