Start Shooting (18 page)

And don’t be Coleen.

We were so sure we would be famous, then Anton Dupree dragged you into his car. Do you see where I’m standing,
Éire Aingeal?

My feet plant the Shubert’s sidewalk like it’s mine.

I’ll dedicate
Streetcar
to you from stage center every night. Chicago will know Coleen Brennan like they should have, the joyful, brilliant Irish girl from the Four Corners. I’ll get this part; you’ll live again, as a
Brennan
. Not a
Dupree
victim. I promise. My eyes cut to another siren; an unmarked car like Ruben’s racing toward criminals and their crimes. Both hands ball to fists; tears run down my cheeks.
I fucking promise
.

Wrigley Field gushes fans into a traffic jam/street party that will last another hour before it gets sloppy and people get arrested. Jason and I are in his Crown Vic, trapped front and back.

Coleen Brennan! I mean, Arleen Brennan. Oh my God. On the sidewalk grinning at me and our
future
. I may be too dizzy to ride in a car. From the sidewalk, Tracy Moens yells for me to wait, to talk to her
now
. Jason pops the siren twice, jerks the wheel, and jumps us into oncoming. My guitar bangs to the floor in the backseat. I stare through the back window and say, “Easy, that’s my future,” meaning my guitar and the prettiest green-eyed, swimsuit-issue, strawberry blond ever to breathe.

Jason stays on the siren, creating a middle lane. “Man, Moens wants you all the way.”

Moens has Arleen cornered. They’re not together like Ruben said. Arleen’s eyes were so green I would’ve stood there all day, awestruck as my man Forrest Gump. Jason slams the gas. Cars and Cub fans blot Arleen out.

She’s really back!
Different name, which is weird, but she’s here. I twist back in the seat, grin like a schoolboy, and exhale deep.

Jason waves “Thanks” at an oncoming car granting us room. “Moens honestly believes you did Coleen Brennan; that you and Ruben are the
monster
she’s gonna expose. And if Little Paul checks out she intends to—”

“I was
thirteen
. How do you
motherfuckers
keep missing that?” Paradise
to hell in two seconds. “Sorry.” I rub my face with both hands. Arleen can’t believe it, I won’t let her.

“You’re definitely popular.” Horns. Bumpers. Siren. “Buff and I and Jewboy went by to see Sheila Lopez’s parents.” Jason shakes his head once. “Only daughter. Jo Ann Merica was there … bunch of other suits.” Jason floats one eyebrow at me. “But no Chicago FBI or DEA.”

“None?”

Jason makes a zero with his thumb and index finger.

“Lopez and Hahn are feds, Ruben’s positive, but can’t figure what branch, and Merica won’t say.”

“That ain’t kosher, Bobby, even for the G.” Jason brakes and pops the siren. “Now you got Little Paul—”

“No way Little Paul checks out, not if Merica or Moens are interested in the facts.”

“That’ll be brand new.”

I think about dead cops and girls of your dreams coming back to life while Jason center-lines us through cars and buses, and … accusations that I molest and murder children.
Me
, focus on me ’cause there aren’t any real assholes out here; I don’t see those motherfuckers every single fucking day feeding on the weak.

“Take me to my car.” My car’s five blocks the other way buried in Cubs-victory traffic and will be for another hour. I pull the Airweight I carry off duty, check the cylinder full, then slide it back clipped to my jeans. “Danny Vacco will back all this down or he’s dead defending it.”

Jason nods. “No problem. Who’d suspect Bobby Vargas?”

“I’m not gonna be guilty of being a child molester.”

“Ease up, Bobby.” Jason backhands my shoulder. “We’ll get a beer, figure it out. The boys want to talk.”

“The boys” is our gang team. “We can talk.
After
I find Danny Vacco. Drag that motherfucker to 12 where he can admit what he’s doing or die in our lockup.”

“Let’s do the boys first; go by Jewboy’s basement, everybody’s there. Maybe they can slow you down, keep you out of Stateville.”

Blink. “Everybody’s there? We figured the red Toyota? Who?”

Jason shakes his head. “Buff said we ain’t spending another day wondering.”

The headache that’s been chasing me since last night begins to
pound. “Ruben thinks Lopez and Hahn were put in 1269 to hunt one of us, but not for the Duprees’ lawsuit—we weren’t on the job then.” I stare at Jason until he glances me. “Ruben can’t figure what Hahn and Lopez are after, but he thinks one of us gave up the Toyota to stop ’em.”

Jason turns right, eyes three shapes peeing in the shadows. “Could’ve been the commander said something; she’s got the street sense of a watermelon. Could’ve been Hahn. They knew everything we knew. Hell, Lopez could’ve told someone. That adds everyone in the federal government.”

“So, what, we’ll all take polygraphs?”

Jason pulls us up in front of Jewboy’s bungalow on the far West Side, throws the car in park, and says, “Yup.” He exits the car and rounds the fender.

I show him my phone through the windshield, then dial Arleen. Her voice makes me a schoolboy instead of cop in a sea of shit. I say, “Been thirty minutes; just wanted to say hi.”

Silence, then a frigid “Can’t talk” and she clicks off.

I blink at my phone. Thirty minutes ago we were going on a midnight picnic, gonna talk all night, probably hold hands. I’d get to kiss her again. I fold my phone. But not anymore. My stomach knots. Had to be Moens. Moens must’ve fed Arleen the exposé back at the L7. Bobby the monster.

Jewboy has named his basement Walter’s Love Hotel, but as far as I know, no girl’s ever been here who wasn’t with Jason or me. The Love Hotel is state-of-the-art, unmarried-cop, wood-paneled hip—pretty much a copy of the old
Saturday Night Live
skit with the Czech brothers. Orange-felt Brunswick pool table, slot machine, Hamm’s OTB beer sign, beer-tap refrigerator Candy Cook painted as the paddock at Arlington Park, autographed life-size Girls Next Door poster he stood in line all day to get, bobbleheads of Earlie Fires, Mike Ditka, Ernie Banks, and Walter Payton; gun-range trophies because Walter Jewboy Mesrow may be more mascot than cop, but he
can
shoot; flat-screen TV and three outdoor, triple-strength chaise longues. My spare amp lives
in the corner for our weekly repeat of the same three-chord lesson. I’ve never been down here when I wasn’t laughing. Till today.

The polygraph guy is set up with a laptop and printer on the pool table. Jewboy’s three vinyl kitchen chairs crowd the five-foot bar. I’m on a stool next to Buff, having just told my cell phone and Ruben I’ll be an hour late for the Mambo.

“
Buey
, Barlow ain’t a lightweight. Not the kind of man the brothers Vargas keep waiting.”

“So buy him a drink. I’ll be there.”

Harder tone. “Stateville’s a cold lifetime,
esé
. I want us to stay out.”

“
I said I’m coming
. Barlow waits or he doesn’t.”

Silence. Ruben lightens his tone. “Be cool, little brother. Don’t be getting all Mexican, not now. We got—”

“Have two stops to make. After I’ve made them, I’ll be there. Bye.” I fold the phone and it snaps like teeth. Buff stares, his hand wrapped around a rolled-up
Herald
. The basement is tense with eight guys, each of us wondering who gave up the Toyota. Nobody asks about Little Paul. It’s an odd tension, a basement room filled with personalities, guys you thought you knew so well you could
be
them. All of us are armed.

Buff says, “Give me your weapons. Everybody.”

We stare.

“On the bar. Those of you with two, put ’em all up here.”

We do; ten weapons total. Buff puts them in a box, then strips his nickel-plated pimp rig and drops it in the box. The box goes on the floor between his barstool and the wall. He nods at the polygraph and says, “Alphabetical. Three baseline-control questions about nothing, then the Toyota. Nothing else.”

No cop likes polygraphs; our eyes bounce from face to face. Before yesterday I knew everything there was to know about these guys. Buff taps the rolled-up
Herald
against his jeans. They may or may not have thought the same about me.

Alphabetically, Buff goes first (Anderson). He sits in the chair and straps himself into the clips and pads. The operator asks him if he’s ready.

“Yeah, c’mon.”

“State your name.”

“Bob Anderson.”

Seven sets of cop eyes watch our sergeant. We can’t read the screen that shows his reactions, the infinitesimal changes in pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity that some say are bullshit anyway.

When Buff finishes, Humberto Candelario goes next—Candy’s got private-security jobs all over, for all kinds of weird people, worked dope for the DEA. Jason is strapped in next—he drives a new car, rides a $15,000 Harley, buys $80 Cubs tickets like he has a trust fund.

Then Rick Gonzalez—Pretty Ricky buys borderline-ghetto three-flats and rehabs them to sell as yuppie condos when the yuppies are ready to take another block. Ricky’s money is always working right up against the gangsters, one midnight fire away from losing it all.

John “Fez” Kelyana is next. Fez is from Syria and has family desperate to get out of harm’s way. What isn’t spent on food and rent, Fez spends on immigration lawyers. One by one we take the chair. The basement becomes a bullpen, not enough room for our shoulders and nervous feet. No one is told if they pass or fail. The air worsens as each cop is put on trial, all of us wondering who sold us out to die.

I’m last to be strapped in. Other than Buff, my team has backed away, flexing their hands, their necks, working the tension out, wondering.

“State your name.”

“Bobby Vargas.”

“What is your legal name?”

“Roberto Vargas Ruiz.”

“Are you a woman?”

“No.”

“Are you a member of the Chicago Police Department.”

“Yes.”

“Last night Officer Sheila Lopez was shot to death in a red Toyota on the corner of Ashland Avenue and Twenty-first Street. Were you present?”

“Yes.”

“Prior to the murder of Officer Lopez, whom did you tell about the red Toyota?”

“No one.”

The polygraph operator looks up. “Did you discuss the red Toyota with members of your team?”

The headache kicks in. “Well, yeah. Yes.” Behind the operator and Buff, all seven are looking at me.

“Did you discuss the red Toyota with anyone else?”

“No.”

I am not asked about Coleen Brennan. Or Little Paul. The polygraph operator nods at his machine, then me, and says, “Done.”

I unclip and remove the waist strap. The polygraph operator gathers papers from his printer, then begins to pack his equipment.

Buff says, “Well?”

“Oh, sorry.” The operator hands Buff the results. “Everybody passed.”

“BOOYAH!” Big grins, backslaps. Gang Team 1269 just won the World Series. Half are on duty but all grab beers with both hands. Somebody fucked us—the commander, the feds—but it wasn’t us, and for the next twenty-four ounces that’s what matters.

Buff rolls up the polygraph results, backs me away from the others, loses his grin, and says, “Leave Danny Vacco alone.”

I toast with beer. “Can’t.”

“Listen, shithead, I’m telling you to leave Vacco alone, not that he’s being
left
alone, it’s just not you who’s doing anything … if something were to happen.”

“Thanks, but Vacco’s not your fight.”

“He’s not? I don’t work the Four Corners? Some day Danny Vacco don’t pull Little Paul on me when I’m in the box?”

“You’re retiring next year. And you’re smarter than that.”

“I’m smarter than
you
, that’s for fucking sure.” Buff fixes me with his steel-blue stare. “Somebody close gave up that Toyota.”

I toast again. “Wasn’t us.”

Buff bangs his beer against the Hamm’s I’m holding, eyes staying on mine an extra second too long, then pulls out the box with all our weapons. “Wasn’t us, but it’s somebody who knows us.”

I grab my Airweight. Buff grabs his pimp rig.

“Something’s out there.” Buff chins at the wall as he slides his pistol and holster into his belt. “A wild card, and it ain’t working well for those involved. How do I know this? We have a dead undercover fed
in our team that no federal agency wants to claim. Our commander isn’t talking to me, and my one friend in OPS—the investigator who took your statement at the scene—poor guy’s married to my cousin, the loud one who likes to eat. My friend in OPS and I go way back, knew him in ’Nam, and last night all he says to me is ‘Shadowland’ and walks away.”

“Shadowland?”

“A box-canyon plateau up above the A Shau Valley, between Hue and Khe Sanh. For the whole of the war—ours, and the French before us—neither side could hold it more than a year. The CIA/SOG guys operated in there with the LRRPs.” Buff’s fingers snake-paint his face. “The long-range recon, special operations people.”