Cold Wind

30

Nate Romanowski drove slowly down South State Street in a rental car on the South Side of Chicago with his windows down and his carry-on within reach on the passenger seat. The air was a warm stew of humidity: gasoline fumes, cooking food, and ripe garbage from Dumpsters. The sun had sunk and the last of it danced on the waves of Lake Michigan, igniting the sky and the west-facing sides of the downtown buildings, and now it was dark enough that the lights came on.

Simple things, he thought. Simple things that were so different. For one, it wasn’t cooling down just because night had come. It was still as warm and sticky as it had been when he landed at O’Hare. And he’d lived so long in the awesome and immense quiet of Hole in the Wall canyon that the cacophony of pure urban white noise dulled his senses and pummeled his ears. There were still canyons, but these were walled by brick and steel and the sidewalks teemed with people. That, and when he looked up, the sky was muddy and soapy with city lights and he couldn’t see through it to the stars.

Simple things. Like grabbing today’s Chicago Tribune as he walked through the terminal and sitting down inside a crowded bar and flipping through the pages until he found:

Two Killed, Two Wounded in Drive-by Shooting at South Side Party

SEPTEMBER 6, 2010 7:13 P.M.

Two men were killed-one of them an expectant father-and two others wounded early Monday morning in a drive-by shooting in the South Side’s Stony Island Park neighborhood, according to police and a family member of one of the deceased victims.

One person was being questioned in connection with the shooting, but no charges have been filed.

About 2:40 a.m., four men were near a party at East 84th Street and South State Street when they were shot from a passing vehicle.

J. D. Farr, 22, of the 9000 block of South Evans Avenue was hit and later pronounced dead at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

So that’s where he was headed.

And he was starting to get some looks. He could see them from the shadows behind buildings and grouped up in alleyways. As it got darker, they came out under the overhead streetlights, and there were knots of gangbangers gathered in certain places: twenty-four-hour convenience stores, eateries, bars. The sharp-dressed businesspeople in a hurry down on Michigan Avenue had been replaced by the people of the night in oversized shirts and coats and trousers on Nate’s southern journey, and he wondered if they ever even encountered each other day-to-day.

Here he was, he thought, a white guy wearing Jackson Hole outdoor sports clothes driving a new rental very slowly, looking off to the side instead of through the windshield, windows down. He was sending a signal and some of them were picking it up.

The intersection of South State Street and 71st had the right feel to him, he thought. There was a well-lit BP station there, lights so bright and blazing in the dark neighborhood that it was hard to see anything else. Nate noted the young clientele inside the BP convenience store, and the high counters and Plexiglas that had been installed inside to act as a barrier between the clerks and their customers. He backed in on the side of the station, out of the harsh light. He couldn’t see inside the station, and the employees couldn’t see him. Nate scanned the light poles and roofs of adjacent buildings for security cameras. They were there, all right, but he knew as long as he stayed in the rental in the low light, he couldn’t be identified.

It was a noisy intersection. Vehicles streamed below the State Street overpass, and he heard snatches of heavy bass from open windows. But on top it was a different level of darkness and mood.

Low-slung retail shops lined 71st: tattoo parlors, pawnshops, dollar stores, hair salons. Accordion-style security gates were up across the doors, and every window he could see was barred. Lights from inside the closed shops were dull and soft.

Across the street from the BP Station was a low square cinder-block building painted bright yellow. The facing wall of the building announced on the side that it was the State Street Grill and that it was open twenty-four hours a day. A list of items offered inside were painted on the side of the bricks:

T-BONE AND EGGS $9.95

JERK CHICKEN WINGS

BBQ RIBS

BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY

The neighborhood just seemed right for what he was after. It was old, dark (except for the BP station), run-down, urban. The buildings weren’t packed together tightly so there were plenty of places to gather, hide, or run. It would be hard to pin someone down here because of all the exits, and it would take someone in a car less than a minute to shoot down the off-ramp and join the stream of traffic going north toward the shining city center.

He was looking out at the street and the grill when he saw a flash of movement in his rearview mirror. They were coming up behind him on both sides of the car.

The passenger window suddenly filled with a pair of dull white eyes in a black round face. He said, “What-choo-doin?” as if it were a single word. Nate guessed he was fourteen or fifteen years old, maybe younger. A scout. He had close-cropped hair and big cheeks and a mouth that showed no expression. He was wearing big clothes under a down coat that was so enormous it reminded Nate of a frontier buffalo robe.

From inches away, at the driver’s window, a girl said, “What-choo-lookin-for, mister man?”

Nate looked from one to the other. They’d approached his car in a rehearsed, cautious way-like cops. The girl was lighter-skinned, hair pulled back with beads in it, not unattractive despite her put-on street scowl.

“Wha-choo-doin here?” the boy asked, high-pitched, as if astonished by Nate’s naivete.

“I like that,” Nate said to the girl. “Mister man.”

“What about it?”

“I’m hoping you can help me,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’m looking for some protection. I was hoping you could steer me in the right direction.”

“Pro-tection?” the boy said, still shrill and high-pitched and mocking. “Like rubbers? They inside.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the outside wall of the BP station. He laughed at his own joke and looked over at the girl, hoping she would laugh, too.

“You know what I mean,” Nate said.

“Are you po-lice?” the girl asked. “You gotta tell me if you are. You look like po-lice.” She said it poh-lease.

“No,” he said.

“You lyin’,” she said. “You a lyin’ motherfucker, mister man.”

Nate sighed. “Such language. Look, I need to buy a gun. If you two can’t help me out, I’ll find someone who can. I’ve got cash and I’m starting to lose my sunny outlook on life.” He thought briefly of shooting his arms out and grabbing both of them by the ear and pulling them inside to make his point. He’d done worse.

The girl looked him over, her face as hostile as she could make it. He felt sorry for her, because her eyes told him she wasn’t lost yet but was working on it. She said, “Wait here a minute,” and was gone.

The boy shook his head at him, condescending, and started to say something and Nate gritted his teeth and whispered, “Don’t.”

The word struck home and the boy was gone.

Ten minutes later, Nate Romanowski steered his rental down the State Street off-ramp. The gangbanger the two had sent over had a thing for nines like most gangbangers, plenty of used pieces in stock, but Nate bought the only revolver he had: a five-shot.44 stainless steel double-action Taurus Bulldog with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel.

“That ’un ’ill make a big mother-fuckin’ hole,” the gangbanger cackled when Nate chose it.

“You don’t need to tell me about guns,” Nate said, and handed over eight one-hundred-dollar bills. The gangbanger threw in a half box of cartridges in the deal. Nate didn’t spend much time speculating what the missing ten bullets had been used for.

As Nate cruised toward the city on the five-lane, he thought: Simple things.

Like how simple it was to buy an unregistered handgun in a city that tried its damndest to ban them. It meant he could pick one up just about anywhere-at any time. No hassle with gun stores, hours of operations, dealers, forms, ID, or criminal record checks.

As long as he had the desire, a purpose, and a brick of one-hundred-dollar bills, he was in business.

Twenty minutes on the computer in the business center of his hotel would give him the rest of what he needed.

Instinctively, he reached over and felt the heavy steel outline of the.44 in his overnight bag. He thought of Sun Tzu.

And he thought about going hunting in the morning.