Last Dark Place Page 7

  Traffic wasn’t heavy, but there was traffic.

  Blue reached under his seat and came up with a pistol. He rolled down the window, looked at the guy in the pickup, showed the weapon.

  The guy in the pickup spat his cigar on the floor, hit his horn again, and shouted something.

  Blue fired.

  “Holy shit,” Comedy shouted and laughed.

  The passenger window of the pickup was down. The bullet went through the windshield, shattering glass.

  “Cold Blue. Ice Blue. Cold Blue,” said Easy Dan watching as the pickup lost control, shot further into traffic. Comedy turned to watch it through the rear window. The pickup was facing the other way now. A passing blue Buick clipped the left fender of the pickup and spun it back into an about-face.

  Blue drove.

  “Good fucking start,” said Comedy. “What now?”

  “Cruise mode,” said Blue. He had an idea of where he was heading but he didn’t want to turn it into a decision. He wanted it to pop open and be there.

  Blue put the gun back under the seat and drove.

  Hanrahan parked in front his house on Ravenswood, the house he and Maureen had bought when he became a cop, the house in which they had raised two boys, the house Maureen had walked away from when Bill had failed for about the sixth time to conquer the bottle. It had been hard for Maureen. She had been a good Catholic. Bill knew she no longer considered herself a good Catholic. She had traded a lifetime of piety for relative peace of mind and she was content with the trade. Bill didn’t blame her.

  Keys in hand, he walked up the short walkway to the three steps, stood in front of the door and inserted his key.

  Bill was sober, remarried. He had waited three years for Maureen to come back. He had kept the house glossy clean though he was seldom there except to sleep. Maureen had made a new life. Bill had kept the house clean. New vacuum cleaner, Pine-Sol, Windex, Swiffer, mops, oven cleaner. But Maureen had made a new life. Eventually, so did Bill.

  “Bill?” Iris called as he stepped in.

  “William Patrick Hanrahan, the hobbled Irish bear of song and legend,” he said.

  Iris was out of the chair and moving toward him with a smile. Bill wondered where Iris, who was almost fifty, got the smooth skin, the perfect body. Not from her father, the wizened Chinese twig. Iris’s mother had died when Iris was a child. There were no photographs of her.

  Bill took her in his arms and kissed her, a soft, gentle kiss. She pulled her head back to look at him. Her eyes were brown and deep and moist.

  “You’re on time,” she said.

  “On time,” he agreed.

  “Wonders never cease,” she said. “Hungry?”

  “Hungry,” he said.

  “Good. So am I. We either sit in the kitchen while I put something together or we go out.”

  “You working tonight?”

  “Two hours. I’ll close,” she said.

  Iris had worked full-time in her father’s small Chinese restaurant on Sheridan Road just south of Devon. The restaurant was in a motel. Now she filled in afternoons and a few nights. The rest of the time one of her younger sisters, Vicki, waited tables.

  “Meaning you want to go out,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Greek.”

  “Yes.”

  Iris was a sucker for gyros.

  “Let’s do it.”

  “I need a sweater?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to bring one.”

  She grabbed a white sweater from the rack next to the door.

  Hanrahan opened the door and found himself facing Sean O’Neil, who was reaching for the door knocker.

  “Your cell’s not on,” O’Neil said, looking at Iris in a way Hanrahan definitely did not care for. It wasn’t quite a leer, but when his eyes met Bill’s, Hanrahan sensed the unspoken words, “Nice piece of Chinese ass you picked up.”

  “I know,” said Bill.

  “Got a call a few minutes after you took off,” said O’Neil. “Nurse at Swedish Covenant raped, beaten. Our boys’ MO. Like a signed piece of work. Mrs. Hanrahan, I’m your husband’s partner, Sean O’Neil.”

  “Temporary partner,” said Hanrahan.

  Iris nodded.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the hospital. Covenant. They jumped her in the parking lot. She crawled about fifty feet to the emergency room door.”

  Bill looked at Iris with an unspoken apology.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll go help my father for an extra hour or two.”

  “Good meeting you, Mrs. H,” said O’Neil.

  Iris said nothing. Bill gave her a quick kiss and followed O’Neil out the door.

  “Your car or mine?” O’Neil asked.

  “Mine,” said Hanrahan. “I’ll drive you back here later.”

  They got into Bill’s car and O’Neil, who seemed to be in a particularly good mood, said, “Nice woman, your wife.”

  Bill drove slowly. One word out of line, one hint and he knew he would throw an elbow into O’Neil’s stomach. In one motion, Bill would throw the elbow, stop the car, reach over and open the door, and push O’Neil over while holding his shoulder so O’Neil could throw up if he had to.

  O’Neil said nothing as they drove down Wilson. The hospital was on Foster near Kedzie. One of Lieberman’s favorite hot dog stands was right near Swedish Covenant.

  “I live alone,” O’Neil finally said, looking out the window at the night neon.

  Hanrahan said nothing.

  “Wife died. Big C. No kids. No family.”

  “Sorry,” said Hanrahan.

  “Landa Carrier. Remember her?”

  The name was … “Records clerk downtown?”

  “That’s the one,” said O’Neil.

  Landa Carrier was black.

  “I didn’t know,” said Hanrahan.

  “That she was dead or that she married me?”

  “Both.”

  “Then how come …?”

  “Nothing’s simple, William,” said O’Neil. “She was the exception. There are always exceptions. Some screwing up of souls or something. She should have been born white. Her father was a black son of a bitch. Her mother … so fucking cold you could chip chunks off of her with a hammer. Your wife looks like an exception.”

  “My wife looks Chinese. Hungry?”

  O’Neil grinned.

  “Guess I am.”

  “I know a hot dog place near the hospital.”

  “I’m feeling generous, partner,” said O’Neil. “Warm poppy seed buns? Koshers?”

  Hanrahan nodded.

  “Dogs are on me,” said O’Neil. “I’m in a good mood.” Hanrahan stepped on the gas and prayed to the Virgin Mother and St. Joseph to get Lieberman back to Chicago before he lost his job and pension for killing a fellow officer.

  6

  HE WALKED. NICE SUNNY day. Slight breeze. Crows cawing somewhere but he couldn’t see them. The streets were almost empty. He was just turning into the driveway of the Fair Breeze Condos on Sheridan. A lady came out of the doorway putting on white gloves as she walked toward him with a smile. She was a friend of Wayne’s mother. Her name was Stella Armstrong.

  “Wayne,” she said.

  “Mrs. Armstrong.”

  “You visiting someone?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m here to shoot Lee Cole Carter.”

  Mrs. Armstrong thought Wayne meant he was going to take the singer’s photograph. He wasn’t carrying a camera, but they were so small nowadays that you could carry one in your pocket. Wayne was a painter, not a photographer, but maybe, Mrs. Armstrong thought, he took photographs and then went back and painted pictures from them, not that she recalled any real paintings of people Wayne had ever done.

  “Got to get to an appointment with my doctor,” she said apologetically. “I’ve got a thing on my back. Down here, you see?”

  Wayne nodded and smiled at her as she passed him. She smelled like lilacs.

  It was
almost midnight when Abe pulled into the garage behind his house in West Rogers Park. Getting home felt good, right, comfortable.

  Abe was not a born traveler. Most of the times he had left Chicago were on police business. Four of the times were trips Bess had arranged after finding out her husband’s schedule.

  “When you retire, we travel,” Bess said about twice a year, usually with the first left hook of winter.

  Lieberman didn’t argue. What would be would be. He had liked Vancouver, San Diego, Mexico, and even the visit to New York for the wedding of one of Bess’s cousin Devora’s six sons. Devora’s husband was a rabbi, ultraorthodox, complete with beard, black suit, and black hat. His name was Benjamin. Lieberman liked him even though Ben was a Mets fan.

  There was a night-light outside the back door. Abe went up the two wooden steps as quietly as he could, opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, where Bess sat with a cup in her hand.

  “You’re back,” she said with relief.

  “Lieberman has returned,” he said. “Not in triumph, but in the recurrent failure which is the lot of most men’s lives.”

  “And women’s, too,” she said. “You hungry?”

  He put down his carry-on bag and said, “Am I ever not hungry?”

  Bess was wearing his favorite white nightgown. It shimmered silky as she came to him and gave him a kiss. She was a beauty. Always had been. She looked ten or more years younger than her fifty-five. He looked a good ten years older than his sixty-one. It was not uncommon for people to assume Bess was his daughter.

  “You want the chicken hot or cold?” she said, moving to the refrigerator.

  “Cold with Miracle Whip.”

  “Cold without Miracle Whip,” she answered.

  “Are there cholesterol police in heaven?” he asked, sitting down.

  She took a platter wrapped in aluminum foil from the refrigerator and placed it on the table.

  “No one has cholesterol problems in heaven,” she said. “In hell everyone has cholesterol problems.”

  He lifted the edge of the aluminum foil and tweaked out a cold piece of brown skin.

  “Avrum,” Bess said with a sigh of despair, which he was sure would bring tears to the eyes of God.

  “Exceptions should be made for a returning warrior,” he said.

  “Exceptions are for those who do not live their lives as a series of exceptions.”

  She handed him a plate, a knife, and a fork, poured him a glass of iced tea from the pitcher in the refrigerator, and sat while he ate.

  “Tired?”

  “Tired,” he said, knowing that he would not be able to sleep for hours. Insomnia was one of his curses, but insomnia made him fully appreciate sleep. “What? You’ve got something.”

  “The sisters say the bar mitzvah dinner will cost eleven hundred dollars more than they thought,” she said.

  “Because …?”

  “I made the invitation list longer.”

  Lieberman nodded and kept eating. The chicken was good and the news was not a big surprise. He was a detective. He had expected it when he met with the two sisters who were planning the event. He looked up.

  “There’s more?”

  “Lisa’s coming.”

  “For the bar mitzvah,” he said. “Her son’s bar mitzvah. Her parents’ money. When are they coming?”

  “He’s not coming. She is. Tomorrow.”

  “Her husband’s not coming?”

  Bess shook her head.

  “How do you say déjà vu in Yiddish?” he asked, sneaking a small piece of skin.

  “You don’t,” Bess said. “You just live it and expect it.”

  Lisa had driven away her first husband, Todd Cresswell, the father of Abe’s two grandchildren. Todd, a professor of classics at Northwestern University, had remarried. Then Lisa had gone through two years of boulder-size rocky times with her present husband, Marvin Alexander, a nearly brilliant pathologist with the patience of Moses in the wilderness. Lisa had chosen him, in part, because he was black, a fact that she incorrectly assumed would be a source of pain to Lieberman. In fact, both Abe and Bess had taken to him immediately. Abe’s initial thought had been “What does this man see in my daughter that I don’t see?”

  Lisa was pretty like her mother. That was true. Lisa was smart, a PhD in biology. But Lisa’s perfectly filed mental list of complaints against her father, and by extension to all men who got too close to her, was encyclopedic.

  “I’ll get her at the airport,” said Bess.

  Lieberman nodded.

  “She wants something, doesn’t she?”

  “She doesn’t like Barry’s speech.”

  “How about his diction?”

  “Abe …”

  He finished the last small forkful of chicken and looked at his wife.

  “Dessert?”

  “Fresh strawberries.”

  “And more tsuris?”

  “A little.”

  Lieberman sat quietly. He knew that whatever it was, Bess had saved it for the last.

  “Ida Katzman is dead,” she said.

  Mr. Woo sat at his desk and looked at the two men, Parker Liao and Victor Tung, seated across from him. Mr. Woo was well aware that his office looked like a white man’s image of how a Chinese criminal lord’s office should look—and not just a white man but all of the second-, third-, and fourth-generation Chinese shippers, store owners, and petty criminals who sat before him awaiting his largesse, forgiveness, or punishment.

  Thin Oriental carpets, vases large and small on dark, ancient tables around the room, colorful paintings of centuries-old warriors on and off horseback, swords raised, ready. There was even a large, seated, fat and smiling Buddha alone on a table behind him. Mr. Woo, however, believed only in himself.

  “And you wish my permission to start a war,” said the thin and ancient Woo.

  He had chosen today not to wear traditional Chinese garb, but a perfectly fitting blue suit with a tasteful blue-and-red striped tie.

  “The Puerto Rican killed David Sen,” said Liao. “I sent David to negotiate a peace. That lunatic shot him and threw him out a window. Victor?”

  “Yes,” Victor Tung said quickly.

  “And this war would not be about territory or money?” Woo said.

  “Honor,” said Parker Liao.

  “Honor,” Woo repeated, looking at the frightened Victor Tung.

  “Without honor there is no respect. Without respect there is no power,” said Liao. “You said that.”

  “And if you cut off the head of the scorpion?” asked Woo.

  “I tried that,” said Parker. “David Sen failed.”

  “And he failed again at the hospital.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it is also you who have twice failed,” said Woo.

  “Yes.”

  Woo thought for a while, looked at the two men, and said, “Do as you wish. I neither bless nor approve. I will watch and wait and in that waiting I want nothing to bring the police to Chinatown. Not a single window or vase broken or anyone who is not a Twin Dragon killed.”

  “I understand,” said Liao.

  “Go,” said the old man.

  Parker and Victor rose, bowed slightly, and left the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Woo pressed a button on his desk. The door behind him next to a painting opened and a well-built Chinese in a tan suit stepped in, closing the door behind him.

  “You heard?”

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “Revenge is a disease,” said Woo.

  The man nodded.

  “It can kill the carrier.”

  The man nodded again.

  “At least we can hope it does. Liao is too much with us. Should he survive the war, I would like to see that he does not survive the peace which follows.”

  “He will not.”

  Hanrahan was late for the meeting at eight in the morning in Kearney’s office. He knocked, entered when he heard someone
’s voice.

  Captain Kearney was standing behind his desk at the window looking down on Clark Street. A few years ago Kearney had been the rising star in the department, honors up to his behind, second-youngest man in the history of department to make captain. Lean, darkly handsome, engaged to the daughter one of the city’s biggest industrialists, Kearney was on the fast track and respected.

  And then came Bernie Shepard. Bernie had been Kearney’s partner. Bernie had decided that Kearney had bedded Bernie’s wife, corrupting her. Bernie had shot his wife and her current lover and a few other people and holed up on a North Side roof, proclaiming to the media that his rampage was caused by Kearney.

  It wasn’t, but the media had picked up on it and after Shepard had been killed, still proclaiming his ex-partner’s guilt, Kearney’s meteoric career had ended, as had his engagement.

  Kearney had aged markedly in four years and grown dark and sullen, but he was a fair man and Bill Hanrahan needed a fair man right now.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Bill said, looking at Sean O’Neil and Abe, who sat in the two chairs facing Kearney’s desk.

  O’Neil didn’t turn to him. Abe did. Their eyes met and agreed that they would talk about what had happened in Yuma when they were alone.

  Kearney put his hands behind his neck and worked his head from side to side before turning to face the new arrival. Kearney nodded toward the wooden table. Bill took one of the chairs and moved it next to Lieberman.

  “Just found out my wife’s pregnant,” Hanrahan said, sitting.

  Lieberman smiled and patted his partner’s face with an open palm. Their eyes met again and Lieberman’s were full of questions. Do you want this at your age? Is Iris too old for children? Are you all right with this? And by the way, congratulations.

  “Congratulations,” Kearney said flatly.

  “Same,” said O’Neil, without looking at Hanrahan.

  And that was it. Lieberman would tell Bess. Bess would call Iris. The fussing would begin. Bill would have to tell his two grown sons. They would have to deal with it. Bill wasn’t dealing at all. It was just something he had begun carrying, tucked away but real, something he would have to look at, think about later.

  Kearney sighed, a small sigh, and said, “What do you have on the Connie Gower killing?”