The Apostles (15 page)

Ghost and Reg nearly split their sides laughing at the Arab's mispronunciations. Ghost turned back to the window and he said, “You know what, Habib? You all right, A.” Ghost pulled his slim bankroll from his pocket and peeled off four singles. “That's three-fifty right, for the burger, right? And give me one of those loose squares, A.”

With the Newport 100 in his mouth, Ghost walked outside the restaurant—Reg followed. They stood in front of the sandwich shop making small talk while they waited for their orders.

Neither of them noticed the rusty white Chevy Celebrity as it putt-putted past them. But the driver of the Celebrity noticed the two Apostles standing in front of the sandwich shop. Behind the steering wheel of the Celebrity, Teddy watched the two young men without staring at them. He looked over at the young Governor Cave and said, “Don't look but there go two Assholes in front of that sandwich spot. It's perfect too. They ain't even watching they ass. We can bend this block and come up in the alley. You gone get out and walk back around this bitch. When you walk up to them, just be like, ‘What's up, A?' Then as soon as they hit you up back, let they ass have it. You got me, Cave?”

Cave's lint-ridden cornrows bobbed up and down as he nodded.

Teddy pulled a 9mm from under the seat and handed it to Cave. “Give them studs the whole clip, shorty. You got that?”

Again Cave nodded his head to answer. His mouth was too dry to speak. Teddy nosed the Celebrity around the corner and into the alley. He crept to the edge of the alley and stopped. He looked over at Cave. “Take care of that state business, Governor.”

Cave pulled on his hood and opened the car door. Rubber-legged he walked to the mouth of the alley. The weight of the pistol in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt seemed to give him courage, and by the time he gained the lip of the alley, he was walking with confidence. He stepped out of the alley. The mouth of the alley was right next to the sandwich shop entrance. He saw the two Apostles.

Reg was saying, “Then shorty told me she was going to the bathroom, but she never came back. I was so high sitting on the couch zoning that I didn't even notice. She had been gone about fifteen minutes before I realized this bitch done gave me move, A.”

When Cave materialized out of the alley, Reg's back was to him, but he noticed the look on Ghost's face and turned around. He saw the young boy standing there with his hood on his head.

Cave greeted them. “What's up, A?”

Ghost looked Cave up and down, then he looked over at Reg to see if he recognized the hooded boy.

If Reg sensed something was amiss, he didn't give away his intuitions when he responded amicably, “Just chilling, A. What you on?”

Cave looked around before answering.

That made Ghost even more suspicious. Reg seemed to have read his mind as he asked with a little more caution in his voice, “Where you from, A? I ain't never seen you before.”

Momentarily Cave almost panicked and ran, but the thought of Cold War brought him back to the task at hand. “I know you ain't trying to talk shit, A,” Cave spurted.

Reg looked at Ghost with a stupefied look on his face. He turned back to Cave. “Nigga, what the fuck is you talking ‘bout?”

Cave's face turned into an ugly mask. “Asshole, who the fuck you think you talking to!” His hand started to clear his pocket with the gun.

Reg turned, put his hand behind his head, and bolted.

Ghost stood transfixed with a look of fear plastered on his face.

His mouth framed the word “shit” but it couldn't be heard over the barking of the pistol in the hooded youth's hand. The sound of the slugs being launched from the semiauto gave Reg wings on his feet. He was halfway down the block when he felt something blur past him. Then he sensed more than felt a bullet disintegrate the tip of his middle finger and graze his ear. The cool wind felt good on his burning finger and ear as he raced across the street and cut through a vacant lot. Ghost finally willed his feet to move and he ran into the sandwich shop.

“Habib, Habib!” Ghost screamed as he beat on the gate that led to the kitchen of the sandwich shop. “Let me in, Habib!”

The Arab sandwich maker was nowhere to be seen. Cave stuck his hand in the door of the restaurant and fired several shots at Ghost. Two of the bullets struck the bulletproof glass, but the third slammed into his back. Ghost pitched forward into the counter, then fell backward onto the floor. Cave walked over to him and stood over him. With his eyes partially closed, Cave made the pistol bark and jerk until it was empty.

When the pistol in Cave's hand fell silent, Cave opened his eyes and peered at the dying youth at his feet. He felt faint, but the thought of being captured made him resolve to carry himself out the door of the sandwich shop into the waiting safety of the Chevy Celebrity. Two blocks from the shooting, Cave threw up all over the dashboard of the Celebrity. He was assured by Teddy that if he didn't pay to have the car cleaned he would be wearing Governor glasses for a month.

In the sandwich shop, on the floor, Ghost was turning into his nickname. He trembled as he watched the credits on the short film of his life roll in front of his eyes as he bled out on the floor among the cigarette butts, blunt guts, and old french fries.
I hope Sherry get that job
, he thought as he went to sleep.

Underneath the porch where Reg was hiding, his heart was colliding against his rib cage. The burn of his dinged ear was nothing in comparison to the throbbing pain accompanied by the pouring
blood of his fingertip. As scared as he was, his thoughts were of his friend and fellow Apostle, Ghost. He knew that his friend was dead; he didn't move fast enough. Reg sat there under the porch with the spiders until he heard police sirens in the distance. His mind drifted as his adrenaline began to subside. The sirens reminded him of something. They almost sounded like a baby crying in the stillness after the shooting. “Moo-Moo!” he said as he scrambled from under the porch and began to run again.

A
LIGHT, STEADY RAIN FELL ONTO THE BLUE-AND-WHITE
Chicago police cars that blocked off both ends of the avenue. Bull and Grove pulled up to the police cruiser on the north end of the street. The officer in the blue-and-white wasn't paying attention, so Bull tapped the siren lightly. The dreadlocked policewoman behind the wheel looked up and saw the two GCU dicks. She dropped her vehicle into reverse and noiselessly glided out of their path. Once their car went past, she guided her vehicle back into position.

In the middle of the block in front of the sandwich shop, an area of twenty feet in either direction had been cordoned off with yellow tape. On the sidewalk beyond the yellow tape barrier a crowd of about fifty people stood, ignoring the slight rain in their curiosity. There were numerous police vehicles parked in the middle of the street, including a paddy wagon. Bull and Grove knew the large police truck was there to transport a dead body.

Bull glided the Crown Vic over to the gaggle of department vehicles and cut the engine. Dressed smartly, Grove wore a navy blue tailored suit complete with a Dobbs hat, and Bull was in an expensive sweater with nice slacks and size-fourteen alligator shoes. The two gang detectives exited the vehicle and made their way under the yellow tape. They received nods and even some catcalls from some of the officers and detectives, which they returned. Inside the sandwich shop several homicide detectives stood to the side smoking cigarettes, while a fourth instructed the
crime scene photographer. Two uniformed officers with white surgical gloves on their hands were positioning Ghost's body in a black body bag.

Homicide Detective Lonihan was behind the bulletproof glass in the kitchen area of the restaurant finishing up a field interview with Habib. The frightened Arab was babbling in a strange mixture of Arabic, English, and street slang. Shock was still etched across his bearded face. Lonihan turned to his partner, Clara Casey, a fiery redheaded woman with a stern schoolmarm face, and said, “I can't understand a thing this guy is saying. Put him in a unit and have them take him to the station. Maybe if we can get him to calm down a bit we can begin to decipher this shit.”

Detective Casey nodded. She helped Habib up off the case of vegetable shortening he had been sitting on and escorted him out of the kitchen. Lonihan walked over to one of the deep fryers and lifted a wire basket containing two charred pizza puffs from the smoking grease. He wiped his hand on a towel and exited the kitchen to the lobby of the sandwich shop. There he saw Bull and Grove. Lonihan started to walk past them, but the captain's last stinging reprimand rang in his head. The Irish detective swallowed and walked over to them.

“How's it going, Detectives?” Lonihan asked evenly.

“Well if it ain't our old buddy O'Connor,” Grove said jovially.

Detective Casey walked back into the lobby.

“That's Lonihan. And this is my partner, Detective Casey. Casey, this is Detectives Thensen and Hargrove.”

Casey offered her freckled hand to the two GCU detectives. “Nice to meet you, Detectives Thensen and Hargrove,” she said politely.

“Bull and Grove, ma'am, GCU at your service,” Grove said as he touched the brim of his hat.

“You guys seem a tad overdressed for GCU,” Casey commented.

“On our way to get a commendation,” Bull grunted.

Grove smirked. “Another commendation.”

“Congratulations,” Casey said as she reeled her hand back in. She blushed a bit when she realized these two detectives were the ones her partner had ranted on and on about. Grove noticed her slight reddening and the self-conscious look on her face.

He laughed it off. “Ah, don't believe anything O'Brien says about us. He's just mad ‘cause he can't be Black and pretty like us.”

This time it was Lonihan's turn to blush. Vowing to not let Grove get under his skin, he turned and walked over to the bagged corpse. “If you guys will take a look at this, I'll give you what we got so far.” He whipped out his small notebook. “Teenage, Black, male. No ID. The owner of this fine establishment called him ‘Ghost.’ Habib Salaam, that's the owner, said he was an Apostle. We already figured that because of the locale and the stiff's headgear.” Lonihan pointed a fat pink finger at an evidence bag on the counter. In it was a bloody fitted hat with an
A
on it. “Do you guys know this kid?” Lonihan asked as the two GCU detectives joined him over the unzipped body bag.

Bull and Grove both stared at the body for a few moments before answering.

“I've never seen this kid before. What about you, Bull?”

The large gang crimes dick shook his massive head.

Grove looked up at Lonihan. “He was probably some foot soldier. He wasn't big or anything or he would have been on our radar. Might have been one of their shorties hustling on the block or something. Did it look like a robbery?”

Casey fielded the question. “Near as we could tell, no. His jewelry is still on his neck and he had a couple of bucks in his pocket. Now I was thinking this may have been—”

Lonihan cut her off. “We're on our way to interview Habib at the station. Maybe he can shine some light on this thing. I think he knows more than he was saying.”

Grove wasn't so easily put off. “Casey, what were you saying?”

Slightly startled that Grove asked her opinion, Casey looked at Lonihan. She was unable to read his beefy face so she went ahead.

“I was thinking this may have been retaliation for the Bingham murder. I was on vacation when it happened, but my partner gave me the details. I know that someone wanted us to think that it was an Apostles hit for sure, but I couldn't really swallow that. It just seems too neat. Then this kid here, ‘Ghost,’ gets it. Seems to me that this is too much of a co-inky-dink.”

Lonihan didn't want to seem stubborn, so he offered, “We got the prints back on the champagne bottle we found at the Bingham scene. Partials from Shawn Terson aka Solemn Shawn and Michael Moore aka Murderman. We're going to pull them in for questioning.”

Grove looked at Bull. To the homicide detectives, he said, “If we bump into them, then we'll bring them in. I think the captain would appreciate that. What you think, O'Brien?”

Lonihan swallowed again. “I'm quite sure that he would appreciate that,” he said dryly. “Come on, Casey.”

Bull and Grove watched them leave. They took one last look at Ghost before the officer zipped up the body bag, then they left too.