Start Shooting (29 page)

Policeman bubbles up in the rage. Who does this Irish mother and daughter know that I know? Hahn? Danny Vacco? The U.S. attorney? The Korean mafia? Dr. Ota at Furukawa? What are Mrs. McKenna’s sins? What or whom does she fear so much that putting me in prison as a child molester is a better option?

She’d tell me if I put a gun in her face. Oh, yeah, she’d tell me, because if I had to, I’d look at her daughter like she says I did. We all have family to protect, no? Why is theirs better, more important than mine?

Kick the door down, let’s find out.

I leave before the rage and filth overcome the last of my judgment.

The drive south toward Chinatown doesn’t help. I keep calling Ruben and get no response. I want to cry, to pound the dashboard into powder. Call Arleen Brennan and just fly away. Jenny and Forrest, Arleen and Bobby—we will save each other just like we promised. The sun glitters the lake on Lake Shore Drive. I dial Arleen’s number, but don’t finish the call, don’t know what to say, finally typing a text message wishing her luck with her
Streetcar
audition.

Except Arleen doesn’t need to be saved, she’s about to become a star, and a Vargas around her neck would be the end of that dream. The Vargas brothers are from the Four Corners in every possible way, and we’re never leaving.

Chinatown’s still dirty from Saturday night. Hahn pulls up to my car just west of Wentworth and says, “Get in.” She’s wearing last night’s clothes, drives a block on Twenty-sixth, and turns left on Wells before she gets to Ricobene’s. “I said I’d help you and your brother and I will, but you gotta get with the program.” She nods at me. “Before Ruben buries our chances. The fight between him and Buff Anderson—”

“What fight?”

“The two of them went at it early this morning in the lot at Area 4. Twenty cops broke it up. Your pal Jewboy Mesrow hit Ruben from behind, knocked him over his car.” She jerks a sudden hard left veering through a chain-link fence that’s been recently knocked down. Instantly, we’re under the elevated Dan Ryan access lanes, avoiding the tall columns and concrete bridging that blocks the eastern sunlight into checkerboard shadows. Her tires ricochet gravel and something rustles behind my seat. Hahn hits the brakes. Her Pontiac slides to a stop as dust clouds engulf us. A blanket sits up in the backseat, then half falls away. I cough, have to blink twice to see what I’m seeing.

Danny Vacco, La Raza street king, handcuffed in the backseat, naked to the waist. Duct tape over his mouth—

Commotion in the dust cloud. I twist to the windshield. Hahn has stopped us just short of two homeless men, one of whom staggers away; the other falls back over into the trash. She puts the Pontiac in Park, reaches across her hip, digs out a 9-millimeter Beretta, and tosses it in my lap.

“As promised.”

Danny Vacco eyes me, then Hahn, then me again.

“All yours, Bobby, shoot him, gun’s cold. Don’t worry about the upholstery, car isn’t mine.”

I dig the Beretta out of my lap, drop the clip, check it full, then rack the slide—loaded—replace the clip, but don’t lower the hammer.

Hahn says, “My word’s good; for this
and
your brother.”

I stare at Danny Vacco, the brown pockmarked cheeks and forehead. The faded blue Twenty-Trey tats circling his neck. Danny’s pushing thirty-five, has poisoned my neighborhood for years. Ruben and I had a chance to kill him in a confrontation years ago and didn’t. My decision that day has come back to haunt or destroy a lot of people in the Four Corners.

I stare at him. “Little Paul?”

No answer; wary eyes.

My hand squeezes the Beretta he can’t see but knows I have. The headache hardens my tone. “Little Paul’s mom? The girl in my building?”

No answer. Danny Vacco’s street-king piece-of-shit face is twenty-four inches away.

Harsher. “I rape children, right?” Louder. “Sodomize them? You know what that means?”

No answer, no expression, but full attention. His eyes dip to the seat back between us, a silencer of sorts. I stare, hate clouding my eyes. My finger tightens on the trigger.

Danny Vacco shows nothing but street armor.

I keep staring, hoping he’ll do something that will help me commit my first murder. “This spic right here is a gutless cocksucker coward, that’s a hundred percent positive, but I’m not murdering him. Not today.”

He and Hahn and I wait to see if I mean it, then, seemingly surprised, Hahn waves for the Beretta. I hesitate at a second opportunity lost, then drop the hammer and give the Beretta to her, afraid that if I keep the gun I’ll use it. Hahn points the Beretta over the seat. With her other hand she rips the duct tape off Danny Vacco’s mouth and slaps it on his shoulder.

“Here’s the deal, Danny. I have some bigger business to do.” She taps her watch. “So you tell me where Little Paul’s mother is, and she better not be dead. Then we go see her and you tell her to get her kid back from Child Services. Two, you tell Little Paul to say he lied. Three, you get the two debs who think they’re witnesses to recant. Four, you tell me who gave up my girlfriend and me in the red Toyota.” Pause. “We do this right now and real fast. Any questions?”

Danny eyes me, then our location, then the little blonde pointing the 9-millimeter at him.
“Esta puta loca.”

Hahn blinks, then thin-lines her lips. “I work in Miami. Cuba, too, sometimes.” She pulls her ID and shows it to Danny. “We have different rules than cops.”

Danny smirks.

FLASH; EXPLOSION. The Beretta kicks in her hand. Danny bounces into the door, a hole smoking above where his left shoulder was.

“Jesus.”
I reach for my door handle and miss. “There’s a gas tank back there.”

The car’s air is cordite. Hahn drops the hammer and holds up one finger to me, asking me to sit tight. I do, sort of frozen.

She speaks street Spanish to Danny. “Bro, not fuckin’ ’round. My dog here has to focus on my business, you know? Big business.” She waits, then slides back into English. “Give me what I want or I will paint my backseat with your little Mexican heart. Then I’ll give your two debs five grand each to recant. Then I’ll give your two street captains ten grand each to say it’s okay, tell ’em to get Little Paul to do the same.” Pause. “ ’Cause that how it work, homes, in CIA land.”

Hahn glances me, waits, then shakes her head at Danny acting unafraid. “Bro, you’re dead, right now, right here at breakfast time, instead of walking tall, selling rock, killing Latin Kings. I’m out thirty grand, but to my bosses that’s lunch money. Then—and here’s the good part—after you’re dead and your two captains roll for me, get my dog here cleaned up, I’ll grab both your captains, put ’em in the very same backseat you’re in, and ask, ‘Who gave up the Toyota?’ They won’t want to tell me, so I’ll shoot one. The other one talks, but I’ll shoot him, too.” Smile. “My dog’s clean. I know who to kill for the Toyota, and your hated rivals, the Latin Kings, now own the Four Corners and chicken-fuck all your girlfriends.”

Danny’s listening, adding up if it could happen. For sure he’s only seen the CIA in movies, but Danny’s a Twenty-Trey, stone-killer street king, and he didn’t get there by birth. If he’s in any way responsible for Sheila Lopez dying, Danny Vacco isn’t showing it. He cocks a one-inch smile. “
Soldado
ain’t doin’ none of that.”

“See, the Latin Kings can’t fuck my girlfriend ’cause she dead.” Hahn un-cocks, then re-cocks the Beretta, looks at it, then Danny. “We both know this 9-millimeter is double action, but cocking it is what they do in the movies to say ‘last chance.’ And since you’re a cold-rolled, twelve-inch dick who gets his life lessons from rap videos, I thought I’d give you one last chance.
Comprende, amigo?
”

Danny smooches at her.

Hahn fires twice. Danny’s heart explodes through his shirt. His handcuffed hands flap once in the cordite smoke. Hahn already has her door open.

I yell: “What the fuck!” and jump halfway out the other side.

Hahn drops the Beretta in an evidence bag held by the now-standing homeless man. She peels almost-invisible gloves, gives them to
him, and turns to me. “I know Danny deserved it, but you shouldn’t have shot him. And all that stuff I told Danny I was planning for your witnesses? It’s already done. That’s the good news: Bobby Vargas just bought two slices of public redemption—you’re no longer Little Paul’s child molester and Danny Vacco’s too dead to throw any altar boys at you. Bad news is, you’re Danny Vacco’s killer.”

Dan Ryan traffic rumbles overhead. I’m backing away from the car, into bridging and deep shadows on three sides. The homeless man disappears with the murder weapon. Hahn loops the Pontiac and stops ten feet from me. “Now you help me corner Ruben and your sergeant—”

“Are you crazy! You just murdered a guy!”

She squints like she doesn’t understand. “Not me. I didn’t shoot him.”

I scan one-eighty for her phantom partners, at the very least the other homeless man who has to be watching. A Mrs Baird’s bread truck slow-rolls outside the fence on Wells. My prints are on the gun. I told at least two people I was going to kill Danny Vacco. Hahn’s face has no expression. I step forward. “How’d you get Danny in your car? Danny Vacco’s a gangster, street smart times a hundred. You didn’t grab him, he
got
in your car … because you and him were already doing business.”

Hahn shrugs, but doesn’t step back. “That’s a stretch, but possible.”

“You put him up to Little Paul. Conned Vacco into your car today and—”

“And I had him shoot my girlfriend and me in the Toyota?” Hahn’s eyes harden. “Your brother’s in way over his head, Bobby, screwing with people who aren’t street, who aren’t stupid, and who have all the money in the world.” She points toward downtown. “Furukawa’s 10K starts in eight hours. I’m not privy to your brother’s blackmail negotiations, but I know I’d threaten it.”

I glance at Danny dead in the backseat of her Pontiac. “That how Ruben finishes?”

“Not if he gives me a choice. Dead cops cause a lot more heat than dead gangsters.”

“Tell me where he is. I’ll talk to him first, then you can—”

Hahn shakes her head. “We go together. You wear a wire, if he doesn’t cooperate, we grab him.”

“Fuck you.”

SIREN.

Red, blue, and white lights careen onto Wells a block north at Twenty-sixth Street. I spin into the deep shadows and concrete bridging. Hahn yells, “Bobby!” Tires squeal and crunch the gravel as I sprint down a chain-link fence line crowded with wrecked cars. The siren quits. The fence turns ninety degrees. I slam into it, bounce big, land on one foot and fall. I crawl between cars to a far concrete column, climb twelve feet of chain link, teeter, bear-hugging the column, twist over, rip my pants from knee to hip, and jump.

I land hard, roll, jump up, hear squad cars, then sprint west, running three blocks of Twenty-seventh—all-out, past kids, cars, trucks—to the Norfolk Southern tracks, jump the fence, and flatten in the trash and overgrown grass.

More sirens. Gasping. Dogs bark, flies buzz. Hundred-degree air.

Maybe Tania Hahn
is
the devil. My heart slows to gunfight, then twenty over normal. Sirens, but no squad-car lights over here. Window curtains pull back in a third-floor six-flat and a head sticks out. The dogs won’t shut up.

My car’s a mile away in Chinatown. Can’t stay here. I crouch, then tramp weeds north, hugging the tracks’ embankment. At the first cross street viaduct I have no choice but to climb to the tracks and walk silhouetted against the sky. In this neighborhood I’m a transient the barking dogs know shouldn’t be here. At the viaduct’s other side I drop and skitter down the embankment.

My phone beeps that I have a message. I duck to my haunches. The phone is bloody and slips in my hand, a long cut on my leg. The message—
finally
—is from Ruben: “
Buey
, where you been? Took some magic, but Barlow’s straightened out; he’ll take care of that little girl in your building. But,
vato
, hey, we gotta talk about who you seein’. These people fillin’ your head; sendin’ you places you gotta stop arriving. Call me. We can make what’s chasing you stop, but you have to help.”

I punch Ruben’s number; it rings through to voice mail. My phone beeps call-waiting. I answer, “Ruben?”

Jason Cowin says, “What
in the fuck
are you and Ruben into?”

A squad car turns northbound onto Stewart Avenue, nothing between me and their handcuffs but a low fence and high grass. The
cop eyes the grass that hides me, then the embankment as he rolls north.

Jason barks, “Bobby?”

“Yeah. I have to find Buff and Ruben.”

“What the fuck is goin’ on? Buff and Jewboy fighting Ruben? Little girls pointing at your dick? Federal judges bailing you out? You ain’t talking to us. The truth, for chrissake.”

I watch the squad car turn. “Is Buff at work? There’s something chasing him and me.”

“No shit. He was looking for you. Went to meet somebody and some psycho Asian bitch shot him four times.”

“What?”

“Still alive, but barely.” Breath. “Jewboy was in the car with him.” Jason chokes, breathing short in the phone. “DOA when they got Walter to Mercy.”

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE