“What do you think those guys wanted?” she said. Even the way she held her glass of wine spiked my testosterone level.
“Mechanic said they were supposed to send me a strong message to leave the Gerrigans alone. They’ve already fired me, and they want the entire case to basically disappear. I have a strong hunch they know what happened to Chopper, and they finally figured out what happened to Tinsley and where she’s been hiding. They’ve been telling me half truths the entire time, and sometimes outright lies. I guess since I didn’t take Violet’s or Burke’s warning, they decided to send a third one I couldn’t ignore.”
“Will you listen this time?” she asked.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“You think that’s smart? Randolph Gerrigan owns half this city by himself and his friends own the other half.”
“I don’t look at it as being smart or not. I look at it as being what’s right and who I am. Chopper McNair is in the ground, probably for no fault of his own other than he fell in love with a girl whose family couldn’t come to terms with the color of his skin. His unborn twins are gone for probably the same reason.”
“You’re angry.”
“Not really. More like determined. I know it sounds old fashioned, but I really have this thing for justice. It starts with a nagging, then it just grows from there.”
“Where is it right now?”
“A full-blown ache that I can’t shake loose.”
“What are you gonna do if you find out what happened?”
“When I find out what happened, I’m gonna make sure Chopper gets justice. Truth will not be denied.”
“You could’ve done a lot with a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Like build a ten-car garage and try to impress you?”
“Or buy me diamonds and Chanel bags.”
“Then you’d have to be with me forever.”
“There could be a lot worse options.”
The waiters brought our appetizers with great flourish. She had roasted foie gras that looked like something you’d expect to be served at Versailles. I had the Nueske triple-cut bacon, thick as a leather sheath, the fat still sizzling.
“The irony of it all,” I said, looking over the water and across Wacker Drive. Gerrigan’s corner office suite was just visible from where we sat. “He sits up there forty floors in the sky like he’s ruling a kingdom, thinking that he’s untouchable. Backroom meetings, a private line to the mayor, favors exchanged between cronies at the country club. The average guy out here who’s just trying to make ends meet really has no idea how badly the cards are stacked against him.”
“All of them act so damn entitled,” Carolina said. “The system creates men like Gerrigan. It always has. I don’t see it changing anytime soon.”
Men like Randolph Gerrigan defined how the political machine in Chicago operated. Corruption was undeniably the engine that drove how the city did business, whether it was an alderman getting kickbacks for allowing a zoning change or the water reclamation commissioner accepting bribes in McDonald’s bags stuffed with cash. To do business in this city meant you either had to be corrupt or you had to turn your head the other way when you saw corruption.
One waiter cleared our plates; the other brought our entrées. Carolina faced a delectable Chilean sea bass perfectly cooked in a miso glaze, yuzu cream sauce, and spinach. I went with the filet cooked medium with truffle scalloped potatoes and asparagus. I had finished my second glass of wine and opted for a tall glass of lemonade. I watched as Carolina quartered the fish, then sliced it further into eighths.
“Ice wants blood,” I said. “And there’s a part of me that feels like feeding Gerrigan to him, see who comes out standing.”
“And the other part?”
“I don’t want Ice to interfere with me finding out what happened to Tinsley and how she fits into all this.”
“What if she’s dead too?”
“She’s not,” I said. “But I’ll go wherever the truth takes me.”
“I brought you something,” she said, making sure her nibble of sea bass had disappeared before she spoke. She opened her tiny sequined handbag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “You didn’t ask me to do this, but I thought it might help,” she said, handing it to me.
I polished off the last piece of bacon, wiped my hands, then studied the paper. A neatly organized three-column table had been divided into time stamp, location, and activity.
“When you mentioned the hole in your timeline, I took it upon myself to do the tower dumps on Chopper’s cell phone,” she said.
“A little enterprising detecting.” I smiled.
“Learning at the knee.” She winked.
I studied the table, matching it up with what I recalled about the CDRs from Tinsley’s phone. Everything made sense except for one entry. Two nights before Chopper’s body was found, his last hit was on the Hyde Park cell tower.
“What do you think?” Carolina asked.
“His movements don’t make sense to me,” I said, still studying the chart. “Tinsley called him seven days after she never showed up at the Morgan house. They speak for thirty-three seconds. His tower had him in the South Loop. Then fifteen minutes later his phone hits the tower in Hyde Park.”
“She called him to come see her, so he went,” Carolina said.
“But where was she in Hyde Park? Where did they meet? And why were both of their phones turned off not too long after he arrived
