Penance: A Chicago Thriller by Dan O'Shea Read Free Book Online Page B

He walked back to the window for a minute, sipping his whiskey, then turned back.
    “Here’s what we do. You declare. You’re the independent taking up Junior’s flag. Press’ll eat that shit up. They love to give it to me in the chops anyway. All those hippie loonies, they’ll flock to you. Meanwhile, I pick out some schmuck, run him in the primary. My side takes a dive, we get some of the vote out your way under the table. You’re the underdog who takes down the machine. Comes the general election, I got no choice but to back the party side.”
    Clarke thought for a moment. It was brilliant. But it could also be a ploy. Could be a way for Hurley to buy his silence long enough that Clarke couldn’t ever come forward, then cut him off at the knees, have his guy actually win, send Clarke packing. It could be, but it didn’t feel that way. There’s always a moment when you have to take that leap.
    “Smart play. I’ll give it a few days, lay low, grieving, get through the funeral. But you announce your candidate first – somebody out of the machine. Then I’m outraged. I have to step forward in Junior’s memory.”
    “Right way to play it,” said Hurley, nodding. “Just remember one thing here. We got each other by the balls. I’ve been at this a long time, had mine twisted before. You try to cross me, I’ll rip yours off.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Clarke.
    Hurley let out a soft snort.
    “What?” Clarke said.
    “The assurance of each other’s fealty? You wanna make it in this town, you better stop talking like that. Your Ivy League crap don’t carry no weight around here.”
     
    After Clarke left, Hurley sat in the office with Riley.
    “I’ve been thinking about who we want handling it with the cops,” said Riley. “You know that Declan Lynch guy?”
    “Up on the northwest side? Does some precinct work and whatnot? Rusty Lynch’s brother?”
    “Yeah. Rusty can help keep him in line. Also, once he reads the tea leaves, I think he’ll smell an opportunity in it.”
    “Good. Call the commissioner.”
    “Zeke Fisher called while you were talking to the kid. He’s done over there. Wants you to know he’s sorry, but it’s going to be ugly. What he had to work with, only way he could go. On the plus side, looks like a chance to clean up the rest of your nigger problem. He also wants to know does he need to do anything about Clarke.”

 
    CHAPTER 5 – KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS
     
    Present Day
     
    Ishmael Leviticus Fisher lay awake in the anonymous hotel on the frontage road off I-57. He needed to sleep, but the moment kept coming back to him. His wife, the quick smile and short wave out the driver’s window of the Blazer as it crunched through the yellowed leaves, down past the short stone wall, past the chestnut tree, angling to the right as it backed into the street.
    Andy’s face in the back window, the delicate skin around the blues eyes crinkled, that smile that seemed to split his head like a melon full of teeth. Amanda in the car seat past him, just a year old, just a hint of Amanda through the reflection of the white house and the black shutters and the fragile blue of the autumn sky.
    Then the white-yellow flash of the Semtex, like diamond lava, and a sound like all the bones in the world snapping at once, the driver’s side of the Blazer pitching up, part of the bottom showing, and then the gas tank exploding, a richer, redder fire with a sound like a bass drum stretched with his own flesh and beaten with his own heart.
    Picking himself up and running to the burning hulk, half, half, half his son strewn into the street, his head now truly split, brains, not teeth, smiling out. And his wife, thrown out onto the lawn, blood sheeting down her face and a flap of her scalp hanging across one eye, a ragged triangle of gray plastic jutting from her abdomen, her right leg gone almost to the hip, the scarlet, arterial blood arcing out in desperate spurts. Her clawing at the plastic as he reached