A Bad Night's Sleep (8 page)

I startled awake again.

The phone was ringing. The dim gray light of early morning filled my bedroom.

I looked for my desk. I had no desk in my bed. I pawed for the phone on the night table. “Yeah?” I said into it. Breathless.

“Thank God! You had me worried, Joe.” The voice was relieved and angry.

“I’m okay, Mom. They let me out yesterday.”

“I know they let you out yesterday. They had it on the news.” All anger now. “Why didn’t you call?”

Because I wasn’t ready to hear her voice. “What time is it?” I said, then looked at the clock on the night table and saw for myself. 7:10
A.M.
“Never mind. I just woke up.”

Mom was silent for a moment. Then, “Have you been drinking?”

“No. I’ve been sleeping.”

Again she went silent for a moment. “Are you all right?”

I lied. “Yeah. I’ll need to work things out, but I’m okay.”

“The news says you shot a police officer.”

“He was shooting at other police officers.”

“That’s not what the news says.”

“Then they’ve got it wrong.”

She went silent again, like she was waiting for me to explain what happened. I had nothing to add.

She asked, “Why didn’t you call when they let you out?”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t,” I said.

“You don’t listen to the messages on your answering machine?”

“I came in late last night. What’s happening?”

“You don’t answer your cell phone?”

“The battery ran out.”

“While you were in jail,” she said.

“As a material witness.”

“The news called you a
person of interest
.”

“Again, they got it wrong. What’s happening. Are you okay?”

“
I’m
fine. Jason’s in the hospital.”

I felt the world falling away from me. “What—?” The words caught in my throat. Jason had lived with me ever since my cousin Alexi ran off with a guy from the Jacksonville Port Authority and her mother and mine decided that her eleven-year-old would benefit from being around a father figure, even one like me. Now I’d fooled myself into thinking he was safe. He was in the hospital while I was lulling myself to sleep with fantasies about a high-priced hooker.

“He’s all right,” Mom said. “They took out his appendix.”

The fear lifted and I felt my body relax. Little things go wrong all the time. This was one of them, nothing more.

“He’s been asking for you.”

“I’ll go see him today,” I said.

“He would like that.”

More silence.

“I’m sorry about all this,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

“I can take care of myself,” she said and I figured that was true. But then she added, “Anyway, some of your friends already came by and offered to help.”

“What friends?”

“Relax. Men you know at the police department. Detectives.”

“Did they give you their names?”

“They did more than that. They showed me their IDs. One was a black man a little older than you and much bigger. Bob something. The other was white but had a foreign name.”

“Raj?” I said, figuring
Bob something
was Bob Monroe.

“It could have been,” she said. “I’d just gotten back from the hospital. I invited them in for coffee and they said I should let them know if they could help. They were very kind.”

“They’re not friends of mine, Mom.”

“No?” She sounded more disappointed than concerned.

“If they come back, don’t answer the door. Don’t talk to them. Call me.”

“Will you be picking up your phone?”

“This is serious, Mom. These guys don’t want to help.”

“That’s a shame,” she said.

I agreed that it was.

“Joe?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe you should leave town for awhile.”

“Yeah,” I said and I almost smiled. “That sounds like a great idea. Maybe I’ll do that.”

Mom gave me Jason’s room number at Children’s Memorial and we hung up.

I got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. While it dripped into the pot, I looked out the back door into the yard. The sky was heavy and gray with the kind of cold rainless clouds that sometimes covered Chicago for a week at a time in November. The elm branches hung in the windless air just like they did last night. The tree was the last of its kind in the neighborhood. All the other elms had died from a disease in the 1970s.

After awhile I made my way into the living room. The red display on the answering machine said I had fourteen messages. Someone loved me. That was something.

But I figured I should take care of business first. I picked up the phone and dialed Bill Gubman.

“Did you change your mind about helping out and rent a fishing boat?” he said when I told him who was calling.

“I was about to,” I said, “but then I started partying with my friends Earl Johnson and Bob Monroe and I forgot about fishing.”

“You’ve met with them? Good work.”

“I didn’t find them. They found
me.
”

“Good work anyway,” he said. “I’ve got some things for you—bank receipts, police reports, photographs. All that you need to set up Johnson.”

“They’re watching me pretty close. I can’t pick them up at the department.”

He considered that for a moment. “There’ll be a ceremony this morning at Daley Plaza for the officers who died at Southshore Village. I’ll be there with a package for you.”

“Not exactly a private meeting,” I said. “Half the city will be there.”

“So no one will be surprised that you and I are both there. Look for me near the stage. We’ll find someplace to talk.”

Last thing I wanted to do. “I’ll see you there,” I said.

I hung up and stared at the phone. Then I punched the button on the answering machine and the machine spoke to me. “Listen, you asshole…” the first message started. It was a crank call from someone who’d heard early that I was involved in the shootings at Southshore Village, someone who knew how to reach me, someone who told me that he’d take me apart, joint by joint. That meant the caller probably was a cop, maybe a friend of one of the cops who were wounded or killed. So much for love.

Corrine had called four times. She was worried. She’d tried to find out where the police had jailed me but no one was telling. She’d figured my lawyer should know what was happening, so she’d called Larry Weiss, but he’d hit the same walls. The first three calls sounded more and more worried. What were they doing to me? In the fourth message, which she’d left last night, she said, “Call me,” and hung up. Like Mom, she must’ve heard that I was out of jail and gotten angry because I didn’t run to her first.

Three calls were from Mom, worried too, the first when she was taking Jason to the hospital, the next telling me that he was all right, the last wondering where I was now that the police had turned me loose.

The crank caller called twice more to let me know new ways he’d worked out to cause me pain.

Lucinda Juarez had left the rest of the messages. She’d been my informal partner for the last month and a half. She’d also fallen into my arms, or I’d fallen into hers—only for a night, but that night kept rippling like a stone in water. It had almost drowned me and Corrine and it still might. Her voice had no worry in it. She reported on her calls to Larry Weiss and to the police department, where she’d worked until she joined me. She still had friends in the department but they’d told her nothing about me. “Hope you’re okay,” she said like she figured I was.

I picked up the phone and dialed Corrine. Maybe she’d be available for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or a lifetime. Her phone rang twice before someone knocked on my front door. I hung up.

Lucinda was standing on the front porch. She was small and compact but had a weight and a strength that always surprised me. She wore jeans and a leather jacket and rocked a little like she was cold.

“Hey,” she said when I opened the door, eyeing me like she might find me in pieces.

“Hey,” I said. “Come in.”

I stood aside and she did.

“You okay?” she said.

I tried a smile. “Great,” I said. “I’m coming off a four-day vacation.”

Then it seemed that, without moving, she was in my arms kissing me and I was kissing her.

“Damn,” I said when we breathed for a moment.

Her dark eyes locked with mine. “God damn,” she said. Then she kissed me again.

TEN

AT 10:30, LUCINDA AND
I drove downtown to Daley Plaza. The police had cordoned off the surrounding streets. We parked three blocks away and walked into a swarm of uniforms and spectators. News vans were broadcasting in front of City Hall.

“It looks like a party,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Lucinda, “except for the tears.”

In the center of the plaza, a bunch of people sat on folding chairs on a temporary stage. The mayor was there, somber in a dark suit. The police superintendent, a thick-shouldered man with a graying crew cut, sat next to him. Detective Chroler, who’d taken me into custody after the Southshore shootings, sat a couple of chairs away from the superintendent.

Two women, each with young kids, sat in a line of chairs off to the side. Families of the dead and wounded, I figured.

The flags at the east end of the Plaza were at half-mast.

“I hate this,” said Lucinda.

“Yeah, me too.”

We made our way toward the stage.

“What good does it do those kids to have them up there?” she said.

I said nothing. I’d given her most of the details about Southshore, my vacation in jail, and my introduction to Earl Johnson’s crew. The more she’d heard, the angrier she’d gotten—at the department, at Bill Gubman for dragging me into the mess, at me too, it seemed, though I’d left out the Russian girl at The Spa Club.

Bill Gubman sat in a wheelchair at the base of the stage, just where he’d said he would be. I shouldered through the crowd, Lucinda behind me.

I was about twenty feet away when Bill saw me, but he turned away hard and looked at the stage. I stopped. On the stage a woman dressed in a dark skirt and matching jacket stepped to the microphone, introduced herself as a police department community liaison, and thanked the crowd for coming to mourn the loss of three young police officers and celebrate their lives of service. Almost everyone in the crowd was watching her, but a half dozen men in suits and ties hovered nearby with the unmoving faces of plainclothes officers at work. Three of them kept their eyes on Bill. I thought that maybe one or two were watching me.

When the woman finished the introductions the mayor moved toward the microphone and Bill maneuvered his wheelchair around and started working slowly through the crowd. Lucinda and I waited thirty seconds, then started walking through the crowd too, cutting away from Bill but always staying within sight.

Bill reached the sidewalk, cut along the edge of Daley Plaza, went around a corner, and headed toward a red-and-white striped awning that looked like it should house a circus but sheltered the entrance to the Hotel Burnham. He turned his chair and went into the hotel lobby. Lucinda and I made sure no one was watching us and then went inside after him.

The lobby was two stories high and had carpet that looked like it could’ve been skinned from leopards, a lot of dark wood on the walls, and heavy art-deco chandeliers. Bill was a big man but the room seemed to swallow him as he waited in his wheelchair just inside the door.

As I stepped in, a half smile formed on his lips. When Lucinda stepped in after me, the smile broke. He glanced again at her and then at me. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Lucinda crossed her arms over her chest. “Good to see you, Bill.”

Bill’s lips cracked into a little smile again. “Yeah, good to see you too, Lucinda.” Like he might mean it.

“That’s better.”

“Now, take a walk, will you?” he said to her.

Lucinda looked at me.

I shrugged.

“Screw yourselves, then,” she said and she stepped back outside.

“Sweet girl. Why did you bring her?”

“We work together.”

He shook his head. “Not on this you don’t. We’ve already got three police officers dead and two wounded. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Me, on the other hand—”

“That’s right, you on the other hand.”

“What do you have for me?” I asked.

He pulled a manila envelope from his jacket. “Dates, times, and places where thefts occurred, totaling a hundred sixty thousand dollars. Police reports verifying the thefts. Bank records showing deposits into accounts in Johnson’s name.” He said it without pleasure.

“Was Johnson really involved in any of it?” I said.

“Not a bit.”

“You’re right about Monroe,” I said. “He’ll kill Johnson when he finds out he’s been cutting him out.”

“That’s the plan.”

I shook my head. “Who was watching us at Daley Plaza?”

“They’re not in the department,” said Bill.

“FBI?”

“Could be. If they are, it’s news to me.”

“Why not invite them into the investigation?” I said.

He laughed. “The FBI? No thanks. They wouldn’t approve of this kind of cleanup.”

“Then I’m not getting involved if they’re watching.”

“You were involved the moment you pulled the trigger at Southshore.”

“Then I’m not getting in deeper.”

“Probably a good idea,” he said and held out the envelope.

“You’re a bastard,” I said and took it.

He laughed. “If you decide you really want out, dump the envelope in the garbage. If you stay in, be careful how you use the documents. Monroe will kill you instead of Johnson if he figures out what you’re up to.”

“Why would I stay in with a sales job like that?”

He stared me in the eyes. “What’s left of you if you quit?”

It was a good question—a hard one but good—and I figured there was love and worry in it. So I called him a bastard again, stuck the envelope inside my jacket, and left him there.

Lucinda was outside, leaning against the building, arms crossed to keep warm. We walked back toward Daley Plaza. Lucinda raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

“He’s afraid you’ll get hurt,” I said.