Precinct 11 - 01 - The Brotherhood (27 page)

“I don’t get too many Hispanics because most of ’em, if they’ve got any church background at all, it’s Catholic. And they got their own chaplain. Good guy. I like him. But like I say, I don’t get too many of ’em. Well, one morning, who shows up but Pascual Candelario himself? Even I was scared. You ever see this guy?”

“Only in pictures.”

“Biggest Mexican I ever saw. Goes about six-six and three hundred pounds, tattoos telling his whole history. Bald with ink around the eyes, tiny crosses encircling his neck—I guess one for each murder—and every gang symbol and image you can think of on his forearms and hands. Besides all the Latin King stuff with the crowns and lions and such, he’s got the DiLoKi Brotherhood symbol near his eyebrows and a permanent teardrop.

“And a scowl? This guy looked like he’d rather tear you in two than look at you. Well, we had maybe fifty or sixty guys for chapel that morning, and PC plants himself dead center of the second row, arms crossed, staring straight at me. I have a simple little routine each week where we’ll stand and sing a couple of choruses, have testimonies and prayer requests, and then I do a short message. Well, PC doesn’t stand when everyone else stands, and he has no interest in sharing a chorus book or looking on at one of the Bibles we issue. In fact, he won’t even pass stuff down the row.

“The place was quieter than I’ve ever seen it, and if there was a guy in there who didn’t know PC was among us, I’d be surprised. Some left before we hardly got started. The singing was quieter, the testimonies and prayer requests shorter, and I admit I got right on with my part of it too. I don’t know if I looked as scared as I was. I’ve learned to hide it pretty good. But I saw a lot of terrified faces that morning, every one of ’em wondering if he was the reason the king of the DiLoKi himself was there.”

George Harrell quieted when their meals arrived. Then he bowed his head and said, “Lord, thanks for this and please protect us. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

The chaplain began eating quickly. Boone said, “Take your time, Reverend. I’m in no hurry unless you are.”

“Nah, force of habit, and I don’t want to keep you. Already told the wife I’d be late.”

“Then slow down and enjoy.”

Boone found the meal delicious but so heavy that he ate only half of it—eschewing the beans at Harrell’s suggestion—and passed on dessert while urging the chaplain to have some. And he did. A huge piece of cherry pie à la mode. Boone almost wished he still had that kind of an appetite.

“That’s really kinda awful,” Harrell said.

“What, the pie?”

The man nodded but finished it anyway. “Not sure what’s wrong with it. Not spoiled, but old, you know? Like me, I guess.”

When the waitress came by again, Harrell said, “You got any more of that pie?”

“Why, yes I do!”

“Well, you’d better throw it out.”

Harrell roared at that one, and when the waitress looked horrified, he assured her it was probably all right but just didn’t sit well with him. She offered to take it off the bill, but he said, “No, no. I was able to force it down, wasn’t I?”

Boone found the whole exchange puzzling, and Harrell must have noticed. He shook his head. “Sorry, but I gotta keep things light outside the joint. Pretty depressing in there, day after day, year after year. In a lot of ways we correctional employees are in prison too, you know?”

“I can only imagine.”

“Well, take it from me.” Harrell maneuvered his rangy frame till he was sitting sideways in the booth, his feet jutting into the aisle. “Anyway, I got Pascual Candelario himself in chapel, and we’re all on edge. So it’s finally over and everybody’s startin’ to leave, except for the two or three guys who help me pick up the chorus books and Bibles and fold the chairs. Only PC says to them, ‘I got this,’ and they immediately take off. Now there I am, alone with him. Just terrific.”

“What’re you thinking at this point?”

“Well, I don’t know what to think. I say, ‘Thanks for your help, man.’ He says, ‘No problem,’ and I have to admit, I was kind of stunned by his tone. I mean, I had never heard him speak before, but you see a guy that huge and you know his reputation and all, and you assume he’s gonna sound scary, right? But he sounded gentle.”

“For real?”

“Gave me courage. I said, ‘To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence this morning?’ That made him smile. He said, ‘My presence gave you pleasure, man?’ Well, he’d caught me, and I had to laugh. That really seemed to amuse him, because a guy like that is certainly aware of how people respond to him. It broke the ice.

“I said, ‘Are you interested in the things of God?’ He nodded, shy-like. I said, ‘Well, you came to the right place, unless you’d be more comfortable at Mass.’ He said, ‘You tryin’ to get rid of me already?’ I assured him I was not and that if he wanted to join us, he was certainly welcome. He said, ‘Wonder what that’ll do to attendance.’”

“So PC is that engaging, huh? Doesn’t sound scary at all.”

“Oh, I was still scared, and I was hoping he wasn’t really planning on becoming a regular. Which he wasn’t. He looked around and asked if we could talk in private. I said sure, but I wasn’t excited about it. I took him into my office, which fortunately has a security camera and a panic button. ’Course a guy like that coulda broke my neck and had me dead before anybody came to help, but I’ve always known the risks of a job like mine.”

“I’m dying to hear what he told you.”

“And I’ll tell ya, at least the basics. But you should hear most of it from him. It’s quite a story, and you’ll be as intrigued as I was. Bottom line is he was raised dirt-poor in Guadalajara, his dad died when he was young, and the rest of the family somehow found their way to the States and migrated to Chicago. He got involved in the Almighty Latin King Nation when he was pretty young, committed his first murder as a teenager.”

“Wow.”

“Well, it was blood in and blood out, you know? If you want in, you’ve got to shed blood, and if you want out, you’re gonna shed some of your own. Came up through the ranks. As he got bigger and stronger and had no qualms about murdering his rivals, he became the most feared gangbanger in the city.”

“That’s pretty much common knowledge.”

“I know, Detective, and like I say, I want you to get the details from him. But the bottom line is that he was raised in a Christian home. Maybe not Christian in the way you and I think of it, but they were sort of outcasts in their own community because they weren’t Catholics. They weren’t traditional evangelicals either, more charismatic or Pentecostal. His mother, he says, was into speaking in tongues and healing and all that, and while Pascual turned his back on church, he remembered what he was taught about being saved.”

“It obviously didn’t affect his life.”

“No, it didn’t. Broke his mother’s heart. Anyway, you know several years ago they finally got him on a laundry list of lesser charges, and he gets sent up. He’s still running things from Stateville and gangbanging even inside, then comes up with the idea of the DiLoKi Brotherhood. It just makes him bigger and more powerful and more feared than ever. The DiLoKi are open to just about everybody, and you’re either in or you’re in trouble.

“But if you can believe him—and frankly at first I didn’t—he says his conscience started working on him because of the constant letters and visits from his mother, telling him she and her little church were praying for him. In every letter this little lady spells out the gospel, how he can repent of his sins and be saved from hell. Funny thing was, he says his motto used to be—you know, to his fellow gangbangers—‘Let’s all go to hell together.’ He really believed that was what was going to become of them. They didn’t care about anything or anybody, and they weren’t afraid to die. They just figured it was inevitable.”

“So he finally decided he was afraid of hell?”

“You know, I never gathered that from him. I don’t see this as a deathbed conversion or something to make things easier for him in the future. He tells me that he finally waited till he knew his cellmate was asleep and nobody was watching, and he knelt by his bunk and prayed the prayer. Asked forgiveness for all the murders—would you believe more than twenty?”

“We had him down for twelve or thirteen.”

“He tells me close to two dozen. And he asked Jesus to come into his life and save him.”

“And you believe him.”

“I told you, at first I didn’t. I know finding Jesus is a common ploy for the worst of these guys, and I was looking for all the holes in the story. I know God can save even the worst of sinners if they are sincere, no matter what anybody else thinks about how easy and convenient it is for a multimurderer to get assured of heaven. The reason I came to believe PC is because of how conflicted he still was, still is.”

“And this has been how long?”

“More than two years. I gave him the Scripture about how you accept, believe, and confess, and he said he had confessed to God. I told him, no, you’ve got to confess with your mouth to someone else that Jesus Christ is Lord. He told me, ‘Reverend, that’s going to be you and my ma. Nobody else would believe it, and I’ll be dead in a week if they think I mean it.’”

“But you said he wasn’t afraid to die even when he thought he would go to hell. Why would he fear death now?”

“He told me he was scared to death he would never get to make amends to all the people he had hurt and killed and stole from.”

Boone sat back. “He sincerely wants to do that?”

“I believe he does. I gather that dealing with his remorse was way more important to him than escaping hell. From that day to this, he has kept the whole thing secret, but he has poured himself into the DiLoKi. So far it seems none of the other leaders have suspected a thing or figured out that the whole idea has cut way back on violence, especially on the inside. Sure, there are still horrible things that happen between various factions. But the three major gangs used to kill each other inside and outside Stateville. You hardly even hear of that anymore. But to PC, it’s not enough. He wants to start making amends.”

“By ratting out the leadership.”

“Exactly.”

“And he has no second thoughts about that?”

“Good question, and I asked him that. Because there’s a code even among killers, you know. There was a day when a gangbanger wouldn’t even rat out an enemy, let alone a friend. But PC says these gangs, the DiLoKi included, are so out of control, the fear and the dread and the horror they inflict on the community will never be checked until the hierarchy is disabled. This is the only way he knows to do it.”

“And he’s got a plan?”

George Harrell nodded. “He’s no dummy, Detective. He didn’t get where he is through intimidation alone. PC knows what it will take to make this work the most thoroughly, and once he’s assured a deal is in place, he’s ready to put his plan into action.”

“And once you hook us up, you want out of this?”

“Completely. Maybe there’s a way I can communicate some kind of encouragement to him through you. And wherever he winds up, I might try to get word to him that I’m still praying for him. But after I tell him he can trust you, I’ve got to be left out of this. He asked only that I make the contact with the Chicago PD and said he would take it from there.”

“I think we can honor that.”

“You have to.”

“You have my word, Reverend. What else do you need to know about me so you can endorse me to him?”

“I know who you are, Drake. And so will he. That you’re still on the job after what you went through tells me all I need to know.”

“How do I meet him?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Harrell pulled from his pocket a sheet from a tiny spiral notebook. On it he had jotted an address. “He holes up above a garage not far from the old headquarters of the Kings at Beach and Spaulding.”

“Northwest Side. I’m going to look kind of conspicuous in that neighborhood.”

“Yeah, but PC assures me it’s a place you can slip into after dark, if you follow the route he’s outlined here on the back. He’ll be waiting for you at two in the morning Friday. I don’t mean to treat you like an imbecile, but that’s after midnight Thursday.”

“Got it.”

“He wants you to just stop at the stop sign at this corner and wait fifteen seconds. He’ll climb in, and then you can take him wherever you feel you’ll both be safe.”

Boone folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. “And so it begins,” he said. “Reverend Harrell, on behalf of the Organized Crime Division of the Chicago Police Department, I want to extend sincere gratitude. This was a thankless but courageous task.”

Harrell scooted out of the booth and stood to shake Boone’s hand. “I appreciate it, Detective, but you’ll understand if I say I hope we never see each other again, at least this side of heaven. What say I meet you at the eastern gate sometime in the hereafter?”

“Works for me,” Boone said.

17

Lion’s Lair

Tuesday morning Jack Keller and Pete Wade came to Boone’s office for a debriefing about his conversation with the chaplain. They didn’t shut the door and lowered their voices only when they heard footsteps in the hall. Boone could not imagine that Haeley was out of earshot. Did that mean they weren’t keeping this from her because she had already seen a lot of the paperwork anyway?