Dan O'Shea - Penance

“It’s Holy Week,” Lynch said.

“So?” said Ferguson.

“You’re Catholic and you’re the confession going type, the one day of the year you’re probably going to go is Good Friday. Check the church, Chen. I bet you they’ve got a penance service on Friday.”

More clicking. “11am,” Chen said.

The room went quiet for a minute.

“Target, time and place,” Ferguson said.

“Do we figure Fisher knows?” asked Lynch.

“Every time we figure he doesn’t know something, we get our ass kicked,” said Ferguson.

“And do we figure Weaver knows?”

“We can make sure he does,” said Chen.

“So you’ll have everyone you need in the same place,” Lynch said.

“Right.”

“And then?”

“Then we shoot them.”

Clean up after one bloodbath by arranging a new one? Lynch thought. But he figured he’d keep that to himself. Still had time to find an angle, work this out some other way. In the meantime, he needed Ferguson and Chen on his side. He looked up and saw Chen staring at him like she could read his mind.

“You two want to get out of here maybe?” Lynch said. “I got my mother’s wake tonight, got some personal business to tend to.”

Ferguson just nodded, stood up, slid the.22 into his coat. Chen closed the laptop and the two of them walked to the door.

“We are sorry about your loss,” she said reflexively as she passed him, the words coming out of her like they were preprogrammed and somebody’d hit the right button. The bullshit official phrase of condolence. Lynch thought back on all the times he’d said that, families of victims, friends of victims. Hoped he’d managed a little more sincerity, a little more feeling.

Be hard to manage any less.

“We sure on this?”

Weaver was talking to Paravola, pushing back on some new intel that might point at Fisher’s next target.

“I’ve hacked it all the way back to the womb. This Spritzen was Manning’s mother, and Spritzen’s mother was Tina Delatanno. Hired at Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation summer, 1963, and fired a few months later. She was Stefanski’s secretary. Intel on Stefanski we already have says he used to screw all his secretaries, so yeah, she matches up every way I can match her. I got hospital records, adoption records, Chicago employment records, Social Security. Now, Stefanski knocking this Delatanno up, that lead came out of your people. Still, if this is accurate, then you’re going to love this next bit…”

Another one of Paravola’s dramatic pauses. Weaver huffed. Paravola, always with the theatrics, always needing affirmation. Guy really ate at Weaver’s nerves.

“Spit it out, Paravola.”

“What your people had, this Delatanno, she goes to work for Stefanski, he pops her cherry, she starts showing, that starts some talk around City Hall, so Stefanski fires her and that’s the end of the line. Nobody paid much attention because Stefanski pulled this kind of shit a lot, so nobody kept tabs on Delatanno, and the next known address I have on her is out of state. Des Moines, Iowa in April of ’64, little over a month after the kid is born. No record of where she was between getting canned and turning up in corn country. Thing is, birth certificates, they gotta show an address, right? And the address on the birth certificate is 6412 West Palmer, Chicago.”

“That’s that Marslovak woman’s house.”

“Yeah. Her husband, that EJ guy, he was Streets and Sanitation, too. Worked with Delatanno. What we got on him and the old woman, all the nice church lady crap, I’m betting they took her in until the kid was born.”

Weaver thought for a minute. They had some other possibles, Mayor Hurley probably on top of the list, that Lynch fuck on the list. But with the Marslovak tie, this Manning chick, she was number one. With a bullet.

“One other thing,” Paravola said. “She looks like a hardline Catholic. I grew up like that. If she’s gonna go to confession any time soon, it’s gonna be Friday. And her church is having a little penance party Friday morning.”

“OK. Good work. Send it out. Full packages to everybody.”

Weaver needed a break to get out in front of Fisher, now maybe he had one. Turned into the room, used his command voice.

“All right people. We got a solid line on Fisher’s next target. Andrea Manning. You’re all getting a data dump from Paravola. I want a full court press. Surveillance, intel, photos. Twelve hours from now, I ask you what her dirty panties smell like, I want an answer. And get me a tactical solution. Our guess is this chick hits the confessional on Friday. We got the date, we got the time, we got the place. I wanna know where Fisher’s gonna be and how we’re gonna take him down.”

Pushing 8pm, the main viewing room at Fitzpatrick’s Funeral Home was only half full. Lynch eyeballing the crowd, looking for faces. Part of the deal, being a cop, there were always asses in the seats. Wakes, weddings, whatever, like the guy or not, you showed up. Just part of having everybody’s back. But they weren’t showing up tonight. So the word was out. Which meant somebody’d put the stink on Lynch, at least for now, and anybody that was worried about it rubbing off was staying away. The violation from the building code people, that was just bullshit, but this stung a little.

Starshak was there, Bernstein, McCord, Cunningham. A few other cops, guys he went back with, guys he’d gone through doors with, but some who normally would have shown, some of the upstream guys, some of the brass, hell, some of the guys from his own squad, suddenly they had better things to do.

With the cop numbers down, the crowd was trending old. People from the neighborhood, the ones that were still alive, retired cops who knew his dad, didn’t have to worry about promotions anymore. Some of the political crowd was there, just a few, guys who weren’t quite sure whether pissing off Rusty was worth snubbing Lynch.

Rusty’d been late, half in the can when he got there. Keeping his distance, sticking to a corner in the back where he could hold court, get his ring kissed.

Half the crowd was from Milwaukee, friends of his sister’s. Made Lynch a little sad, not so much the numbers as the realization that she had this whole life up there that he’d missed out on. Lynch burying his mom, his sister next to him in the black dress, the only other person in the room who could look at the body lying there with the over-done hair and a couple pounds of make-up and know that the first thing his mom would have said if she could look in a mirror would be “My God, would you look at this, I look like the Whore of Babylon.” His sister there and she’s almost a stranger to him.

Liz walked in, rushed, hair a little messed. He’d dropped her at her place after the ball — she had to take off for Springfield at dawn, had to cover some special session down at the state capital, some pissing contest over pension funding, the latest game of political chicken between the downstate Republicans and Hurley’s machine. Must have driven up from Springfield as soon as the day’s session ended, and must have broken some traffic laws doing it. Hadn’t gone home first to change, hadn’t worried how she was going to look meeting Lynch’s family for the first time. Been weird, the last few days, what would push Lynch’s buttons. Little choked up at his mom’s place when he’d opened the medicine cabinet, his leg barking at him, looking for the Tylenol, and had seen his mom’s old brush, the one with the Abalone inlay in the back, the one his dad had brought home from the Pacific after Korea. Liz rushing in like this, making the effort, that had him tearing up, too.