The Red Book Page 4

  “Where we going?”

  “You’ll find out,” I say. “If you can keep up.”

  Chapter 11

  DISCO PULLS his convertible up to the curbside valet and throws it in Park. “Do not speak unless you are spoken to,” he says to Nadia. “This is one of the finest restaurants in Chicago.”

  “I know.” Her tight purple dress worn off the shoulder, hair slicked back into a bun.

  “What do you know about fine restaurants?” Nothing, that’s what she knows.

  He turns the rearview mirror toward himself, his hair gelled and coiffed, two days’ worth of stubble on his face, small circular eyeglasses. Nailed it.

  He sucks in his stomach and walks toward the simple black door to Domaine—the name of the restaurant spelled out in fashionably minimalist small-block lettering. This place is, indeed, one of the city’s finest, if you believe Time Out Chicago, but Disco’s not much of a foodie. He just likes being seen in one of Chicago’s finest restaurants.

  Business always comes first, always, said the general years ago. But you must make time to enjoy life’s comforts, too.

  Besides, one day he might be running more than Chicago. He could get the entire Midwest. That would mean millions. He might as well get used to consorting with the elite.

  Inside, low-hanging lanterns wash simple wood tables in dim orange light, while casual-cool patrons sitting in black chairs listen to retro music playing from the overhead sound system. Most of the men are wearing jackets over T-shirts or open-collar dress shirts, some in jeans.

  Disco frowns. He overdressed. But he still looks good, and enough heads turn at Nadia and her sleek figure to make him feel better, keep his chin held high. She was the right one to bring. Nadia is probably his hottest girl, certainly one of the most popular.

  And besides, fuck all these people and their stares. How many of them left their native country as he did, moved to the States, built an operation from scratch, got a law degree even though English was his second language?

  None of them.

  How many have killed eighteen people, including three this morning?

  Zero, that’s how many. He has more balls than all these trust-fund babies and tech millionaires combined.

  He had preordered a 2006 Allemand Cornas, which he chose from the online menu after checking reviews in Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, and some wine-tasting blogs. The sommelier pours the first taste for him and waits.

  He drinks it as you’re supposed to drink it. As he’s seen the general drink it. Appreciate the glass. Hold it to the light. Tilt it. Sip the wine. Suck on it, swirl it.

  Disco swallows the sip, looks at the sommelier. “It needs to open up,” he says.

  He’s heard the general say that.

  “Yes, sir. Shall I decant it?”

  Disco trips over that. Decant? But he quickly and casually says, “Yes.”

  The waiter leaves with the bottle.

  Nadia doesn’t understand. She wouldn’t. She is beautiful and sexy when she is dressed up, but she is stupid, just like the rest of them. Good for one thing and one thing only. “Read your menu,” he tells her, as if she’s capable of reading it. She’s been here four years and has picked up English only from what she’s been told and what she’s seen on the television in the basement.

  Disco is in the midst of checking his phone under the table, looking up the word decant, when it buzzes.

  His other phone. His burner phone. The phone for which only three people have the number.

  Probably Nicolas, still worried about today. You fired too many shots, he complained after they sped away. You killed too many people.

  He had to smack Nicolas to get him back in line. Nobody cares about a bunch of black drug dealers, he explained to him. They shoot each other all the time.

  But it’s not Nicolas texting. It’s Augustina, with a link to a news article in the online Sun-Times.

  He stops breathing. He knows from the headline alone. He thought he killed three people today in K-Town. But he didn’t. He killed four.

  He opens the link: FOUR-YEAR-OLD AMONG VICTIMS IN WEST SIDE SHOOTING. The story is the headline on the page. A photo of an African American toddler, wearing pigtails, a fancy dress, and a beaming, innocent smile.

  No. No. But yes. The 300 block of South Kilbourn, midday.

  He clicks over to the Tribune’s site. The same lead headline, the same photo. Four-year-old LaTisha Moreland among the victims of a drive-by shooting, believed to be drug-related. A protest rally planned for the day after tomorrow at Daley Plaza. The mayor pleading for calm. The police superintendent vowing to bring the killers to justice.

  He dials Augustina on the burner phone, his hands shaking. He crouches inward, cups his free hand around his mouth. “She was not out there,” he says when Augustina answers, noting the shake in his own voice. “I saw no little girl outside.”

  “She was inside house,” says Augustina. “You must have shot through window.”

  He closes his eyes. Of all the luck. There are shootings on the West Side all the time, but when he does it, it’s a headline story?

  “I call Boho?”

  “No!” he hisses, catching the harshness, the fear in his voice. “Do not call the general. I will handle this. Understand?”

  He cuts out the phone, straightens up, runs a shaky hand over the stubble on his cheek. What is he going to do now?

  The sommelier places down a long goosenecked glass vessel holding the red wine.

  “What is this?” Disco snaps. “I do not want this. Take this away.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, you wanted to open it up—”

  Disco lashes out, backhands the decanter off the table, wine splashing on Nadia, glass shattering on the floor. The heavy din of conversation ceases abruptly.

  “There—now it is opened up.” Disco gets to his feet, rocking the table. He pulls a wad of money from his pocket, counting out twelve hundred-dollar bills, throws them down on the table. He grabs Nadia by the arm.

  “Hey, excuse me!” The next table over, a man standing, brushing splattered wine off his slim-fitting shirt. “You spilled wine all over us, guy.”

  Disco pivots, fixes a stare on the man, grips the man’s flimsy bicep, squeezing, his fist like a tourniquet. The man’s indignation immediately turns to alarm. “You should sit back down,” Disco says, “before this becomes embarrassing for you.”

  He shoves the man back into his seat. Turns to the waiter, who backs away, hands up in peace.

  Disco straightens his suit jacket. Turns and leaves, Nadia following.

  On his way out, he dials his phone. “We have to meet,” he says. “Right now.”

  Chapter 12

  “YOU KNOW about the protest rally day after tomorrow,” says Lieutenant Wizniewski over the speakerphone of my cell.

  “Right, you mentioned.”

  “‘Cops don’t care about black victims.’ ‘Cops don’t protect the West Side.’ ‘Justice for LaTisha.’ Read me?”

  “Read you,” I say.

  “The supe’s putting the entire force on riot duty. They’re gonna shut down the courts and the government buildings, evacuate the downtown. I don’t gotta remind you what happened last time.”

  The last time this happened, a year and a half ago, after a cop shot an unarmed African American kid, what started as a peaceful protest turned ugly. Some blamed the police for overreacting. Others blamed the protesters. Either way, everything went to shit. The Daley Center was smashed up, there was a fire down by the Old Post Office, protesters flooded and shut down the Eisenhower Expressway. Multiple dead and dozens of casualties, damage to businesses in the millions.

  “It’s gonna be a fucking mess, Harney. Unless.”

  Unless we solve this case by tomorrow.

  “We’re working on the ‘unless,’ Lew.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.” I punch out the phone. We’re speeding along the West Side, close to our destination.
<
br />   “We should call ahead,” Carla says from the passenger seat. “This could get us shot.”

  She might be right. But I don’t think so. “Andre’s not gonna shoot us.”

  She glances over at me. “What, I make a comment about your daughter, and you not being up for this assignment, and now you have to show me what a hard-ass you are?”

  “Yeah, Griffin, you nailed it again. You’ve got me figured, all right. We got the biggest heater we’ve seen in years, with a dead little girl, a riot about to break out on the West Side, the mayor and the superintendent breathing down our necks, but all I’m worried about is your opinion of me.”

  She goes quiet, conceding the point. She’s wrong about my motives, because I wouldn’t give two shakes of my weenie over what she thinks of me, but she may be right that an unannounced visit to Andre Oliver isn’t the best idea.

  “Your daughter was three when she died?”

  “Oh, good, we’re gonna talk about that again.”

  “And you lost your wife the same day?”

  “Jesus,” I sigh. “Yes. Just to get this over with. Yes, my wife and daughter died on the same day.”

  She lets out a breath of her own. “Life can be cruel.”

  “Gee, yet more keen insight from you. What’s next? The weather’s unpredictable?”

  “Doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole, Harney.”

  I veer the car over, put it in Park at the curb. “My daughter died of a stroke, okay? A fluke. One in a million. A three-year-old had a fuckin’ stroke. Nothing we coulda done. Never coulda seen it coming. That’s life being cruel.”

  She nods.

  “My wife, she had depression, and then this thing with our daughter hit, and she couldn’t handle it. And I was too caught up with my daughter to realize how much it was killing my wife. So her eating a bullet? That wasn’t life being cruel. That was me fucking up. That was me failing her. You got that all down on your scorecard? Is get-to-know-ya time over?”

  Not sure where all that came from. Those feelings about Valerie have always lurked under the surface, but I’ve rarely said them out loud. I don’t know why I picked now, with Carla, to unleash them. Probably the lateness of the hour, the stress, the fact that she’s been busting my balls all day with this passive-aggressive bullshit.

  “My father had depression,” she says. “A chemical imbalance. It took him—it took us—a long time to realize it. It’s not always easy to recognize.”

  Especially if you never see your wife because you’re working the night shift while she works days, trading off responsibilities for the baby. And then your daughter has a stroke, and you turn every ounce of your attention on her, ignoring your wife at the very time when her suffering has exponentially multiplied.

  “And you know how many homicides I’ve solved since that happened, four years ago?” I say. “I’ll tell you, because yes, I keep count. Thirty-one. Thirty-fucking-one. So yeah, seeing a dead girl today, maybe it brought back some memories, and maybe my knees got shaky for three seconds. But I’m gonna put on my big-boy pants and solve this one, too.”

  She looks over at me but doesn’t speak. A truce, détente.

  “Let’s go say hello to Andre,” she says.

  I remember Andre Oliver from when I was a high school kid. He was my age, but he went to Simeon, where he played power forward and drew the attention of virtually every Division I program in the nation. He was the next Magic, the next Jordan, graceful and powerful, a beautiful touch on the ball. He got a ride to U of I, which back then attracted most of the Chicago talent, but got kicked off the team freshman year after a rape charge, followed by a B and E that ended with him punching out the cop who busted him. He did some time, went to Europe to play, blew out his knee, and came back home, still a hoops legend but with an asterisk.

  Now he’s involved in several ventures—basketball camps and a nightclub and his own rap label—but more important for our purposes, Andre Oliver is the undisputed leader of the K-Street Hustlers, who lost two of their soldiers today in a drive-by.

  “So tell me why we don’t call ahead,” she says. “Andre’s gonna have a battalion covering him tonight.”

  “We don’t call ahead because cops don’t call ahead. We show up when we want, where we want. We don’t ask permission.”

  That’s not what she meant, but she takes the point anyway. We have to show we’re in charge.

  I slow the car as we get close to his house, two miles away from K-Town. The streets are quiet, but they’re not deserted. We catch plenty of eyes as we pass.

  Sentries. Andre’s gonna have ’em out in full force tonight. He’s hunkering down for an assault right now while planning one of his own in response.

  I drive the speed limit, use my signal when we turn. Last thing I want to do is come storming up to the house.

  I curb the car in front of Andre’s house, turn to my partner.

  “Ready?” I say to her.

  Chapter 13

  THE BLOCK is covered on both sides with parked cars, most occupied by young men, heavily armed, who’d be letting everyone see their weapons if they hadn’t just been told that a cop car was coming around the corner.

  The K-Street Hustlers are circling the wagons tonight, after the drive-by, preparing for war.

  Andre Oliver’s house isn’t much to look at from the outside, a two-story brick building with a small lawn and wraparound porch. Two men on the porch stand up as Carla and I get out of our car. Our stars hang from lanyards around our necks, as if the flashing cherry on the dash and every other single thing about us didn’t already signal that we are cops.

  “We need to talk to Andre,” I say before these guys say a word.

  “He’s not available,” says the guy on the left, tall and wide, probably early twenties. Dreads hang to his shoulder, gold chains from his neck. A bulge under his T-shirt for his hand cannon. Once upon a time, that was cause for arrest right there, but the Supreme Court changed everything when it said guns are a constitutional right.

  “Does ‘not available’ mean he’s here but busy?” I say. “Or he’s not here?”

  “He’s not available, Officer.”

  Behind us, a couple of car doors open. I look behind me, but casually, the men watching me by their car doors, automatic weapons within arm’s reach.

  “Go get him,” I say to the man on the porch. “Tell him Chicago police detectives want to ask him some questions. You have thirty seconds.”

  “You officers have a warrant?” he asks.

  “Oh, good, you have an education,” I say. “That means you can count. We’re down to twenty seconds now. Wanna guess what happens in twenty seconds if Andre doesn’t come out?”

  “We’ll start with the two of you,” says Carla. “Then your friends over there hiding by their cars. You guys all have permits for your weapons? That’ll be the first question.” She shrugs. “Either way, even if you’re clean, we take all of you in for questioning. Is that what Andre would want? Half his crew taken in for the night? Seems like he wants his people nice and close right about now.”

  The tough guy blinks. His left hand, near his sidearm, opens and closes.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I say.

  The other guy on the porch, shorter and heavier, tenses up, his legs spreading apart.

  Maybe Carla had a point about calling ahead.

  “Five seconds,” I say, watching the first one’s left hand, separated by a thin piece of shirt cloth from his handgun.

  But he’s saved by his right hand, where his phone bleeps once. He looks at the phone, then looks away. “Follow me,” he says.

  Chapter 14

  WE INTERRUPTED a summit, a meeting of the Hustlers’ top brass, a war council. A number of men emerge from the basement door, all tight shirts and biceps and gold chains and tats, each one making it clear that they aren’t intimidated or even impressed by the police in their presence.

  Andre’s home, not surprisingly, is much
nicer on the inside than it would appear from the outside. He knocked down some walls, opting for an open floor plan, a nice family room with a sectional sofa, a large TV mounted on the wall, a fancy Oriental rug. Photos of him are everywhere—framed pictures from his high school days, showing him flying through the air toward the basketball rim; headlines announcing that “Sir Andre” committed to the U of I; a gigantic “Mr. Basketball” trophy he won for being player of the year.

  Our guide takes us down a flight of stairs with plush purple carpeting to a basement with the same carpet laid from wall to wall. This man cave of man caves contains a fully stocked bar, a basketball hoop, two big-screen TVs, sports memorabilia, and pornographic posters.

  Andre Oliver is spread out on a purple couch—six feet and six inches of solid muscle and attitude, dressed in long basketball shorts and a T-shirt, giving Carla a good look-over before even acknowledging me.

  “Ain’t a great time for this,” he tells us. “I got nothin’ to do with what happened.”

  Yeah, we didn’t like Andre for shooting up his own people. That’s not how a leader disciplines his crew. If Shiv and Frisk needed a lesson, it would’ve been given behind closed doors, not in a drive-by shooting.

  “Looks like you’re hunkered down for a war,” I say.

  He allows one shoulder to lift. “Don’t look for no war. One’s declared, I don’t back down. Can’t back down, am I right?”

  “Who declared the war?” I ask.

  He likes that, chuckles, runs his tongue over his teeth. “Who you think?”

  “The King,” Carla says.

  “Smart, too,” he says to me, gesturing to Carla.

  Jericho Hooper is the leader of the largest street gang currently operating in the city, the Imperial Gangster Nation. King Jericho, so it goes, or just the King.

  “How do you know it was Jericho?” I ask.

  “Oh, the brother wrote me a full confession.” Andre pats the cushions around him. “Gotta be here somewhere. He told me to give it to the po-lice when they show up.”