Brandenburg was an industrial demolition firm with buildings on both sides of the street, maybe fifteen acres of storage and equipment. A dock wall ran along the river, oily water licking at the rusted faces of barges floating like rotting giants. The company had built its business on smashing things that were no longer useful and then disposing of the junk. What better place?

He glided into the parking lot in neutral, headlights off. Security was probably a couple of rent-a-cops playing gin rummy through the midnight shift, but no need to draw attention. He stopped in a pool of darkness and thumbed the trunk release button.

The black tarp shone like wet ink by the light of the trunk. He grunted a little getting started – the angle was a bitch – but once he had it out, shouldering the load was easy. Twice a week he squatted several times Patrick’s weight.

A funny place, Chicago. Something like nine million people, forty thousand violent crimes a year, more goddamn cars than you could count, but in the middle of the night, in the middle of the city, you could find quiet. All he could hear was the sound of his own breathing and the wet slap of the river. Evan stepped onto the dock running along the river’s edge. The water glowed black a few feet below.

He bent down, lowering his burden to the concrete. A boot stuck out of the tarp like it was waving good-bye. Evan put one foot against the middle of the bundle and shoved. The plastic scraped to the edge, friction fighting him, then the weight overbalanced and it slipped off. Half a heartbeat of silence later he heard a splash like a dark fish jumping, and Patrick was gone.

Evan shook out a cigarette, lit it. The ripples spread out from below, semicircles drifting to kiss a barge forty yards upriver. He could almost see the silhouettes of teenage boys reclining on the mountain of trash it bore, stolen forty-ouncers in their hands and the skyline filling their eyes. What had happened to those kids, him and Marty and Seamus?

And Patrick. And Danny.

Tonight’s work was done. Tomorrow he’d plan his next move. It baffled him that Danny had sent Patrick after him. Could he really be so fucking dense after everything Evan had done to make his point?

Apparently talk wasn’t getting through.

He’d have to find a clearer way to communicate.

17

Exhaust billowed white in the cold air, but no one sat inside the Mercedes.

Danny let the door to the White Hen swing shut behind him, and took a swig of coffee. An E500 sedan, V8, sticker probably sixty grand, and some asshole had dashed in to buy milk and left it running. He could have it downtown in ten minutes, find a shop through Patrick, and make two weeks’ pay before lunch.

Danny shook his head, turned away, hopped in his truck. Richard expected him, and with midday traffic, he’d be hard-pressed to make the twenty-minute drive in forty.

He did allow himself a last glance as he pulled onto Diversey.

Work had been tough. He had to keep his routine up, pretend like nothing was going on – however this nightmare shook out, he couldn’t afford raised eyebrows. The morning had been spent overseeing the final winterizing of the Pike Street loft complex. The foreman, McCloskey, had it well in hand. The infrastructure of the whole building was in place, and the open walls sealed off with plastic. Tools and materials had been stored, and by the end of the week, the site would be chained up.

The unfinished loft complex and the construction trailer would remain untouched through winter’s lonely haul, waiting, like the rest of the city, for spring to resurrect them.

As he turned onto Lakeshore, the wind lashed steel waves against the rocks, spray climbing tall as a man. It suited his mood. Nearly a week since he’d found Evan in his kitchen. It wouldn’t be long before he showed up demanding an answer. Nearly a week, and Danny still had no plan. All he’d managed to do was remind a detective he existed. That, and make Karen suspicious. He’d thought he was playing it close to his chest, but she knew him too well.

“Nightmares again, baby?” She’d touched the dark circles under his eyes and smiled tenderly at him in the bathroom mirror.

“Just busy,” he said, and put on his game face. She’d nodded, but he knew her mind was still chewing on it.

Not telling her was eating at him. It wasn’t his way to hide things from her. Just the opposite. She came at things from different angles, fresh viewpoints, and together there hadn’t been many problems they couldn’t solve.

But the most dangerous one of the last seven years? That, he didn’t dare share.

Wednesday, and the lawn crews had descended to service the wealthy. Day laborers called to one another in Spanish as they pushed mowers and raked leaves. A white guy with a clipboard sat in the heated cab of the pickup outside Richard’s house. Late October, and Danny knew the workers must be getting nervous, all too aware that business would shut down for the winter. He had a flash of coming home in the afternoon to find his old man at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering untouched in an ashtray, and knowing that another construction company had screwed them; that this winter, like last, Dad would be getting up at four in the morning to help Kevin O’Bannon with the snowplow.

Richard answered the door in golf pants and a polo shirt, like he planned on hitting the back nine after lunch. “What took so long?”

“Lakeshore was bumper-to-bumper.”

Richard nodded. “Come in. Ignore this mess.” The way he said it, Danny wasn’t sure if he was talking about the leaves on his lawn or the guys raking it. “You bring those contracts?”

“Yeah.” He stepped in, shutting the front door behind him. Richard was already halfway down the hall, and Danny followed him into the kitchen. Skylights brought autumn sun flooding across granite countertops and stainless appliances. With two ovens, two sinks, and a massive chef’s prep island in the center, the kitchen could service a restaurant, but he noticed the copper pans hanging over the chopping block had dust on them.

“You look everything over? I don’t want to find out I got rogered again.”

The last time Richard had gotten rogered it had been because he’d ignored Danny’s cost estimates, but Danny kept that to himself. “They’re clean.”

His boss nodded, sipping espresso as he flipped through the documents. “How’s Pike Street?” he asked, not looking up.

“McCloskey will have it locked down by the end of the week.”

“Good. And we’ve got him on contract for the spring?”

Danny started. “Huh?”

“McCloskey. We’ve got him set for the spring?”

Danny remembered his conversation with the foreman in the trailer, how good it had felt to treat him like a man, to explain the situation instead of just lay down the law the way so many managers had laid it on his father. “We’re keeping McCloskey on over the winter, remember?”

Richard didn’t look up from his papers. “Yeah, I thought it over, ran some numbers, and it’s not going to work.”

Had he heard right? “What?”

“Jeff Teller has the other projects under control, and he costs less. We’ll dump McCloskey and his crew for the winter, pick ’em back up in spring.”

Danny’s mind was racing. He’d promised that no one would lose his job. “Teller’s good, but not as good as McCloskey. And we could use help prepping next spring’s bids.”

Richard shrugged, his mind only half in the conversation. “I don’t need a foreman to tell me how to throw a bid.”

Danny tried a different tack. “You know, McCloskey’s pretty connected. We let him go, we may not get him back.”

“The market’s not going to be much better then. Besides, we can always find somebody else.”