“And Marslovak rolled it up anyway.”

“Big time.”

“That’s good work, Slo-mo. Get what details you can. We’ll go down tomorrow and drop this on Marslovak, see how that shakes out. Get your butt out of the office for a while.”

“What, no ice cream?”

“Buy you a cone on the way back.” Lynch took a step away and then turned back. “Hey, Slo-mo. You dress nice. Think you could maybe give me some pointers?”

Bernstein turned in his chair, gave Lynch a careful look.

“You look OK. Little GAP-commercial generic maybe, but OK.”

“Yeah, but I was thinking of upgrading a little. You seem like you put some effort into this.”

“I’m a Lilliputian Jew, Lynch, not an ex-jock. We’re supposed to use money to get chicks, and I went with the cops instead of the investment bankers. If I don’t at least dress up, bris would’ve been the last time anybody touched my unit. So, you want to push the old sartorial envelope? You got a date or something?”

“Something like that.”

“OK. When?”

“Tonight.”

Bernstein laughed, shook his head. “It’s almost 4.00 Lynch. How much time you got?”

“Picking her up at 7.00.”

Bernstein pulled a planner out of his desk. “I’m going to call my guy at Barney’s, over on North Michigan. Andre. And yes, Lynch, he is gay, so don’t sap him or anything when he measures your inseam, OK? He’ll set you up nice. You’re at least gonna have to get some pants hemmed, which means he’s gonna have to push it through alterations for you, so slip him a little something. Otherwise I look like a schmuck.”

“What, like a five?”

“Like a twenty.”

“Jesus, Slo-mo. Maybe you should be working there.”

“Be a twenty-grand bump in pay if I did.”

CHAPTER 18 – CHICAGO

 

March, 1971

Lynch jerked awake in bed, looked at the clock. A little after 3am. Dog barking. Not Missy, neighbor’s dog. Somebody shouting, Lynch not able to make it out. Tires squealing in the alley.

Julie sat up in bed.

“What’s going on?”

Lynch getting out of bed, grabbing his short .38 from the nightstand.

“Don’t know. Get downstairs, keep the kids in their rooms.” Lynch stepping into his slippers and heading for the stairs.

Lynch stepped out the back door, wearing his pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His next-door neighbor was out on the porch, trying to calm his mutt down, the mutt still yapping.

“What’s going on?” Lynch asked across the fence.

“Mess of coloreds out back by your garage, Declan. They jumped in some red beater when I come out, hauled ass down the alley.”

“Get a make on the beater?”

“Dodge, it looked like.”

Red Dodge. Lynch headed down the fence toward the garage, whistling for the dog. Nothing. Let himself out the gate, walking around the side of the garage into the alley.

Missy lay on her side in front of the garage door, throat cut, blood pooling around her head and shoulders. Someone had dropped a blood-soaked wad of newspaper next to the dog. Lynch looked up at the garage door. “Butcher the Pigs” smeared in blood on the door.

And just on the edge of the pool of blood, part of a heel print. The distinctive diamonds from the bottom of a pair of All-Stars.

All sorts of things going through Lynch’s head. Like if everybody’s playing this so tight, how come some radical asshole knows who I am, where I live? Like if he does, and he’s such a fucking warrior, what’s with knifing an old, half-blind dog? Like either way, Lynch and this Simba fucker, they were gonna talk. And depending on what Lynch got, he was either gonna take down this Simba and his fist-pumping friends, or he was gonna take down somebody else. He didn’t care how Junior Hurley felt about it, Lynch was about done taking it up the ass.

Lynch went back in the house, grabbed the phone, and called the all-hours number he had for Riley. It rang five times before Riley picked up, Lynch hearing the sleep in his voice. Good, thought Lynch. Would’ve made him think had Riley been up, waiting on a call.

“What?” said Riley, clearing the gunk out of his throat.

“It’s Lynch.” He told Riley about the dog and the garage. “Call Riordan, get the troops up. We’re gonna go roust this Simba bastard, get some answers. Got the feeling he ain’t in bed anyway.”

The Feds said Simba was holed up in a two-flat on the west side just south of the Eisenhower off Central. Lynch met Riley and Riordan and his squad in the north parking lot at Chicago Stadium. Riordan had ten cops with him, big guys, every one of them carrying a pump gun along with his sidearm. The FBI twins were there, too, in their raid jackets.

“Your buddy Fisher not coming?” said Lynch.

“He’s more an advise and consent guy,” said Riley.

“Good, because I’m pretty sure he’s got no police powers. And you know you’re not coming, right?”

Riley held up his hands and shook his head. “Fuck, no. News tonight is as close to any rabid armed niggers as I wanna get.”

“Good.” Lynch speaking up. “We are doing this by the book, gentlemen. I need this son of a bitch Simba alive to answer questions. I don’t need his head on a wall next to Hampton’s. OK? Riordan, what do you got?”

“Our guy tells us probably four, maybe five, guys in the place,” said Riordan. “This Simba, he sleeps in a room on the first floor in the back so he can get out quick if he’s gotta. Empty lot to the west, and the building east is an abandoned three-flat, so they ain’t gonna do any roof-to-roof crap. All of em gonna be armed, and we gotta figure all of em are willing to shoot it out after Simba’s little pep talk on the news tonight. I don’t care how many dead niggers we got, I don’t want any dead cops.”

Lynch interrupted. “All we end up with is dead coloreds, we don’t get any answers. Don’t forget we’re dealing with Hurley’s kid here. We’re gonna surround the place, we’re gonna announce, and then, when they don’t come out, and I figure they don’t, we’re gonna gas em and wait it out.”

One of Riordan’s goons shook his head. “I ain’t gettin’ shot over no nigger– ”

“Hey,” Riley shouted. “Mayor wants to know what happened here. This is Lynch’s case, and his rules.”

Lynch looked around the group. “OK, here’s how we do this. Me and the Feds here, we’re taking the alley in the back. Layout of the place is there’s no door straight back and only the one door on the side of the house they can come out toward the back. Got the two doors up front, one for the upper and one for the lower. Riordan, you line your boys up across the front, get a couple on each corner that got a clear view down the sides. Let me make this real clear. I’m not telling anybody not to shoot back, but I see anybody, and I mean anybody,” Lynch looking right at Riordan, “pulling any crap, I’m gonna cuff em myself. I want the Feds to do the bullhorn work. They can tell this Simba they’re here to make sure nobody gets trigger happy. All this guy is at this point is a guy I wanna talk to. I don’t want nobody doing anything out of line. Remember that you’re cops, not some dickhead rednecks runnin’ around with sheets over your heads.”

Lynch looked the group over, holding the eyes each time until they looked away.

“Let’s go.”

Riley got back into his city car, reached over to the walkie-talkie on the seat, and clicked the send button twice.

For Zeke Fisher, it felt like the old days in France – or in Korea or Laos or half a dozen other shitholes, for that matter. And the west side of Chicago was about as deep a shithole as any of them. He wore black fatigue pants, a black turtleneck, and a black watch cap. He had burnt cork rubbed onto his face and thin black gloves on his hands. The Walther PPK he’d taken from Stefanski’s house and two extra clips hung in the shoulder holster under his left arm. In his right hand, he held a small penlight. He was flattened in an alcove of the wall of the building immediately east of the two-flat where the AMN Commando were hiding, watching the side door, waiting for his signal. He heard the walkie-talkie in the pack click twice. Time. He pointed the penlight toward the side door of the house and flashed it.