“I know,” Jeff said. He pulled off Damen, turned right on Roscoe, then came back down Wolcott and onto Henderson, headed back toward the bar.
“What are we doing?” Matthew said.
“I want to see what he does,” Jeff said. “If he walks home, back to the wife, we got him. If he sits in there and calls a couple of his boys, starts plotting how he’s going to kill us, we’ll need to make different arrangements.”
“He doesn’t even know my name,” Matthew said.
“He could get it,” Jeff said. “He knew who I was.”
“Do I need to worry about my sister?”
“We’ll know soon enough.” Jeff parked half a block away from the bar, in front of a blue walk-up that had both Cubs and Sox banners flying out front. Jeff took out his cell and tried Paul Bruno’s phone again. Voicemail still full. Shit.
“Anything?” Matthew said.
“No,” Jeff said. Matthew nodded, kept staring out the window, waiting for Fat Monte, or a bunch of guys in sweat suits, to appear. “If he’s dead,” Jeff said, “that’s on me.”
“It’s on him,” Matthew said. “What did you say to Fat Monte? That he chose this life? Same thing for your friend.”
“Maybe so,” Jeff said, though he didn’t want to believe that.
Jeff dialed 411 and got the number for Paul Bruno’s mother. Mrs. Bruno picked up on the third ring.
“Ma’am,” Jeff said, “my name is Jeff Hopper. I’m friends with your son. I was wondering if you’d heard from him recently.”
“Are you friends from the neighborhood?” she asked.
“No,” Jeff said.
“You one of his boyfriends, then?”
“No,” Jeff said. He tried to figure out a polite way of telling the truth and then just decided he’d tell the truth as it was. “I knew him from his work with the FBI.”
“Oh,” she said. “You were his handler, is that right?”
“That’s right,” Jeff said.
“Oh,” she said again. Jeff heard her sigh, and he wondered how much she actually knew about her son. “I haven’t heard from him in weeks. He normally called every other day or so. More often since his father passed. It’s been almost a month. Do you think he’s all right?”
“No,” Jeff said. “Ma’am, if I were you, I would file a missing person’s report. Get an investigation going.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “Maybe I can ask you a question?”
“Sure,” Jeff said.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Ma’am?”
“I just want to know if you think I’m stupid,” she said. Her voice sounded choked, and Jeff realized she was crying.
“Of course not,” Jeff said.
“Then please don’t call here again,” she said, and she hung up.
Jeff set his phone down. It was 1999, a whole new century was about to start, and people were still too scared to do the right thing. Chicago was still the kind of place where people feared the authorities and respected the crime bosses, even after all this time. “Paul Bruno is dead,” he said quietly.
Matthew nodded. “What do you want to do about it?”
“This whole thing,” Jeff said. “It’s stupid. Right? Isn’t that what you tried to convince me of? Back at the White Palace? That this was a fool’s journey?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Where else do you have to go?”
“You know who killed him,” Matthew said. “You just sat there and had drinks with him. I’ve got his blood all over my pants.”
“That’s what gets me,” Jeff said. “What makes Sal Cupertine any different? Why bother looking for him if it all just perpetuates? Could be any of these assholes who work for the Family.”
“The FBI any better right now? They let Sal Cupertine walk,” Matthew said. “You said it yourself. They’ll wait until it’s convenient to start looking for him. And you know what? They won’t find him. And the czars at Stateville? Doesn’t someone have to do the right thing? I mean, isn’t that what this is about, Jeff? Doing the right thing?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Jeff said.
“You better figure that out,” Matthew said, “because I’m riding with you now, and I can’t just throw my life away. I need to find this guy if I want to have a career, or else I’m going to be the most qualified security guard at Citibank.”
Ten minutes later, as Jeff and Matthew sat in the front seat of Jeff’s idling Explorer, a single woman crossed the street in front of them and entered the Four Treys. She came back out less than a minute later, hand in hand with Fat Monte Moretti.
Jeff was woken up at four o’clock in the morning by the sound of his cell phone ringing. He picked it up and looked at the number on the caller ID, but he didn’t recognize it. He hoped it was Paul Bruno, calling from Canada or something, but was fairly certain that wasn’t going to be the case.
“Hopper,” he said.
“Why do you law enforcement people always answer the phone like that?” Fat Monte said. “Anyone ever teach you to say hello?”
“It’s FBI policy,” Jeff said. “Always smart to identify yourself, takes the mystery out of things.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Fat Monte said.
“Something I can help you with, Monte?” Jeff asked. “Or are you just making sure I gave you a working number.”
“You know,” Fat Monte said, “your people aren’t that sharp. There was another body in that dump.”
“Oh yeah?” Jeff said.
“A white guy,” Monte said. “About the same height and weight as Sal. But you find the faggot Mexican and make him. That’s why you’re never going to win, you get that?”
“What’s to win, Monte?” Jeff said.
“Tonight,” Fat Monte said, “why didn’t you just take me in? Why bust me up and let me go home? That’s not how you guys normally do business.”
“New policy went into effect,” Jeff said, “right after one of your guys killed three feds.” He sat up in bed and turned on a light, looked around for his minirecorder, since it wasn’t every day that a member of the Family called in the middle of the night with, it sounded like, a few things to get off his chest. Jeff was pretty sure he’d left the recorder outside in his car, and he wasn’t about to go running outside in his underwear when it was zero degrees outside. He fumbled through his nightstand and came up with a pencil but no paper. He’d write on the wall if he had to. “You want to talk to me about that day, Monte? That why you’re calling?”
“You gotta make me a promise,” Fat Monte said. “I tell you some shit, you go back out to the dump, and you get that fucking body. Because I can’t have that on me.”
Jeff tried to remember if there’d been any chatter about any guys from Fat Monte’s crew missing around the time of Sal’s disappearance, but part of his brain was still in REM. And anyway, Chema Espinoza wasn’t listed in any of the files. The FBI didn’t care much about the guppies, not when there were whales like Fat Monte swimming around.
“It’s been months, Monte,” Jeff said. “Whoever you threw in there has probably been picked clean by the rats.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” Fat Monte said. “Jesus Christ, don’t say that shit. Get some of those cadaver dogs and get out there tomorrow, right? Tomorrow. Promise me you’ll get those cadaver dogs out to the dump, or this phone call is over.”
“Okay,” Jeff said. He was startled by the desperation in Fat Monte’s voice. There was something happening here, and it wasn’t good. “Okay. I’ll get them. I’ll get dogs and radar and everything, okay? Whatever you need, we’ll get it. We’ll go out together if you want.”
“Nah, nah, fuck that,” Fat Monte said. He was silent for a moment, and Jeff heard what he thought was the clink of ice in a glass. “One other thing. You keep my wife’s name out of this. She’s got family and cousins, and they don’t need to know what kind of life she was living, okay?”