He took a deep breath and another look at himself in the rearview. His heart felt flittery and his fingers tingled. Bar none, this had to be the craziest thing he'd ever done. Jason smiled a grin tight enough to make his teeth ache.
The suit fit well, but looked a couple of years out of style, just as he hoped. It'd caught his eye the moment he stepped into the used-clothing store: double-breasted brown fabric with the faint sheen of too many wearings. A blue tie, Windsor-knotted, and a silver tie clip he'd seen beside the register.
"You're going to be fine," he said to his own reflection. Then he took the Ray-Bans from the passenger seat and put them on, the oversize lenses flashing back a sunset.
He was only three blocks away, but felt every inch of them, the pressure and pop of cracked blacktop beneath the wheels. The breeze stale and warm as someone breathing in his face. The reactions as he turned down the street, the way one of the men at the end of the block glared as he unclipped a phone from his belt and spoke into it. The way things seemed to swirl and resolve, a spiral with himself at the center, the eye of a human hurricane.
He had a moment of panic in his belly, and then he was putting the car into park, and it was too late, the point of no return, and that gave him the energy he needed, just like it always had on patrol, when they left the relative safety of the FOB and went into the streets. Jason moved deliberately, trying not to show hurry or nerves. Just another day, another item on his list. Shuffled papers, took one last breath, then opened the car door and stepped out.
He could feel the stares pressing down. A handful of younger gangbangers sat on the steps of the sagging porch, a radio at their feet spilling hip-hop like fog. He glanced at them, then casually further up, to the two men who stood in the bungalow's doorway. Early twenties, faces composed and steady, poker masks sheened with sweat and hatred.
His veins pumped panic, but he met their gaze, nodded slightly, turned to close the car door. Adjusted his suit jacket as he did, pulling it up enough that they could see his purchases.
The holster was soft brown leather, stained dark down the center with traces of Hoppes #9. He wore it on his right hip, not low-slung like a gunfighter, but high on his slacks. He'd left the Beretta cocked, a subtlety he doubted would be noticed but that might buy him a half second if things went wrong.
He almost laughed. Like he had a prayer of walking if things went wrong.
The handcuffs hung on his belt behind the holster. The Army surplus store had a bunch of different kinds, most of them for sex play, with quick releases and padding. He'd gone for a classic nickel-finish pair, heavy and shiny. Beside them, where his coat would cover it most of the time, hung a silver star on a black leather square. He lingered long enough at the car, retrieving a notebook he'd set on the roof, for the kids on the porch to get a nice long look. Counting on them seeing it.
At a distance.
Because if anyone saw it up close, he was a corpse. He hadn't held a police badge, but he felt fairly sure they didn't have the words "FBI: Female Body Inspector" etched across the face.
It's in the attitude, he thought. That sense of unquestioned entitlement police had, the way they walked the street like they owned everything on it. The pads of his fingers were numb. He pocketed the car keys and turned slow, jacket falling back to cover the gear on his belt, leaving only the butt of the pistol still in sight. Notebook in his left hand, fighting the urge to flex the fingers of his right. Felt a mad urge to run, to just jump in the car and go, knowing he could be back in safe territory in twenty minutes.
Then he thought of Billy, asleep in an Army T-shirt.
He walked over, trying for swagger. Hit the boys on the porch with his Ray-Bans and a stern expression. Showtime. "Which one of you is going to tell Dion Williams I need to talk to him?" Jason asked, and flashed a thin smile that said he didn't have a worry in his life.
The afternoon sun lay on his shoulders. His demons raged, screamed, sent electricity crackling up and down the lengths of his nerves. He stood still.
Then the taller of the two in the doorway nudged one of the teenagers with his foot. "Bounce on in, tell C-Note a detective wants to see him."
Jason tried to look bored, tapping his notebook. Tried not to run the odds on whether or not Playboy would be here, knowing that if he was, it was certain death. One of the guys on the steps turned up the radio, the music saying there was no such thing as halfway crooks, scared to death and scared to look. Jason glanced down the block and pretended to stifle a yawn while fear hollowed out his body.
"Don't remember calling no police." The man in the doorway wore a striped button-up with a Sean John logo, the lines stretched across the muscles of his chest and arms. The two bangers stood beside him like bodyguards.
Jason smiled. "You don't call us, Dion. We call you."
One of the bangers stepped up, head cocked and chest forward. Jason met his gaze. Knew the game, one he'd played plenty of times in the Army. No weakness, no fear. "Best control your boy. Hate to search him, find something that violates his parole."
"Go easy, cuz." Dion kept his voice level, and the banger stepped back. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Detective Martinez." The real Martinez, crazy mother that he'd been, he would have approved of this stunt.
"You don't look like no Martinez."
Jason shielded his eyes from the sun, drawled, "Get that all the time."
"How come I ain't seen you before?"
"Because I only come when shit's about to get out of hand. We need to talk." Gestured to his car. "Let's take a ride."
Dion's eyes narrowed. "Since when the po-lice drive Cadillacs?
Shit. He'd wondered about that, but hadn't seen a way around it. He controlled his expression, said, "That's my personal ride." Smiled. "Car's the Virgin Mary. You like the classics?"
"They 'aight. My boy Brillo used to have an old Monte Carlo, till that shit got disappeared the other night." He paused. "Why'n't you make yourself useful, find Brillo's whip?" The boys on the steps laughed at that.
"Hop in, we'll go look." Waited a beat, saw the hesitation in the other man's eyes. "Unless you want the whole block to know your business."
"You come here to arrest me?"
"Nope. To invite you."
"I ain't going nowhere."
Jason shrugged. He felt like his stomach was being slowly tugged away from him. "Trying to do you a favor here. You know Cruz, from Gang Intelligence?" He waited for the faint nod. "She and the lieutenant, they wanted to send in the cavalry. I said no. Said C-Note's a smart guy, that we should try to talk to him first." So much came down to the gang leader buying this, getting in the car with him. Taking a drive around the neighborhood, talking as they went, the Caddy giving Jason a tiny edge in enemy turf. Mobility and security.
A long moment. Then Dion turned and opened the door. "My office."
Jason's hands went swampy, his heart thudding against his ribs. If he went inside, he was a whisper away from death. One wrong move, and the gangbangers could do whatever they wanted to him, do it safely and in privacy.
Take as long as they wanted.
Under his jacket, the sleeves of his Oxford were soaked. Dion watched him, measuring. The look in the man's eyes lit a cold flame in Jason's belly. This lowlife had sent men to kill Billy, maybe Michael, too. Was he going to walk away from that?
Jason curled his lips in a sneer, shrugged. "Lead the way." Stepped up on the porch, brushing by the bodyguards, the skin on his neck tingling as he passed into the monster's lair. A strange déjà vu, the same combination of terror and exhilaration he'd felt every time he cleared a house with the squad, not knowing what he was walking into. A soldier's rush, the fear present but controlled, mastered. Except that then he'd been wearing body armor, slinging an M4, and representing the strong arm of the United States Army.
It was dim inside, and reeked of weed and sweat and Chinese takeout. A constellation of cigarette burns scarred the carpet. A girl reclined on one couch, a baby asleep on her chest. On the other, two shirtless teenagers were leaning forward, each furiously punching buttons on a controller. Jason looked up, saw a big plasma TV where the two were storming a dusty city block under an orange sky. A voice yelled, "Fire in the hole," and a grenade blew on screen, tossing a digital body like a rag doll. One of the gangbangers hooted. "Like that?" he asked, and then leaned forward to grab a beer from the table, exposing the gleaming handle of a pistol tucked in his back. "Want a little more?"
The office was a small bedroom. Enormous particle-board desk, pleather wing chair, green banker's lamp. A junior-executive rig in the middle of a gang house guarded by teenaged killers playing videogames about soldiers. The only things that kept Jason from laughing were the fear he wouldn't be able to stop and the knowledge that every step he'd taken forward was one he might have to fight his way back.
"All right, Po-lice." Dion turned and offered a grin laced with menace. "Now we're all alone. Now we in my house."
A muscle in Jason's thigh jumped, but he kept his face straight and stepped closer, his chest inches from the other man's. They were about the same height, but Dion had an easy thirty pounds of muscle on him. Jason stared, unblinking, feeling the wetness in his armpits, the tremor in his fingertips. From the moment he'd stepped inside it'd been play hard or die. He had to make the man believe completely. "You think I'm alone?"
"Don't see nobody else." Dion's voice had a sort of restless craziness to it.
" 'Cause you ain't looking. It's like cowboys and Indians. I'm the scout. You only see me, but the whole tribe's waiting just over the hill."
Dion's eyes narrowed. "What you want?"
"I want to know why you sent Playboy to kill Jason Palmer."
"Don't know anybody by either name."
"You sell crack out of houses on Eggleston and Ross. You run a basement club in a warehouse up on Hooker. You got a baby-mama named Cherise." He saw the reaction in Dion's eyes, and silently thanked Ronald for the details. "We're always watching. I know more about your business than you do." Jason made himself wait a beat, then put a little steel in his voice. "You really don't want to piss me off. Now, why did your boys try to hit Jason Palmer?"
Dion shrugged. "That was Playboy's deal. He was just supposed to pick him up, wait for a call."
"And what about the bangers you sent to kill his nephew the other night?"
"I don't know nothing about that." Dion had a decent poker face. If Jason hadn't been there, he might have believed.
"We've got a witness that ID'd three members of your crew, including Playboy." He was starting to feel the part. The lingo may've been pulled from television and books, but the attitude was familiar. In this part of the city, being a cop wasn't that much different from being a soldier, just as in Iraq, being a soldier had been a lot like being a cop. "You're saying they acted without you?"
"Could be. Players got minds of their own."
"Maybe I ought to talk to them." The air conditioner in the window hummed to life. "Let them know you're washing your hands. Maybe they'll remember it differently once they know you're going to let them face murder on their own Now why did you kill Michael Palmer?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Dion said. "And even if I did, I wouldn't tell you shit."
Jason shook his head. "You aren't giving me much choice. It's one thing to do a little business, keep it reasonable. But hijacking civilians? Breaking into houses, chasing little kids? I can't have it."
"Ain't a crime till the victim's white, huh?"
"You sent men to murder an eight-year-old. You want to see how it plays on the news? They'll bring the death penalty back just for you."
Gun blasts sounded in the other room.
Jason whirled, one hand reaching for his weapon. A second shot, and a third. Then, timed with the fourth, a wicked bass beat, thick with anger.
Music. He turned back to Dion, saw the banger smirking, wet-lipped and arrogant. "Pretty jumpy, Po-lice. You scared?"
Jason's tongue was a dry beast flopping in the desert of his mouth. He eased his hand off the Beretta, his fingers reluctant to move. "Nah." He forced himself to smile. "I just don't want to have to fill out the paperwork for shooting you."
The muscles in Dion's neck bulged, and he stepped forward. "Oh, you fucked up now."
"I don't think so." Jason's bowels went warm and loose, but he stood his ground. "Like I told my lieutenant, you're a smart man. You know no cop is going to walk in here all alone, no backup. So you know what will happen if you make a move." He held the moment like it was nitroglycerine: one wrong move and everything would blow. There was only so far he dared bluff. But he had to get something out of this for Billy's sake. "Besides, I'm here to do you a favor."
Dion had stopped moving, looked at him suspiciously. "Yeah?"
"Truth is, we know you didn't kill Michael Palmer. We've got a witness says it was two white guys. But since Palmer was such an upstanding citizen, we have to lock somebody up fast. Ideally, that would be the guys who actually did it, probably the same ones that hired you to grab Jason. Problem is, we don't know who they are." He paused, let his words sink in. "But we do know who you are."
Dion shook his head. "Po-lice."
"Just telling you how it is. Fact that I know you didn't do it doesn't mean I won't arrest you for it." He paused. "Unless you got a better name."
"Black man can't get no break."
Jason shrugged. "Has more to do with you being a gangster and a killer. But whatever you like."
Dion turned to the window, set his hands on the air conditioner, fingers drumming idly. Stared out the dirty pane above it. The moment stretched.
Then he turned back. "Playboy was hired by a white dude, name of Anthony DiRisio."
Relief washed through Jason's body. "Who is he?"
"Wait a second. If I give him up for the shit you're looking for, will any, you know, previous dealings he and I have had come back to bite my ass?"
"No way." Jason smiled. "My word, as a cop."
"I feel better already." Dion shook his head. "Guy's a dealer."
"What, drugs?"
"Naw," Dion said, and smiled. "He's specialized. He sells hardware."
"Guns."
"Nigga, please. I want a gat, I pick up the phone, have boys here in half an hour with a trunk full. Anthony sells hardware. Military shit. MPs, AKs, those big-ass combat shotguns. Ain't cheap, neither."
Jason stared, his mouth hanging open.
"Been selling for about a year now. Sells to anybody, which is the only reason you and I is talking, 'aight? That boy don't have no loyalty."
Jason blinked. "So this guy, he hired you to hijack-" almost said me, caught himself at the last second-"Jason Palmer? Why?"
"Like I said, that was Playboy's deal. All's I know is he was supposed to grab the dude and wait for a call."
"And what about the other night, breaking into Michael Palmer's house?"
"After Jason got away, DiRisio wanted Playboy to make good. He called, gave us an address."
"And you sent people to kill everyone there."
Dion shrugged. "I didn't say that."
Jason smiled, a thin expression, his heart raging. Wanting to tear Dion apart, even knowing he wasn't the real problem. "I need to find DiRisio."
"Who you really after, cop? You trying to arrest a couple of brothers, or you want the dude who gave the order?"
Both. I want all of you rotting in the depths of the earth for a thousand years. "All I want is the man who gave the order."
"DiRisio was in here talking like a punk this morning." Dion shrugged. "Said he's got a deal going down tonight."
"Where?"
"Don't know for sure," Dion said. "But our last couple meets were downtown. Wacker Drive."
"Upper or Lower?"
The man smiled. "Lower Lower Wacker. The drive under the drive, down on the bottom level where they was filming that Batman movie. There's a spot there by the loading docks for the Hyatt. That's where we done it."
Jason nodded. He didn't know the specific spot, but knew Wacker. A three-level artery for the city, following the river's curve from Lake Shore Drive to the highways. The top levels were fairly busy, but the bottom was mostly used by service vehicles and delivery trucks. Smart. Private and easy to secure, but with plenty of exit options. It was the kind of location a trained soldier might choose. He felt twisting in his belly, acid in his throat. What in the hell had Mikey gotten himself into?
"Now, Po-lice." Dion glared at him. "How about you get the fuck outta my house."
Jason nodded. He'd gotten as much as he could expect. More. Time to go, before some stupid mistake gave him away. "All right." Jason backed away, eyes on Dion. He risked a quick glance to find the doorknob, then turned back.
"One more thing." He paused. "You said this guy sells submachine guns, military hardware. What do you need firepower like that for?"
"Ain't you noticed, cop?" Dion's voice was soft, his gaze weary, and for the tiniest second, Jason almost felt sorry for him. "There's a war goin' on."