High Chicago

CHAPTER 35

At a glance, the second man looked a dozen years older and a lot heavier than me. He had a gun, but handguns aren't nearly as accurate as cop shows and westerns make them out to be. Anything over a hundred yards would be a crapshoot.

I was in shape and built for speed. I ran back into the park, along the one stretch I knew, the oak-lined path that led to the fountain, arms and legs pumping like a wide receiver with a safety on his tail.

I heard no footsteps behind me. Took that as a good thing. Glanced behind me and saw no one. Turned back, heard an engine roar and saw the black Interceptor bouncing up a narrow paved path reserved for park vehicles, cutting me off again. Once more the gunman spilled out of the car, this time steering clear of the swinging door. He crouched and pointed a semiautomatic pistol at me. No suppressor on it; nothing subtle about this dude.

"On the ground," he barked. "On the motherfucking ground."

I stayed where I was.

"Now!" he yelled. "Or I'll drop you where you stand."

I raised my hands high in the air and turned my back on him.

"I didn't say turn around," he said. "I said get on the goddamn ground."

I lowered myself slowly into push-up position. The pavement was cold against my hands, then my chest when the gunman kicked my hands out from under me. Then he knelt on my back, not being shy about forcing my spine down, and told me to put my hands behind my back.

"You a cop?" I asked.

"I'm your angel of fucking death, you don't do what I say."

I put my hands behind me. He cuffed them in metal, not plastic. Then he grabbed the collar of my jacket and pulled me to my feet, shoved me against his car, forced my upper body down on the hood.

"Do I get to see an ID?" I asked.

His gun muzzle pressed into my neck. "This is all the ID I need right now."

He reached into my jacket and found my wallet. His gun pushed farther into my neck when he saw my investigator's licence. "A PI?" he asked. His free hand moved over every part of my body that could conceivably have hidden a gun. "Where's your piece?"

"I don't carry one."

"What kind of PI goes around Chicago without a gun?"

"A Canadian one."

"Weird."

"You know, if you're a cop, this would be the ideal time to identify yourself."

"Shut up."

"I was attacked," I said. "All I did was defend myself."

"I saw you beat a guy down and throw a gun in the bushes."

Then I heard a woman call, "Excuse me."

He looked up. Even with my face pressed down against the hood of the car, I could see the tourist couple who had been filming near the fountain walking hesitantly toward us, the woman the more assertive of the two, urging her husband forward. He seemed more interested in protecting his cameras.

When they were within ten feet of us, the gunman told them to stop and said, "Chicago PD," and took out a leather ID case, flipped it open so we could all see his badge and his name, which I had pretty much guessed already.

Detective Thomas Barnett, Bureau of Investigative Services, Chicago Police Department.

"We saw it. Dennis," the woman said, her breathing laboured from the fast walk over. "Tell him what we saw."

Dennis was about fifty, also out of breath, with fine sandy hair and a great spur-shaped cowlick in the back. "This fellow was attacked," he told Barnett. "The other guy-"

"What other guy?" Barnett asked.

"A big guy with dark hair and a moustache," I said. "Think Stalin."

"It looked like he was going to shoot this fellow but then this fellow-"

"Jonah Geller," I said, wanting my name out there.

"Then Mr. Geller here knocked him out and ran. And then you showed up."

"I got a call," Barnett said. "An assault in progress."

That had to be steaming bullshit. He had arrived on the scene too fast to have been responding to any call. The couple were the closest witnesses and they obviously hadn't phoned it in.

I walked Barnett and the tourists to where the assault had taken place. The gunman was gone but there was a blood spatter on the pavement where his broken nose had gushed. The gun was in the bushes where I said it would be, and Barnett made a show of sealing it in a plastic bag and locking it in a case in the trunk of his car. Having been educated in these matters by Dante Ryan, I guessed it was a.22, either a Colt or a Field King.

"What about these handcuffs?" I asked Barnett.

"What about them?"

"You heard it from them, I defended myself."

"In fact," the woman said, "we got it all on tape."

"You what?" Barnett said.

"On tape," she said. "Play it back, Den. Show him the part you filmed."

Dennis sighed and unfolded the viewer from his camcorder. He played back footage of the fountain: you could hear him instructing his wife to move out of the way so he could get a close-up of the plaque that told who it had been named after. Then you saw me in the background, walking along the path behind the fountain; the other man coming up swiftly; and my counterattack, which I thought even Eidan would have admired.

"You don't have to keep this, do you?" Dennis asked. "It's got my footage of me in front of Soldier Field."

"Sorry," Barnett said. He held out his hand for the cassette, pocketed it and told them they could go. I tried to look contrite for causing them to lose their vacation footage and thanked them for coming forward. It struck me as odd that we weren't all going down to a precinct to sign statements and look at mug books. But mentioning that would have been like asking the teacher why she hadn't popped a quiz.

It was clearly no coincidence that Barnett had appeared on the scene. My guess was he had been there for two reasons: to confirm the kill, and to provide an official version of the events: probably as a mugging or robbery gone wrong. Either way, I knew now that he was in Simon Birk's pocket, which made me more sure than ever that Birk had set up the robbery at his home.

Barnett undid my handcuffs and said, "How many murders a year you get in Toronto?"

"I don't know," I said. "About eighty or ninety, I guess."

"We get at least five or six hundred," he said. "Used to be like a thousand a year. But still. Five, six hundred is a lot of killings. And there's a lot that go unsolved."

"Which means what?"

"That Frank Sinatra had it all wrong. Chicago ain't your kind of town."