Calumet City (41 page)

"What else did Tracy say?"

Sonny slips into street sergeant. "Thought maybe somebody oughta slap the shit out of you. Wake you up some." He shrugs and sips the Old Style. "Me, I know you don’t listen no matter how hard you get hit."

The tone’s got a funny edge, like there’s hurt in it. I glance at him, big and better-dressed than I’ve ever seen him, and realize that the tone’s been there all week, ever since this started. I scoop up the clothes right-handed and stare at a guy who never looks away, but he does.

"What’d my son say to you? At the fire."

Sonny Barrett dressed as Phil Donahue doesn’t answer.

"What’d he say?"

"Kid was confused; he didn’t know shit about what he was saying."

I lean at him like he needs to answer me. "What’d he say, Sonny?"

Sonny’s eyes narrow as he returns to my face, all the Phil Donahue gone. "You gonna brace me, Patti? For saving your ass. Again?"

I grab his arm, digging in with my nails and he doesn’t move. I lean into his face and watch it harden. "What-did-he-say?"

Sonny cocks his head, fights with his temper, and loses. "He said…he hoped those two psychos hadn’t made any kids; the world didn’t need any more mental patients."

At first I laugh, ’cause it’s what I’d say. Then I see WGN running John’s tape again and realize he’s about to find out who his parents are, that they did make a kid.

Sonny removes my nails from his arm. "You gotta tell the story. The whole thing. Tell your kid before the TV does. Then tell me and your lawyer. Make some kinda show before the G loads up the whole city against you."

I blink at the tone and the words. "Why would they do that?"

"What are you, a fucking child?
Somebody’s
gotta pay for the mayor’s wife and it ain’t gonna be the mayor. Chief Jesse ain’t gonna help you, he’s in too—"

Sonny stops so fast his beer bobbles. I look at the TV like it has answers to the old questions forming on my lips, but the TV’s now full of bikinis, frat boys, and beer.

"Chief Jesse is ’in too
what
?’"

Sonny’s nostrils flare and his neck bulges, but he doesn’t answer.

"What! Damn it."

"They say they got him cold, Patti, on the casino license. That bitch lawyer from the old First Ward—you know her, she works for Toddy Pete; she rolled on him and Chief Jesse."

I remember the perfume in Chief Jesse’s car. Shit, she was in my hospital room too, after the SUV almost killed Toddy Pete’s kid. She patted my hand—

"The G says they flipped her, had her wearing a wire. If Jesse Smith survives the hospital, they say he’s toast. And so are most of our bosses."

"Tell me you’re lying, Sonny."

"Ain’t no way Chief Jesse’s guilty. But the G thinks so and they think you know all about it. That you, him, and all this bullshit from Calumet City was being used on the mayor, making Mayor McQuinn agree to casino shit he otherwise wouldn’t."

"That’s a lie."

"Is it?" Sonny’s rubbing his arm.

"You don’t believe me? You think I’m into that?"

"Hell, you don’t ever answer; don’t explain." Sonny doesn’t sound right; he’s not mad, he’s…"What’re we supposed to think?"

"
We?
Who’s ’we’?" The answer hits me. "Are you wearing a wire on me, Sonny? That why you’re dressed for a costume party?"

Sonny flashes teeth and stands. "’We’ is your fucking crew, asshole. Your friends."

The whole week of revelations freight-trains in my face—John, the career, prison, lawyers, microphones. The cameras. Patti Black victim, Patti Black liar. I killed two people today, yesterday. Roland Ganz is dead. All of Roland and Gwen’s victims have my fingerprints around them. My entire Calumet City past, everybody but me and Danny del Pasco doing life in Joliet, is dead.

"I didn’t kill the guy in Calumet City. Back in ’87. Gwen did."

Sonny crushes his beer, says, "Whatever you say," and walks toward the kitchen. He palms the snap-brim cap off his head and tosses it in a trash can as he passes.

I watch, start to yell something shitty, and stomp to the bathroom with my new clothes instead. Inside, I put on Tracy’s hand-delivered jeans and the sweatshirt with my back to the mirror, then the Cubs hat. A credit card receipt falls out. It has Sonny’s name, not Tracy’s.

Five twenties are in the jeans, so is a key to Tracy’s town house, and a note that reads: "My deadline is midnight, Monday. Call or come over by 8:00. Remember, we have a deal."

We have a deal
. I lace up my tennis shoes. This must be what it feels like to be important—everybody waiting for your next step, except my fans and paparazzi will be armed with leering tabloid questions, then pistols and handcuffs. I spin on the mirror, glare right at it, dare the son of a bitch to look back.

The shock is total, the face much older than thirty-eight, someone whose lack of courage has killed innocent people, buried them tiny and young, and shallow in the Sonoran Desert. I…I…I’m not butch enough to face this. My eyes blur and my gun hand starts to shake. I steal something from Sonny. And I do what I’ve been doing since I was fifteen.

I run.

   And keep running. Toward a last dark cocktail with the ghosts of Wentworth Avenue. Seventeen years of Friday nights.

In real time the journey’s an hour race from Sonny’s apartment, but almost two and half decades if you count back from my parents dying in that car wreck. My final confrontation with Wentworth Avenue won’t settle my whole life, just the nightmare half, the half with no reflection and all the hate.

Roland Ganz has to be dead for the nightmare to end. Chinatown will be my proof. I have to know it here, feel it on my skin just once before my life runs out of gas and time.

Winded, I skirt Ricobene’s parking lot and the worst of its shadows, then slow to a walk at the south end of Wentworth. Chinatown’s pavement looks almost clean stripped of its litter by the heavy rains. The storefront neons glare a smeary ’40s feel, hazy like me and all four blocks are smoking opium. The sidewalks bustle, busy for a Monday night.

As I pass through the narrow-eyed hawkers fronting the bars and restaurants, they tell my shoulder why I need what they have. I hear sailors, girls…promises. Noncombatants crowd the sidewalks and don’t notice me.

But I notice them. I’m looking for Roland Ganz in their faces, in their hands. In the cheap perfume and cigarette smoke. A man bumps me; we share an angry stare and he moves on, figuring me for the transient hustler he is.

Roland took me here twice. Chinatown suited him, he said. They understood things in Chinatown. My first time here was so he could explain the blood in my underwear, that I was a woman now with a woman’s responsibilities. We had noodle soup and fish balls and he fucked me in the car.

Roland and I will be news very soon—he with Mary Kate and Gwen. Me with John and the will. The G and the media will put me in Roland’s Calumet City foster home; they may guess the devil was John’s father. But they won’t
know
. Not if that secret dies tonight.

Tracy will have plenty else to write about—and none of it Patti Black, hero cop. Now it’s Patti Black coward. Patti Black victim, Patti Black dirty cop and owner of His Pentecostal City. That’s where Chinatown ends you if you lack the guts to end it elsewhere—a prison 6 x 9 that never sees sunlight. Me and Danny D and the nightmares. Forever.

At Twenty-third Street I step into the restaurant. It’s dim and empty and when she sees me, the old woman inches back in her chair. She knows something isn’t right. I sit facing the window. The same boy who works Friday nights brings my tea. I surprise him and the old woman by ordering wrong and too loud, "Noodle soup and fish balls."

I know I’m not going to prison—I’ve known it since I left Sonny’s; I’m not going to trial either, not making transcripts to sell leery scandal sheets in the supermarket. And I’m not running. I’m keeping the faith tonight, the old promise that’s kept me pieced together since I made it out of Calumet City: no capture—no more attics, no more basements. Ever.

For seventeen years I’ve come here every Friday and reaffirmed that promise, making it true, making it strong enough to sustain the unsustainable.

The food comes, steaming the stale air between me and the window. Roland and I sat at this table the second time we came to Chinatown, me in this chair, and I looked out that window in a daze. I was fifteen then, and already showing; Roland was buying me a present for our baby, telling me I was his special little girl, telling me he was my father and my husband, and that I would understand when I was older.

I’m older, but I still don’t understand.

I don’t understand Chief Jesse taking money either, being mixed up with the old First Ward crew and the casino license. And I don’t believe it. His accidental brush with my past could bury him and his career—every decent thing he worked for—even though he and my past have nothing to do with each other.

I don’t understand why John will have to suffer for all of it.

I don’t understand. But I know what to do.

The restaurant’s door bangs open. I don’t look; I’m frowning at the window, at my reflection that won’t ever be there, won’t ever be completed.

"No more bullshit." Sonny’s voice is hard and angry. "Time to talk."

I force my eyes not to cut. How Sonny found me is a mystery; no one knows I come here. I feel his size looming at my shoulder and look up. He’s in gunfighter-don’t-fuck-with-me mode. In the Outfit, it’s your best friend who pulls the trigger. That would be easier. I just wish it wasn’t him.

"Talk about what?" The steam from my soup smells old.

Sonny has his new cap on and angles it at the kitchen. "Cisco’s out back. You got a piece?"

He knows I only carry one gun and it’s lost in the fire. If Cisco really is blocking the back exit, then Sonny has shrunk the restaurant to the length of his arms. He also knows I have a terror thing with confinement and doesn’t step any closer.

I pull the .38 Airweight I stole from his apartment and rest it and my hand on the table. "Badass Sonny Barrett afraid of me?"

Sonny takes a breath that he exhales slowly. "I’m gonna tell you somethin’."

I wait, but he doesn’t speak. I feel strangely lighter looking at him, less afraid of where all this has to go. He shifts his 250 pounds, takes another breath, and still doesn’t say anything.

I check the window, then the kitchen, then back to him. "What?"

"I know about this place."

"Yeah, I can see."

"You gotta tell the story, Patti."

We both know that isn’t gonna happen. He can tell by looking at me and I can tell by looking at the window. Sonny and I are saying good-bye. He knows it; I know it.

Sonny seems smaller, almost manageable. Boyish. His eyes read funny too, like he’s a photograph from the early days when we were in our twenties. I’d forgotten how he looked at me then, protected me. I’d forgotten. He asked me twice to go for "coffee or somethin’" back then, and the weight of those requests hadn’t registered until just now. At the end of everything and there it is.

"How’d you know? About here?"

Sonny swallows small. "After that shit by St. Rita’s. Thought you might start drinking again. Followed you here."

I squeeze the .38 and sit back to see all of him. "That was a long time ago, Sonny. I come here every week."

He nods, embarrassed, like he knows. Street criminals nod like that, copping to the cheapest of the felonies they face. For some reason I remove the Cubs hat and show it to him. "You buy me this?"

He nods again, another felony in Sonny Barrett Tough-guy Land.

I smile, surprised that I can, and the smile chokes at my air. "
You?
Badass Sonny Barrett has
a thing for me
?"

Sonny harrumphs and cuts his eyes. It’s knee-jerk and he stops halfway, hesitates, and tells the floor, "Maybe. If I didn’t know better."

"Me?"
I’m still choking. "Damn, Sonny, I figured you for smarter."

He shrugs the big shoulders. For sure boyish now, stripped of the armor—then flexes his neck to recover the macho he just tossed in the river. I stare because I don’t know what else to do. Three quarters of me knows she has to go, to face the Airweight finish; one quarter wants to stay, see what the boyfriend I never had feels like. Sonny Barrett, my boyfriend—no possible way I could’ve seen that.

Except every way…if I’d been a girl before just now. I tighten on the pistol before I lose my nerve. I owe my son a clean slate. "Gotta go, Sonny."

His face flushes and real hurt fills his eyes; he shakes his big head.

"I gotta. And you have to let me."

"Am I so bad…that I ain’t even worth trying? That ain’t fucking right, Patti. I could be better. As good as the other guys."

"That’s not it, Sonny. Not you; it’s me. It’s this…" The .38 waves itself at the room.

Sonny snarls, "Fuck this place and whatever it means," then nods at the window. "Them too."

Outside, two sets of flashing lights are double parking.
Shit.
I jump up to run. Sonny shoves me back into the chair. I try again and he puts his weight into it this time, splattering me to the floor.
Big panic
, then anger, then more panic.

"I gotta get, Sonny."

"What you gotta do is face this thing. Dying’s chickenshit."

Then I see it, the betrayal, the…"You fed me to the G?
You mother
—"

I scramble to stand. Sonny puts a size-13 boot on my chest. I shove him off balance and use the wall to stand. Everything’s a blur, not the moment of clarity the shrinks say will be there when you finally decide. Cisco charges from the kitchen, yelling, "Don’t!" Sonny pancakes me into the wall. His hand covers the Airweight but doesn’t rip it out. We’re face to chest; I can hear his heart. He whispers, "I’m going with you in the car. Everybody from the crew will be at the station. You ain’t doing this alone."

My hand tightens on the gun. His hand tightens on mine.

"Don’t say shit outside; don’t answer shit. Far as they know you were giving yourself up, just having dinner first."