"Do I get to see an ID?" I asked.
His gun muzzle pressed into my neck. "This is all the ID I need right now."
He reached into my jacket and found my wallet. His gun pushed farther into my neck when he saw my investigator's licence. "A PI?" he asked. His free hand moved over every part of my body that could conceivably have hidden a gun. "Where's your piece?"
"I don't carry one."
"What kind of PI goes around Chicago without a gun?"
"A Canadian one."
"Weird."
"You know, if you're a cop, this would be the ideal time to identify yourself."
"Shut up."
"I was attacked," I said. "All I did was defend myself."
"I saw you beat a guy down and throw a gun in the bushes."
Then I heard a woman call, "Excuse me."
He looked up. Even with my face pressed down against the hood of the car, I could see the tourist couple who had been filming near the fountain walking hesitantly toward us, the woman the more assertive of the two, urging her husband forward. He seemed more interested in protecting his cameras.
When they were within ten feet of us, the gunman told them to stop and said, "Chicago PD," and took out a leather ID case, flipped it open so we could all see his badge and his name, which I had pretty much guessed already.
Detective Thomas Barnett, Bureau of Investigative Services, Chicago Police Department.
"We saw it. Dennis," the woman said, her breathing laboured from the fast walk over. "Tell him what we saw."
Dennis was about fifty, also out of breath, with fine sandy hair and a great spur-shaped cowlick in the back. "This fellow was attacked," he told Barnett. "The other guy-"
"What other guy?" Barnett asked.
"A big guy with dark hair and a moustache," I said. "Think Stalin."
"It looked like he was going to shoot this fellow but then this fellow-"
"Jonah Geller," I said, wanting my name out there.
"Then Mr. Geller here knocked him out and ran. And then you showed up."
"I got a call," Barnett said. "An assault in progress."
That had to be steaming bullshit. He had arrived on the scene too fast to have been responding to any call. The couple were the closest witnesses and they obviously hadn't phoned it in.
I walked Barnett and the tourists to where the assault had taken place. The gunman was gone but there was a blood spatter on the pavement where his broken nose had gushed. The gun was in the bushes where I said it would be, and Barnett made a show of sealing it in a plastic bag and locking it in a case in the trunk of his car. Having been educated in these matters by Dante Ryan, I guessed it was a.22, either a Colt or a Field King.
"What about these handcuffs?" I asked Barnett.
"What about them?"
"You heard it from them, I defended myself."
"In fact," the woman said, "we got it all on tape."
"You what?" Barnett said.
"On tape," she said. "Play it back, Den. Show him the part you filmed."
Dennis sighed and unfolded the viewer from his camcorder. He played back footage of the fountain: you could hear him instructing his wife to move out of the way so he could get a close-up of the plaque that told who it had been named after. Then you saw me in the background, walking along the path behind the fountain; the other man coming up swiftly; and my counterattack, which I thought even Eidan would have admired.
"You don't have to keep this, do you?" Dennis asked. "It's got my footage of me in front of Soldier Field."
"Sorry," Barnett said. He held out his hand for the cassette, pocketed it and told them they could go. I tried to look contrite for causing them to lose their vacation footage and thanked them for coming forward. It struck me as odd that we weren't all going down to a precinct to sign statements and look at mug books. But mentioning that would have been like asking the teacher why she hadn't popped a quiz.
It was clearly no coincidence that Barnett had appeared on the scene. My guess was he had been there for two reasons: to confirm the kill, and to provide an official version of the events: probably as a mugging or robbery gone wrong. Either way, I knew now that he was in Simon Birk's pocket, which made me more sure than ever that Birk had set up the robbery at his home.
Barnett undid my handcuffs and said, "How many murders a year you get in Toronto?"
"I don't know," I said. "About eighty or ninety, I guess."
"We get at least five or six hundred," he said. "Used to be like a thousand a year. But still. Five, six hundred is a lot of killings. And there's a lot that go unsolved."
"Which means what?"
"That Frank Sinatra had it all wrong. Chicago ain't your kind of town."
CHAPTER 36
"Back so soon?" asked Jericho Hale.
I held out my wrists. "See these marks?"
"I'm a black man in America," he said. "I know cuff stripes when I see them."
"Want to guess who put them there?"
"I don't have to," he said, "because I can see you're dying to tell me."
He had me there. "Tom Barnett."
He leaned forward so fast his chair almost tipped. "You shitting me?"
"I shit you not."
"Detective Thomas Barnett had you in cuffs."
"I think I'm lucky that's all he did." I told Hale what had happened in Grant Park.
"All right, Geller. Walk with me."
I followed him to the far end of the newsroom, where a young Hispanic reporter sat at a desk covered with police band scanners.
"Alvaro," Hale said.
"Sssh." The reporter had his head down, listening intently to one of the scanners. "Damn," he said. "I can't make half this shit out."
"That's the code for armed robbery," Hale said. "South Hermitage, 6000 block."
"How'd you-"
"I started on this desk, man. You'll develop an ear for it, you give it enough time. Alvaro, this is Geller. He has a question for you."
"Make it quick," he said. "I miss a call-"
"I'll listen to your scanners," Hale said. "You answer his question."
Alvaro looked at me. He was in his early twenties, tops, wiry and full of nervous energy, one knee pumping away beneath the desk.
I said, "There was an assault in Grant Park today. Just over an hour ago. Did anything go out over the police radio? Call for assistance?"
He flipped through a notepad. "Grant Park… no. Had a shooting in Humboldt Park and an assault in Hyde Park… nothing in Grant."
I beamed a pleasant smile at Hale.
"What?" Alvaro asked. "What's that look? There a story in this?"
"No," I said. "Nothing happened."
"Seriously?" Alvaro flipped to a clean page in the notebook. "I haven't had a decent byline in a week."
"Um… Alvaro? Better get back to your scanner," Hale said. "You just missed a Homicide call on West 25th. Probably the Latin Kings."
"What? Shit!" Alvaro said.
Hale tugged on my shirt sleeve and steered me back to his cubicle.
"So," he said. "Barnett responded to a call that never went out."
"He knew it was going to happen. So dish," I said. "What do you know about Barnett that I ought to know?"
"Well, his rep is he's a tough cop, even by Chicago standards. Bit of a head-breaker. But honest enough. Nothing too rancid following him. No whispers he was ever on the take."
"Until now."
"The only thing I recall…"
"Yes?"
"You know there's another newspaper in this town?" he said. "One without the, uh, high journalistic standards to which we here at the Tribune aspire?"
"The tabloid."
"The very one. They go for stories with a certain flavour. The kind their readers can follow without spraining a lip."