I felt tears of fury stinging my eyes.
I also felt hyper-alive and totally in control.
I knew this old neighborhood better than anyone, and that my chances of escape were better behind the big old houses than in front of them.
I yanked the wheel hard to the right, gunning down the nearest alley.
Behind me I heard the squeal of brakes and tires while I sped straight for a dilapidated pickup. Almost every day, before the neighborhood rises or after it’s asleep, junk collectors wheel beater trucks from Dumpster to Dumpster, looking for recyclable metal. They perform incredible feats of balance, using bungee cords and rope to strap old bed frames, water heaters, giant bags of tin cans, and rusty hubcaps to the back of the trucks. The one I was bearing down on now at great speed was an acrobatic miracle-a pyramid of rolling junk parked right in the middle of the alley. I heard the scream of the cop car, looked back at it and the two others barreling after me, slowed just enough to encourage them to speed up-and then yanked the wheel hard left. The alley I entered was so tight that the Lincoln’s side mirrors sparked the brick walls. I’d made such a fast turn that the cop car never had a chance to brake, and the last thing I saw before speeding away were two guys in the pickup truck leaping out for their lives.
The last thing I heard was the collision.
It was cop car into truck, van into cop car, unmarked car into van.
It sounded like a calliope had exploded.
Almost immediately my phone rang, and I recognized the number as belonging to Detective Smelt. I ignored it, turning toward Lake Shore Drive, and my mind drifted to my family. Part of me wanted to pull over and weep at the horrible uncertainty of it all, but the other part of me, the one now in charge, knew that the time for weeping, if it ever came, would be only when I had answers.
I drove at the speed limit, using my signals, careful not to attract the attention of the cop cars lying in wait for speeders along Lake Shore Drive. I exited at Grand Avenue, passing throngs of people out on the town. The rain had stopped and it had become a beautiful night. After what I’d been through in the last several hours, it was surprising that the world was going on as usual. I proceeded southwest until the glitz of the Magnificent Mile faded. Streets became residential, then industrial, then mean and impoverished, and then I was parking in front of Windy City Gym.
Willy Williams lived behind it in a small, neat apartment.
I knew he would take me in, listen to my story, and give me shelter.
Now was the time to be around fighters.
11
There is a rare anger that accompanies unwilling separation.
It’s an orchid of fury, sprouting in the stinking manure of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence when normal existence is split in two-the side you loved that is gone and the side you now occupy that is isolated, strange, freakish, and alone.
You wait for the universe to right itself-you wait because you’re human and humans are innately optimistic-and then it doesn’t, and you feel like a sucker.
You are the original fool, a butt of nature’s large, cruel joke.
That’s when the flame begins to flicker, low and cold.
You’re not mad at the world and you don’t want to bluntly attack the innocent-no, it’s a sharp, laser-focused anger. The concentrated nucleus is narrowly defined to kick in the teeth and bust the bones of the specific people who did this thing to you.
I did not know for sure who those people were.
I did know that I would find him, or her, or them.
I also knew that one of my teeth was loose, Harry was shivering in my arms, and I was so oddly calm as I rang the Windy City Gym buzzer that I was probably in shock.
Footsteps echoed through the empty warehouse, a steel door on wheels unlatched and slid, and I heard Willy’s deliberate padding down metal stairs. An eye squinted through a peephole, more locks slid, and he looked me up and down through steel-framed glasses. After an examination of my bloodstained disco dress, fist-marked forehead, and throat decorated with a necklace of purple bruises, he said, “So. How was the dance?”
I dumped Harry in his arms, sprinted upstairs into the shadowy gym, and went directly to the nearest heavy bag. Its bulky form hung from a chain, swaying in a slow, threatening circle, and I began to hit it with bare knuckles. My arms shot from my shoulders as I circled the bag, throwing the oldest combination in the book-left jab, left jab, hard right, left hook-and felt tears mix with sweat until my hands were as bloody as my dress. Willy tried to stop me but I shoved him away, continuing to pummel leather until I couldn’t lift my arms anymore, then collapsed to the mat sobbing. Willy counted silently to ten and then said what he always said to a fighter who was down.
“Get up, Sara Jane.”
I did, slowly, and went into his arms. Willy patted my back until I was done crying, telling me whatever it was, it would be okay.
I stepped back, wiped at my eyes, and said, “I don’t think so. Not this time.”
Willy had lived a long, tough life, both in and out of the ring, and knew there were times that required action rather than reassurance. He led me across the gym to his tiny apartment, handed me clean worn sweats and an ancient satin robe that read “Willy ‘Chilly’ Williams” across its back, and motioned me toward the bathroom. When I emerged, scrubbed clean of blood but suddenly unable to stop shaking, a glass of hot sweet tea waited at a wooden table. Willy set down a slice of buttered toast and a bowl of cold green grapes, saying, “You need it. You’ve been running on all cylinders and now you’re out of gas.”
“Where’s Harry?”
He nodded at a threadbare couch where the little dog rested on a pile of blankets, his side wrapped perfectly in gauze and tape as only a good corner man could do. Willy nudged my shoulder gently and said, “Go on.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t trust yourself right now. Eat.”
He knew something I didn’t know because even though food was the last thing on my mind, I devoured it, along with another slice of toast and two more glasses of tea. When I finished, I quit shaking and started talking. I told him all that had happened, from the scene between my dad and Uncle Buddy to the terrible moment when I walked into my house to the confrontation with Detective Smelt. By the time I was done, the cold flame in my gut was burning brightly again. Willy rose from the table, opened a cabinet, took out a battered tin box, and removed a single cigarette.
“I quit twenty-five years ago,” he said. “But I always keep one on hand for emergencies.” He sat down, scratched a match, and lit it.
“What do I do now?” I said.
“You sure can’t go to the police,” he said. “I’ve known a lot of cops in my time, some good, some bad, some ten times more crooked than the crooks they’re supposed to catch. Whoever this Detective Smelt is, she’s not playing by any cop rulebook I ever heard of. She wants something and she’s obviously willing to break the law-hell, several laws-to get it. Seems like that thing is you.” Willy went silent, smoking and thinking, then said, “Thing is, police are a fraternity-they’re tight, and they talk about everything. The problem is that the good cops don’t know when they’re sharing dangerous info with bad cops.”
“So I can’t speak to any of them.”
“Too risky, at least for now,” he said, tapping an ash into a chipped coffee cup. “I’m more concerned about the freak in the ski mask.”
“Like I said, he was burly and he could take a punch. . or at least a kick,” I said, suddenly recalling the first time I met Willy and how he described my uncle’s ability as a boxer to take a beating and keep on going. “Just like Uncle Buddy,” I said.