Rodriguez was waiting in the car outside Santorini. “How’d it go?” he said and turned over the engine. “How do you think?”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna work it. You already knew that. So did Wilson.”
Rodriguez pul ed into a line of early evening headlights streaming north on Halsted. “Let me guess, on your own terms?”
I shrugged. “What are the feds focusing on?”
“About what you’d expect. Physical evidence, witness statements. They’re developing an offender profile, gonna run al their data through NCIC, VICAP, and every other database they can think of.”
“What about the rifle?”
“Preliminary from Bal istics established it as the sniper kil. No prints. They’re running a trace right now.”
“And the apartment?”
“Should have some information in the morning. By the way, the morning should be a lot of fun. City’s putting uniforms on al the CTA platforms. Plainclothes on board the buses.”
“That’s a lot of manpower.”
“It gets better. The Bureau wants to put its own teams up on the rooftops. From Evanston to Ninety-fifth. North, south, east, and west. Along every mile of L track.”
“Snipers?”
“Whole nine yards. Balaclava, painted faces, rifles with scopes, al that crap.”
“Maybe they’l just scare the shit out of these guys.”
“Or the half mil ion people who use the L every day. Wilson didn’t like it. Said he wasn’t going to turn his city into some unholy fucking vision of Baghdad.”
“He’l be changing his tune if another body turns up,” I said.
Rodriguez grunted. We slipped across the tip of Goose Island, clattered over Clybourn Avenue, and took a left onto Lincoln.
“What’s the story with Lawson?” I said.
Rodriguez chuckled. “Thought you might get to that. They cal her Sister Katherine.”
“Why’s that?”
“You remember Father Mark?”
“Doesn’t ring a bel.”
“Father Mark was the pastor at St. Cecilia’s over on the Southwest Side. Took the parish for a little more than a mil ion dol ars over five years.”
“Heartwarming.”
“Yeah, he was shorting the col ection money, using parish credit cards, everything. Lawson was the one who got onto him. Spent six months hip deep in church records looking for loose cash. Turns out this guy had a second home in California and three Beemers. When Lawson grabbed him, he was planning to sel the rectory and buy himself a boat.”
“That’s her big score?”
“That’s what she’s known for.”
“She a climber?” I said.
“Depends on who you talk to. Some say she’s always wanted to be a player in Washington. Just never made the cut.”
“And the rest?”
“One agent who’s been around awhile told me the exact opposite. Says the woman is right where she wants to be. Says she’s got big-time pul downtown, but no one is sure with whom or why.” Rodriguez glanced across the car. “Bottom line, this guy says: ‘Don’t fuck with Katherine. She’l ruin your week.’”
“I’l keep that in mind.”
Rodriguez flicked his turn signal, took a right onto Southport Avenue, and pul ed to the corner at Eddy.
“Tomorrow?” I said and reached for the door handle.
“Hang on.” Rodriguez kil ed the engine. My hand slipped off the handle, and I pushed back in my seat.
“What is it?”
“You tel me,” Rodriguez said.
I tried to hide behind a smile that was too quick for its own good. My friend the detective was having none of it.
“Been two months since you went out to L.A. Haven’t seen you. Talked to you. Nobody’s seen you, except Rachel.”
“People get busy.”
“Yeah, wel, that’s fine. But I stil need to know you’re okay for this.”
“You think L.A.’s gonna keep me from the job?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Then what are you saying.” I felt the screws tighten in my voice, the pressure build behind my eyes.
“Your father passed. You went out to L.A. to pick up his ashes and came back empty-handed.”
“For a guy who doesn’t know much, you’re pretty wel informed.”
“Losing your dad can be rough, Kel y.”
“Yeah, he was a real fucking prize.”
“I lost mine when I was fourteen.”
I’d known Rodriguez for four years, but didn’t know that. Never thought to ask.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said and looked across the car. The detective’s face was rutted by memory and his voice grew large in the smal space between us.
“He worked the swing shift at U.S. Steel. One night he was coming out of the plant. Had the key in the car door when a squad car hit the corner on two wheels, chasing a kid in a hot box. The kid’s car bounced my dad off the side of a Buick. Cracked his head open.
“By the time I got to the ER, the docs had done what they could, which wasn’t much. He couldn’t talk ’cuz of the tubes, and that was probably just about right. But he took my hand and we sat there, waiting. Didn’t take too long, either. Eyes fil ed up with that look. Fucking head went over. And just that quick, my old man was gone.”
Rodriguez snapped his fingers, a dry sound, and shrugged.
“Who wants to cry at fourteen, right? But, goddamn, if I didn’t sit down on the floor of that hospital and do exactly that. I didn’t know my dad. Never got a good word out of him, or even a kick in the ass. But he was my dad. And I cried. And it was the right thing to do.”
Rodriguez was finished then, and we both listened to the weather. There was a storm boiling over the lake, and the wind was rising around us.
“I’m okay for the job,” I said and hunted for the hint of desperation in my voice.
Rodriguez nodded. “I believe you. But it’s stil gonna come. Sooner or later. Just because it’s your dad. And that’s how that is. Now get the fuck out of here and get some sleep.”
I slipped out of the detective’s car and watched it rol into the night. Then I walked down Eddy to Lakewood. My building was painted in strips of hard streetlight. The hawk was rattling garbage cans in an al ey and banging a wooden sign against the side of a tavern. I bundled myself into a doorway and considered cal ing it a day. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to crawl into an early bed. Lately, however, there’d been no percentage in sleep.
MY CAR WAS parked a half block from Wrigley Field. The Friendly Confines were dark, save for a red neon scrawl atop the main gate, touting regular season tickets, a bargain at a hundred bucks a pop. I turned the car around and drove west. At a stop sign, I pul ed out my cel and punched in a number.
“Mr. Kel y?”
“You ever say hel o, Hubert?”
“Hel o, Mr. Kel y.”
“Cal me Michael.”
“I’d prefer Mr. Kel y, if that’s al right.”
“How you doing?”
“Okay.”
“You stil with the county?”
I had met Hubert Russel at the Cook County Bureau of Land Records. He helped me with some library research on the Chicago fire. Then the twenty-something cyberhacker went virtual to help me catch a kil er.
“Nah, I left there a few months ago.”
“’Cuz of me?”
“Heck, no. I told you. I wanted out of there, so I left.”
“Good. Listen, you got a couple of minutes to talk?”
“Right now?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Have anything to do with al the stuff going down today?”
“How’d you guess?”
There was a pause. “Where do you want to meet?”
“How about Filter over on Milwaukee? Maybe early? Eight a.m.?”
“See you there.”
“And Hubert?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring your laptop.”
“No kidding.”
“And al the toys.”
Hubert Russel laughed. Maybe at me. Maybe not. Then he hung up. I flipped my cel phone shut and steered my car through the night, toward the highway and the sainted Irish of Chicago’s South Side.