Dan O'Shea - Penance

Fisher stepped into the kitchen, pulled the stove away from the wall, and slid his combat knife from the scabbard sewn into the right cargo pocket of his fatigues. Reaching behind the stove, he sawed at the gas connection until he felt the knife bite through and heard the gas start to hiss. Fisher slipped off the small pack and pulled out the walkie-talkie.

“Ready here,” Fisher said.

“On their way,” Riley said. “Lynch will be in the back.”

Fisher put the walkie-talkie away and headed down the basement stairs, leaving the door to the basement open behind him. The gas, lighter than air, should stay upstairs. Simba’s boys had painted over the basement windows, didn’t want anybody seeing downstairs. Which made sense, because downstairs looked like an armory. Fisher took out his penlight, found a crate, and set it by the window facing the back, sliding the window open just enough for a field of fire. He picked up a.45 from a shelf, checked the magazine, and slid the gun in his fatigue pocket. Then he pushed once on the fake panel in the east wall and felt it pop open to reveal the tunnel to the vacant building next door. The tunnel he’d told Jones not to tell Riordan’s guys about. Fisher was ready to go. He got up on the crate to watch the back.

At the intersection east of the building, Lynch and the Feds turned down the alley while the three squads with Riordan’s team went straight toward the front of the house. Lynch had told Riordan to pull up quiet, no lights, then, when Riordan saw Lynch’s lights and bubble go on, to turn on the lights and bubble tops out front.

Lynch pulled his squad up behind the house, the Feds pulling their plain sedan in next to him. Lynch hit his lights and bubble, the Feds hit theirs, and Riordan’s team lit up the front.

Lynch got out of his car, staying behind the door, and nodded to the Feds. They got out behind the doors of their cars, and one of them pulled out the bullhorn.

“Harold James, this is the FBI. We are assisting the Chicago Police. You are wanted for questioning…”

Fisher watched from the basement of the house while Lynch and the Feds moved into position. He had Hurley Jr’s Walther out. Fisher liked the PPK. He’d used them in Europe during WWII. Smooth action, good velocity, nice flat trajectory at this range.

Lynch was staying behind the car door, which complicated things, but Fisher had a good angle. Didn’t want to shoot through the glass if he didn’t have to, funny things could happen. Let the Feds start with the bullhorn but don’t let them talk long. This Simba had set himself up as a hothead; he wouldn’t hesitate.

“Harold James-” The Feds starting in, Lynch sticking his head up a little to get a better view of the house.

Fisher fired.

The FBI guy on the bullhorn heard the crack and saw Lynch drop straight down, not moving again. Two more shots smacked into the door of the Feds’ car. The special agent dropped down behind the door and yelled into the bullhorn.

“Riordan, we are taking fire. Lynch is down. Light em up, and get some gas in there.”

Both FBI men trained their revolvers on the back window — Simba’s room, and opened up. Up front, they could hear all ten guys firing, and the phoop of the tear gas gun.

Fisher ran toward the front of the house. On his way past the basement stairs, he tossed the Walther up so that it landed next to Jones. He pulled the.45 from his fatigues, popped the penlight once to get a line on the front basement window, and then emptied the entire clip out toward Riordan’s men. With the bushes out front, they wouldn’t see the flash in the basement, but they’d hear the fire, and the rounds ought to hit something. Once the.45 was empty, Fisher moved quickly into the tunnel, closed and latched the door behind him, ran through the basement of the building next door, up the stairs on the east side, over the fence by the next property, and through the next two lots to the street. He was gone.

Riordan heard the first shots out back, one and then three more, heard the warning from the Feds, then heard fire coming from the front of the house.

“Tear the fucking place down, boys,” he yelled, and the squad started up with everything they had.

The first two gas canisters crashed through the screens and window in the front room of the house, but the third wasn’t slowed down by any glass or screen because both were pretty much shot out, and it had a slightly higher trajectory. It cleared the couch and bounced into the kitchen, which was now densely packed with gas. The canister set off the gas, and the explosion blew out the back windows and side door, leaving the house in flames.

“Shit!” Riordan got on the radio to call in the fire department. As the house burned, some ammo inside started cooking off, more as the heat in the basement started to rise. Riordan and the Feds backed off, watching to make sure nobody left.

Nobody did.

Present Day

Lynch dropped nearly a grand on some damn comfortable loafers, toffee-colored slacks made out of some lightweight wool that Lynch couldn’t pronounce, a black silk crewneck top that was almost like a hologram — it had this subtle pattern that looked different every time you switched angles — and a lean, three-button jacket, faint check, little olive, little black, lot of the toffee color from the slacks. Waiting for the jacket and slacks to get back from alterations. The Andre guy even had them letting out the side seam in the jacket along the hip, make room for Lynch’s gun. Have to get a dress gun, Lynch thought, flat little.380 or something.

“How about some underwear, detective?” This Andre guy, he didn’t quit.

“That’s OK, Andre. Got plenty of shorts.”

“Not like these.” Andre holding up some silk boxers, fifty bucks a pop.

Lynch laughed. “I’m not dropping fifty bucks on something nobody can see.”

Andre tilting his head a little. “I don’t know detective, you came to see me looking like that, I’d want to see your shorts.”

Lynch laughing again. Liked this Andre guy, couldn’t help it.

Lynch got to Johnson’s place at five after seven, Wrigleyville, Pine Grove and Addison, just off the Inner Drive. He had a Sonata in the garage back at his building, but also a British Racing Green Triumph TR6 he’d bought with some of his dough when he’d been drafted. Didn’t drive it much, but he kept it pristine. Temperature had gone up all day, seventy right now, supposed to stay up in the mid-Sixties all night. Lynch figured what the hell, cruise the Drive with the top down, dressed like movie star, why not?

Johnson answered the door wearing leather pants that fit like a tattoo and a metallic silver top that draped like water, sweater tied loose around her neck. Deep scoop in the top. With her heels, she was Lynch’s height.

“Wow, look at you,” she said.

“Rather look at you. No dress? Thought I was supposed to help you with your zipper.”

She grabbed his hand and ran it up the front of her pants. “These have a zipper, see? Some detective you are.”

Lynch headed south on the Drive, swung through Grant Park on Columbus, cut south of the Loop and took Taylor Street west out toward the UIC Circle campus to a little Italian place in an old brownstone set back from the street, patio in the front behind a wrought iron gate. Only ten tables in the place. Lynch knew the owner and had called ahead. Got the little booth in the corner, tucked into a nook next to the fireplace. Expensive, but once you’ve dropped a week’s pay on clothes, Lynch thought, what’s a couple hundred for dinner?

They talked easily all through dinner, Lynch telling her stories he hadn’t told anyone in years. Even talked about his mom a little, Johnson putting her hand on his during that just right, like a balm. Her telling him about doing a year as the TV weather bunny in a station in Duluth just out of school, how the sports guy used to grab her ass and she’d finally broken his nose. Lynch couldn’t believe it when they’d finished the wine and he looked at his watch and it was almost 11.00.