The Blade Itself (15 page)

‘Baby, wait in the car, okay?’ Evan didn’t make it sound like a question.

Danny pushed open the trailer door and stepped in, feeling it rock slightly. The inside was as he remembered it, only cleaner. The smell of old coffee scorched the air. A trickle of dusty sunlight came through the windows. He walked over and closed the blinds.

‘Sure.’ Evan looked around, moving to the couch, lifting one end and then dropping it with a thump, like he was gauging the weight. ‘Seems private.’

‘This area is still pretty industrial, not many homes yet. The owners got the land cheap, so they’re rolling the dice on lofts.’

‘Money in that?’ Evan looking curious, like he might invest.

‘No doubt. Used to be, people wanted to live in the suburbs. That’s why Daley Senior put the housing projects in the city. Except now people are moving back, everybody wants to live downtown, ride the El to work. So everything changes. You know the Green?’

Evan nodded.

‘Cabrini Green is one of the worst projects in the country. Something like ninety percent unemployment. So bad they have those chain-link walls on the hallways, so the cops can see inside from the street.’ It had always made him a little sick, the people walking out their own front door to an exposed hall like a cage. Kids leaning against the wire with forties in their hands and anger in their eyes. ‘But it’s
on great land. Close to the city, the trains. The only thing wrong with the area where the Green sits is the Green. So Daley Junior, he’s been tearing down what his father built, one at a time. Technically they’re building mixed-income housing, but what you got, there’s a strip mall half a block away now with a Starbucks, the parking lot full of expensive cars. Lofts going for three hundred grand.’ Danny sat at the table. ‘You want to make money in Chicago, figure out where the poor people live and move them.’

Evan shrugged, his interest gone. ‘Sucks to be poor.’

‘Yeah.’ Danny’s eyes roamed the walls, the old instincts coming back, a strange rush with them. Was it excitement? Guilt? Hope? A bit of all of them. It set him on edge, like too many cups of coffee, his stomach jittery, wondering what he was doing here, knowing he had no choice.

‘All right. We snatch the kid, get a blindfold on him, bring him here. Tie him to the couch.’ Evan paused. ‘What happens if a cop comes by, sees the cars?’

‘Nothing, so long as we don’t act stupid. They see cars in here all the time.’ Danny scratched at his elbow. ‘We make the call –’

‘I make it.’

The words came too quickly, not the easy toss-out Danny would have expected. It set off an internal alarm. But Evan was right, it wasn’t like Danny could call his own boss. ‘You make the call. We ask for half a million. Tell him we’ll call back in a couple of days to set up the meet. Debbie takes care of Tommy. How much does she know?’

‘She knows she’s babysitting. I told her she’d see twenty large on it. She doesn’t know who the guy is.’

Danny nodded. ‘I might need her help with something else, too.’

Evan shrugged. ‘Whatever. She’ll do what I tell her.’ He moved to the couch, dropped down, put his feet up on the
counter opposite. Leaned back with hands laced behind his head. ‘You know what I like about this?’

‘What?’

‘Keeping the man’s kid in his own trailer.’ Evan’s face split into a hard smile.

Later, back in his truck, the seat sun-warm against his back, Danny replayed that look. Saw how much the cruelty of the irony pleased Evan. It made Danny wonder, turning onto Halsted, made him question. Was he about to get back in over his head?

Enough. He’d been over this a million times. Given the choice between losing everything he cared about but standing on principle, or bending the rules in a way that didn’t harm anyone, well, that wasn’t any kind of choice at all.

Besides, he was starting to think they could pull it off. His problem would be solved, and Karen would never know a thing. And while he’d happily trade the money to get Evan out of his life, having a quarter million in a safe deposit box couldn’t hurt. In fact, he was starting to entertain a strange sort of hope, an old excitement. The looming black clouds might turn out to be a summer storm, hard and fast, but gone without doing any real damage.

Before he’d left the trailer, Danny had cleaned up. He didn’t want the kid to somehow accidentally see a piece of letterhead, an envelope, something that might help the police track them down. Though at half a million, Danny didn’t see Richard going to the police. The guy was a blowhard and a bastard, but he loved his son. Why play games?

‘It doesn’t matter what kind of car it is,’ he said, giving Evan his assignment. ‘So long as it’s decent-looking. The neighbors will notice a beater.’

‘Sure. And afterward?’

‘Park it in front of Cabrini Green with the keys in it. Give somebody a stroke of luck.’

Evan liked that.

‘I’ll bring masks and gloves.’ Danny’s mind churned, trying to think of all the angles. He’d talk to Debbie later. Stop by the store on the way home for some rope. Maybe a pair of nylons? Something that wouldn’t chafe or scrape the kid up. There was something else, something important.

Oh yes. ‘One more thing.’

‘What?’ Evan said, bored already. Always happier to be doing the job than thinking about it.

‘Don’t bring a gun.’ Danny kept his voice level and his eyes hard, not trying to stare Evan down, just letting him know he was serious. ‘Not a scratch, remember?’

Evan shrugged. ‘Okay.’

Danny held the look for a minute, then nodded, went back to straightening up. ‘Get the car tomorrow morning. You can pick me up at the same spot as last time, round one o’clock.’

‘We going tomorrow?’ Evan sounded surprised, turning to look up.

‘What, you got somewhere to be?’

When they were ten, they’d played a game called Pisser. It was a made-up game, but it lasted for almost two years, until Bobby Doyle missed his jump from the roof of a two-story CVS to the fire escape of the building next door and broke both wrists.

When Danny remembered the game, he always felt the way he did when he caught his own voice on an answering machine. It felt familiar, but a little off, too. Like someone else was telling a story that had happened to him.

The leader of the game was the Big Dick. It was a title they fought to earn, though mostly it meant that as they went about their lives, they kept their eyes open for the right kind of opportunity. Say, a new skyscraper going up in the Loop, the concrete and glass of the curtain wall only half finished, the dark silhouette of a tower crane looming sixty stories up.

Boom
. Call a Challenge.

Meet at seven o’clock, the yard deserted except for the security guys drinking coffee in their trailer. Squeeze under the chain link on the far side, keeping low until you’re in the building. The first floors would have actual staircases, what would become the fire steps. After that, plywood ramps. When those ran out, grab the A-frame of the crane, hoist yourself over the rail to the gridwork stairs, and start climbing.

At twenty stories, your calves burn.

At thirty-five stories, you’ve come farther than the out-side wall. The wind hits.

At fifty stories, five hundred swimming feet of vertigo, people on the street are just dots. Cabs are those mini-Matchbox cars you can put a dozen in your pocket.

At sixty stories, you’ve run out of stories. The building drops away, structural steel blackened by welding marks. You’re climbing the crane to the sky. Start counting steps. Ignore your legs Elvis-ing.

One hundred and eighty steps later, you’ve reached the operator’s cab, the white box like the driver’s seat of a semi. But it’ll be locked, so go up twenty more, to the gangway on top of the mast.

Take panting breaths on the ceiling of the city, the sky indigo around you, the world spread out jeweled at your feet.

Now the Challenge, because that was just a warm-up.

Step onto the crane arm. The metal grid is maybe two feet wide, but it feels like a tightrope. Indian-walk one foot in front of the other, keeping low to fight the wind, nothing on either side, just a few inches of steel between you and a five-second trip to State Street. Hit so hard, they’d tell each other, your shins come out your shoulders. Hit so hard nobody can tell your head from your ass. Hit so hard your teeth bounce for blocks.

Step. Breathe. Step.

When you reach the end, take a bow. Then hustle back fast as you dare. If you’re the first to ante up, congratulations. You’re the new Big Dick. Pussy out, you’re the Pisser, a little baby still whines for his mommy and wets the sheets. No hair on his nuts. No nuts at all.

It was vivid to Danny, like he could step back into that Challenge today if he wanted. The way his legs had trembled and burned. The way the air cut as he drew it in, far, far above the city-street smells of exhaust and garbage.

Once he took that first step, the fear would fade. His
mind would throw up interference, like radio static, that screened out everything but a calm inner monologue and his body’s response to it. The first step wasn’t the hard part.

No, the hard part came before he stepped into the void. The hard part was the waiting, his brain imagining all the things that could go wrong, all the things he couldn’t control, all the ways that fate loomed beneath him, hungry, eager for him to slip.

The hard part was sitting in the passenger seat of the nice black Saab Evan had stolen – a sedan, probably a five-star safety rating, just the thing to drive your kid to private school – watching Evan light yet another cigarette. Watching the digital clock soundlessly change a four to a five. He caught his hands fiddling with the strap of the duffel bag, and made them stop. ‘Go around again.’

Evan nodded, his cigarette bobbing up and down, the muscles in his neck rigid. He was feeling it, too. They stopped at a sign, then turned right, taking the block the other direction. On both sides of the car, wide lawns sprawled in front of five-bedroom houses nestled beneath towering shade trees. The streets had that oddly wide feeling of a neighborhood where every house had a garage, nothing like the crowded city parking he was used to.

‘We saw the kid come home,’ Evan said. ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘You got to put yourself in the mind of the boy, right?’ Talking to relax. ‘He gets home, drops his schoolbag, wonders what to do with himself. No brothers, and Dad won’t be home till eight or nine. So the kid,’ Danny wanting to avoid calling him Tommy, not wanting to think of him that personally, ‘he’s got the run of the house. What’s he do?’

‘Fuck should I know?’ Evan said. ‘Turn on the TV?’

‘Exactly. That’s where I want him. Watching TV. It’ll
drown out noise, and I don’t think there’s an alarm console in that room.’

‘So how long do we wait?’ Evan seemed eager, almost anxious. Best to move.

‘What’s it been, twenty minutes? Now’s probably good.’ He unzipped the duffel for one final inventory. Everything was just as it had been the last dozen times he’d checked. Before closing the bag, he brushed the inner pocket. The plastic rectangle inside felt strangely reassuring.

Evan turned the corner, another right, Richard’s house now in sight, a brick and shingle two-story with bay windows, architecturally a cross between a Swiss chalet and an English manor. The driveway was smooth blacktop that hummed beneath the tires as Evan turned in gently, letting the car coast up to the closed garage door. He threw it in park and rested his hands on the wheel. They’d both put on driving gloves in the McDonald’s parking lot, and seeing Evan tap the Saab’s wheel with his elegantly gloved hands, Danny had a flash of him as a chauffeur. Just put a jaunty cap on him. The image was funny, but he pushed it aside.

‘Ready?’ Evan’s voice had a hint of excitement, a familiar note that Danny had almost forgotten. He used to have the same tone playing Pisser, just before diving off the Michigan Avenue drawbridge, or sprinting across Lakeshore at rush hour.

‘One second.’ Danny opened his cell phone and dialed. She answered on the second ring.

‘Debbie. Give us five minutes.’

‘Okay. Be careful.’

‘Yeah.’ Danny flipped the phone closed.

‘What’s that all about?’

‘Let’s go,’ not answering Evan, grabbing the duffel bag and opening the car door. The October wind slapped at him
as he left the heated car, the air high-thirties, way colder this year than most. Careful to keep his face pointed toward the house, he scanned the windows for any sign of life. Nothing.

He looked across the roof of the Saab at Evan, who also stood with his door open, and for a moment, they just held the gaze. Then Danny nodded, and closed his door.

Time to take that first step onto the ledge.

He turned and walked toward the near side of the house, around the garage, feeling Evan fall into step behind him. The adrenaline hit full force now, the rush of blood in his ears drowning out the fear, giving him the quiet he needed. They walked steadily around the garage, keeping up a front in case any neighbors happened to look out the window.
Nothing suspicious here, ma’am. Just checking the meter
. The side yard was neatly kept, the grass sparse from the shade of a maple that had to be sixty years old. The garage windows had gauzy curtains, but Danny could tell it was empty. Perfect. When they reached the back corner, he stopped and peered around.

Everything seemed quiet. The backyard was smaller than the front, with a line of evergreens marking the rear. A large deck jutted off the second story, and Danny had a sudden pang, remembering the company party last year, everybody on the deck, Richard playing Papa at the grill. Then he remembered that none of the yard staff had been invited. Besides, the man had asked everyone to bring their own beer. ‘Come on. Keep low.’

Danny went first, fast now that they were out of sight of the neighbors, staying bent over so that hedges screened his movement from the house. He could hear Evan behind him, the crack of sticks as he stomped along. Thirty feet brought them under the wooden deck to a single door beside the air-conditioning unit, a big Trane that came up to
Danny’s waist. He ducked to look at the lock. Evan came up and squatted beside the air conditioner.