“Then I’m not getting in deeper.”
“Probably a good idea,” he said and held out the envelope.
“You’re a bastard,” I said and took it.
He laughed. “If you decide you really want out, dump the envelope in the garbage. If you stay in, be careful how you use the documents. Monroe will kill you instead of Johnson if he figures out what you’re up to.”
“Why would I stay in with a sales job like that?”
He stared me in the eyes. “What’s left of you if you quit?”
It was a good question-a hard one but good-and I figured there was love and worry in it. So I called him a bastard again, stuck the envelope inside my jacket, and left him there.
Lucinda was outside, leaning against the building, arms crossed to keep warm. We walked back toward Daley Plaza. Lucinda raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
“He’s afraid you’ll get hurt,” I said.
“He’s a bastard.”
“That’s what I told him. But he’s our bastard.”
At the Plaza, we listened to the mayor’s speech from the back of the crowd. He was talking about good men and women who put the safety of the city above their own and about the sacrifices they and their families made every day and the bigger sacrifices that a few of them made on especially terrible days, sacrifices that could never be repaid. I glanced at the row of wives and children and wished that I hadn’t.
We turned away as the mayor finished his comments and a bugle started playing sad and soulful.
“What else did Bill tell you?” Lucinda said.
I wondered if Bill was right. Lucinda could get hurt and maybe I should keep my mouth shut. But she would never forgive me if I did. “He gave me the papers I need to bring Johnson down.”
“Let’s see.”
“In the car.”
“Do you trust him?”
“He’s my oldest friend. He’s always been there for me.”
“Except when you were drinking heavily.”
“He came around on that when his wife started abusing.”
“When it served his purposes. It seems to me more like you’ve always been there for him.”
“Except when he got shot.”
“You didn’t shoot him, and you did everything you could to help him afterward. As far as I can tell, you saved his life.”
“I’m not sure he sees it that way.”
She shrugged. “He might have it wrong.”
“He’s the closest friend I’ve got.”
We walked north a block, then east toward the parking garage. The cold wind blew a plastic bag across the street. The bag rose along the side of a building and danced in the air five stories up like a dirty angel.
“So how do you want to work this?” Lucinda said.
I considered the possibilities. “I’m meeting with Bob Monroe and Raj this afternoon,” I said. “I’ll start feeding them information in little bits. If it goes well, they’ll want more. Can you see what you can find out about these guys? What trouble have they gotten into in the department and outside it? Who are their friends? Anyone with power? I don’t want surprises.”
We came to the corner of Wabash and Randolph and stopped for the light. An El train screeched on the tracks above Wabash. A city bus rushed along the curb. A white GMC van slowed to a stop in front of us.
Lucinda moved close so her shoulder touched my arm. I smiled at her. We had a plan. That was something.
Then footsteps approached from behind. Too fast.
I spun.
Three men were closing in on us.
I’d seen them before. Fifteen minutes earlier, they’d watched Bill and me at Daley Plaza.
Lucinda and I could have backed off the curb but the bus would have flattened us. We could have run north under the El tracks. We could have yelled for help.
We stood where we were.
The men grabbed us and threw us against the white van.
Lucinda rolled to the side and caught one of them in his throat with her elbow. He went down on the sidewalk. She turned to another and he backed away and pulled a chained badge out of his jacket. It said FBI.
Lucinda stopped. “Shit! Why didn’t you say?”
The man she’d knocked down peeled himself off the pavement. He was short and thick, with brown hair parted on the left and combed neatly to the side. The back door of the van opened, and the man with the badge-taller, older, and with less hair than the one Lucinda had hit-said, “Get in!”
I said, “Not me.” Lucinda looked at me as though she wondered if she should start swinging again.
The two agents who’d stayed on their feet came at us hard. The one with the badge took me and the other one, bigger, took Lucinda. It was over in about fifteen seconds and the one with the badge repeated himself. “Get in!”
We got in.
The back door slammed and the van pulled away from the curb. Vinyl benches lined the sides. Lucinda and I sat on one, the FBI agents on the other. The man Lucinda had knocked down touched the tender spot on his throat and glared at me like it was my fault.
The one who’d told us to get in showed me an open palm. “Give it to me.”
“What?” I said.
“The envelope Gubman gave you.”
“What envelope?”
He looked disgusted. “Don’t make me take it from you.”
I shook my head. “Only with a court order.”
More disgust. “Jesus Christ!” He cocked a fist and shifted toward me.
“All right,” I said and fished the envelope out of my coat. He handed it to a woman sitting in the front passenger seat. “Do we get to know your names?” I said.
He gave me a grim smile. “No.”
“Great,” said Lucinda.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“We want to know what you’re doing.”
“I’ve spent half my life trying to figure that out.”
He pursed his lips. “The man you killed at Southshore was working with us.”
Lucinda sighed. “Shit.”
I said, “He was FBI?”
The man shook his head. “He was a cop. A bad one. But he was also an informant. He’s gone and so is most of our investigation into Johnson’s crew.”
I looked down at the van floor. “You should’ve kept tighter control of him, told him not to point his gun at other cops if he got caught.”
The man Lucinda knocked down said, “You should’ve kept your finger off your fucking trigger.”
The lead man frowned at him. “So,” the lead man asked again, reasonable and level, “what are you doing?”
I shrugged. “I’m trying to dig myself out.”
The man with the sore throat said, “You’re up to your fucking ears. You’re not getting out.”
The lead man leaned toward me. “What did Johnson and his people want from you last night?”
I considered telling him what Bill Gubman had asked me to do and what Bob Monroe, Raj, and Earl Johnson had asked me to do-telling it all. I said, “Like you, they wanted to know what I was doing.”
“For an hour and a half at Bob Monroe’s apartment and three hours at The Spa Club?”
“You’re not always as obvious when you’re watching as you were at Daley Plaza,” I said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed, and I asked again, “What do you want from me?”
The lead man went silent for a moment like he was considering options. “We want you to report what you hear from Johnson’s group,” he said.
I almost laughed. “You want me to be your new informant?”
He nodded once. “In a word.”
I needed no time to think about it. “No.”
He looked unsurprised but asked, “May I know why not?”
Because, I thought, with Bill on one side and Johnson’s crew on the other I already was juggling knives. I didn’t need the FBI to toss in another. “You won’t even tell me your name,” I said. “Why should I trust you? I figure when Johnson’s crew goes down, you might let them take me with them.”
He didn’t deny it. He smiled. “My partner said you’re in up to your ears, but he’s wrong. You’re in way over your head.”