Marcus Sakey - The Blade Itself

He turned right onto Randolph, the skyline swinging into his rearview mirror, the Sears Tower and the Hancock sharp-edged against the horizon. Behind him he could see Evan’s Mustang, Debbie with her feet up on the dash. He wondered about her. She didn’t seem like a hustler. Maybe a groupie, one of those smart women who like dangerous men. Regardless, he was glad to have her, if only to keep Evan away from Tommy. They might be partners again, but he wasn’t about to lower his guard. Just do the job smart, get paid, go their separate ways.

The money. He hadn’t even thought about it. Hell, he’d only decided to do the job to get clear of Evan. What was he going to do with Richard’s money?

He thought of the lawn crew, of Richard smug in his designer house. Of Dad sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette smoldering untouched in the ashtray.

Call the money a bonus. A karmic payout for everybody who’d ever screwed his old man. Stash it in a safe deposit box and always have an umbrella against gathering storms.

He forced his thoughts back to the road, watching loft complexes give way to industrial space. The El rattled a couple of blocks away. New residential construction crept ever outward, but it was still quiet here, few cars and nobody on the sidewalk.

When he turned on Pike Street, the loft complex sat snug ahead of him, five stories of structural steel swathed in dirty gray plastic. A chain-link fence circled the whole site. Danny parked in front of the gate and stepped out, digging in his jacket for a ring of keys on a clip chain. He popped the padlock and swung the gate open, gestured the Mustang through, then returned to the Explorer and drove into the rutted dirt of the yard.

Evan leaned on the car door and glanced around. He nodded. “Not bad. They let you walk around with the keys?”

“It’s my job. Come on.” He turned toward the trailer, O’DONNELL CONSTRUCTION neatly lettered on one side. It felt weird to walk the yard without his hard hat. Behind him, he heard the sound of a car door opening, Debbie getting out. He turned back, caught Evan’s eye, and shook his head.

“Baby, wait in the car, okay?” Evan didn’t make it sound like a question.

Danny pushed open the trailer door and stepped in, feeling it rock slightly. The inside was as he remembered it, only cleaner. The smell of old coffee scorched the air. A trickle of dusty sunlight came through the windows. He walked over and closed the blinds.

“Sure.” Evan looked around, moving to the couch, lifting one end and then dropping it with a thump, like he was gauging the weight. “Seems private.”

“This area is still pretty industrial, not many homes yet. The owners got the land cheap, so they’re rolling the dice on lofts.”

“Money in that?” Evan looking curious, like he might invest.

“No doubt. Used to be, people wanted to live in the suburbs. That’s why Daley Senior put the housing projects in the city. Except now people are moving back, everybody wants to live downtown, ride the El to work. So everything changes. You know the Green?”

Evan nodded.

“Cabrini Green is one of the worst projects in the country. Something like ninety percent unemployment. So bad they have those chain-link walls on the hallways, so the cops can see inside from the street.” It had always made him a little sick, the people walking out their own front door to an exposed hall like a cage. Kids leaning against the wire with forties in their hands and anger in their eyes. “But it’s on great land. Close to the city, the trains. The only thing wrong with the area where the Green sits is the Green. So Daley Junior, he’s been tearing down what his father built, one at a time. Technically they’re building mixed-income housing, but what you got, there’s a strip mall half a block away now with a Starbucks, the parking lot full of expensive cars. Lofts going for three hundred grand.” Danny sat at the table. “You want to make money in Chicago, figure out where the poor people live and move them.”

Evan shrugged, his interest gone. “Sucks to be poor.”

“Yeah.” Danny’s eyes roamed the walls, the old instincts coming back, a strange rush with them. Was it excitement? Guilt? Hope? A bit of all of them. It set him on edge, like too many cups of coffee, his stomach jittery, wondering what he was doing here, knowing he had no choice.

“All right. We snatch the kid, get a blindfold on him, bring him here. Tie him to the couch.” Evan paused. “What happens if a cop comes by, sees the cars?”

“Nothing, so long as we don’t act stupid. They see cars in here all the time.” Danny scratched at his elbow. “We make the call-”

“I make it.”

The words came too quickly, not the easy toss-out Danny would have expected. It set off an internal alarm. But Evan was right, it wasn’t like Danny could call his own boss. “You make the call. We ask for half a million. Tell him we’ll call back in a couple of days to set up the meet. Debbie takes care of Tommy. How much does she know?”

“She knows she’s babysitting. I told her she’d see twenty large on it. She doesn’t know who the guy is.”

Danny nodded. “I might need her help with something else, too.”

Evan shrugged. “Whatever. She’ll do what I tell her.” He moved to the couch, dropped down, put his feet up on the counter opposite. Leaned back with hands laced behind his head. “You know what I like about this?”

“What?”

“Keeping the man’s kid in his own trailer.” Evan’s face split into a hard smile.

Later, back in his truck, the seat sun-warm against his back, Danny replayed that look. Saw how much the cruelty of the irony pleased Evan. It made Danny wonder, turning onto Halsted, made him question. Was he about to get back in over his head?

Enough. He’d been over this a million times. Given the choice between losing everything he cared about but standing on principle, or bending the rules in a way that didn’t harm anyone, well, that wasn’t any kind of choice at all.

Besides, he was starting to think they could pull it off. His problem would be solved, and Karen would never know a thing. And while he’d happily trade the money to get Evan out of his life, having a quarter million in a safe deposit box couldn’t hurt. In fact, he was starting to entertain a strange sort of hope, an old excitement. The looming black clouds might turn out to be a summer storm, hard and fast, but gone without doing any real damage.

Before he’d left the trailer, Danny had cleaned up. He didn’t want the kid to somehow accidentally see a piece of letterhead, an envelope, something that might help the police track them down. Though at half a million, Danny didn’t see Richard going to the police. The guy was a blowhard and a bastard, but he loved his son. Why play games?

“It doesn’t matter what kind of car it is,” he said, giving Evan his assignment. “So long as it’s decent-looking. The neighbors will notice a beater.”

“Sure. And afterward?”

“Park it in front of Cabrini-Green with the keys in it. Give somebody a stroke of luck.”

Evan liked that.

“I’ll bring masks and gloves.” Danny’s mind churned, trying to think of all the angles. He’d talk to Debbie later. Stop by the store on the way home for some rope. Maybe a pair of nylons? Something that wouldn’t chafe or scrape the kid up. There was something else, something important.

Oh yes. “One more thing.”

“What?” Evan said, bored already. Always happier to be doing the job than thinking about it.

“Don’t bring a gun.” Danny kept his voice level and his eyes hard, not trying to stare Evan down, just letting him know he was serious. “Not a scratch, remember?”

Evan shrugged. “Okay.”