Children of Chicago Page 17

  Lauren could not move. Her feet were cement. He pressed the instrument to his lips and drew in a note, and then blew out a note, preparing. Lauren had her car keys in her hand now and moved carefully to her car, which was parked just a few feet away from the man. He removed the harmonica from his mouth when Lauren got to her car door.

  “Say the words, Lauren. Payment is due,” he called out. “Payment is due, Lauren.”

  Lauren forced her feet to move, breaking free from the binding that held her to the sidewalk. She walked backwards, watching the man as he played. She tripped, falling off the curb, catching herself before a bus blared its horn as it rushed past, ignoring the red light at the intersection. She pressed the unlock button on her key fob and pushed down on the handle. Nothing. It did not move. She pulled, pushed, and finally screamed for her car to open and it did. Inside, she locked the doors and started the car.

  “Say the words!” The man shouted from the sidewalk. He stood up. The bunches of blankets falling off him like snakeskin. His arms down at his sides. His right hand clutching the gold harmonica.

  Even from inside her car, she could hear him laughing. She closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a deep breath, and counted to four: one, two, three, four. Her arms shook on the steering wheel, her pulse racing. She held her breath, two, three, four, and then released, two, three, four. “This is nothing,” she whispered.

  When she opened her eyes, he was standing in front of her car, blocking her exit. He brought the harmonica to his lips again, that she could now see were, dry, chapped and crusted over with dried blood. He closed his eyes and proceeded to play. It was a sweet, mournful, bluesy riff. One Diana liked to play.

  The man continued to play, opening one eye, making sure she was there watching, listening, and he smiled. He raised a free hand to tip his hat. It was then that she saw his long, sharp, curled black fingernails against the fabric of the brim.

  Lauren turned on the car. He stopped playing. The man held the harmonica overhead and shouted, “Pay the Piper!” He brought his hand down to his face with force, and in that quick motion, a blood fountain. Bright red blood sprayed out from his eye where he had lodged the gold harmonica now covered in crimson.

  Lauren put the car in reverse. She pushed down hard on the gas. The car lurched forward. She pulled the wheel left, to avoid hitting the maniac who had now removed the dripping harmonica, a gaping hole where his eye had once been, and continued to play. Lips pressed against the blood-covered instrument, droplets and sprays splashing on her windshield.

  A bloody ballad for her and only her.

  She pressed on the gas further, passing streetlights. Cars beeping. She flicked her siren on. She sped. But no matter how fast she drove she knew he would catch up, to not just her, but to Jordan.

  CHAPTER 17

  Lauren found Detective Van leaning back in his chair, a pen dangling from the corner of his mouth. His fingers were interlaced behind his head, and he gazed at a fixed point on the ceiling.

  “You were out early this morning.”

  “Early morning tutoring,” she said, dropping her bag beside her desk and taking a seat in her chair.

  “Kids voluntarily go to tutoring in the morning?”

  “They do what they can to get ahead in this city.

  She pulled out her tablet and looked over at the coffee pot in the corner and the Keurig machine next to it. She needed good coffee right now.

  “I’m running out for coffee.”

  “It’s all so bizarre,” Van said, eyes still staring above.

  “What?” She said, reaching for her wallet and car keys in her bag. “That some of us need caffeine to make it through the day?”

  Van removed the pen from his mouth and sat up in his chair. “How’s it being a mentor?”

  “I’ve done it one morning. All the pros of being a parent, with most of the cons.”

  “What are the cons?”

  “He’s a senior in high school,” she leaned against her desk. “He thinks he knows everything.”

  “Where’s he at school?”

  “DePaul College Prep,” she said.

  He stared at her for a moment. “Same school as these kids?”

  “Yes.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Does he know them?”

  “Yes, and the entire school knows what happened. The principal sent a memo. Parents have been notified. Counselors were called in.”

  “Right. That’s right,” he said looking down at his hands and then asking. “But did he personally know any of these kids?”

  “He knew of them…” She normally would ignore most of what was coming out of Van’s mouth, but she wanted to know where he was going with this. So far it was clear, but she had to be sure, and she needed to be ten steps ahead of him so that he did not interfere.

  “You sure you can trust this kid? This...what’s his name?”

  “Jordan,” she crossed her arms in front of her chest. Jordan’s name came out loud. Protective. She saw a lot of herself in Jordan. He was smart, lonely, untrusting, and detached from adults—because to children, adults were not always the protectors. Adults were the ones who brought about wickedness and regret.

  “Jordan gotta last name?”

  “Green.”

  “You sure you can trust this kid? Seems like there’s a lot of strange things happening with kids at his school. One girl shot and killed. Two kids arrested, for murder and attempted murder, and now you’re mentoring one of them? Strange week don’t you think?”

  It’s been a strange life. Lauren did not like all of his questions, but she knew how Van operated. Van functioned at a baseline of paranoid.

  “His mother works two jobs. She’s never home but wants to be. His father is in the Army, deployed. He’s a good kid. He’s worked hard to get to where he is. Full scholarship to UIC to study creative writing and then his best friend is murdered. So yeah, strange week for a few people.”

  “He’s raising himself, then?”

  “Pretty much.” That worried Lauren. They were children cast out, her and Jordan. And as time goes on, children who are pushed aside grow angrier and angrier, sometimes even plotting revenge against those that deprived them of happiness. Especially for children raised on fairy tales, because children raised on fairy tales are searching for their guaranteed happy ending, and they will do whatever it takes to live happily ever after.

  “You worried about him?”

  “No.” Yet, she knew that Jordan walked past five gang territories on his way to school and back each day. These were not the days of singular gangs by city region; Northside Gang, Southside Gang. Chicago’s gangs had splintered in the early 2000s when major gang leaders—who ran organized criminal operations like Fortune 500 companies—were arrested, jailed and imprisoned. This created less centralized and less hierarchical organizations, factions, crews, and a total over 2,300 of these groups. Each city block held its own crew, and just because you lived one block over did not mean you were safe. At least there were the Safe Passage crossing guards: city employees who stood out on street corners and helped kids cross the street. They were heavily present in feuding gang territories, which meant nearly every other block. Still, even Safe Passage crossing guards had been caught up in gang violence. One was recently arrested for shooting at a rival gang member. No one in Chicago, not even authority figures, could be trusted.

  “He’s a really good kid. I’ve read his writing. He’s pretty good. I’m trying to keep him out of trouble, but trouble seems to find him. He texted me on my way here telling me his headphones were stolen from the bus. He just doesn’t have many people to talk to.”

  “You’re doing a good thing, Medina. You have the time. This kid needs someone with time. I’m sure he appreciates it, appreciates you. You know, when kids are young, teens and such, they do stupid things. Most of the time they’re forgiven for those stupid things...”

  She did not like the directi
on this conversation was going. Before she could say something, Washington entered, pulling a dolly behind him with clear, empty plastic bins stacked on top. His desk was a heap and history of ephemera—scribbled notes on yellow notepads, stacks of them. The desk overflowed, struggling to hold onto folders, books, newspaper clippings, and magazines. Then there was the corkboard in front of his desk pinned with phone numbers written on napkins, as well as pictures of people and places that stretched back from even before her life. Everyone else’s desk was bare: a laptop or tablet, a mug, maybe a picture frame.

  “You can always push retirement away a few more weeks...or months,” Lauren said as she left her car keys and wallet on her desk and moved to stand beside Washington’s desk. A tower of books and old Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers teetered on the verge of collapse on the floor next to him.

  “What are you going to do with those?” She asked of the papers.

  “It just seems awful to throw them away. We’re one of the last two newspaper towns. Before all this I used to work at the Chicago Daily News. Crime reporter.”

  “That, I didn’t know, Washington. Look at you still keeping secrets.”

  “Reporters keep the best secrets,” he said as he started setting the bins around him. “The Tribune is older. Been around since 1847. The Daily started in 1875 but closed in 1978. I was there on the last day. I became an officer not too long after. I needed a job, healthcare, pension. Nowadays, everyone gets their news from their pockets, but I really loved working with the newspaper and punching away at the keys of a typewriter. It felt like you were a part of the story, just that motion, being in a newsroom, cigarette smoke thick in the air, telephones blaring, people shouting. You never know what the good times are until they’re gone. Before my time, to get breaking news you had to go down to Tribune Tower and read the bulletins posted on the windows. Just think of that, having to go down Michigan Avenue—which was a dirt road back then—all of those people crowded around that glass to understand what was happening in their world. Well, the original tower that is. The Great Chicago Fire took down the original tower. That Gothic skyscraper we have today was built in the 1920s. I’ll miss looking at the top of that building. It looks like a castle.”

  He put his hands on his hips and inspected his legacy before him on the desk, plotting out where to start.

  “Can I help?” Lauren asked.

  Washington opened one of the bottom drawers. “These should all be organized and ready to put in a bin.”

  There were several large, stuffed manila envelopes. Each of them bore the same name written across in thick sharpie, BRADY, followed by a case number. Lauren picked up the first few folders and set them in a bin.

  The Brady case was one singed on Chicago’s memory. She had grown up hearing about it, and the warnings to not play in front of her house alone, wander off, or talk to strangers. Chicago had many known boogeymen: serial killer H.H. Holmes, who tortured and killed potentially hundreds in his murder castle, Richard Speck who murdered eight nursing students in a single night, The Ripper Crew, who kidnapped, ritualistically mutilated and killed over a dozen women, John Wayne Gacey who worked as a construction worker and a clown for children’s parties and went on to murder and store the bodies of thirty-three boys and men beneath his floorboards, and today’s Chicago Strangler who has killed over fifty girls and women in the South Side of Chicago, and is still operating.

  “No one has ever heard from these girls?”

  “No one. Lord knows I tried.” Washington looked down into the container as Lauren set the envelopes inside. “Fifteen years is a long time for anything, for anyone.”

  Washington did not talk about the ten-year-old and three-year-old sisters much, but she knew they hung heavy on his conscience. Lauren opened one of the folders. It contained just two sheets of paper: missing person posters, one for each of the little girls. Lauren did the math quickly and realized the girls would be twenty-five and eighteen today.

  When Washington wasn’t in the office, Lauren knew she could find him walking the streets of Bronzeville, the city’s historic center for African American culture dating back to the Great Migration. Washington went to Bronzeville trying to retrace those little girl’s steps. It was his obsession: trying to figure out what happened to them. No one just disappears. He had gotten to know most of the residents of that community. He had even become a regular at some of the restaurants. He felt like he could almost reach out and grasp the girls by sitting in a place so close to where they were last seen. Washington had never worked a missing persons case before that. He did not work one after.

  “No retirement party,” Washington said, giving her side-eye.

  “Do I seem like the type of person who would willingly organize a party, for anyone? Even for you?”

  “Right,” he gave her a sharp nod.

  He shouted over to Van “No party, Van!”

  “Already made the down payment at Revolution Brewery,” Van said without looking up from scrolling through his phone.

  “I don’t like their beer,” Washington said. “It’s too bitter.”

  “What do you care? You’re retiring anyway,” Van said.

  Lauren placed the remaining folders from the Bradley sister’s case in the bin. “Apparently, it’s his favorite place,” she whispered.

  “Look who’s been making friends?” Washington smiled wide.

  “Not making friends. He just won’t shut up.”

  “Can you do me a favor?” Washington asked as he slowly removed the pushpins from a sun-faded picture of him and Mayor Richard M. Daley, taken what must have been over a decade ago.

  “No.”

  “Can you drive by Mina’s place? Let her know...I’ve been busy, and I just didn’t have time to stop in and say goodbye.”

  Lauren felt a sinking, cold feeling in the center of her chest, that feeling you got when you knew something you loved was coming to an end.

  “You’re not going to call her at least to say bye?”

  “Things are just busy right now. Frank needs help fixing that old Hyundai of his. Still, lots to do around the house, and I’d like to go say goodbye to your dad at the cemetery just one more time.”

  Lauren closed the bottom drawer and reached for a framed picture of Washington and her dad that sat on his desk. On Lauren’s first day she’d noticed a collection of dust on the top of that picture frame. Something about the dust being there made her feel as though Washington and her dad were no longer present, and so she’d reached in her pocket for a napkin, which she usually had from whichever cafe she had just been in that day. Then she lifted the frame and dusted the glass, removing those particles of time. The two of them, Washington and her dad, smiled at her.

  “You know you’re wiping away like two decades worth of dust there, right?” Washington had told her.

  She set the frame back down. “It’s weird for people who are alive to have dust accumulating on their photos.”

  He’d just shrugged her off, but she’d noticed that since that day he always kept the frame clean and dusted.

  “You keep that.” Washington held his hand out. “Your dad belongs here, in this place, and I don’t mind being by his side.”

  “He didn’t get the closure he wanted either, did he?” She said.

  “No, he never got the answers he wanted. There were a lot of bad days, and then your mom, Marie and well...”

  “Diana...” she sighed.

  “It’s been a long time,” Washington said.

  “I know...you’re right,” she said.

  Washington pulled over a large garbage can. He sat down and proceeded to fill it with old restaurant menus and community alert flyers. “He had to move on, even though it was so horrible, and no one could really explain to him what happened.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I know it was your life, too, shaken up by all of this. I’m happy you’re here. I know he was very happy that you came here.”
<
br />   Her father and his partner bonded over the pain of the unknown. And that pain held their friendship together because not many other people could understand their suffering.

  “I think I’ve got it from here,” Washington said. “Don’t forget, I’ll need that ride to the airport early Friday morning.”

  She nodded, turned and walked back to her desk to grab her wallet and keys before her eyes could water. She was not going to cry, especially not here.

  Van removed the pen from his mouth again. “How am I supposed to write this?” He said, staring down at a blank report form.

  “The same way you do all of your other reports.” Lauren reached inside her bag for her phone but it was already glowing. Another text had come in from Jordan.

  “Can you drive me to the funeral Friday morning? My mom can’t get out of work, and I don’t know who else to ask.”

  She was becoming a chauffeur, and her Friday was already packed with things to do, but she was not going to tell him no. She would figure it out, somehow. “Sure, I’ll pick you up and drop you off. I can’t stay, though. You’ll have to find a ride back on your own.”

  “Thanks,” he responded.

  Van grumbled under his breath, still struggling with the report.

  “I’m not going to write it for you,” Lauren snapped.

  “It sounds like some drug-induced nightmare.”

  Lauren pulled in a deep breath. When she exhaled, she pressed her lips together, pulled her hair out from her ponytail and rewrapped it in a bun.

  “Why’d they do it?” Van asked. It was not as if he were really asking her, just posing the question out there to the universe.

  Lauren generally avoided wanting to diagnose the why of any crime. Many criminals were beyond logical comprehension. A case like this was beyond what she covered during her few years on the job. She had pretty much seen it all in Chicago, all manner of gunshots, and gun deaths stemming from gang retaliation shootings to mistaken identities. One time, a teenager shot and killed two other teens simply because they asked him how tall he was while they were standing in line at the corner store to be soda and chips. She’d covered the range of sexual assault cases, from the known perpetrator to the unknown, child and elderly neglect cases, and there was even a death by chainsaw torture case she recalled vividly, but that was over drugs and money and cartels.