Urban Renewal (15 page)

After that, it was the hospital for the lucky ones. Once they learned what had happened to the
unlucky
ones, silence was the survivors’ only option. They’d never seen
who
jumped them, but it had been at least a dozen of them.

Word got around. Not only to the gay-bashers, to the police. That’s when Detective Mike McNamara, the man other cops called “King of the Confession Coaxers,” was brought in. “We need to know what’s happening to these gangs,” the chief had told him.

“Why?”

“It’s a
crime
, goddamnit! And we’ve had a lot of citizen complaints about it.”

Some politician’s son must have gotten himself crippled for life
, McNamara thought, but kept his face expressionless.

“Look,” the chief said, “you know we’ve given you a
long
leash, Detective. You don’t share your informants. You don’t even register them. You roam around Cook County like you don’t even have a precinct. One day it’s Stony Island, the next, you’re in the projects. You snatch cars out of the asset-forfeiture pool whenever you want. We don’t even say a word when you go all over the damn world to fight in those tournaments—”

“The International Police and Fire Games.”

“Whatever. Those are supposed to be for amateurs, and you fought pro for years while you were on the job and never said a word to anyone.”

“I always used my vacation time. And the Games aren’t
for amateurs. The Russian team does about as much police work as I do competitive crocheting. All they do is train.”

“Look, all I’m asking you to do is find out what’s going on, okay? I know you can. So let’s just say I’m asking you for a personal favor.”

“I’ll do my best,” McNamara said. And walked away before he said something he’d regret.

USING HIS
single-malt voice—that uniquely Irish way of speaking that could sound so lyrical and carry so much threat on the same breeze—McNamara succeeded in piecing together a description of a man who would be too overdeveloped for a comic book.

One visit to Red 71 had answered the question McNamara had been planning to ask Cross when he spotted Princess shooting pool with Rhino.
Good Sweet Jesus!
McNamara thought.
That’s got to be him
.

Recognized by Rhino, McNamara crossed himself as if entering church, and was rewarded by a nod. In the back room, he found Cross, Ace, and Buddha. Whatever they had been discussing was of no interest to him.

“That guy out there, the one playing pool with Rhino?”

“What?” was all Cross replied.

“He’s been ID’ed.”

“By who?”

McNamara laughed. “Whoever’s been busting up the gay-bashing crews, the chief wants them.”

“DOA work for you?”

The detective moved his head a quarter-inch.

THE FOUR
young men whose bodies had been unceremoniously dumped in a lot behind a Wilson Avenue flophouse were all known to the police. Records ranging from armed robbery to felonious assault.

“Why would
those
guys get into fag-bashing?” the chief asked.

“They probably got paid,” McNamara answered.

It was the truth. The paymaster had been Cross. A meeting place had been set just outside the Badlands to lay out the job.

After that, the only thing left was transportation to the dump site.

And Princess was told he had to give up his hobby for a while.

“
I
’
M NOT
letting that damn dog ride behind me,” Buddha said. “He decides the back of my neck looks good to him, then what?”

“Sweetie wouldn’t hurt you, Buddha.”

“
Sweetie!
You named that—”

“Don’t hurt his feelings,” Princess said, solemnly. “He’s very sensitive. Besides, he’s going to ride in my lap, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Buddha exchanged a look with Cross.

“Don’t look at me,” the crew leader said. “Remember, this whole thing was your wife’s idea.”

“
THIS ONE,
”
Buddha said, nosing the Shark Car into the front yard of one of the five houses So Long now owned. He kept rolling around to the back. “It’s got the best sight lines.”

“Now, me and Rhino—”

“Will you wait a damn second?”

“It’s okay, Princess,” Rhino assured the ridiculously overmuscled child, reaching a serving-platter-sized hand from the back seat to pat his shoulder. “We’ll do it just like we practiced. But Buddha has to turn the car around first.”

Buddha wheeled the Shark Car in a half-circle so it was facing out. He tapped one of the four parallel lines made up of different colored LED panels. A very faint hiss accompanied the trunk as it slid open a couple of inches. Only then did the two men get out.

Rhino grasped the handles protruding from a seven-foot-wide roll of CarbonSkin, pulled it free, raised it above his head, and snapped his wrists. The CarbonSkin—a carbon fiber product converted to a clothlike material—unfurled across the top of the car. Princess caught it at the front and gently lowered it into position.

“Damn!” Buddha said, impressed despite his natural tendency to belittle anything concerning his beloved street beast. “It’s gone.”

“The CarbonSkin is a light-eater,” Rhino explained. “At night, even if you hit it with a flashlight, it would look like a shadow.”

“But what happens if I have to blast out of here?”

“There’s a tear panel right here,” Rhino said, tapping
gently. “The car will go through it like an ice pick through tissue paper. And, no, it won’t harm the finish.”

“How many of these have we got?”

“A couple, just in case. But if you’re not in a hurry, Princess and I can lift this one up high enough for you to back right in again.”

“
THAT MUCH?
”
Cross spoke into a burner cell, taken from the anti-magnetic locker in which several dozen such use-it-and-lose-it tools were stored.

“Yeah.”

“Want to come to—?”

“No. Just this side of the border.”

“One hour.”

“Yes,” said the one cop in all of Cook County who was guaranteed to lock you up if you offered him a bribe. The cop clicked off his phone—a heavy chromed job retrieved from a dope dealer’s ornate SUV—and tossed it out the window of his white Crown Vic, the most unmistakable “unmarked” in the city.

THE SHARK CAR
pulled up to the rusted-out semi-trailer resting on its axles that marked the entrance to the Badlands, then spun into a bootlegger’s turn, leaving it facing any incoming traffic.

“How in hell can they
do
that?” whispered a kid whose Afro-Asian blood mix had guaranteed he’d never be adopted, despite the promises of the group home’s social worker.

Another prisoner—which is how all the residents of that place thought of themselves—had told him where to find the Badlands, sealing a pact that they’d make the jump together.

But when the time to make a run for it came, the kid had found himself alone. Not for the first time. He decided not to wait for a bus he knew was never coming, and he’d been a permanent resident of the No-Name Crew ever since.

“That’s Buddha,” Condor said, using the voice of an experienced pro schooling an amateur. An amateur who’d already shown he had the guts, but was way short of the smarts he’d need to be a real asset. “He can make that monster car of theirs
dance
, A.B.”

“I never saw anything like that, even in the movies.”

“You’re never gonna, either, little brother.”

“I shouldn’t ask?”

“Sure. You can always ask. That’s the only way you learn. But that’s
listen
and learn, understand?”

“No arguing, you’re saying?”

“Right. Look, remember when Dino asked you where your name—‘A.B.,’ I’m talking about—where that came from?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told him, right? You’re Asian, and you’re Black. So that would be ‘A.B.’ all by itself. But it’s also two things the AB inside the Walls hate, so it’s like a spit on them, too. Anybody ask you any more questions about your name after that?”