“You want to see?”
I don’t know if I nodded but the other three pushed their chairs back from the table.
“Let’s go,” said Monroe.
EIGHT
WE DROVE NORTH ON Michigan Avenue, Finley at the wheel, Monroe beside him, Raj in the back with me. The night was cold and windy. Shop windows glittered under the streetlights-jewelry stores, a high-end toy store, restaurants. When Michigan ended, we continued up the lakefront to a high-rise facing Oak Street Beach. Finley turned across the oncoming lane, drove the SUV onto the circular driveway in front of the building, and slowed to a stop.
A valet, who’d been standing under a heat lamp outside the building, jogged to the car and opened the doors. “Good evening, Mr. Monroe,” he said, then greeted Raj and Finley by name. He nodded to me.
The big glass doors had brass handles and a doorman in gloves to use them. He also greeted Monroe, Finley, and Raj by name.
A large oriental rug covered most of the lobby floor. Leather sofas and easy chairs were arranged in a circle around a large dark-wood table. On the center of the table stood a tall vase with flowers and ferns fountaining out of the top. A crystal chandelier hung over the table. The room looked like a fine place to wait for a limousine.
A uniformed elevator operator stood by the elevator. He wished us a good evening. He didn’t need to ask where to take us.
At the top floor, the elevator door opened to a lounge lighted by blue-tinted bulbs. A red neon sign hanging on the facing wall said THE SPA CLUB. About fifteen tables were scattered around the room, a third of them occupied, mostly by men who were drinking from highball glasses or eating small dinners off small plates. The waitresses wore high heels, short khaki skirts, and khaki halter tops like strippers who’d shopped at L.L.Bean. Behind a bar, two men in khaki safari shirts that hung tight over muscled bodies were making drinks in blenders.
“What is this place?” I said.
Monroe put a large hand on my shoulder and smiled. “It’s where we hang out until we move to Arizona.”
Raj said, “The mayor’s been here.”
Finley said, “Not the mayor himself. His chief assistant.”
Raj nodded. “One of his chief assistants. And a lot of other guys you’d recognize.”
Monroe said, “We run it. It’s ours, you understand?”
A hostess approached, greeted us, and gave Finley a kiss on the cheek. Then Finley and Monroe left us, and the hostess led Raj and me to a table in the back of the room.
She asked us what we wanted to drink.
“Heineken,” Raj said.
I said, “Bourbon.”
Raj tilted his head and admired her as she walked away.
“What are we doing here?” I said.
He eyed me. “You’ve got a better place to be?” He leaned in. “You said you want to talk to Johnson. Johnson wants to talk to you too.”
“Okay,” I said, then asked again, “What is this place?”
He kept his face close to mine. “Private club.”
“Uh-huh, I figured that much.”
He glanced around the room at the waitstaff. “See anyone you like? You can have her.” With his eyes on me again, he added, “Or him, if that’s what you’re into. We’re equal opportunity. Or if you want, you can bring in a friend of your own and have a party with one of our staff. You can have whatever you dream of.”
“You don’t want to know my dreams.”
Raj smiled and tipped his head toward a man and a woman at a nearby table. “See them?”
The man was tall and thin and had black hair and the pale, glistening, whiskerless facial skin that you sometimes see on burn victims. The woman was tall and thin too, flat-chested, with wheat-colored hair braided in pigtails. She had a bruise on her left cheek.
“He gave her the bruise,” Raj said. “They’re a perfect couple. He likes to hit her. She likes to get hit.”
He glanced at a table of four men in their young thirties. Three had steak salads in front of them, one a piece of broiled fish. They wore blue jeans and shirts stretched tight over their biceps. “Wannabes,” Raj said.
He nodded toward another couple.
She had black kinky hair that she wore tied back and eyes so weirdly intense you could see their blue across the room. He wore black pants and a black silk T-shirt. His gray hair was short, his beard at a couple days’ stubble. He was no more than five foot four.
Raj said, “He’s the most dangerous man in the place.”
The woman kept her eyes on the short man when he spoke to her but when he looked down at his asparagus she gazed at the bartender, at me, at Raj.
Raj smiled at her.
She quickly turned away.
Raj said, “When a woman hangs out with a guy like him, she’s always watching for her next move in case she needs out fast. I’ve seen it.”
I started to feel sick the way you do when a whiskey drunk runs low, but I’d drunk plenty to keep going for another hour or two. I figured I was feeling the city and its rotting bodies, the ones rotting on the outside and the ones that looked like a hundred thousand dollars of plastic surgery on the outside but you knew the inside had gone bad.
Still, when a waitress brought our drinks, I tipped my glass back and downed the drink. It was top-shelf stuff, higher than I usually reached.
Across the room, a door opened behind the hostess station, and a man came out. He was wearing faded jeans and a heavy white cotton shirt. He moved with the ease of a man who owned everything around him. I hadn’t seen Earl Johnson in six or seven years but had no trouble recognizing him. He looked the same as when we went through the academy together in the 1980s. Some guys get lucky that way naturally. Some work hard at the weights, diets, and the pharmacy to stay lucky. I figured he was a natural.
The woman with the black kinky hair and intense eyes watched him as he crossed to our table, and she didn’t turn away when he flashed her a smile.
He flashed me the smile too as he sat at the table. “Joe,” he said with the warmth of an old friend. “It’s been a long time. Life treating you well?”
I turned to Raj and said, “The last time I saw Earl, I was still in the department but barely. Then I lost the job, cleaned myself up, got married and divorced, played dad to my nephew, and opened a detective business that’s kept my head above water most of the time. Now I’ve shot one of his friends and I’m drunk on his whiskey and mine. He knows damn well how life’s treating me.” Then I looked up at Johnson and said, “Couldn’t be better,” I said. “You?”
His smile held. “Can’t complain. I’m keeping busy.”
A waitress brought him a glass with a piece of lime and something clear in it. He hugged her around the waist. She gave him a smile and he let her go.
“You like this place?” he said.
I shrugged. “For an overpriced whorehouse, sure.”
He ignored that. “My friends and I have worked hard to get where we are.” The warmth dropped from his voice. “We’re not going to let someone like you come in and fuck things up. You understand that, right?”
“I understand what you are.”
He looked at me, patient. “You know, I’m a slow but steady learner. You and the other guys were way ahead of me in the academy. Everyone expected great things from you. Not me. I was a screwball. I’m sure you remember that. But I got through and I kept learning afterward. And now here I am, and there you are. Ironic, right?”
“I guess so.”
He stared hard at me. “Kind of sad too.”
“I suppose so. An honest jerk like me sitting at the table of an evil jerk like you-you’d think there’s no justice.”
He hit the table with his fist. The others in the lounge looked at him for a moment, then went back to their conversations. He spoke quietly. “Why did you meet with Bill Gubman this afternoon?”
“I already told your friends. Ask them.” I pointed my thumb at Raj. “Ask him.”