The girl in the yellow dress smiled at me from under her umbrella. I smiled back. Beside her, blue letters stretched across the sloped pitch of a white roof: MORTON SALT WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS
Morton’s processing shed took up a good chunk of the thirteen hundred block of North Elston Avenue. Tracks ran out on either side, and silver railcars stood on sidings, their hoppers filled with salt. I put the girl with the umbrella in my rearview mirror and turned off Elston onto Blackhawk Street. Rita Alvarez hadn’t said a word on the ride over.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Tell me how this works again.”
“The way I see it?”
She glanced over. “Is there any other?”
“The Korean needed muscle. No way he runs all that dope in and out of the West Side without it.”
“That’s how he kept the Fours in line?”
“For a while, yeah, that’s what I’m guessing.”
“Guessing?”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
I pulled Rita’s car into a long, narrow lot. It ran north along the Chicago River, shielded from traffic by the hulking Morton Salt plant. There were a couple of truck rigs parked there, a long metal shed, and, in the exact middle of the lot, a black Cadillac. The vehicle’s windows were tinted, its engine running.
Chili Davis was the first to exit. The little man had a large shiner and a chip the size of Napoleon on his shoulder. Chili wanted to even the score by putting a bullet in me. Or maybe three.
The next guy who got out wasn’t so complex. Or small. His name was Johnny Apple. Johnny killed people using a gun, his bare hands, and the occasional Hefty bag. Vinny DeLuca liked to save Johnny for intimate jobs. When only the best would do.
Himself came last. The only remaining link to Alphonse Capone was folded up in a black coat and flat cap. In the small space between the two, a thick round cigar chugged a steady stream of white smoke.
Johnny and Chili stopped about ten feet from us and flared to either side. DeLuca dropped the cigar to the ground and stepped on it with the toe of his shoe.
“Hate those things.” He looked out at Rita from under the brim of his cap and stretched a smile across his face. “Vincent DeLuca.”
I felt Rita’s skin crawl right off her bones and run down Blackhawk. But the reporter hung tough and offered her hand.
“Rita Alvarez.”
DeLuca pressed lips the color of slate to the back of Rita’s hand. “Kelly says we have something to talk about. For me, it’s a chance to meet my favorite reporter in the city. The best, right, Chili?”
Chili Davis was keeping the burn on me, his finger on the trigger of the. 40-cal he had in his pocket.
“He doesn’t say much.” DeLuca laughed and looked at Johnny Apple, who laughed. “You and Chili, Kelly. What are we going to do?”
“I told you. It wasn’t anything personal.”
DeLuca nodded and gestured. Chili came forward, and the old man tucked an arm in his. “I explained this to Chili. Now it’s over.”
Chili extended a hand. I didn’t believe any of it but shook anyway. DeLuca seemed happy. “Good. Now we can talk.”
“It’s about a Korean named Jae Lee,” I said.
Black eyes flattened to blacker slits in the afternoon gray.
“He was peddling dope on the West Side,” I said. “I’m thinking you were acting as his muscle. Maybe running the whole operation through him.”
A gust of wind rumbled across the lot. Johnny Apple’s voice rumbled with it. “What makes you think that?”
“Lee never could have held down that territory without someone like the Outfit as backup. When Rita started sniffing around the Korean, you got worried she was on to your operation. Why else put a tail on her?”
Johnny looked at Rita. Rita looked at me. DeLuca stared at the crushed remains of the cigar at his feet.
“What do you want?” Apple said.
“The Korean’s dead. But I think you know that. The last shipment of drugs he was supposed to take is also gone. I’m thinking you know that as well.”
“Who killed the Korean?” Apple said.
“You mean who took your dope? I don’t know the answer to that.”
“We’re ignoring Ms. Alvarez.” It was DeLuca, checking back into the conversation with a smile meant to lubricate.
“Rita’s not doing a story on your drug operation,” I said. “At least she wasn’t as of this morning.”
“She was talking to Lee,” Apple said.
“The Korean was running a side business.”
I glanced over at Rita, who stepped up.
“Mr. Lee was acting as a middleman,” she said. “He would get no-bid contracts for medical supplies through a contact in City Hall and funnel them to a number of small companies. Lee delivered the supplies through his own trucking company and took a cut on both ends.”
“And why do we care about this?” Apple said.
I ignored Johnny this time and waited on his boss.
“We care,” DeLuca said, “because there is something larger at play. Something that Mr. Kelly believes is more important than anything we’ve discussed so far. Something we need to know about.”
Vinny DeLuca was old but hadn’t lost a step. Which was a good thing to know.
“We have information,” I said, “that ties the Korean and his trucking company into what’s going on over on the West Side.”
Johnny Apple’s hand went under his coat, and he looked up in the sky, as if choppers were about to descend on all of us. DeLuca put a light touch on his bodyguard’s arm.
“Chili, go take a walk.” DeLuca spoke without looking behind him. Chili turned and walked back to the car. “Go ahead, Mr. Kelly.”
I told him about Danielson. About the note with Lee’s address on it, and Silver Line Trucking. I left out the mayor. DeLuca waited.
“I was in the Korean’s cellar,” I said, “before the fences went up. Found a few thousand body bags inside.” I nodded toward Rita. “If there’s a connection to the pathogen release, Rita’s gonna run the story.”
“And, in the process, implicate us as working with some sort of terrorists?” DeLuca raised an eyebrow.
I could feel Johnny move again, drifting a little wider, getting some shooting room, no doubt.
“Perhaps not directly… ”
“But it would be inevitable,” DeLuca said.
“Unless she took steps to keep you out of it, probably.”
Now we had gotten to it. The old man seemed almost relieved. “What’s your proposition, Kelly?”
“You tell us what you know about the Korean. We keep the drug angle, and your involvement, out of this entire thing.”
“What makes you think I know anything about Mr. Lee? And especially his side business?”
“Because you know everything about everyone you do business with. And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have some information.”
DeLuca seemed to ponder that, until a second thought struck him.
“How about this? We shoot you both. Could have you at the bottom of the river within the hour and be home for a nice bowl of minestrone.”
I waved my hand once over my head. A car horn beeped from the salt yards behind me.
“Rodriguez?” DeLuca said.
I nodded.
“Tell him to come in. It’s getting cold out here.” The old man bundled his coat close around him, walked back to his car, and climbed inside. The Cadillac pulled away, toward the corrugated shed at the very back of the lot.