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“You don’t drink ?”

Apparently not. She looks like she’s about to puke.

Which reminds me. The pill I found on Carla’s chair this morning, before everything happened. Feels like a lifetime ago now.

I head over to the coffee station to give myself a little space and pull out the pill. It’s an oval gelcap, the word VIT-A-GIN on it.

I stuff it back in my pocket and do a search on my phone. Vit-a-gin is a gelcap of purified ginger root extract.

I take a breath, relieved. I had it all wrong. I was afraid she was on Oxy or something. But she’s no addict. She’s taking ginger pills. My wife took ginger to battle nausea when—

Oh. Oh .

That explains the nausea, the haggard look, the no drinking, even her attitude. It’s hard to be in a good mood when you have morning sickness.

My partner is pregnant.

Chapter 31

DRINKS AT the Hole. We probably started around seven, coming straight from the city hall press conference announcing our solve. The Hole is wall to wall with cops. Everybody wants a piece of this. Everybody deserves it, as much as we get shat on.

Even Superintendent Driscoll, at the press conference, shook my hand and told me, “Well done, Detective,” before he took credit for the whole thing in front of the bank of microphones.

I’ve turned down more shots tonight than I’ve drunk, but I’ve drunk plenty. Why not? Last time I was here, half the coppers turned their backs on me or mumbled something under their breath. Now I’m the man of the hour. That’s fine. It makes the job easier if you’re on good paper with other cops. But I won’t forget who my friends are, the ones who were there during the rough patches.

I spot Carla, who’s basically standing alone. Not drinking (of course) and not really socializing. Looking like someone who feels like she’s supposed to be there but doesn’t really want to be. Valerie always retired early during her pregnancy and slept in fits.

Maybe I’ll never get Carla Griffin. But at least I have some window into her life now, whether I’m supposed to or not. And thinking of her jumping down onto that roof to stay with me, to do the job, even though she’s carrying a child, and feeling like crap—I’ve got to cut her a lot more slack.

I tap her on the shoulder. She turns and tries to smile. It just isn’t really her. “Good work today,” she shouts to me, the only way we could hear each other. “If I didn’t say so already. Great work, actually.” She doesn’t look me in the eye as she speaks. It must have taken a lot for her to say that.

“Right back atcha,” I say. “A good team effort.”

She nods, but she’s not done. She looks at her feet. “I…sometimes, y’know, take a while to—”

And then I’m mugged, lifted from my feet, carried away as a chant starts in the room, Har-ney! Har-ney!, and suddenly I’m back on the stage in the corner, someone shoving the mike in my hand, just like old times, Billy Harney in the house.

The crowd goes quiet. I wasn’t really up for this, but what the hell.

“First of all, I’d like to thank the entire team that made this happen,” I say into the mike. “Lanny Soscia—where are you, Sosh? There he is.” Sosh raises a pint. “I’d like to thank Soscia for getting us through that door with a battering ram. It only took him six or seven tries.”

Everyone seems to like that.

“I’m not saying we lost the element of surprise, but the offender showered, packed a suitcase, and did his taxes before we got in.”

I wait for the laughter to subside. “That’s not to say Sosh is out of shape, but the guy breaks out in a sweat if he jumps to a conclusion. I’ve seen turtles with better lateral movement.

“Rodriguez still here? Mat?” Rodriguez shouts out from the crowd, hand cupped around his mouth. “There he is. Your wife let you stay out tonight?” He waves me off with a smirk. The crowd likes it.

“I’m not saying Mat’s henpecked. The other night, his wife told him to be home by eight. But she wasn’t gonna tell him what to do. No, sir. He was home by seven .

“But seriously,” I say after the laugh. “Mat’s an assertive guy. He comes right out and says exactly what his wife tells him to think.” Someone puts Mat in a headlock. I’m not the first one with this observation. “But no matter how much he argues with his wife, Mat always, always has the last word.” I lower the mike, nod at Rodriguez, then bring it back up. “That word is, Sorry !

“You know why Mat goes to a female dentist? It’s a nice change to have a woman tell him to open his mouth instead of shut it.”

I make an attempt to bow, but it doesn’t go so well. I’ve had better balance on a pogo stick. Someone figures out that it’s time to get me off the stage. Maybe this would be a good point in the night to slow down on the booze.

At ten o’clock, everyone shushes as the local news comes on. The stunning anchor breathlessly relates the “breaking news” as a photo of little LaTisha pops up alongside her. Within seconds, the screen cuts to the press conference from earlier today—the mayor and the superintendent, several leaders of the African American community, and behind them, our team: the Wiz, Carla, Rodriguez, and the two pale white guys, Sosh and me, as the bookends.

A cheer goes up. Elbows thrown my way. Sosh hollers out about the camera adding ten pounds. Someone asks if I lost my comb. They show us a couple of clips from the presser, the mayor taking credit for starting the Special Operations Section and saying it’s “time to heal,” a minister telling us “there’s more work to be done.” Then the anchor’s talking again as they run some footage without audio of Superintendent Driscoll at the mike.

Sosh doesn’t miss the opportunity to mimic the supe, his best Poindexter voice: “I’d just like everyone to know that I had absolutely nothing to do with the solving of this crime, and that I’m currently wearing ladies’ undergarments.”

I spot Joe Bostwick among the revelers, throwing back a pint with the lads. I grab his arm. “First of all,” I say, “great work today, Joe.”

He shakes my hand. “Learned a lot from you today, Detective. It’s been an honor.”

“Bright and early tomorrow morning,” I say, “we recanvass.”

“For real?” Patrol officers don’t usually question orders. He seems to realize he stepped over the line. “I mean, we got our—”

“Coulda been more than two people in the car,” I say. “Probably was.”

“But we talked to practically every person in the neighborhood.”

“Is practically every person the same as every person?”

The next story on the news: PROTEST RALLY CANCELED, and I can’t really hear what they’re saying, but apparently the solve of the case has led the community to change the rally from a protest downtown to a “peace vigil” outside one of the South Side churches.

Jeez, I guess that makes all this a happy ending.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Chapter 32

LATHAM JACKSON’S eyes are open before his alarm goes off Friday morning. Feels like he hardly slept. His stomach is still churning, and not from hunger or from the two or three bites of his mother’s hamburger pizza he forced down last night.

No, he’s hardly eaten, hardly slept since he saw the shooting outside Shiv’s house two days ago.

He assumed it would be another run-of-the-mill drug buy. He handled it same as always. He started the video rolling as a vehicle turned from Van Buren onto Kilbourn, used the toggle on his computer to move his video camera, hidden inside the window AC unit. Followed the car until it stopped outside Shiv’s house, where Frisk casually approached the vehicle to get the customer’s order.