“Don’t lie to me.”
I said, “I’m trying to clean things up.”
She looked at me long as though there might be something inside me that she’d missed. She said, “Your father was a policeman for twenty-seven years, and one thing I learned was that some things don’t get clean. Some things it’s better to walk away from.”
I nodded. “You’re a smart woman, Mom.”
“Walk away.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try to.”
“It’s not hard. People do it all the time.”
CORRINE AND I RODE the elevator to the basement cafeteria, got coffee, and sat at a table. She had a calm look that I knew not to trust. She said, “Where the hell have you been?”
The cafeteria was empty except for two women in blue surgical scrubs and a man off in a corner reading a book. No one who would cause me trouble. So I told my story again, including my meeting with Bob Monroe and the memorial service at Daley Plaza, but leaving out the bottle of bourbon, The Spa Club, the Russian girl, and Lucinda.
Corrine sighed when I finished. “Yeah, you’ve got to fix this. You’ve got to make it right.”
I felt a weight lift from me. “I do?”
She frowned and shrugged. “You can’t just turn your back on it, can you?”
I leaned across the table and kissed her. “No, I can’t,” I said.
She sat back in her chair and cocked her head to the side. “Why didn’t you call when you got out?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I know this is hard,” she said, “but it can be hard with me or without me. With me, it might be a little easier.”
I nodded.
“Tell me what you need.”
I said, “I will.”
She put her hand in mine. “I want you if you want me,” she said.
“I want you.”
She looked down at the table, then up at me. “Could we go somewhere for awhile?”
I said, “That would be good.”
WE DROVE TO HER house and went up the front stairs. Until our divorce, her house had been our house, her bedroom ours. The rich smell of sleep in the bedsheets was still the same. The photographs on the wall-three black-and-white sixteen-by-twenties of staircases, the middle one with a woman on it-were the same too. Corrine had brought the photographs into our house and had kept them when I moved out. The other pictures that we’d had, framed photos of the two of us together, were long gone, into storage or out with the trash. She’d bought new night tables. I wondered how many other men she’d brought home to her bed.
Then she came to me and we kissed and I stopped wondering. She pulled her mouth from mine and unbuttoned my shirt, stripped it off my shoulders. I unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall. She kissed my chest, ran her fingers over me, scraped my nipples with her fingernails.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
She put her mouth on me again, nibbled, and answered, “Biting you.”
She nibbled some more. I whispered, “Why?”
“It will feel good.” She bit harder.
“Ouch.”
“Relax-”
“Ouch!”
She pulled away. “I don’t think you’re giving this a chance.”
I lifted her face to mine, kissed her, and said, “I’ll give you a chance.”
I did.
We did.
Twice.
TWELVE
AT 2:30 IN THE afternoon I drove back to The Spa Club. The valet in front of the building was new and didn’t recognize me, but when I told him my name and said I was there to see Bob Monroe he tipped his head respectfully, opened my door, and said he would park my Skylark in front so it would be available when I needed it.
I fished a five-dollar bill from my wallet but he said, “Not necessary, sir.”
I eyed him. “Do you curtsy?”
He said, “I do anything Mr. Johnson and Mr. Monroe pay me to, sir.”
I rode the elevator to The Spa Club.
The lounge outside the elevator door was empty except for a table where a fat man in a white shirt and dark tie was eating a late lunch. A new hostess stood at the desk. She smiled and looked me up and down like she was measuring me for a new suit or a bed. So I looked her up and down, the same, and said, “I’m here to see-”
“Mr. Monroe,” she said, still with the smile. She tilted her head toward the private hallway that extended from behind the desk. “He’s in Mr. Johnson’s office. Through the hall, the door on the right.”
“It’s good to be recognized,” I said.
A door on the left was open to an office with a desk and computer. The door on the right was closed. When I raised my hand to knock, it swung open and the Russian girl stumbled out. Raj had called her Tina when he’d offered her to me. She wore a man’s shirt, yellow, unbuttoned except at the bottom, and nothing else. She had glazed eyes and her lips were bent between a grin and pain. She brushed past me like she’d never seen me before.
“Tina?” I said.
Nothing. Not a twitch.
I knocked.
The door swung open again.
I recognized the man who opened it. He’d loaded a spool of copper wire into a van at Southshore Village just before the shooting started.
“Hey, come on in,” he said.
This office was four times the size of the one across the hall. It had a brown leather couch, a brown leather chair, an Oriental carpet between them, and a large dark-wood desk, also with a leather chair.
Bob Monroe sat in the desk chair, Raj sat in the other chair, and the man who’d opened the door joined another guy from the Southshore robbery on the couch. They were having a party.
Monroe looked me over. “You’re sober today.” Like that surprised and didn’t completely please him.
“True.”
“Want a drink?”
“I always want a drink.”
“Bourbon?”
I nodded.
He picked up the telephone, punched a button, and said, “A Heineken, a couple shots of Maker’s Mark, and a glass of water.”
When he hung up, he leaned forward and said, “Ready to get started?”
“Sure.”
“We’re holding an organizational meeting tonight. Representatives from twelve of the city’s gangs will be there-El Rukns, Latin Kings, Black Gangster Disciples, La Raza, Vice Lords, and a bunch of others. The Asians have refused to participate but they’ll come around. We’re not bothering with the small gangs at this point.”
“Where’s the meeting?”
He ignored the question. “Earl will do the talking and the rest of us will be there. Rules are, no weapons, no flashing signs, and no more than two representatives from each gang. We wanted just one but some of them said they wouldn’t come alone. As much as possible, everyone drives in on separate streets. If we all play by the rules, the meeting should go fine. But these guys never saw a rule they didn’t break. Your job and mine will be to make sure no one gets shot and no one gets in a fight that spills back into the neighborhoods. Earl’s job will be to tell the gang representatives what we expect them to do and what they can expect in return. They keep violence to a minimum and cough up their money, and we let things slide when we can. We make money and they make money. They stay alive and out of jail and we make more money.”
“Who could object?” I said. “Will we have guns?”
“Officially, no. But we’ll stash a couple in the room just in case.”
“Why not meet with the gangs separately?” I asked. “Seems like it would be a lot safer and easier.”
He shook his head. “We need to set an example of what happens if the gangs don’t pay. We don’t want to have to set twelve separate examples.”
Raj said, “That would be too much blood, too much anger.”
I said, “What are you planning to do?”
Monroe shrugged like it was no big deal. “Just enough to scare the fuck out of them.”