Nelson closed the red binder he’d been reading from, stood up, and looked out at a mil ion-dol ar view of Chicago’s skyline. He had found the place by accident-a white ghost of a building on the edge of an orgy of gentrification, the last remnants of the city’s Cabrini-Green housing complex, patiently awaiting Mayor Wilson’s wrecking bal. The high-rise stil had heat, stil had electricity, and was forgotten by everyone, save the rats. It was perfect for their time frame. Nelson just had to make sure Robles was careful. So far, so good. A floorboard creaked, and Nelson turned. His shooter was slouched in the doorway.
“Cable?” Nelson nodded toward the silent TV set up in the corner.
Robles smiled and glided across the room. “Relax, old man. We ain’t paying.” Robles reached down and turned up the volume. CNN was stil carrying wal -to-wal coverage of the shootings. The banner headline read: KILLER ON THE CTA.
“This is so fucking wild.” Robles squatted on the floor and stared at the screen. A picture of a young Latino girl flashed up. The caption pegged her as a sniper victim. The girl was smiling. The talking head said her name was Theresa Pasil as. She was a senior at Whitney Young High School and had just been accepted at Stanford. Now she was dead. Already they were laying out the black and marching through the streets of Pilsen, the city’s largest Latino neighborhood. Nelson turned down the volume on the set.
“Tel me about today,” he said.
“Turn it up and we both can learn about it.”
Nelson turned the set off altogether. They had spoken once by phone after the second shooting, but Robles hadn’t offered up a lot of detail.
“You didn’t tel me about the building manager,” Nelson said.
“What about him?”
“The news said he was found inside the apartment.”
Robles took a sip from a bottle of water. “Dude came in, started sniffing around. I took him with the knife.”
“No anger?”
The smile moved easily across Robles’ face. “Knife went in and the old bastard dropped.”
“What about Kel y?”
“What about him? I already told you. He tracked your footprints down the al ey. I put the gun on him.”
“And?”
“And what? Didn’t seem to bother him much.” Robles pul ed out a long knife and pointed it at a locked door on the other side of the room. “She stil here?”
“She’s here.”
“Can I have her?”
“What did I tel you?”
“You said I could have her.”
“Later.”
Robles drew himself up into a sulk. “I could take her anytime I want.”
“I know, but you won’t.”
Robles flicked a wrist and buried his knife a half inch into the wal. He’d done his first kil ing for his country-as a Ranger with the Eighty-second Airborne in Mogadishu. Upon his return to the States his taste for blood only deepened, and trouble began to tick. The military knew something was wrong, which would have been okay if they could have turned it to their advantage. But they couldn’t. So they hit him with a general discharge. After that, he wandered up and down both coasts. Hunting, Robles liked to cal it. By his own count, he’d kil ed maybe a half dozen women before coming to Chicago. Taken a few kids along the way, as wel. Nelson put a stop to al that. He replaced common lust with calculated bloodshed and succeeded where the army had failed, harnessing the violence, molding Robles to suit his purposes. The ex-Ranger was a dangerous, if mostly wil ing, pupil. And even brought his teacher a very special gift.
“You stil got the case I gave you?” Robles said.
“Never mind about the case.”
“But you stil got it.” Robles’ gaze found the cover of the binder Nelson had been reading. It was a classified Pentagon report titled “Terror 2000.”
Robles reached for it, face lit from within. “What’re you thinking about, old man?”
Nelson pul ed the binder away. “That’s not your concern.”
“Who’s the one done the kil ing here?” Robles’ eyes chal enged, and Nelson could feel the anger simmering between them. His mind edged toward the gun in his pocket. Not now. Not yet.
“We don’t have time for this,” Nelson said.
“Tel me about the binder.”
“No.”
“It has to do with the case I gave you. With the lightbulbs.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Fuck complicated.” Robles pul ed his knife from the wal. The blade flashed between them, and Nelson drifted his hand toward the gun.
“You gonna use that thing, you better make it count,” Nelson said.
Robles looked at the knife like he’d never seen it before, then shrugged. “I get it, old man.”
“Maybe you do.”
“Dying’s not a problem.” Robles spun the knife in his hands and sank it into the wal a second time. “Just don’t let me see it coming.”
“That’s it?”
Robles pointed at the locked door. “And let me do what I want with the girl.”
“Actual y, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk about.”
The two men walked over to a window covered in sheer plastic and looked down at what remained of Cabrini-Green’s once-notorious nightlife. In a breezeway, a solitary figure huddled against a stiffening wind, waiting for someone to drive up and buy his drugs. Half a block down, a woman stamped her feet against the cold and smoked a cigarette while a second walked smal circles under a streetlight. After a while the men moved away from the window and made their plans. Then Nelson left. Robles smoked his own cigarette down and looked up at a starless sky. When he was finished, he got a length of rope, some tape, and his knife. He went over to the locked door and opened it with the key. The girl screamed, but only for a minute. After that Robles had al the time in the world. Or at least until Nelson returned.