Precinct 11 - 01 - The Brotherhood (25 page)

“Play it by ear?”

She nodded, looking eager to escape.

“I don’t want to become a pest,” he said, “but I can’t promise I’ll quit asking.”

“I didn’t ask you to quit asking, but you’ll do yourself a favor if you slow down.”

“Got it.”

“How did you like our church?”

“I liked it. Will it bother you if I come back?”

“It’s no place to see me. You can see how busy I am there. But no, it wouldn’t bother me at all. In fact, it would encourage me to see you here.”

Bitterly disappointed, Boone texted Francisco Sosa and asked if they could get together for coffee late that evening.

I would almost any time,
Sosa wrote back,
but after multiple services this weekend, Sunday night is family crash time. Pick another time and I’ll make it work. Meanwhile, here’s another passage to look up. Romans 8:38-39.

All Boone had wanted was to tell Sosa of his new resolve and his interest in what the pastor had once referred to as the nourishment of his spiritual life. He knew he had been remiss, even in all the years before the tragedy, in his devotional life—reading the Bible every day and praying. He wanted to do something about that and wanted some kind of an aid. Was there a book or a list of passages or a guide for, say, reading through the Bible in a year? He knew there was. He had heard of those, even a through-the-year Bible that had it all scoped out for you. That seemed perfect.

Boone knew he could find all this stuff on his own, but after the brush-off by Haeley, he needed the kind of feedback he knew he’d get from Francisco. Ah, who was he kidding? He had brushed off Sosa ten times. He was surprised the guy hadn’t given up on him already. Boone certainly couldn’t expect special treatment by someone in charge of so many people.

Boone looked online for a book on prayer and for a one-year Bible, ordering them both. Meanwhile he thanked God for a most unusual day, for revealing himself to Boone and even for the response he’d gotten from Haeley. “I don’t understand that either,” he said, “but I’m trusting you and accepting it for now.” He also prayed about the assignment that was coming in the morning and for the ability to sleep so he would be alert and ready to respond to his bosses.

Then he looked up the Bible passage Francisco Sosa had recommended:

I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So often Sosa’s references resonated with something Boone had experienced that very day. This one he could not put into that category, but something about it gave him such a sense of deep peace that he knew God must have nudged Francisco to suggest it. Boone’s biggest fear, as he haltingly and cautiously made his way back to his faith, was that he himself had somehow caused a separation between him and God. But if none of those things listed could separate him from God, how could he himself?

These were verses he wanted to memorize, and he decided he would try to memorize at least one verse a week. He read them over and over before he went to bed, and with the promise rattling in his brain, slept deeply and soundly for the first time in ages.

Boone awoke at dawn thanking God for peace and rest, which surprised Boone after his disappointment. What struck him was that he was still wounded, still alone, still confused about many things, and yet he looked forward to the future.

He had planned to work out before leaving for headquarters but decided instead to go for a run. Boone felt better than he had in a long time as the cold morning air filled his lungs. By the time he arrived at the office, he was ready for whatever the brass had to offer. He greeted Haeley, who seemed warm enough, and grabbed the picture of Max. Boone just smiled at it and put it back, angling it to where he could see it from his office.

He was sitting at his desk when Haeley called out, “Detective Drake, it’s time for your meeting. Deputy Chief Keller and Commander Wade would like you to bring just a legal pad.”

Maybe it was his imagination, but Boone thought Keller and Wade looked even more excited than he did. He sat across from them in the small conference room off Jack’s office, his pen ready. Keller had his suit coat off, revealing his 9mm strapped in a shoulder holster. Wade, his pure white hair shining, wore a dark suit, buttoned up despite that he was sitting, and was fingering a stack of file folders.

“Ready, Boones?” Keller said.

“If I was any more ready, I’d burst.”

Wade opened the top folder, revealing a large mug shot of a dapper, elderly man. “You recognize him?”

Boone nodded. “Jacopo.”

“Graziano Jacopo,” Wade said. “To the best of our knowledge, still boss of the Chicago Outfit.”

“Don’t let his age or his look fool you,” Keller said. “He’s still the most feared man in the Mob. And as you know, we suspect he has kept his nose clean the last few years by outsourcing his hits.”

“To the gangbangers,” Boone said.

“That’s why the Crime Commission doesn’t lay some of the Outfit deaths personally at his feet or hold his most established hit men responsible,” Wade said. “The deaths have not had the quick and clean characteristics of Mob hits. You remember some of these?”

“Sure,” Boone said. “Ripped to shreds. Overkill. Some by AK-47s. The way the street gangs do it.”

Jack stood and placed both palms on the table. “The public tells us to quit looking for the killers. To just thank them. I understand that sentiment, but it’s not what we’re about. The problem is, these kinds of murders don’t reveal the modus operandi of the Mob or any specific hit men. They could have been committed by any one of tens of thousands of gangbangers.”

“The proverbial needle in a haystack, huh?” Boone said.

Keller smiled grimly. “Welcome to Organized Crime, Boones.”

“What, that’s my assignment? Find these killers out of the whole Chicago universe of street gangs? We can’t even differentiate between the black gangs and the Hispanic gangs in their methodology. Or at least I can’t.”

Wade pulled out another folder and opened it to reveal another photo. Boone turned it upright and slid it in front of himself. “That’s Pascual Candelario, right? Didn’t he do time at Stateville?”

Wade nodded. “Armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon, but as you can imagine, that was just what we could get him on. You remember what he did almost as soon as he got in there?”

Boone racked his brain. It was coming back to him. “Just about cleaned up all the gang stuff at Stateville, didn’t he?”

“
Between
the gangs, at least,” Wade said. “God help you if you were white, a skinhead, an Aryan, or unaffiliated. But anybody in there from the Disciples, the Lords, or the Kings was invited to join Candelario’s new coalition, the DiLoKi Brotherhood. There wasn’t so much as an injury to one of them after that.”

“But they wreaked havoc on everybody else.”

“They did. And now he’s out and heading up the same kind of coalition in the city.”

It was Boone’s turn to stand and stretch. “You know what the new coalition reminds me of? The Jamaican Shower Posse in New York and Toronto in the eighties.”

Boone felt Pete Wade looking at him with admiration. “That’s a good thought,” Wade said. “The posse was one of the first coalitions of smaller gangs.”

Boone shrugged. “So what are we doing about that? Do we think the DiLoKi is easier to manage than three rival gangs?”

“They could even wipe out the Outfit,” Wade said. “Candelario’s genius is that he welcomes everybody. No turf. No colors. All for one and one for all.”

“Is it working?”

“Seems to be. Intergang violence is almost nil.”

“What are they doing to everyone else? Seems they’d be just as hard to control—maybe harder.”

“They would,” Jack said. “Except Pascual Candelario—he goes by PC—wants to work with us.”

Boone sat back down. “I’ll bite. What happened?”

“Two things,” Wade said. “The DiLoKi, specifically Candelario, made a pact with the Outfit to protect any of their guys in Stateville. Imagine that coalition now, on the outside. The Chicago Outfit and the three biggest street gangs in the country working together against everybody else.”

“Wow. But you said two things.”

“For that you’ll have to come with us. Get your coat.”

A few minutes later, in the backseat of an unmarked squad with Keller driving and Wade in the passenger seat, Boone said, “Does this all have to be cloak-and-dagger, or can I ask where we’re going?”

“You’ve been there,” Keller said.

Okay, so this was how it was going to be. Boone sat quiet until he recognized the route and Keller finally pulled into a parking garage near the U.S. Customs building on Canal Street. Among other things, the structure housed the Chicago Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Gang Crime Unit and crime lab.

There the three were greeted by forensics expert Dr. Ragnar Waldemarr, a tall, graying man of about sixty. He took them to an anteroom off the crime lab, where he pulled from the shelf a large, white storage box and carefully set it on a table, at which they all sat. Despite how little Dr. Waldemarr jostled the box, still it rattled and tinkled.

A crime scene location and date were felt-tip marked on the side, identifying the evidence from the last big gang shoot-out on the Northwest Side, six months before. Boone remembered seeing the story on the news, but the DiLoKi Brotherhood was not named. Reporters merely mentioned that a coalition of gangs had engaged in a brief but bloody war with one of the lesser Hispanic gangs, a lagging holdout against the merger. Word was, the new alliance had vowed to persuade whatever few survivors there might be to join peacefully. There hadn’t been many, but they had meekly joined.

Dr. Waldemarr began removing handfuls of large-caliber shells, and soon more than two hundred were scattered on the table, some rolling, and all three cops gathered them to keep them from dropping onto the floor.

“You want them all?” the doctor said. “There are more than a thousand.”

“That’s plenty, Rag,” Keller said. “Just show the new guy.”

The doctor turned to Boone. “Drake, is it? Do you know the assault weapon of choice of the head of the DiLoKi?”

“Some kind of Nazi rifle, but I couldn’t tell you much more about it.”

“Well, let me tell you, it’s something distinctive. It’s called the StG 44, the Sturmgewehr model 1944. It’s widely referred to as the first modern assault rifle. The Nazis used it for only about a year at the end of World War II, and less than a half million were produced. Where Candelario got one, we have no idea, but someone who knew what they were doing has it in tip-top shape.”

As he spoke, the doctor was separating out and setting on their broad flat ends the shells for cartridges that looked like—with bullets inserted—they would have been close to eight inches tall. The hollow end made Boone guess, “32mm?”

Dr. Waldemarr nodded. “Close—33. Gas-operated, the thing will shoot more than five hundred rounds a minute, emptying a thirty-round magazine in less than four seconds. Velocity of more than two thousand feet a second with an effective range of three American football fields.”

Boone snorted. “Candelario would never shoot that far.”

“More like twenty feet,” Wade said. “That thing rips people in two.”

The doctor and the two older cops glanced at each other. “Show him,” Keller said.

Waldemarr stood and pulled a small envelope from another box on the shelf. He emptied into his hand a half-dozen similar shells. “Compare one of these to one of those,” he said, sitting and sliding one to Boone.

Drake examined one from each group. “These,” he said, referring to the ones the doctor had taken from the envelope, “make the others look as if they haven’t even been fired. I don’t get it.”

Dr. Waldemarr smiled at Keller. “Can you spare him for lab work?”

“Not on your life.”

“Very good, Detective Drake,” the doctor said. “We have determined that of all the shells collected from that battle scene, only the few dozen from Candelario’s StG 44 were blanks.”

Boone let his eyes close and shook his head. When he found his voice, he said, “I’m lost.”

The doctor stood and began putting all the evidence away. “Now he is in your territory, gentlemen. Not mine. I show you the forensics; you make of it what you will.”

On the way back to headquarters, Boone sorted and shifted the news in his head and simply couldn’t make it compute. “I give up,” he said finally. “I don’t get it.”

“PC got religion,” Keller said.

“No way.”

“He did. Nobody knows quite how or why, but we have inside information that this guy is a born-againer and the real deal. Won’t kill anybody, but he can’t let on to his compatriots either. He’d be a dead man.”

“Inside information?” Boone said. “How solid?”

“The Protestant chaplain at Stateville. Claims it’s legit and that he’s the only one who knows about it. That’s where you come in.”

“I’m listening.”

“We’ll set up a meeting between you and this chaplain. He says the new PC isn’t really that new, that he’s been a secret Holy Roller for more than two years. If that’s true, it could be that PC came up with the DiLoKi idea as a way to help make amends for all the stuff he’s done.”

“That’s a lot, isn’t it? Wasn’t he high up in the Latin Kings?”

“Among the top three for a decade. We figure he personally killed at least a dozen rivals. Maybe more.”

“What’s his angle now?”

“That’s for you to find out from the chaplain. But in broad strokes, it involves PC getting the big coalition solidly established and out of each other’s hair. Then they plan something big, and at the right time, he gives ’em all up, the leadership of all three big gangs and the Outfit.”

Boone drew a hand through his hair. “Talk about writing your own death sentence.”

“Of course he wants to do it in such a way that it’ll save his own skin.”