Start Shooting (24 page)

SUNDAY

My guitar stays behind, locked up in property. Angry eyes burn into the back of my head as Cindy Bourland walks me out of 12 into the night. Outside, two uniforms I work with don’t hide the disgust in their faces and don’t move their cigarettes out of our way. We sidestep the uniforms. Bourland stops when we’re clear, locks her eyes on mine, and annunciates: “Be. Careful.”

Before I can speak, she palms my elbow, walks me to a waiting Pontiac idling with the windows down. She places herself between me and the passenger door, mouths “Careful,” and walks away.

I check the Pontiac’s backseat, empty, then the front seat to ID the driver. My hand pops the door, I force calm into my demeanor, and slide in. Tania Hahn is behind the wheel. “Forget to call me after the Mambo?”

I nod back over my shoulder toward “my” lawyer.

Hahn sips from a can of Pepsi One. “Yep, Cindy Bourland works for me.” Hahn sets the can on the Pontiac’s dashboard. “And now so do you.”

The uniforms watch. I watch them back, consider a short trip to their personal space and a brief, bloody fistfight. “No reason to call you. Not wearing a wire on Buff. Never happen.”

“Sergeant Anderson thinks you’re a child molester.”

I turn to Hahn. “Fuck you.”

“Enjoy prison, then.” Hahn studies the cut above my eye, then waves
to Cindy Bourland passing in a Porsche convertible. “Cop? Child molester? Maybe you last a week in Stateville.”

“I didn’t do it twenty-nine years ago and I didn’t do it now.”

“Two out of three ain’t bad, if that’s what you mean.” Hahn turns slightly. “Where’s your guitar? I can drop you back at your gig. Heard Ed Cherney was in town.”

I bite my teeth and stare at Hahn. Taking the bait won’t help me kill Danny Vacco or find who’s behind him framing me, somebody big like the CIA. “The Chess session’s over; I called from inside.”

“Pity. Cindy said it was a big deal you were invited.”

Maybe hit her first, then the two uniforms. “Suppose you can fix that, too?”

Headshake. “More into country, k. d. lang, Bekka Bramlett, cowboy-chick stuff.”

“You wasted your money. Feds rat. Chicago cops don’t.”

Hahn purses thin lips. “Should we add up your problems one last time? Before your only hope tosses you out of her Pontiac and signs up another
Chicago cop
?” Pause. “Let’s see, the
Herald
—child-sex murder; Little Paul in the ’hood has you wagging your dick at him or worse; add the white girl in your building, then the red Toyota that got my girlfriend killed … I miss anything?”

“What the fuck do you want?”

Hahn turns the Pepsi One can so I can see the logo. “I already told you.”

“Not from me, asshole. From Robbie and his partners. You said they had what you wanted. I’ll go with you. Give me a gun and we’ll go get it.”

She attempts ingenue. “I know I’m just a girl. But if it were that simple, wouldn’t I already be doing it?”

I stare, squeeze my hands to keep them off her. She doesn’t speak or blink. Just stares.

“I’m not wearing a wire on my friends, no matter what you threaten or promise.”

“Somebody will. Might as well be you, survive all these awful accusations you say aren’t true.”

“They
aren’t
true. I’ll prove it.”

“How? Your friends are already walking away. Hell, you can’t blame ’em. Come Monday all the city, state, and department agencies will be all over you. The newspapers, tabloid TV; shit, Bobby, you’re fucked. And if we were talking about somebody else you’d know it.”

“Not wearing a wire on my friends. Price is too high.”

She shrugs. “Depends. Only injures the guilty. That’s your job, isn’t it?”

My job … I take a long look at the uniforms, Bobby Vargas already convicted. If cops who know me think I’m guilty, what will the agencies, the social workers, the feds say? Every ghetto kid I meet will be scared to death of me. Hahn’s right, I
am
fucked. I toss her some of my own bait. “You want me to roll? Tell your rat why.”

Headshake, pursed lips, Pepsi sip. “Explanations aren’t part of my job description, sugah.”

“Then we’re done.” I pop her door, leave it open, and walk south on Racine, mumbling, spitting. Good job controlling your temper.
Fuck my temper
, how’s that?

Guess it’s James Barlow time. Assuming he’ll still have me. Maybe he can’t afford a multi-accusation pedophile client; Toddy Pete insures the Archdiocese of Chicago; Toddy Pete might not want to share a lawyer with a pedophile.
Horn
. A hundred feet past the District 12 parking lot Hahn pulls up with her passenger door still hanging open. “Compromise.”

“Fuck you.”

“Wear the wire on Robbie Steffen. You
know
he’s a crook.”

I stop, scout Racine for listeners, and stay on the sidewalk. “And how do I know that?”

“Because you’re a cop, even if these other assholes aren’t. And if I’m right, you don’t like crooked cops. So it’s not being a rat; it’s payback for him shitting on your uniform.”

Eve and her apple; little blond reptile ought to be a game-show host.

But she’s right, I hate crooked cops, most of us do, but I’m not Frank Serpico, not that I think Serpico was on the level. “If I wear a wire on Robbie there isn’t a cop in this department who’ll talk to me when it’s over. Even if the prick’s guilty of treason.”

“Probably won’t come to that. No testimony; nobody has to know.”

“Only way it
can
end—bright lights, U.S. attorney, federal court, reporters and cameras everywhere. Jo Ann Merica wants to be governor, remember?”

Hahn tosses her can of Pepsi One at a wire trash basket between us and misses. “If I can unpack Robbie, he’ll roll to stay free, white, and alive.” Eyes tight, focused. “I’m not interested in lawyers or law and order. Couldn’t care less.”

“You can override a U.S. attorney? Bullshit. God can’t do that.”

“Not override.”

“Jo Ann Merica’s on a mission for Robbie Steffen, he’s one of her tickets to the governor’s office in Springfield. If she finds the ammunition she’ll crucify him … assuming Toddy Pete doesn’t get stupid and put her in the river.”

Hahn pops another Pepsi One. “Jo Ann’s part of the federal government—a big place with lots of competing agendas—and you’re right, Jo Ann Merica would put me in prison next to Robbie Steffen if it would make her governor of Illinois. But she’d also cut a deal with Toddy Pete—a kingmaker in Chicago, you’d have to admit—if it earned her the same thing.”

“Nah. You don’t know Chicago.”

“I know the federal government, and I know Jo Ann’s bosses. What I’m hunting trumps crooked cops and governor’s races.”

I stare at District 12 a block behind us, then at Hahn. “All my shit goes away? Clean? The
Herald
prints a retraction?”

Hahn nods. “Do Robbie the way I want, then Toddy Pete; and if you’re still alive, you’re free. I’ll even shoot Danny Vacco for you, just like I said.”

“What about Buff?”

“Maybe I explain some, let you decide whether to wear the wire or not.” Shrug. “Or we put Buff on hold … for now.”

Half of me is shadowed by the lights of the 12th District station. My home of seventeen years, old and worn and full of my dysfunctional family. My lungs exhale and I hear my voice use words I would have bet my life against hearing. “Ask Robbie what?”

“Hop in, time for your education.”

Wacker Drive still has Saturday-night traffic passing the window of Coogan’s Riverside. Our large table in back is lit dim by a green porcelain shade overhead. From the chair next to her, Tania Hahn lifts a government-issue folder and slides it between our pints of Guinness. Her hand presses down on the folder.

“Open the folder and you’re pregnant.” Pause. “Bobby Vargas is in till I say he’s out.”

I focus on her, not the folder. “Everyone in the CIA a drama queen?”

She smiles—half the time it looks real. “Nah, just me.” The smile quits, becomes a blank like it was never there. “I’m not kidding about being
in
. And I’m not kidding when I tell you I can act
way
different than I look.”

I sip the Guinness and try not to hear the music that’s playing. Bonnie Raitt and John Lee Hooker dueting “I’m in the Mood.” A song John Lee wrote and I can play top to bottom; can hear it come out of my fingers. Mine.

Hahn says, “WMD … BW.”

More Guinness; it’s easier, several is a good idea. Me and Chess Records were right there. Now I’m a child molester pedophile. A rat. Hard to fucking believe—

“Biological warfare.”

“Huh?”

“I’d listen if I were you.” Hahn’s face is a blank, a serious one.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“BW is biological warfare, my specialty, my calling if you will. Not chemical weapons;
pathogens, bacteria
, and
live virus
, the kind that finds a living host—mammals like you and me—reproduces inside millions of times till the host bursts.”

“That’s
warfare
?”

“Enough hosts and you have a strategic weapon
—not tactical
, strategic. There are only two types of strategic weapons on this planet—nuclear and weaponized live virus.”

“Nuclear. We’re talking
nukes
? Like the A-bomb?”

“Not nukes, but Robbie Steffen and his partners say they have weaponized live-virus matériel. Old stuff from the 1940s, but scary shit nonetheless. We don’t believe they have it yet, but they very well might
know where it is. They tried to blackmail a major corporation with direct historical ties to the creation of this matériel. The corporation tried unsuccessfully to recover the matériel … were a bit heavy-handed. Do we at the CIA care about blackmail or heavy-handed recovery? Somebody on the fourth floor might, but I don’t. I want the BW matériel—or proof Robbie’s running a scam; which he probably is.” Hahn checks me for understanding, then lifts her pint and drinks a quarter. “Agent Tania Hahn, over and out.”

“Nah. Doesn’t add up. Why be in my gang team?”

“I need a cop with your history. The rest you don’t need to know. Not yet.”

I turn the pint once in my hands. “I wear a wire, trick Robbie into convicting himself, then do the same to his father. Risk my life twice and
then
you’ll explain?”

Nod. “After we try T.P., you and I are probably dead, so knowing the rest won’t matter.”

“I take it back. You’re too stupid to be a drama queen.”

Hahn taps the folder. “In or out?”

“Last chance. Who the fuck are you?”

“Think of me like the Secret Service guys working counterfeit hundreds. Lots of attempts and passes that don’t amount to much, but the Secret Service takes all of them seriously because when a well-done, well-distributed outbreak occurs, the ramifications are huge.” Pause. “BW—when it’s live and on the ground here in the USA, and it will be one of these days—has a lot more teeth and lot more dead people than bankers jumping out of windows. I’m someone who runs down the leads to see if they have teeth.” Hahn taps the folder again. “In or out?”

I stare at her, not the folder and her bullshit story. “So, like the movies, I open this, then change my mind about being your bitch, and you shoot me?”

Small nod. No smile.

“Bullshit.”

She makes a pistol finger at me. “Whenever and wherever I feel like it.” No smile. Icy blue eyes that don’t blink.

“We prosecute murder in this city, arrest people and put them in prison.”

“They all say that, Bobby. Then they’ll hold your funeral.”

It’s two in the morning and I’ve had a long day. I open the folder; if she really is CIA there’s nothing new
she
can do to me. On top is a black-and-white eight-by-ten dated 1945 in white ink at the bottom. Approximately a hundred bodies, outdoors, the Kool-Aid die-where-you-fall of Reverend Jim Jones’s Jonestown.

Hahn says, “Manchuria. Northeastern China, not far from the Songhua River.”

I stare at the bodies but don’t see the trauma that put them there.

“A research facility named Pingfan, Unit 731.”

I lean back. She’s looking at me for a reaction I don’t have. She waits, studying like cops do when we think you’re guilty. Her fingers pull out another black-and-white eight-by-ten. This one’s bad, vivisection—a live man in agony, cut open on a table, surrounded on three sides by other men in lab coats.

“1944. Notice the doctors.”

“Doctors?”

“The doctors are Japanese.” Agent Hahn extracts another eight-by-ten. This one I don’t pick up: more vivisection, a woman; she’s in agony, the women and men in lab coats are unmoved, scientific, passive in the victim’s terror. The woman’s pregnant. I blow my air out slowly and focus on the wall. How do people do this and remain people?

Hahn taps the photo. “Before and during World War II, Imperial Japan had a bio-weapons research facility in Pingfan, Manchuria, called Unit 731, the one I just mentioned.”

“Our Japanese? Sushi restaurants, Toyotas—”

“The same. For the last sixty years America’s strongest ally in Asia; home to our fast-strike bases against Red China and southern Russia.” Hahn adds emphasis: “And our most important economic trading partner off the American continent.”