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  “What if she wakes up today?” I said. “And you’re not here?”

  Valerie’s head dropped. “You and I both know that’s not going to happen.”

  Anger, bitterness, always brimming near the surface during this whole ordeal, took over. “Then go,” I said. “Because those kids need you. The rapists and murderers and drug dealers—they need you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” she said. “I’m on to something, Billy. There are girls, girls I might be able to help—”

  “What about that girl?” I hissed, pointing toward the hospital room. “The one who happens to be your daughter? What about helping her?”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears, her face hardening. “We can’t save her, Billy. Don’t you dare pretend we can. Don’t you dare be that cruel—”

  “Fine—then go. Go save those other girls. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to worry about one beautiful little girl who needs her parents right now.”

  I turned my back on Valerie and returned to the room.

  The third girl who passes looks the part. Blond hair teased up, slinky outfit showing off her legs, sidling awkwardly up to my car on her high, chunky heels after we make eye contact.

  I buzz down the passenger-side window.

  “Hi, handsome,” she says. If the nose and cheekbones didn’t do it, the accent does. Eastern European. “Want some company?”

  I nod. She opens the door and gets in.

  She doesn’t tell me her name. I don’t tell her mine. No point in either of us lying.

  She runs her hand high up my thigh, long purple nails scraping denim. “What would you like to do, handsome?” Her voice sultry, comforting, like I’m the man she’s always fantasized about, like she can’t believe her luck, meeting me.

  “I have fifty dollars,” I say.

  She tells me what that will get me. She tells me to drive, turn at the next right. After three blocks, we’re in a vacant lot by an abandoned manufacturing plant.

  I put the car in Park and turn on the dome light, surprising her. “Lemme see your feet,” I say.

  A quick arching of her eyebrows, but no more than that. This poor kid probably sees everything, fetishes of every kind. “You want to see my feet.”

  “I like feet,” I say. “And heels.”

  So she leans back against the passenger door and turns those spindly legs toward me, putting her feet and heels in my lap next to the steering wheel. I pretend to admire them, caress them, turning them from side to side as if appreciating fine art.

  Nope. No black flower tattoo above her ankle. No black lily.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “You are funny,” she says.

  I show her my shield. She doesn’t think that’s as funny.

  The whole enamored-with-me facade immediately leaves her face, replaced with defiance, an eye roll. “Oh, c’mon, cop,” she says. “I give to you for free.”

  I shake my head. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is…Cherie.”

  Yeah, and mine’s Leopold. “Cherie, I have you on solicitation. But you answer a couple questions and you walk away. Or I take you in, find out what your real name is, and you get a free night in the clink, maybe more depending on your record. What’s it gonna be?”

  She doesn’t answer. But that’s an answer. I reach down to my feet, grab the file folder, remove the photograph of my Jane Doe’s ankle. “You see this tat?”

  She takes the photo and looks at it.

  “That mean anything to you?”

  “No.” She shakes her head, shrugs. She’s being straight. No fear in her eyes, not the kind of fear she’d register if she recognized this.

  “You ever see a girl with this ink on her?”

  “No.”

  “Ever heard any talk about ‘black lily girls’ or anything like that?”

  She shakes her head again, hands me back the photo, concern on her face. Pretty obvious that it’s a crime scene photo, a victim photo. Prostitutes see a lot of kinky and dirty stuff, and they are no strangers to violence, but murder isn’t an everyday occurrence.

  “I have one more question,” I say.

  I ask her. She doesn’t want to tell me. Tears well up in her eyes. But eventually she tells me, with my promise that it won’t come back to her.

  I drive her back to her spot on West Armitage and hand her a hundred dollars, all I have on me. She takes three of the twenty-dollar bills and stuffs them into her skirt. She takes the other two and slips them into her shoe, tucked under her foot, money her pimp will never see. She better hope he doesn’t.

  Then she looks up at me, appearing several years younger than she did when she sauntered up to my car door twenty minutes ago. Looking like a young girl, a scared young girl.

  “You have something else you could do?” I ask. “Somewhere else you could go? A family or friends or something?”

  That seems almost amusing to her. “You are going to save me, Mr. Police Officer?”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “There is nowhere else to go.” She opens the door and gets out before I can say another word.

  I watch her disappear into the shadows. Then I put the car in gear and start driving.

  Chapter 43

  JOSEF DROPS his cigarette to the sidewalk and stubs it out, counting the bills as he blows out smoke through pursed lips. “Forty? Only forty?” He shakes the bills in his hand. “For an hour?”

  “That’s all he gave me, Yo.”

  The woman, who uses the name Martina on the street, red-and-blue dyed hair in a bun, shifts her weight from one side to the other, knowing Josef is angry, knowing she screwed up.

  “You get the money up front,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “I always tell you to get the money up front.” He shoves Martina backward. She nearly falls, balanced precariously enough already on her high heels.

  “I did,” she says. “I told him he had half an hour. But he made me stay longer.”

  “He made you stay. He made you…” Josef points to the car. “Get in. Now.”

  “Yo, I told him—”

  “Get in the car now.”

  She walks past him, giving him a wide berth, wincing, but he doesn’t touch her. Not yet.

  “The back seat,” he tells her when she tries for the front-seat passenger door.

  “Yo, please—”

  “Get in the back seat now.” He lunges for her, making a fist, feigning a strike. She rushes into the back seat, closes the door.

  God, these girls. He walks around to the other side of the car, removes the leather strap tucked into the back of his pants, and gets in.

  “Yo, please,” she says before he grabs her bun and shoves her face against the front passenger seat. Holding her in that position with his left hand, he gathers up the leather strap in his right, gripping each end in his fist, a makeshift whip.

  Always the back, which the men don’t notice. Always through her shirt, the less likely to break skin. She takes the first strike between her shoulder blades with a whoosh of air, the second with a loud whimper, the third—

  The illumination coming from the streetlight disappears, the interior of the car suddenly dark.

  A shadow by the car, blocking the light. A man standing at the window.

  Chapter 44

  I SMACK my Maglite against the rear window, the glass shattering on impact. I drop the flashlight and reach through the window into the car, the man with the belt in his hand turning in my direction.

  I grip his slimy hair in one hand and cup my other hand under his chin, yanking him backward, toward me, away from the girl he was whipping. I step back, using my body weight, pulling with every bit of force I can muster, a tug-of-war, yanking his head toward the shattered window. I keep pulling, leaving the scumbag with the choice of a broken neck or reluctant compliance.

  His hands claw desperately at mine, but I have the leverage. His mouth forced shut, he is reduced to loud grunts of pain and surprise. My forearm cuts
on the jagged shards of glass in the window’s frame as I yank his head through the window and keep pulling with everything I have, leaving him no options.

  He tries to raise an arm free, but I yank his shoulders through the frame of the window, barely fitting, pinning his arms at his side. The upper third of his body hanging out the window, facing upward into the dark sky, pure shock on his face.

  He tries to adjust, to look at me upside down. I slam my fist down on his mouth, a pronounced crack, busting teeth, popping his jaw out of place. He takes the blow badly, having no cushion to receive it, his eyes rolling back, his head lolled backward, dangling.

  I pull him the rest of the way out of the car, his body limp, his feet smacking the ground, and throw him to the street, face forward. He lands like a lump of cement, not breaking his fall, a loud puff of air escaping him. Stuffed in the back of his pants, a Glock. I remove it and stuff it in mine. I take out his wallet, too, and check his ID.

  Josef Alexander Sablotny.

  I flip him over, a garbled cry escaping from him, the stench of body odor and tobacco and fresh blood. Facing up now, his head lolling from side to side, eyes shut in pain, his jaw off its hinges like a broken puppet. His mouth bloody red, like a wolf after devouring prey. Not as fun when you’re the hunted, not the hunter.

  I drop down on top of Josef. He issues another pained grunt, which causes him to open his eyes, trying to focus on me, dumped on his torso, pinning his arms down with my knees.

  “I have questions, Josef. If you answer them, you live.”

  Josef’s head rolls to the side. He tries to spit out blood, but with his jaw malfunctioning, most of it dribbles onto his chin.

  “Fuck…yourself,” he hisses, not moving that jaw, spraying more blood.

  “You’re a tough guy, no doubt about it. Especially when you’re beating up defenseless girls.” I find the Maglite on the ground, raise it, and strike him in the chin, right where it would hurt the most. The wounded-animal cry he releases would make National Geographic proud.

  I stand up, grab his arms, and pull him to a sitting position. He probably lacks the ability to fight back now. But I hope he tries.

  Instead, he rocks, swoons, then vomits into his lap. That’s hard to do with a busted jaw.

  I reach into my bag and pull out the photo of my Jane Doe’s ankle, the same one I showed one of his prostitutes, Cherie, an hour ago. “Tell me what you see,” I say, holding it near his face.

  It takes him a while. He catches his breath, wipes his mouth tentatively, and finally focuses. I watch his face. He reacts to the photo, a change in his expression.

  “You recognize it,” I say.

  He closes his eyes, nods his head.

  “Who runs these girls?”

  “Don’t…know. I don’t, I don’t.” Raising a hand. “I…swear.” Speaking without jaw movement.

  “Of course you do, Josef. They’re your competition.”

  “No.” The way he says it, not a desperate denial but an assured statement of fact. “Not my comp—competition. They do not…walk streets.”

  “What, they’re higher-end? Call girls? Escorts?”

  He nods, still taking wet, heavy breaths.

  “Where do they work? Where do they live? Who runs them?”

  “I…” He shakes his head. “I don’t—please…”

  There are girls, girls I might be able to help.

  These kids need me.

  “Please?” I repeat. “Please? You want mercy from me?”

  I reel back and kick him in the ribs, audible cracks, as Josef doubles over in pain, grimacing and broken, curled into the fetal position.

  “You think I won’t kill you?” I shout down at him. “You think I won’t?”

  “Nobody…knows,” says Josef, wincing, gritting through the pain. “Is not…my business.”

  “Bullshit. Bullshit!” I remove Josef’s Glock from my waistband, crouch down over him, pressing the barrel of the gun against his left eye. “You know a name. Or a club. Or a hotel. Something. You have till the count of three, or I put a bullet through your brain.”

  A moan of protest or pain or both.

  “One,” I say.

  Behind me, the roar of a vehicle, a flashing red light. Josef, with his free right eye, sees the lights behind us.

  “That’s not gonna save you,” I say. “Two.”

  Tires screeching to a halt, the flashing light now bathing us, coloring Josef’s face.

  A door opening. “Police! Police officer!”

  Footsteps approaching, shuffling. “Drop that weapon! Drop it!”

  “No! This isn’t your business!” I shout back. I press the gun harder against his left eye. “You little fuck! Tell me! Tell me!”

  “Drop that weapon now! Now!”

  My body trembling, I hiss through my teeth. “Tell…me.”

  Josef cries out, spitting more blood, coughing.

  I Frisbee the gun to the street and take Josef’s jaw in my hands, like I’m going to rip it off his face. “Tell me what you know!” I shout over his high-pitched squeal of pain. “Tell me what—”

  One arm wraps around my neck in a choke hold, the other under my armpit.

  “No!” I shout, but I have no leverage, being pulled backward out of my crouch, wrestled backward, unable to get my feet under me. “No! Let go!”

  I end up thrown against the bumper of the vehicle with the flashing light.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I spit.

  Patti bends down and looks me in the eyes. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Chapter 45

  PATTI DISABLES the cherry on her dashboard and tosses it in the back seat. We peel away in her car.

  “You have got to get it together, little brother,” she says. “You have any idea how many ways that could’ve gone wrong? You know how lucky you are?”

  “The only one who’s lucky is Josef.”

  “Yeah? So what’s the plan here, Wyatt Earp? Kill every pimp in Chicago?”

  My body shaking with post-event adrenaline. Still wishing I had my hands on that guy. “I didn’t kill Josef.”

  “Would you have, if I hadn’t shown up?” She turns to me, concern more than anger on her face, her eyes brimming with tears.

  If I had an answer to that question, I’d give it. “I told you not to get involved,” I say.

  “Well, I shared a womb with you,” she says, “so I guess that makes me involved.”

  I punch the side door of the car. Punch it again.

  I rub my hand. My forearm, I notice for the first time, is bleeding from Josef’s busted glass window. My hands are bloody, though it’s not my blood.

  “Would Val—” Patti’s throat closes. Muffled sobs. “Would Val want this?” she manages. “Throwing your life away over this?”

  There are girls, girls I might be able to help.

  These kids need me.

  “She’d want me to find these scumbags and stop them.”

  Patti swerves the car over to the side of the road and brakes hard, the seat belt locking me in place.

  She puts the car in Park and turns to me, tears on her cheeks, but no grief in her expression. Determined, resolute.

  “Then let’s find them and stop them,” she says. “But do it smart. Keep your eye on the prize. No bull. No china shop. No Charlie Bronson. Let’s make a plan.”

  Chapter 46

  “ONE THING you need to be clear on,” Patti says after we’ve adiosed the scene, doubling back now to drive me to my car. “The force isn’t going to back you up on this. They get one hint that you’re shitting all over the K-Town solve, they’ll put you down.”

  The adrenaline slowly drains away. Patti’s right. I can’t shoot or fight my way through this. I need to be smart. Still, I’d be ready, willing, and able to go back for round 2 with Josef the pimp right now.

  “Got that covered,” I say. “The story is that I’m trying to ID the Jane Doe. It gives me an excuse to go looking for these guys.
The whole black-lily tattoo thing.”

  “That won’t hold for long.”

  “Maybe I won’t need very long. Or maybe my partner buys into my plan.”

  “Your partner,” says Patti. “Carla Griffin?”

  “Right. We didn’t hit it off so well at first, but I think she’s okay.”

  Patti steals a glance in my direction. “Carla Griffin is not okay. She’s bad news.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says a lot of people.”

  I look over at her. “Don’t tell me she’s IAB.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Thank God. That’s all I need right now. I’m not sure how I’m going to figure out who killed Valerie, but I do know it’s gonna involve fracturing some laws and bending a few rules into pretzels. I don’t need Internal Affairs sticking its long, hairy snout over my shoulder.

  “She burned a lieutenant in Wentworth,” she says. “Guy named Franco. You hear about that?”

  I didn’t. I’ve been out of the gossip circle for a long time. Hell, I was never in it. But Patti, she’s a different story. The women on the force tend to stick together, having to deal with so much bullshit, the double standards and everything else.

  “Lieutenant Ron Franco,” says Patti. “Married, buncha kids. Anyway, Carla was sleeping with him. He ended it; she didn’t like it. So she accuses him of sexual harassment. He denied it, said everything was consensual, but the department, well, they didn’t want the publicity. Neither did Franco, because he didn’t want this getting back to wifey. So he took an early retirement. And Carla, voilà, gets promoted up to SOS.”

  “Sounds like a he said, she said.”

  “That’s the thing,” Patti says, stopping at a light. “It was a they said, she said. Half the coppers in the Second knew about the affair. A detective I used to partner with—remember Gunner?—he said it was common knowledge. And they all went to bat for Franco. But it didn’t matter. She screams ‘sexual harassment,’ everyone runs for cover. She had him by the short hairs, and she pulled hard.”

  “So now we’re feeling sorry for a guy who stepped out on his wife?”