Calumet City by Charlie Newton Read Free Book Online

dicks."
    "They’re not, ah, my biggest fans."
    "So ask…Who gives a shit anyway?" Sonny wrestles with the hangover. "Could be interesting, though. White broad in 6, buried alive in a ghetto wall." He smiles. "Has to be a hooker or some Ted Bundy shit." The smile broadens to his ears. "Hope it’s a Ted; we’ll be Dennis Farina."
    Dennis was a Chicago cop who made it in Hollywood. "It
is
interesting, Sonny. Ask, okay? They’ll talk to you, a big swingin’ dick who speaks the language."
    Sonny checks his crotch, "Got that right," then back at me. "So what’d Chief Jesse say?"
    "How’s it, ah, you know he and I did dinner last night?"
    Sonny blinks again, almost like he’s mad. His hand flexes and he slides it under the table. "You and him…
are
an item?"
    "Baby shower’s this week. After IAD charges me for dereliction."
    Sonny leans back, eyes tighter.
    "The superintendent and I are registered at Field’s."
    Sonny reads my eyes, then hardens up. "Fuck you."
    Now I think I’ve hurt his feelings, not that anyone would believe Sonny Barrett has any. "Listen, this is quiet, okay? That’s why he said it to me."
    Sonny nods, looks at me straighter but doesn’t lean in to hear.
    "He wants to know if folks from here," my fingernail taps the table between us, "are part of it. Farrakhan and Alderman Gibbons in particular."
    Now Sonny leans in, "Shit, I thought I was jokin’." The beginning of another smile competes with his hangover and whatever reason he’s pissed off. "You absolutely gotta be shittin’ me."
    "Nope."
    His neck flexes back into his collar. "So much for the civil rights movement." Sonny gets the implications better and faster than I did. "We got cameras and pickets three deep at 6. This could be big, Patti. Big."
    And it could be. Messy too. No one would mount an attempt on the mayor—an operation this complicated—without serious players on the inside. Looking at Sonny’s face it begins to dawn on me how serious this is if Alderman Gibbons or Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam
is
involved, even peripherally, if one can be "peripherally" involved in a coup d’état.
    Sonny goes back to the coffee he couldn’t drink a second ago. "Who else knows?"
    "How’d you know about my meeting last night?"
    Sonny shrugs. "His driver, Fatso Leary."
    I wag my index finger.
    Sonny frowns, not unlike how he frowns when he has explained something to the crew that none of us captures. "Fatso’s married to Kelly, my older sister, the one in Humboldt Park. She called all excited that one of my crew was having dinner with the superintendent. Wanted to know why, since Fatso wouldn’t tell her."
    "That right? The guy driving him last night might’ve weighed one-fifty tops. Tall too."
    Sonny screws up the rest of his face. "So fucking what?" He leans almost to my nose and waits until he has my undivided attention. "All of a sudden you and me ain’t working together for seventeen years? I ain’t somebody you talk to?"
    I smooch the air between us. He startles back; I grin. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in twenty-four hours.
    Sonny growls, "You got any fuckin’ idea what it’ll be like, sticking our hand up the asses of Gibbons and Farrakhan? Without being on the record?"
    "Won’t be good."
    "
Won’t be good?
" Sonny shakes his head, "It’ll be shit city if your boyfriend decides to front us. We’ll be out there alone, fucked sideways, is what it’ll be."
    "Why’d you ask if I was coming to work today; why wouldn’t I?"
    Sonny keeps staring; he’s no-shit angry and gets like this when he isn’t provided answers or feels threatened by the system. The explanation I want will have to wait.
    "I got this assignment directly from the superintendent, so I get to pick. You and the boys take Farrakhan. I’ll do Gibbons."
    Sonny stands, "This is fucking bullshit," and glares at everything he can, including down at me. "We been together a long time, Patti; do not lay down on me or the guys."
    "
Me?
" My