The voices in the bedroom got louder.
Raj’s wife said, “He killed a cop.”
“He’s-”
The voices fell to angry whispers.
A boy about seven years old wandered down the stairs from the attic bedroom. He wore red pajama pants that looked like long underwear and a matching shirt. He had sleep in his eyes. He gave me a shy smile and disappeared back up the stairs.
A minute later, he came back down a couple steps.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
“It’s late. You should be in bed.”
“Where’s my dad?” he asked.
I nodded toward the bedroom. “In there.”
He came down the stairs, stopped on the bottom step, looked at me like I was a danger he didn’t want to face on his way across the room. I stepped away to clear the path. “What’s your name?” I said.
He eyed me. “Farid.” Then he darted across the room.
“Like your dad.”
He nodded and knocked on the door.
“I have a boy named Jason,” I tried, but he just stared at the door.
His mother opened it and, when she saw him, scooped him into her arms and whisked him upstairs like I was a disease she needed to protect him from.
As they disappeared, Raj wandered in. He’d cleaned himself and slicked his hair down with water. He limped a little and his pant leg bulged over his left ankle where he’d wrapped it with gauze. He’d taped a butterfly bandage over the skin above his lips. He had a Band-Aid on his left hand. Other than that, his sleeves and jeans covered his wounds.
He tried a smile. “You ready?”
FOR FIVE MILES NORTHWEST out of the Loop, brick warehouses line both sides of the Chicago River. They were built at a time when men on the docks unloaded cargo that had come in through the locks from Lake Michigan or loaded it for the reverse trip. Here and there in the past couple of years, a condo development or a restaurant had shouldered in with promises of a water view, but mostly the brick buildings stood empty or half used. On a cold November night, even the bums who’d found a spot on the floor in the buildings during the spring, summer, and fall had cleared out for shelters with central heating.
Raj and I drove to a warehouse built on a spot where the river swings to the west. The lights were off outside the building. Leaves and garbage had clumped on the parking lot like no one had parked or driven there in years.
“The quicker we get rid of this stuff, the less chance we have of getting caught,” Raj said.
I backed the SUV to an aluminum garage door and Raj got out, pushed a button on an intercom, and spoke into it. The garage door rattled up, metal clashing against metal.
Johnson’s crew stood inside with three tall black men, one in a pin-striped suit and tie, the others in zippered nylon warm-up suits. One of them yelled at me to back the car between the SUVs and vans already in the warehouse. Before I cleared the threshold, the aluminum garage door started down.
Ceiling lamps high in the steel rafters lighted the front end of the building. The back end disappeared in shadows. Steel shelves made neat aisles, rising from the concrete floor high toward the ceiling. Wooden pallets on the shelves held electronics, tools, and building supplies.
One of the guys in warm-up suits opened the back of the SUV and brought a transformer that we’d stolen to the man in pinstripes. The man looked it over and offered Johnson ninety dollars. Johnson said a hundred fifty. They agreed on a hundred ten. The guys in warm-ups unloaded the rest of the transformers onto a pallet set on a forklift.
Raj and I joined the other men. Monroe looked Raj over. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Raj said.
A grin spread across Monroe’s face. “Come on, let’s see the battle wounds.”
Raj shrugged and hoisted his pant leg, exposing his ankle. Blood had soaked through the gauze.
Finley gave a low whistle.
“What else?” said Monroe.
Raj lied. “That’s it.”
Finley stepped toward him, grinning too, and reached toward his cheek. “Such a pretty face too-”
Raj grabbed Finley’s wrist.
The grin fell from Finley’s face. For a few seconds, it seemed that they would fight.
Then Finley said, “All right.” He shook his wrist free.
Monroe turned to the other men. “Who’s hungry?” he said. “I’m buying breakfast.”
THE GOLDEN NUGGET FAMILY Restaurant on North Clark Street is in a dirty brown brick building with a faded yellow sign. At four in the morning, the clientele includes hookers done with their final customers, insomniac transvestites, and men living on the street who can’t take any more of the night and the cold so they scrape together enough quarters and dimes to buy a cup of coffee and an egg. But day or night, the Golden Nugget serves the best pancakes on the Northside.
We pulled four tables together in a back room usually reserved for birthday parties. The waitresses knew Johnson’s crew well enough to joke with them and exchange hugs. They also knew them well enough to leave us alone once we’d ordered.
We’d tossed our jackets over empty chairs. A couple of guys had kicked their feet up on the vinyl seat cushions. Finley rested his chin on his hands, yawned, and closed his eyes. We could’ve been a group of undercover cops relaxing at the end of a tough shift. Except Johnson had a stack of cash in front of him and he was dividing it into smaller stacks, one for each of us.
“How much did we make?” Monroe asked.
Johnson kept dealing bills into piles. “Eighteen thousand, four hundred.”
Finley opened his eyes. “For four and a half minutes of work. What’s that per hour?”
Monroe said to Johnson, “You could’ve gotten more for the transformers.”
Johnson looked annoyed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we’re not in business to make the buyer happy.”
“If the buyer is unhappy, we’re out of business.”
Monroe mumbled, “Plus you wouldn’t pick up a little extra on the side.”
Johnson snapped. “Don’t ever fucking say that!”
“Okay, maybe not. I’m just saying-”
“Never,” Johnson said, standing up at the table, leaning over Monroe. “Don’t say it unless you’re ready to prove it, not if you want to work with me.”
Monroe didn’t look worried. “I’m just saying we’ve got only one buyer and you brought him in. He gets the price he wants to pay, more or less. I’d like to have more than one buyer. We’d make more money.”
Johnson shook his head like he couldn’t believe Monroe’s stupidity. “Do you know another buyer?”
Monroe admitted he didn’t.
“Until you do, shut the fuck up, okay?” Johnson sat down and continued dealing out the bills.
A minute or two after we’d stuffed our stacks of bills into our pockets, the waitresses came in with trays of steaming pancakes, eggs, bacon, and toast. A large-breasted gray-haired waitress in her late fifties leaned over me and filled my cup with coffee, as hot as the night was cold. For a moment I lost my appetite. Then I tore into my food like I’d spent my night burning energy with gang members, vicious dogs, and thieves.
EIGHTEEN
I CLIMBED THE STEPS to the back porch of my house as the first sunlight brightened the sky. My legs ached. The rest of me too. The night had drained the last of me and I wondered if I should climb into bed or just go inside and lie down on the kitchen floor. Twelve hours of sleep would help. Fourteen wouldn’t hurt.
I unlocked the door, let myself in.
I stopped. “Damn,” I said.
The three FBI agents who’d stopped Lucinda and me as we’d left Daley Plaza were sitting at the kitchen table. They had cups of steaming coffee in front of them.