Calumet City (34 page)

Part of the lower torso is still tied to the remainder of the chair, a syringe buried to the hilt above the hip. A cleaver lies upright in the corner, pliers and a hacksaw beside it. My stomach cramps; I fight the vomit down. There’s the head. Rolling in a corner.

Delmont wanted me to meet someone.

The head’s gagged. The eyes are gone.
Jesus Christ,
this is awful.

Deep breath. Mistake. Steady, Patti, steady. Judging by the amount of body, all this…flesh likely belongs to Delmont Chukut. Sonny said he was 250+. But massacred, Delmont seems twice that size. This is bad beyond what I’ve seen before. Wind roars over the boat. The CD siren wails and I remember the tornado. Bad too; I crane my neck, semi-frozen but can’t see the funnel. I can see what’s tied to the chair. The chunk resembles a pair of Bermuda shorts, only full. I know what I have to do, look away, and reach through the gore, hoping to try all four pockets if I can force myself.

Pockets one and two have car keys and a thin wallet. I toss both at the door. Pockets three and four are empty save for a pen that sticks me. My head’s starting to fog and I gasp from holding no breath. The siren won’t quit. Hard to think. The wind pitches the boat and stumbles me into the wall. I get the whole scene again, framed from the opposite corner. Lightning streaks just beyond the windows. My hand and fingernails are covered in Delmont Chukut.

I part bolt, part stumble out of the cabin into the discarded body parts. The wind knocks me to a knee and I slide in the blood. A quarter of the Southside’s sky is now funnel. The thing’s huge but no closer. Thunder hammers again. I land on my ass—
Jesus Christ
—both hands braced on the deck.

Tracy yells, but I can’t make the words. I can make the bloody wallet and keys, grab both, fight to my feet, and jump onto the pier. My handprints and shoe prints are everywhere in the blood. Tracy and I sprint for the gate. She jumps an overturned dock box and a gust sails her sideways. She falls and I can’t avoid her without swimming, and go down too. The wallet and keys hit the water. I get both hands in. The keys are gone; the wallet sinks slower. I get it, lose it, and get it again. Bigmouthed fish come up and gulp at my hands.

I beat them to the wallet. My arms return harbor-water clean to the elbows. Lightning rips through the sky. Tracy tugs me up, yelling. All I hear are sirens and wind. We run for the gate, then to her Jag. She jerks her door open and dives behind the wheel. I round the hood and scramble in. Rain lands in a wave. We both wince
"Jesus"
in unison.

But we don’t move.

"Need to get away from here, Trace." Lightning explodes into the park. The air is water. We’re swimming or will be if the funnel catches us here.

"Can’t see—"

I push Tracy up into her seat; she’s blinking. "
Hell with seeing
. Crank your window." Her side’s on the back side of the rain. She could see inland if we don’t have to turn. The Jag inches backward. I slam her knee and we catapult backward into the lot. "Go!"

She hits the brakes. I bounce into the dash.

"For chrissake, go! Roland cut that guy to pieces. He could be on your bumper!"

She hits the gas blind and accelerates me into the seat. Her head’s out the window with one hand blocking the rain, the other steering serpentine through the lot. She brakes and turns left toward the park, away from the lake and jolts to a stop.

She cranks her door open. "
Can’t see
. Have to run," and stumbles out. I round the hood semi-floating and catch her sleeve before she’s sucked away in the wind. We pack back into the car, me behind the wheel, and I hit the gas. An invisible low curb bounces us left, downwind of the rain. I miss an elm tree by accident, swerve, miss a bench, and land us on a six-foot-wide walkway. A row of trees blocks rain; the windshield’s suddenly functional. I gun it, hoping no escaping jogger gets in our way.

Four hundred feet—then another hundred—then the path veers into the storm. I lock both arms and bounce us blind off another curb, jump it, and land in the middle of the oil-painting boulevard we drove before the sky fell. The wind pushes us sideways, then catches us like a sail and we’re semi-flying past a monument’s corner. The corner blocks our tailwind; we decelerate, the tires grab. I steer left again and land behind the monument. Instantly the wind quits. The rain slows by half. I’m death-gripped on the wheel and can’t feel my hands. I can see them, though, blood clots and gore under my nails. I’m gasping from holding my breath.

Tracy says, "Headlights. Behind us. Back by the parking lot."

I see a glow diffused in the rain and stomp the gas. We chew grass uphill, then down and through willow trees whipping themselves into green shreds, skirt the edge of a huge pond with whitecaps, and skid into a street littered with branches and a foot of water.

The Jag stalls.

Oh, shit, baby, c’mon
.

It starts.

Tracy jabs at the windshield, "Diversey’s up there."

We make Diversey and the park becomes city. A snarl of people are fighting into a hospital building tall enough to be in trouble if the funnel picks this path. I veer left, away from the lake. Both of Diversey’s two lanes are empty. We hit sixty semi-blind and Tracy yells to slow down. I do, with both feet, miss an ambulance parked without its lights on, slide twenty feet broadside down the center stripe, kill nobody, and the Jag stops.

My heart’s pounding. The rain’s pounding. A man’s pounding too, on my hood, drenched, deranged, bearded, and beating it with both fists. I hit the horn and he jumps sideways to Tracy’s door. She lurches into me and I hit the gas. We pass the guy still screaming and confront knotted headlights facing us from three directions. I veer into…an alley, gun it again, miss all the dumpsters for Duffy’s Tavern but one, bounce off its overflow, find another street, turn us left and back west away from the water. Away from the devil.

But not far enough away. The ground’s shaking. I can’t hear the engine. Suddenly the roar outside is so loud I can’t hear anything.

   I heard a guy once say God owned parking garages.

We’re in one on Clark Street, an old three-decker that could stop artillery rounds. It’s raining in three directions. Tracy’s out of the car and hugging herself warm, protected by the garage’s outer wall on the downwind side. She’s looking out at what wanted to kill her and me two hours ago. The Jag’s radio works. WLS says it was a water spout—a tornado on the water, nine hundred feet high like they get in Miami. It came within a quarter mile of Thirty-first Beach before the storm’s own squall line swallowed it.

The DJ promises that the worst is over, then jokes that all the fish in Chicago’s end of Lake Michigan are dead—drop down to any beach and pick up dinner. He has a laugh track to go with the patter.

Past Tracy, the rain has slowed and the last of the afternoon starts to look less like soup. The Cubs game was rain-delayed and finally postponed when it became clear that everyone in Wrigley would die if they stayed there, and they would—Cub fans have a stranglehold on stupid. The DJ says the Sox lost yesterday, so they’re toast for another year. Win or lose, at least we outlasted them.

I wipe residual water from my eyes and notice my fingernails; they’ll be sore but clean as soon as I can find a knife or paper clip. My jeans and Tracy’s serape are blotched with Delmont Chukut’s blood—I think it was Delmont.

And I remember the wallet. But it’s not in my lap or pockets, or in the seat, or in the console. It was a tough trip from there to here, but I know I fished it out of the harbor just before the fish and sky attacked us. Tracy’s walking back, her arms still hugging her chest. At the passenger door she leans in and looks a little better, not good by any measure, but better.

"That was…harrowing."

Harrowing
makes me smile. On the Northside, near-death by weather requires three syllables. Miss All-Everything has had a tough two days as my sidekick.

"Who did that…to him?"

I wipe at my nose and eyes again. "Gotta be Roland."

"But why…like that?" She pales out again and turns away.

That’s not a tough one either. "Roland’s a monster. A long-term hunter-killer. The fucking devil." I feel him in the words, shiver, and reach for the high-heat buttons.

Tracy leans on the Jag with her hip to me and squeezes wet red hair into a ponytail. When she finishes, she turns, only her chest in the window. Her voice’s half reporter, half assault victim. "No. They slow down when they get older. Everything I’ve read says so. Less testosterone, less murder." She shivers and shakes water off her hands. "And that boat was a lot…of murder."

Since I don’t work serial killers, I don’t know. I do know Roland Ganz, though, the earlier version. But Tracy has a point—why like that? That was madness and rage. A bunch more than paying back a dishonest employee. The storm hadn’t hit yet and Roland’s tossing body parts out in plain sight? Any boat owner on the far end of that pier could’ve seen them. And if it was torture—
and it had to be, at least at first
. Roland wanted answers to something at the beginning, after Delmont was subdued with the syringe, answers that Delmont was withholding. If it was Delmont.

Where’s the damn wallet?

This is the blackmail scheme or schemes unraveling, the employer declining to be blackmailed or pay more for information he already bought.

Where’s the damn wallet?

I reach around under my seat and find only a pen, then reach under the passenger seat and find the wallet. The leather’s wet, but thankfully with harbor water. I open it in the passenger seat anyway, not my lap. Credit cards are layered on the left, a wad of business cards on the right.
Confidential Investigations
in bold type, his name underneath with the Arizona phone number. All the credit cards have his name. Two driver’s licenses—one Arizona, the other California. Different picture, but the same guy, big blockish head and shoulders.

I flash on the gagged and severed head rolling in the cabin—there’s no obvious resemblance, but there wouldn’t be. It’s the same guy, gotta be, given that I fished this wallet out of the chunk of him still tied to the chair. It wasn’t Roland; I know that in my bones. And that’s too bad. The wallet has nineteen one-hundred-dollar bills and an oddly familiar folded paper wrapped in plastic.

Tracy says something I don’t quite hear, then, "Patti?" that I do.

"Huh?" I look up, trying to place the feeling rushing at me. "What?"

"We’ve got company."

It’s an SUV, the right color, and the driver’s side headlight is smashed like it should be if it hit a TAC car in 18 four days ago. I eject and draw before the SUV finishes the turn into our aisle. Tracy jumps fast and lands alive behind our rear bumper. I level at the SUV’s windshield using our fender as semi-cover. A .38 will kill the driver but not four tons of metal.

The SUV rolls at us, then jolts to a stop that sprays water off the hood.

Three…two…one….

Its back tires smoke and squeal in reverse. Thirty feet back it slams two parked Hondas shattering their windshields, wheels left, and fishtails down the ramp it just climbed. I hear the engine gun; there’s no way to tell if it was a civilian scared shitless by me and the pistol or the grab team that took Richard Rhodes to Roland.

"Get in. We’re outta here."

Tracy requires no convincing. She hip-checks me and takes the driver’s seat. I loop the front, grab the wallet off the passenger seat, and make it in just as she floors it. We take the ramp fast and don’t stop for the gate arm. It smashes across the top of her windshield and makes us both duck.

No SUV there to T-bone us. She slides left at the intersection, hits no one, and speeds north. I flash on the folded paper inside the wallet I’m holding. See it plain as day inside a yellowed envelope taped to the back of my mirror at home.

My adoption agreement with Le Bassinet.

The burglars left my envelope in place but took the agreement;
I just touched the envelope to be sure it was there—I rip at the wallet, tear open the plastic. "Le Bassinet" is the fourth word I see. "John Cougar Black" are the first three.
Harold Tyree knew
. Delmont knew. Now
the devil knows
. "Oh my God."

"What? Patti, what?"

The phone fumbles out of my hands to the floor. Our car veers to the curb and throws me into the dash when it stops. I shoulder the door. Tracy grabs my arm. I find the phone, bang the door open, and stagger into the rain. Night’s coming and Roland knows where John is.

Tracy grabs both my shoulders, her face inches from mine. "Patti!"

It’s like I’m…lost. "Roland knows. About the adoption agency."

She grabs the paper in my hand, covers it from the rain, and reads it. She says: "When?"

"Huh?"

She shakes me. "
When,
Patti? How long have they had this paper?"

"The B&E…last Monday." My fingertip tries to punch-dial Le Bassinet but misses. "Harold Tyree. Gave it to Chukut."

"They don’t have John."

"Yes they do. Yes…" The phone won’t work.

"That’s six days ago. You’ve been there since." She’s shaking me again. "Roland doesn’t have him."

"What?"

She slaps me. "THEY-DON’T-HAVE-JOHN. Think about it. Think."

I blink at the slap, then think long enough to see. She’s right.
They don’t have him
. I was at Le Bassinet Friday. Delmont Chukut never told Roland; Delmont had gone into business for himself. Blackmail or ransom. Just like I thought.

John’s reprieve is a river and gushes over and through me and suddenly I’m sitting on the wet concrete, empty and full at the same time. My watch is fogged but it looks like 5:15; Le Bassinet opens in sixteen hours…

Tracy tugs at me. "C’mon, get out of the rain."

I stand but don’t move. Tracy pulls me to a print shop doorway, checks the street, then checks me again.

"Are you all right?"