“Hang on a second.” I stood on the brakes.
We were underneath the stilts of the Skyway. The endless detritus of the South Side stretched depressingly on either side of the road. I’d been focusing on the potholes in front of me when some motion caught the corner of my eye. A couple of guys, poking through the debris. They stopped when I stopped and turned to glare at me. The lights from the highway overhead leaked through the joins in the road and glinted on their tire irons. I squinted beyond them, trying to make out what they were hacking at: the smooth, round fender of a new car.
I pulled my gun from my holster and grabbed Mitch’s leash. “Stay in the car,” I barked at Mr. Contreras. I wrenched the door open and was out and in the road before he could object.
I had Mitch’s leash in my left hand, the gun in my right. “Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!”
They yelled obscenities at me, but Mitch was growling, lunging against his collar.
“I can’t hold him long,” I warned, advancing on them.
Headlights from above dipped and slipped along our bodies. Mitch’s teeth gleamed in the gliding lights. The two dropped their tire irons and put their hands above their heads, backing away from me. When they’d moved, I could see the car. A Miata, driven so hard into the pile of boards and bedsprings that only its tail was visible, with the trunk pried open, and the license plate: The Kid 1.
“Where did you find this car?” I demanded.
“Fuck off, ’ho. We got here first.” The speaker dropped his hands and started toward me.
I fired the gun, wide enough to make sure I didn’t hit them but close enough to make them pay attention. Mitch roared with fear: he’d never heard a gun go off. He barked and jumped, trying to get away from me. I burned my fingers on the hot barrel as I fumbled the safety into place while Mitch snarled and bucked. When I had him somewhat under control, I was sweating and panting, and Mitch was shaking, but the two gangbangers had turned to stone, their hands once more behind their heads.
Mr. Contreras appeared next to me and took the leash. I was trembling myself, and grateful to him, but I didn’t say anything, just made sure my voice came out steady when I spoke to the guys.
“The only name you two punks call me is ‘ma’am.’ Not ‘’ho,’ not ‘bitch,’ not any nasty word that pops into your disgusting heads and out your mouths. Just ‘ma’am.’ Now. Which one of you drove this car down here?”
They didn’t say anything. I made a great show of releasing the safety on the Smith & Wesson.
“We found it here,” one of them said. “What’s it to you?”
“What’s it to you, ma’am,” I growled. “What it is to me is that I’m a detective, and this car is involved in a kidnapping. If I find a body, you guys will be lucky not to face a death sentence.”
“We found the car here, it was just here.” They were almost whining; I felt sickened by my own bullying—give a woman a gun and a big dog and she can do anything a man can do to humiliate other people.
“You can’t prove anything, we don’t know nothing, we—”
“Keep them covered,” I said to Mr. Contreras.
I backed around in a circle to the car, keeping the gun on them. My neighbor held Mitch, who was still moving uneasily. The trunk, which the pair had pried open, held nothing but a towel and a few books of Billy’s—Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and The Violence of Love.
The two punks were still holding their hands over their heads. I turned around and shoved my way into the bracken to peer into the car. No Josie, no Billy. The windshield had a spiderweb crack in front of the driver’s seat, and the driver’s window was smashed. The ragtop was torn. Maybe the damage had occurred when the car plunged headlong into the pile of garbage. Maybe someone had attacked the car with tire irons.
The traffic overhead sent a constant, irregular thwacking down the rusted legs of the Skyway. The lights swooped past but couldn’t penetrate the bracken well enough for me to see inside the car. Turning on the little flashlight on my cell phone, I stuck my head and shoulders through the hole in the Miata’s canvas top and shone the light around. Glass shards lay on the dashboard and the seat. I could smell whiskey, maybe bourbon or rye. I slowly moved the light around. An open thermos lay on the passenger floor, with a little puddle underneath the lip.
It was a titanium model, a Nissan. Morrell had one like it—I’d bought it for him when he left for Afghanistan. It had cost a fortune, but nothing dented it, even when he’d gotten shot, although the i in the logo had chipped away, just as it had on this one.