Rasta-Dog, a rangy spaniel the shorties and taggers spray paint when they have extra. He and I discuss mayoral politics while he eats his hot links and the occasional bit of gravel. Rasta-Dog has no insight on Chief Jesse’s assignment but his tail wags when I talk.
We call it even and I do another hour of detective work that yields additional votes to canonize Alderman Leslie Gibbons and a crack whore warning that the GDs are more unhappy with me than usual. At 2:30 I do backup for a uniform car under the viaduct at Eighty-first and Wallace, just down the tracks from Gilbert Court. The stop is loud and angry, but no one gets shot, and the uniforms drive off with two felons when it’s over. I don’t; I sit in my Ford and listen to the engine knock echo off the viaduct’s walls, thinking about yesterday’s dead GDs around the corner…And the gasolined six-flat across the alley.
I drop the Ford into drive and spit gravel with the tires before I can decide to turn into Gilbert Court. Going in there alone is…there isn’t a term for how stupid that is.
• • •
By mid-afternoon no one has accused the Republicans or Alderman Leslie Gibbons of plotting to kill the mayor, although a Blackstone facing five to ten said he may have heard something and would say so if I can "help him out." I do two stolen vehicle stops, assist another uniform car with a woman threatening to kill a man for talking to her child, and now I’m passing Gilbert Court’s dead-end entrance again. And this time I begin to turn.
"5-0! 5-0!"
I jerk the wheel mid-turn and miss a GD lookout sprinting toward Kerfoot Liquors. My tires buckle on the passenger side and the Ford skids sideways at a utility pole—
son of a
—then back onto Vincennes. Horns blare. Two trucks scissor to the shoulders. I split them and shoot through the viaducts bordering Simeon Vocational. Instantly I’m sharing my side of the street with bangers from four gangster sets and blue-and-whites working the daily fight and occasional massacre when class lets out.
I try driving like I know how and only in my lane. A uniform waves; I gulp quick, then wave back and flip a U just beyond the school. Trains rumble over the viaducts I just left, two of them in the same direction and covered in graffiti. I’m about to cruise by Gilbert Court a third time.
Annabelle Ganz is dead, okay? The dicks ID’d her
.
The daylight quits when I enter the viaducts. The mold smells stronger than my basement memories, but the confinement is suddenly the same and I hit the gas.
Like the dicks haven’t been wrong before?
And why in my district? It’s a city of three million, goddamnit—why was she in my district? My right hand pounds the seat. "Not fucking fair! Not fucking fair!"
A truck driver wide-eyes me going by. I reach Gilbert Court and its goddamn basements and this time look away toward the tracks. And decide to do something only slightly less dangerous.
I stop by Ruth Ann’s Emerald Avenue apartment instead. Her street has cars parked on both sides. Directly opposite her porch six GDs lean against an old Ford Galaxy. Ruth Ann’s outside, shoulders folded into her chest, hands folded on her lap. Next to her, one of Alderman Gibbons’s flunkies fills a chair he borrowed elsewhere or bought for the occasion. Five other women sit various boxes and cartons. There are no GDs on the porch; Ruth Ann is not a gangster fan, a vocal opinion that is tolerated but considered treason.
A storefront preacher I know from the Lazarus Temple sits the steps, a Bible in hand, sneakers on his feet, and a pained expression in his eyes. He’s what they call "African," a shouter, a denomination of one who intends to lead his flock back to Africa. Of all the bullshit artists selling religion down here, I believe this fellow means it. He’s about thirty, give or take five, college-educated and confrontational—with both sides—the gangs and us. And alive by accident. For the
Robert J. Sawyer, Stefan Bolz, Ann Christy, Samuel Peralta, Rysa Walker, Lucas Bale, Anthony Vicino, Ernie Lindsey, Carol Davis, Tracy Banghart, Michael Holden, Daniel Arthur Smith, Ernie Luis, Erik Wecks