At one-thirty, Rose called to see if we’d found any signs of Josie. When I gave her all my negatives, she sighed, but said she guessed she had to go to bed: she had to continue her job search tomorrow, although as heavy as her heart was lying in her chest she knew she wouldn’t make a good impression.
Mr. Contreras and I headed on south, under the legs of the Skyway, to Benito Dorrado’s small frame house on Avenue J. There weren’t any lights on in the bungalow, which was scarcely surprising since it was now after two, but I didn’t feel the same scruples against rousing him as I did for the girls on my team-he was Josie’s father, he could pay attention to some of the dramas of her life. I rang the doorbell urgently for several minutes, and then called him on my cell phone. When the phone had rung tinnily a dozen times or so behind the dark front door, we went around to the back. The single-car garage was empty; neither Benito’s Eldorado nor Billy’s Miata were anywhere in sight. Either he’d moved or he was spending the night with the overpainted puta.
“I think this is where we go home to bed.” I yawned so widely my jaw cracked. “I’m seeing spots instead of street signs, which is not a good time to be driving.”
“You tired this early, doll?” my neighbor grinned. “You often ain’t later than this.”
“Not that you pay any attention, right?” I grinned back.
“No way, doll: I know you don’t like me poking around in your business.”
Usually when I’m out this late, I’m at a club with friends, dancing, exhilarated by music and motion. Sitting in a car, peering anxiously through the windshield, was another story. South Chicago was a hard area to drive in, too: streets dead-end into bits of the old swamp that underlies the city, or into a canal or shipping lane; others bump into the Skyway. I thought I remembered that I could cross west to the expressway at 103rd Street, but I ended up at the Calumet River and had to turn around. On the far side of the river lay the By-Smart warehouse. I wondered if Romeo Czernin was driving for them tonight, if he and Marcena were parked in some schoolyard, making love behind the seats in the cab.
The road was rutted here, and the houses were spaced wide apart. The long stretches in between weren’t really vacant: old beds, tires, and rusted-out car frames poked out of heaps of rotting marsh grasses and dead trees. A couple of rats crossed the road in front of me and slid into the ditch on my left; Mitch began whimpering and turning in the narrow backseat-he’d seen them, too, and was sure he could catch them if I’d just turn him loose.
I flexed my cramped shoulder muscles and opened my window to get some fresh air on my face. Mr. Contreras tutted in concern and turned on the radio, hoping the noise would keep me alert. I turned north again, on a street that should get me to an access road for the expressway.
The temperature was hovering just above freezing, WBBM reported, and the expressways were all moving freely-clearly, two in the morning was the time to drive in Chicago. Stock markets had opened sluggishly in London and Frankfurt. The Chiefs had rallied after the two-minute warning, but still fell short by eight points.
“So you beat the spread, cookie,” Mr. Contreras consoled me. “That means you only owe me seven bucks more, two for the third-quarter score, one for the total number of sacks by New England, one for-”
“Hang on a second.” I stood on the brakes.
We were underneath the stilts of the Skyway. The endless detritus of the South Side stretched depressingly on either side of the road. I’d been focusing on the potholes in front of me when some motion caught the corner of my eye. A couple of guys, poking through the debris. They stopped when I stopped and turned to glare at me. The lights from the highway overhead leaked through the joins in the road and glinted on their tire irons. I squinted beyond them, trying to make out what they were hacking at: the smooth, round fender of a new car.
I pulled my gun from my holster and grabbed Mitch’s leash. “Stay in the car,” I barked at Mr. Contreras. I wrenched the door open and was out and in the road before he could object.
I had Mitch’s leash in my left hand, the gun in my right. “Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!”
They yelled obscenities at me, but Mitch was growling, lunging against his collar.
“I can’t hold him long,” I warned, advancing on them.
Headlights from above dipped and slipped along our bodies. Mitch’s teeth gleamed in the gliding lights. The two dropped their tire irons and put their hands above their heads, backing away from me. When they’d moved, I could see the car. A Miata, driven so hard into the pile of boards and bedsprings that only its tail was visible, with the trunk pried open, and the license plate: The Kid 1.
“Where did you find this car?” I demanded.
“Fuck off, ’ho. We got here first.” The speaker dropped his hands and started toward me.
I fired the gun, wide enough to make sure I didn’t hit them but close enough to make them pay attention. Mitch roared with fear: he’d never heard a gun go off. He barked and jumped, trying to get away from me. I burned my fingers on the hot barrel as I fumbled the safety into place while Mitch snarled and bucked. When I had him somewhat under control, I was sweating and panting, and Mitch was shaking, but the two gangbangers had turned to stone, their hands once more behind their heads.
Mr. Contreras appeared next to me and took the leash. I was trembling myself, and grateful to him, but I didn’t say anything, just made sure my voice came out steady when I spoke to the guys.
“The only name you two punks call me is ‘ma’am.’ Not ‘’ho,’ not ‘bitch,’ not any nasty word that pops into your disgusting heads and out your mouths. Just ‘ma’am.’ Now. Which one of you drove this car down here?”
They didn’t say anything. I made a great show of releasing the safety on the Smith & Wesson.
“We found it here,” one of them said. “What’s it to you?”
“What’s it to you, ma’am,” I growled. “What it is to me is that I’m a detective, and this car is involved in a kidnapping. If I find a body, you guys will be lucky not to face a death sentence.”
“We found the car here, it was just here.” They were almost whining; I felt sickened by my own bullying-give a woman a gun and a big dog and she can do anything a man can do to humiliate other people.
“You can’t prove anything, we don’t know nothing, we-”
“Keep them covered,” I said to Mr. Contreras.
I backed around in a circle to the car, keeping the gun on them. My neighbor held Mitch, who was still moving uneasily. The trunk, which the pair had pried open, held nothing but a towel and a few books of Billy’s-Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and The Violence of Love.
The two punks were still holding their hands over their heads. I turned around and shoved my way into the bracken to peer into the car. No Josie, no Billy. The windshield had a spiderweb crack in front of the driver’s seat, and the driver’s window was smashed. The ragtop was torn. Maybe the damage had occurred when the car plunged headlong into the pile of garbage. Maybe someone had attacked the car with tire irons.
The traffic overhead sent a constant, irregular thwacking down the rusted legs of the Skyway. The lights swooped past but couldn’t penetrate the bracken well enough for me to see inside the car. Turning on the little flashlight on my cell phone, I stuck my head and shoulders through the hole in the Miata’s canvas top and shone the light around. Glass shards lay on the dashboard and the seat. I could smell whiskey, maybe bourbon or rye. I slowly moved the light around. An open thermos lay on the passenger floor, with a little puddle underneath the lip.
It was a titanium model, a Nissan. Morrell had one like it-I’d bought it for him when he left for Afghanistan. It had cost a fortune, but nothing dented it, even when he’d gotten shot, although the i in the logo had chipped away, just as it had on this one.