“You guys don’t have anything better to do? Sit around and monitor the radio all day?”
Bloome studied him carefully. “You know what we do here?” he said, nodding toward the closed door. “We’ve taken four hundred pounds of heroin off the street this year. Fuck knows how many guns on top of that. You want to come down to the evidence room and see?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“We report directly to the supe, and we can take over any case we want. At any time.”
Sandoval had already seen it, in the motel room, when Bloome had told him SIS was taking over the investigation of Jameson’s murder. That was the rule and it came straight from the superintendent himself—if SIS takes over, you get out of the way. There is no argument, no appeal, no room for discussion. If SIS wants your case, it’s theirs.
But there’s no way I’m gonna give them Mason, Sandoval thought. Hell, it’s not even a case. It’s something more.
“The driver of that Escalade,” Sandoval said, watching Bloome’s eyes, “Marcos Quintero. You think he’s part of a case I’m working on. And you want it.”
“I don’t know anything about your caseload,” Bloome said. “But I know you homicide guys usually have your hands full. And Quintero happens to be someone who’s already on my radar.”
“How do you know him?”
Sandoval watched Bloome working over the question.
“He’s a person of interest,” Bloome finally said. “That’s all I can say.”
Sandoval took a moment. He had to decide how to play this. “I’m watching someone else,” he said, “and Quintero shows up. I wonder who he is. That’s it.”
Bloome leaned back in his chair. He didn’t say a word.
This is where you keep your mouth shut, Sandoval thought. You wait to see what happens next. Because that might tell you everything you need to know.
“I’m going to bring in two of my men,” Bloome said. “Then we can keep talking.”
I just told him I was watching someone else, Sandoval said to himself. And yet he’s not asking me who that someone is.
Because he already knows.
Bloome was startled when Sandoval stood up. This was clearly something that didn’t happen. Ever.
You don’t get up and walk out of this room before you’re told to do so.
“Detective,” Bloome said, “where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going back to work,” Sandoval said as he opened the door and walked through it, never looking back. He could feel a dozen eyes burning right through him as he made his way through the office and out the door.
? ? ?
It was late in the afternoon now. Mason trailed the 300 as it headed back north through Englewood. It pulled over on a street in Woodlawn and stopped at one of those rent-to-own places where you pay a little every month for furniture and electronics.
Mason watched them pay their visit to the manager, then get back in the car and take off, but this time they went to the expressway and headed downtown. They got off around the Loop and disappeared into the late-afternoon traffic. Two times, Mason thought he had lost the car but picked it back up again, until he saw it pull over in front of Morton’s Steakhouse.
A second black Chrysler 300 was already parked out front. The doors opened and a woman got out from the back. From forty yards away, Mason could see why a half-dozen other men on the street were already staring at her. She was a perfect blonde with a perfect body, right off a Stockholm runway, the kind of woman only a man like Tyron Harris could afford.
Harris greeted her with a kiss. Then the four of them—Harris, this woman, and the two bodyguards—went inside, leaving the two drivers outside in the cars.
Mason parked the car, got out, and wolfed down a Polish dog at a place down the street, from where he could still see the cars. Unsure whether to call Quintero again, he decided to finish the day with Harris first. Waiting back out in the BMW, he could picture the scene inside the restaurant—bottles of wine and waiters falling all over themselves.
When the party broke up, Harris and the woman came out on the street, followed by the bodyguards, and this time both drivers got out of the cars and met with them. Everyone stood there, nodding and bumping fists. Still all business, but a little more relaxed. Taking their cue from the boss.
The woman got in the car with Harris, along with the bodyguards. Harris’s car took off in one direction while the other car went in the opposite. Mason kept his eye on Harris’s car and followed it back to the expressway. The sun was going down. He checked the gas tank and realized he didn’t have many more miles left.
But he didn’t have to go far. They stayed in the local lanes and got off on Forty-third Street. Just a few blocks in, they stopped at an old three-story brick building surrounded by two empty lots. Harris, the woman, and the bodyguards went inside. The driver stayed in the car.