“Didn’t figure he would,” said Lynch.
“So how many people you ready to write off just so you can make sure you color inside the lines?”
“We could save a lot of time by just popping every gangbanger we have on file, too. Or maybe just round em up and stick em on a train and take em out somewhere and gas em. Maybe you’d like to help with that.”
Ferguson frowned, shook his head. “Great, two minutes into our little chat and you’re already playing the Nazi card. Look, nobody likes this thing, but it got away from us. This guy you’re looking for, he’s a friend of mine, OK? Or I’m as close to a friend as he’s got. I don’t know what his deal is right now, but whatever it is, it means killing a lot of folks who don’t have it coming. He’s our Frankenstein’s monster. We made him. I’m asking for some help taking him off the board before he runs up the body count. And I’m asking that we keep things quiet. He starts telling tales, it’s going to be bad for the whole fucking country. You got no idea how many stiffs have his fingerprints on them. And these are some high-profile stiffs going back a long way. I don’t know how much attention you pay to the news, Lynch, but this ain’t Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood anymore, if it ever was. There’re a couple million yahoos out there who’d like to pop a nuke off here and then piss on the rubble. We have to play a little rough, then we do. If you’re waiting for me to apologize, then pack a lunch.”
Lynch clapped a couple of times, quietly. Golf gallery clapping.
“Wow. Nice speech. You got a neocon hymnal you memorize shit out of?”
Ferguson shrugged. “Got some lines I can riff on. Never know what’s gonna work with somebody.”
“OK, so your shooter. You’re saying instead of you just giving us what you’ve got, letting us do our job, you want me to make sure we execute the son of a bitch for you?”
“What am I supposed to do, Lynch? Walk down to the station and introduce myself to your boss? I’m dead, remember? The people I work for aren’t on anybody’s org chart.”
“Cut the bullshit. You got channels. Use them.”
“Meaning get somebody legit to front the info for us? Not going to happen. You don’t get it, Lynch. Not existing is our whole deal. We don’t just need this guy off the streets, we need him out of history. He was never born.”
Lynch held Ferguson’s eyes a long moment. “Fuck it. I don’t see this going anywhere. So what’s your end game here? I don’t sign up, you gonna pop me? If so, get to it. If not, get out.”
“Not gonna pop you, Lynch. Least not yet. Maybe we’ll chat again later.”
“OK,” said Lynch.
“Another thing. You’ve started poking around in a couple other deals, one up in Wisconsin, another one downstate. Just so you know, that mess downstate? That wasn’t my call. But I’m running the show now, and I’m going to keep it as clean as I can.”
“Breaking in and holding a gun on a cop, this is what you call clean?”
Ferguson got up, slipped the .22 inside his jacket. “I can’t remember the last time I pulled a gun on somebody and didn’t shoot them. You’re already way ahead of the game.”
CHAPTER 39 – CHICAGO
Next day, early. Lynch couldn’t sleep, turning the whole mess over in his mind, trying to get a handle on it, getting nowhere. He decided to drive over to his mom’s place, finally deal with the garage. The sun was getting up, going to be warm, big clouds floating, the birds back, those yellow flowers his mom had put in along the back of the house bursting out. Daffodils? Jonquils? Lynch couldn’t remember.
He backed his mom’s old Taurus out, pulled the lawn mower out and left it on the side of the drive. Maybe mow the lawn in a couple hours, gets late enough he’s not going to wake anybody up. Some old lawn chairs, not worth keeping. Those he took to the curb. An ice chest, one of the old metal ones, still good. He’d take that home with him.
The bike he’d bought his mom probably ten years ago was leaning against the two-by-fours his dad had nailed into the framing to make a ladder up to the little loft he’d built. Pulled that out of the way. Grabbed a two-by-four. Thirty-six years since he’d been up that ladder. Hadn’t put his hand there in thirty-six years.
Lynch pulled his way up, could feel the stitches in the leg tugging a little, then stuck his head up over the edge of the loft, looked around.
Roll of leftover trim pieces from when he and his old man had done the upstairs, the quarter round for the floor and the chair rail, tied neatly with twine like his dad always did. Lynch making a note to look through the house, find any spots that were dinged up. He could use these, swap the bad parts out. A box from that old tile store that used to be on Devon on the stretch south of California heading down toward Western, all Indo-Pak groceries now, falafel joints. Place his old man had bought the tile for the upstairs bathroom, the tile Lynch had put down the day his father was killed. Three decades of dust on the box.
Lynch took the box down the ladder, set it on the hood of his mom’s car, and opened it.
An old manila envelope sat on top of a couple left-over tiles, the paper stiff with age, the envelope sealed. Lynch opened his pocket knife and slit the top. ME’s report – an older form. It was from the Hurley case back in ’71. Autopsy reports on Hurley Jr and Stefanski. He’d read them before, pulled the paper years ago right after he got on the force. But why would his father have a copy, and why would he hide it in the garage? Lynch scanned down the report. Everything matched up with what he remembered. Then an addendum, the serological info on the semen found in Hurley jumping out at him. Semen? That had never come out. That wasn’t in the ME’s report he’d seen.
Behind the report were several pages of loose leaf paper covered with his dad’s precise Palmer-method hand. Notes on the Hurley case, all dated, all written in the three days before his father’s death. Marslovak, Riordan and the Red Squad, Zeke Fisher. Lynch felt flushed, and he slumped against the car. My God, all the names were the same. More than three decades later, and all the same names. Lynch read more – the Feds, the AMN Commando, his father’s theory for a murder-suicide and cover up, Riley.
Lynch thought back to that last night, the last time he’d seen his father. Something happening outside, tires squealing, barking, his dad going out the back, his mom coming down, bringing Collie into his room, keeping them in there. His dad back in the house, on the phone, Lynch not able to hear it all but knowing his dad was pissed.
The sound of his dad upstairs, closet and drawers opening, quiet for a while, then the old man coming down into Lynch’s room.
“Listen, guys, I’ve got some bad news,” the old man said. “Somebody was tearing down the alley. Missy must’ve got loose out back, and she got hit.”
Collie sounding shaky. “Is she going to be OK?”
“No, honey. I’m sorry, but she’s dead.” Collie was crying now, her head buried in her mom’s chest, Lynch seeing his mom look at the old man and the old man look back, Lynch not knowing what was up, but knowing that what the old man said, that wasn’t it.
“Now you guys get back to bed. It’s really late. Stay out of the alley. Couple of officers will be by to check on some things, see if we can’t find out who did this. I have to go out for a while. Something’s come up I have to take care of. You two be good for your mother now.”
Lynch remembered watching his father straighten up. His mom putting Collie down on the bed then standing. His dad hugging her and her hugging back and there being more to it than usual. Collie scrambling across the bed, latching onto Lynch. His mom finally letting go of the old man, running her hand down his face.
“You be careful,” she said, which she never said. The old man just nodding. The old man bent down and picked something up off the floor – the tile box from upstairs. Lynch figuring his father was taking the box out to the garage on his way, feeling good for a minute because that meant the old man figured the floor was done, he wasn’t going to sneak back in and fix something he thought wasn’t done well enough.