Michael Harvey - We All Fall Down

“You been here before?” I said.

“Nope.”

The cat jumped to the floor and rubbed her way past us. The waitress brought over Rita’s tea in a clear glass pot. The Daily Herald reporter took off the top, leaned forward, and breathed in a small bloom of steam.

“Lavender.”

“Great. You want to tell me why you’re sitting in a car outside CDA Labs in the middle of the morning?”

Rita put the lid back on her teapot and poured herself a cup. Her skin was lush and scented with almonds. Her teeth shone when she smiled. Why she wasn’t on TV was an enduring mystery to us all.

“I like you, Michael. You’ve got a good heart.”

“Who told you that?”

“Don’t try to deny it.”

“Where’s Rodriguez?”

“Don’t know. Working.”

Rita had been dating my friend for less than a month. I liked them as a couple, which meant, of course, they didn’t stand a chance.

“What do you need, Rita?”

She took a sip of tea and offered up a delicate sneeze.

“You allergic to the cats?” I said.

“Not that I know of.”

“It’s all this dust. Dust and books. What Hyde Park does best.”

“Don’t forget the Obama tours.”

“I’m going over this afternoon to see where he gets his hair cut. So, what is it?”

“I want to hire you.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“Funny.” Another sip of tea.

“Rodriguez definitely can’t afford me.”

“Seriously, Michael.”

“You need protection from something?”

“I need you to look into something.”

“Last time I checked your business card, it read ‘Investigative Journalist.’ And then there’s your boyfriend, the detective.”

“The thing I’m working on is a little tricky.”

“And you think I do well at ‘tricky.’ ”

“You want to hear about it?”

Of course I wanted to hear about it. I always wanted to hear about it. And then I wanted to jump in with my size tens. So I nodded my head and cursed my nature.

“You know Mark Rissman?”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Really. Because I followed him this morning, and he took me to CDA Labs. In fact, he went in the same door you came out of. With the mayor.”

“Imagine that.”

“Why were they at CDA this morning?”

“Maybe they were in the building for some other reason.”

“I checked. There’s nothing else in the building, except for a company that makes envelopes.”

“I’d look into that.”

“What are you doing for CDA?”

“It has nothing to do with Rissman and anything you might be kicking up downtown.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Rissman’s dirty, Michael.”

“In Chicago? I’m shocked.”

“He’s steering public contracts to certain people and taking a cut.”

“What kind of people?”

“Don’t know that yet.”

In Chicago that was like whistling in a tub full of water while you changed out the light fixtures. Just a matter of when before you got juiced. I would have lectured Rita, but she knew better. Which meant she had some idea who was on the other end of the city graft and didn’t want to share. That was okay, too. My day had already been more than full, and it wasn’t even lunch.

“What do you want from me?” I said.

“It’s complicated. Rissman is not peddling city business directly. He’s using his influence to steer contracts from the county.”

“What sort of contracts?”

“Medical supplies, mostly. Basic stuff. Surgical masks, latex gloves, syringes. Some office supplies.”

“Where’s it all going?”

“Cook County Hospital, the ME’s office. Couple of others. Rissman inserts himself, pressures the key folks, and gets the contract to go his way.”

“Your source?”

“Several.”

“Let me guess-the people inside County who are getting squeezed?”

“Yes.”

“And you have no idea who Rissman is pushing all this business to?”

“You would think I might know that.”

“I would.”

On cue, we both stared out the window. It had rained briefly, and the neighborhood was sketched in wet slashes of March. A couple stood at the corner, blurry in their thick overcoats, waiting for the light to change, then leaning against the wind as they walked. A late-model Buick took up a spot at the curb, maybe half a block distant. The car was running. The windows were squeezed tight and tinted black. Illegal, but not unusual. Hyde Park was a hermetically sealed world of culture and privilege, with the University of Chicago its beating heart. The blue blood, however, didn’t travel very far. A mile or two west, the university’s list of Nobel laureates didn’t mean a damn thing. Gangs ran the show. They routinely shot people for fun and tinted their windows because they felt like it. Ask too many questions about the latter, and you ran a good chance of winding up among the ranks of the former. I turned back from the window. Rita reached for a leather briefcase by her feet.

“I have the names of some of the companies.” She zipped open the case and pulled out a list. “They’re all nobodies. Small one- or two-person outfits with no experience and none of the clout that usually goes with this kind of stuff.”

I took a quick look at the names. “Campaign contributions?”

“Not a dime to the mayor. Or anybody else. Nothing I can see, anyway.”

“So they’re paying off Rissman directly?”

“Could be.”

“How big are the contracts?”

“They’re not huge, but that’s not the point.”

I scanned the list again. “And you think these vendors all come back to one person?”

“Or persons. But I don’t know how and, more important, who.”

I handed her back the list. “Does it matter? You have Rissman. He’s the public official. Run the story on him. Shine the light and watch the rats scatter.”

Rita shook her head.

“You think it might go higher?”

She angled her face away and didn’t respond. I looked out at the street again. The Buick was still there, but the window was rolled down. The driver sat in profile, long sallow face, dark sunglasses up on his forehead, a cigarette dangling in one hand. He wasn’t looking our way, but it didn’t matter.

“Excuse me a second.” I went to the front of the shop, paid the bill, and asked the woman at the register if she had a roll of quarters. She had two. I slipped out the back of the shop and crept around the block. The Buick was still idling, window still down, driver still smoking. I palmed both rolls of quarters in my right hand, crossed the street, and approached the car from the front. Ten yards short of the hood, I stopped and shivered in the cold. I blew into cupped hands and looked past the Buick for a taxi. The driver’s eyes flicked up and over me. Then he returned to staring intently at his side mirror and Rita, still in the booth across the street. I walked the last ten yards, left hand trailing across the Buick’s flank, right fist closed. The driver looked up again.

“How you doing?” I said.

He raised his chin, but didn’t respond. The driver didn’t recognize me. But I knew him.

“I’m looking for a cab,” I said and leaned in, left hand gripping the window frame, shoulders turning, right fist coming up and across. The punch was short, maybe eight inches, and landed flush on the point of his jaw. The body went limp, one hand sliding off the steering wheel and falling awkwardly in his lap. The guy was skinny, mid-thirties, with a bad complexion and worse teeth. I pushed him into the passenger’s seat, climbed behind the wheel, and checked for a weapon. He wasn’t carrying, but there was a. 40-cal in the glovie. I rolled up the window, locked the doors, and pulled out my cell. Rita picked up on the first ring.