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  The general turns toward the men behind him, a curt nod. One of them reaches down to his seat and produces a set of hedge shears—long, sharp blades with black-and-orange leather handles.

  “General, please.” Disco feels himself shrink, his hands over his privates, his heartbeat violent against his chest.

  “I haven’t asked my question yet, Colonel. Do you want to hear my question?”

  “Yes, sir,” he whispers, bent over. “Yes, General.”

  “My question,” says Boho, “is why, two days ago, my cousin—the one who operates the orphanage in Timisoara—received a phone call from a Chicago police officer, trying to determine the identity of a dead girl. A girl who had been shot to death in Chicago.” The general opens his hands. “Why would this happen?”

  “General, I…” His throat closes up involuntarily. Sweat stings his eyes.

  “Now,” Boho goes on, “I am trying to decide if an answer such as ‘I don’t know’ is better than ‘I do know, General, but I forgot to mention this problem to you.’ I am truly unsure of which answer would upset me more.”

  “General—”

  “Because if you do not know of something going on with one of our girls, from one of our orphanages, then I have to wonder why. Why are things happening without your knowledge? I have to wonder whether you are the right person to be running this operation in Chicago.”

  “I—”

  “But on the other hand, Colonel, if you know of a specific problem but failed to mention it to me, I would have to wonder why you did not bring this problem to my attention.” The general holds out his glass. One of the men refreshes it from a decanter of Scotch.

  “General, I can explain.”

  “Ah, he can explain,” he says to Milton. “So explain, Colonel.”

  “I did not…did not want to bother you with a problem I can…take care of myself.”

  “You wanted to show…what is the American word?…initiative. Yes, that is it. You wanted to show initiative, Colonel, is that correct?”

  “Yes, General. I wanted to take care of it without troubling you, sir.”

  “And yet I am troubled. I am receiving calls from Romanian orphanages. Chicago police officers are sending photographs of a dead girl to an orphanage. Do you not think that causes me trouble?”

  “I am…sorry, General.”

  “Do you know why these police are interested in this girl?”

  “We…had to kill her, sir. She es—” The throat closure again. This one isn’t going to be easy to say.

  Boho’s eyes bulge in mock curiosity. “She es—she escaped? Is that it?”

  Disco nods, trying to keep himself from collapsing to the carpet.

  “You allowed a girl to escape, and you had to kill her. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you did not dispose of the body?”

  “We couldn’t, sir.”

  “You did not dispose of the body! You left her to be found by the police. And now they are calling one of our best orphanages!” He rises from his chair. “You let all this happen, Colonel.”

  “Sir, I—”

  An arm comes around his neck, lifts him off his feet, arching backward. The two thugs by Boho rush forward, each grabbing a leg. No matter how Disco kicks and rears, it takes them no time whatsoever to hold him still, in midair, spread-eagled.

  His body on fire, trembling so hard he couldn’t speak if he wanted to, feeling the deepest animal shriek build from his gut.

  No no please no God no

  Boho, holding the hedge shears, trying them out, opening and closing them, the razor-sharp blades whining.

  Disco, subdued and spread-eagled.

  “How do I express my disappointment?” Boho asks. “What shall we do now?”

  Chapter 77

  PORTER, SITTING in his office at 35th and Michigan, leans back in his chair, pops a hard candy in his mouth. “Tell him he’s gotta wear a wire, he wants to make this thing right.”

  “He won’t go for it, Captain. He says he’ll provide information as a CI but won’t wire up.”

  So says Garcia, a new kid, just made sergeant, making his start in the Bureau of Internal Affairs, though everyone still inverts the letters, calls it IAB. He’s smart and ambitious, like most of the ones who come here. Porter doesn’t know him well enough yet, so he doesn’t trust him.

  “Tell him he won’t wear a wire, we walk him out of the Tenth in bracelets.”

  “And then we don’t build a case, Captain. We don’t get the ringleaders.”

  “Then we don’t get the ringleaders,” says Porter. “But we send a message. Nobody dictates nuthin’ to Internal Affairs. We got this guy by the scrotum, and he’s telling us what he will and won’t do? No fuckin’ way. Tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to decide. Day after tomorrow, he tapes a mike to his chest or we perp-walk him out in front of the whole fuckin’ squad room. A reporter and cameraman from channel 7 might happen to be there, too, just coincidentally, so his wife and kids can see it on the news.”

  “What if we push him too hard? What if he eats a bullet?”

  “C’mon, that’s a cliché.”

  It’s a cliché because it’s true.

  “This guy’s got four generations of cop in his family,” Garcia says. “You shoulda seen him. He was crying like a little girl, beggin’ me for mercy. I wouldn’t put it past him to take the exit ramp.”

  “Then he eats a bullet. That’s his choice.”

  “Jesus, Cap. Remind me not to piss you off.”

  Porter’s phone buzzes in his pocket. His left pocket. His throwaway. Buys a new one every month, which is a pain in the ass, having to give out a new number to his mushrooms, having to input all the numbers again, but it’s better than being predictable.

  “Beat it, Garcia, would ya?”

  The caller ID says it’s Carla Griffin. He’s supposed to call her today, not the other way around.

  He answers the phone. “Call you back in two minutes.”

  The time it takes him to leave headquarters, at 35th and Michigan, make it onto the street. He sweeps his office every week for bugs, but you never know.

  He gets to the street, another scorcher of a day, but nicer now, as the sun falls, close to the end of the workday. Or at least a traditional workday, if Porter ever had one.

  He dials Carla.

  “We gotta meet,” she says, smart enough not to use his name.

  “Help me out a little.”

  “K-Town,” she says. “Four dead people. It was about the junkie prostitute, wasn’t it? Not a turf war. Not gangs. But a girl. The one Har—the one he’s so worried about. The one you seem so worried about.”

  Porter looks around him while his insides swirl. Christ, what happened now?

  “Take it easy,” he says. “Okay, we’ll meet. Say, ten o’clock.”

  “Where?”

  Where, indeed.

  He says, “Remember the place we first met?”

  Chapter 78

  PORTER DRIVES through the parking garage. The fourth level is empty, which is good, because that means nobody will be parked on the roof.

  This shit is getting out of control, he thinks. First Carla, then Disco, calling him frantically. The lid is coming off, and it’s going to take all Porter can muster to shut it back on and screw it tight.

  He pulls up the final ramp onto the rooftop. Sees only one vehicle.

  He approaches it, prepared to park next to it but facing the opposite direction, so he’d be driver’s side to driver’s side.

  But Disco isn’t in the driver’s seat. Nobody is. Disco’s in the passenger seat.

  Porter removes the Beretta from his shoulder holster. Then he pulls up alongside Disco’s car the traditional way, so his driver’s side is adjacent to Disco’s passenger side. They aren’t more than three feet from each other as Porter buzzes down the window.

  “Where the fuck’s the driver?”

  Disco’s jaw is clenched, eyes narrowed, a blo
od rush to the face. He’s in pain. “Downstairs.”

  “You sure about that?” Porter looks around him, checks his rearview mirror. But it’s safe. There’s no place to hide up here on the roof. Porter checks the seat behind Disco—empty.

  “Downstairs,” Disco repeats.

  “Yeah? He get a look at me?” Their deal is strict, one-on-one only. No friends or associates.

  “No,” Disco says.

  “Then why’s he here? What, you can’t drive yourself all of a sudden?”

  Disco bends forward, reaches down to the floorboard.

  “Don’t you fucking move!” Porter raises his Beretta, both hands, ready to fire, adrenaline pumping.

  Disco just shakes his head, like he doesn’t have time for theatrics. He pulls up his leg, showing a right foot that wears no shoe, only a heavy bandage. “This is why I cannot drive,” he says.

  “The fuck happened to you?”

  Disco turns to him. His eyes wander a bit, like there’s something wrong. Like he’s drugged. Hurting and drugged. “You know the man I work for.”

  “Yeah, that general guy, Boho-whatever.”

  “He flew into town to see me.”

  That’s not good.

  “He knows about the girl.”

  Even worse. This thing’s turning into a freakin’ horror show.

  “He put his hands on you,” Porter says.

  “Not his hands.” Disco raises a cigarette to his mouth, his hand trembling, struggles to light it. Blows out smoke. “He gave me a choice. My big toe or my balls.”

  “Jesus. He cut your fuckin’ toe off?”

  Disco nods. “He called it ‘door number two.’ He said in twenty-four hours, he’s going with ‘door number one.’ Unless Harney’s dead.”

  Porter’s blood goes cold. “Wait—Harney? Who said anything about Harney? I never told you the SOS cops’ names.”

  He made a point of not doing that. Tell ’em only what they need to know.

  Maybe Disco read it in the papers. That coulda happened. There was enough coverage of the K-Town shooting and solve.

  “The general gave me his name,” he says. “Harney is trying to find out more about the girl. The general says he must be taken out.”

  “There’re other ways of taking someone out. I’m IAB. Let me do it.”

  The life comes to Disco’s eyes now, the druggy haze evaporating. “I have my orders. He must be dead now. You have to help me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Porter raises a hand. “Hold on there, friend. We aren’t killing cops.”

  “We’re killing this cop,” says Disco, his jaw clenched, his eyes watering. “He dies or I die.”

  “I can’t be part of that. I can’t be within a hundred miles of that.”

  Disco shows his teeth, wearing a feral expression, a mix of fear and desperation Porter’s never seen. Say what you want about Disco, but he’s always been a cool customer. He looks like he’s coming unglued.

  “I will do it either way, Denny. With or without you. But if I do it without you, it will be messier. If I do it with your help, we can—”

  Contain it, Porter thinks. Control it.

  Make it look like something other than an assassination.

  “Let me think about it,” says Porter. “Give me tonight.”

  He’s had an idea percolating along these lines anyway. He’s been hoping it wouldn’t end in Harney’s death, but he probably can’t stop that now. This idea, though, now that he thinks about it, is probably the perfect solution.

  Let’s see what Carla thinks.

  Chapter 79

  PORTER HAS two choices. Hard or soft.

  It’s all he’s thought about since leaving Disco a few hours ago.

  He’s made his decision. He gets there first, parking as close to the runway at Midway airport as he’s allowed, a small lot off the one for general aviation, close to the fire station.

  Gangsters like to talk at airports because eavesdropping is nearly impossible and, in many cases, illegal under federal law. But that’s not why Porter chose the airport.

  He chose it as a reminder. This is where he first met Carla Griffin.

  She pulls up five minutes later, gets out of her car, looks around. “Is this your idea of a joke, meeting here?”

  “We’re past jokes, chica.”

  She stops just short of him. The overhead lights give enough illumination to reveal the gleam in her eye, at least her unswollen eye, but not much more of her expression.

  “Why do I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know what the hell is going on?”

  “Probably cuz that’s true,” says Porter. “That’s about to change. But first, tell me what happened today.”

  She does. The anonymous delivery of a video of the K-Town shooting showing two white guys in the front seat (Fuck, and after all that work killing Latham Jackson); the same white guys captured by the POD footage after Harney chased them from Shiv’s house (Motherfuck); Harney coming clean—or somewhat clean, anyway—about his suspicions and resisting the idea of the FBI being brought in.

  As bad as it is to hear this, Porter feels good knowing that his idea, the plan he’s formulated, is the right one. He has all this covered.

  Okay, here goes. He better keep his lies straight. That’s the problem with lies—they’re a lot harder to remember than the truth.

  “Harney’s dirty,” he tells her. “He’s a wrong cop.”

  Carla steps back. “Bullshit.”

  “Doesn’t seem like one, does he?”

  “No,” she says, “he doesn’t.”

  “Right, cuz he’s a smart wrong cop. But wrong all the same.”

  “Give it to me, then,” she says. “All of it.”

  He starts to reach for her, thinks better of it. He’s decided on soft, not hard, but he doesn’t wanna be too soft.

  “Harney protects a sex-trafficking ring,” he says.

  He can’t see Carla’s expression. He wishes he could.

  “Jesus,” she whispers. “For real? No bullshit?”

  “Definitely no bullshit. Could I prove it in court right now? No. But am I sure? Sure as I’m standing here.”

  “So…he protects the ring that puts black-lily ankle tattoos on their girls?”

  “No, no. No, no.” He touches her arm, after vowing not to. “No, he protects a rival group. A group that doesn’t like competition. This was a turf war, all right. Just not one involving drugs. It involves girls.”

  “So the crew Harney protects, they killed Evie. Because she’s a competitor.”

  “Right.”

  “So what’s Harney doing? What’s tracking Evie back to where she came from going to accomplish?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Porter says. “The crew he protects, they wanna take over the black-lily crew’s business. Harney wants to know their supply lines back to other countries. He wants to know anything and everything he can about them. He’s using this case as an excuse to get it.”

  “But without my help,” she says. “And without the Bureau’s help.”

  “Exactly. You’ll get in his way. The crew he’s protecting, they want to take over their rivals’ supply line, get their customer lists, grab their girls, then kill the black-lily crew. You wouldn’t allow that. Neither would the FBI. You’d want to arrest them, prosecute them. He and his crew want to kill them and swallow their business.”

  “Wow. That…that all fits, I guess.”

  Of course it all fits. I didn’t get where I am by being a mope.

  “And Junior Peppers?” she asks. “We found the AR-15 in his car. The murder weapon.”

  “Yeah. The guy shoots up K-Town, the press goes wild with it, all kinds a heat on him, and he just leaves the assault rifle in the back of his car? That never seemed odd to you?”

  She allows for that. “So Harney planted it,” she says.

  Porter did, actually, through one of his mushrooms. But yeah, Carla’s taken the hook and bitten down hard.

&nbs
p; “And Harney planted the Sig in Prince Valentine’s apartment, to tie the whole thing up.”

  “Now you’re getting it.” Porter made that happen, too, but Carla’s locked in now. “Harney picked Prince well,” he says. “An easy scapegoat. A gunner for the Nation, out on MSR—big surprise he might be slinging dope to make ends meet. No surprise at all he’d run when you knocked on his door. And pretty convenient that Harney put him in a coffin so he couldn’t defend himself.”

  “No, Valentine shot at him first,” she says. “Saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Maybe so. That may be how it played out. But either way, Harney wasn’t gonna let Valentine leave that roof alive.”

  “Wow. Wow, really?” She does a little circle. She’ll work this over. But it will all fit, as she put it. “Harney knew all along that K-Town wasn’t a drug thing. He played me the whole time.”

  “He played everybody. Mr. Squeaky-Clean Image.”

  “God.” She touches her chest. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Yeah, on that topic—you don’t look so good, lady,” he says. “Might be time for some sick leave.”

  She looks up at him. “Yeah?”

  “You got that big-ass wound on your face. Plus, of course, the ‘cancer.’ Maybe you’re having bad nausea.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “I think this is happening the next day or so,” Porter says. “Next twenty-four hours. He’s close to finding these guys’ identities.”

  “He is? He didn’t tell me that.”

  “No shit he didn’t tell you. But he’s got a bead on them. He’s about to make his move. And IAB’s gonna be there.”

  “I should be, too.”

  “And risk getting caught up in this? That’s the last thing you need, kid. Believe me, a dirty cop gives off skunk spray. You’ll stink for years after, even if you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  That seems to make sense to her. “Yeah, it gives me a snitch tag, too.”

  “Exactly. This way, you can act just as surprised as everybody else. And really, nobody’ll think twice, you take a day off after that thing on the rooftop. So disappear tomorrow, okay? That’s an order.”