Critical Mass

“He never mentioned it. Of course, everyone knew she was a drug addict. Some of the kids rode Martin pretty hard about it, so I guess if he went to see her, he kept it to himself.”

 

 

Martin must have learned to put up a shield at a young age; maybe his grandfather was the only person who ever really got behind it. I thought of the two of them grinning at Martin’s first-place science fair exhibit.

 

Toby was edgy: he needed to get to class, he needed to take another call, he couldn’t really tell me anything. He didn’t have a cell phone number for Martin. Ms. Hahne, who taught AP physics over at the high school, might know Martin’s plans; Toby thought Martin had been close to her.

 

Nadja Hahne was in class. The receptionist took a message, promising that she would get it to the teacher. While I had a sandwich and a surprisingly good cappuccino at one of the little cafes near the campus, Stefan Klevic, my old pal from the PD, sent me an e-mail: he had found Ricky Schlafly’s Cook County sheet and scanned it for me.

 

I read it, trying not to drip hummus on my keyboard. Schlafly had been arrested a number of times for possession, for dealing, for breaking and entering. He’d taken part in a botched armed robbery of a convenience store. No one had been seriously hurt, but he bought himself five years in Stateville that time.

 

Schlafly’s last known Chicago address, right before he headed back to Palfry, was in Austin, at the far end of the city’s run-down West Side. The lease was in the name of a man named Freddie Walker.

 

Stefan closed his e-mail by saying, “Walker doesn’t have a record but Oak Park and Chicago PDs both say he’s the muscle behind a lot of the coke moving around that part of town. You now know everything I do, but if you plan to go visiting, I’d put on my best Sunday Kevlar.”

 

Not only did I return home for a vest and my handgun, I even mentioned my expedition to one of my acquaintances in the Chicago PD, although Conrad Rawlings’s district, down on the southeast side of the city, where I grew up, was at the opposite end of the map from Austin.

 

We’d been lovers for a time in the misty past. Our breakup hadn’t been happy, especially since Conrad took a bullet in the process, but in some deeply buried chamber of his heart, Conrad still cares if I live or die.

 

“I hope you don’t imagine I’m going to escort you to a meth house, Ms. W. If you want that kind of thrill, you can come down to my turf any old afternoon.”

 

“I wouldn’t dream of taking you from the Latin Cobras, Conrad. I thought you might let some of your buddies in the Fifteenth know I’m coming so they don’t arrest me when they see me going into that address on Lorel. Also, I’d like someone to look after my dogs when I’m gone.”

 

“I’ll say the tear-jerkiest eulogy you ever heard, at least if you were alive to hear it, but I will not take those damned dogs. The male, what’s his name? Mitch? He’s come way too close to my manhood way too many times. What’s this really about, Vic?”

 

I told him about Derrick Schlafly’s death, and Judy’s cry for help. “I’m trying to find where she ran to when she couldn’t reach Lotty.”

 

I could hear Conrad tapping a keyboard at the other end of the phone. “Missing person in a drug murder case, don’t you dare go into that apartment, Warshawski. I’m sending a message to Ferret Downey; he’ll get a warrant to check out the place. You leave it alone. This is why they pay us cops the big bucks. You got that?”

 

“Aye, aye, Sergeant,” I said.

 

“Don’t be a wiseass, Vic, it isn’t becoming at your age. If I find you’ve gone in there on your own, I will shoot you myself.”

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

IMPULSE CONTROL

 

 

I TOOK MY GUN into the kitchen to clean it. I hadn’t been at the range since the beginning of summer. If I was going to be butting heads with drug lords on a regular basis, I’d better start taking target practice every day, and invest in Tasers and automatic pistols as well.

 

There’s no end to the armory I could get by hanging out in the right bars, but I seldom carry the one gun I do own. Having a weapon makes you want to use it, and if you use yours the other person wants to use theirs, and then one of you gets badly hurt or dead, and the one who survives has to spend a lot of time explaining herself to the state’s attorney. All of which takes time from more meaningful work, although you could argue that killing a drug dealer constitutes meaningful work.

 

Conrad’s warning had been a prudent one. Only a wiseass who behaved in a way unbecoming to her age would disregard it. I put on a leg holster, easiest for me to reach if I was ducking or rolling away from an attack. Ferret Downey, I wondered as I left my apartment. That had to be a nickname that Conrad had used inadvertently.