Charlie Newton - Calumet City

Calumet City
Charlie Newton
A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
Published by Simon & Schuster
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Touchstone
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
While there may be similarities, the words, deeds, beliefs, and/or opinions of all characters herein are fictional and have no connection whatsoever to the actual person whose name they may share or upon whom they may be based, nor does the actual person adopt, express, or acknowledge agreement with any words, deeds, beliefs, and/or opinions of said fictional characters herein.
Copyright 2008 by Charlie Newton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newton, Charlie.
Calumet City: a novel/Charlie Newton.
p. cm.
"A Touchstone Book."
1. PoliceFiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)Fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.E73 C35 2008
813.'6dc22 2007016112
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4514-9
ISBN-10: 1-4165-4514-X
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Officer Patti Black

There's this place in Chinatown.
Off Wentworth Avenue in the 25th Ward, where the four-story walkups lean out over the street. Buildings not yet leveled by urban renewal, mattress fires, or debts to the wrong politicians. The kind of neighborhood that scares people who look too close.
A block east the 'L' screeches overhead, sharp like it's mad, metal-on-metal that bitters the back of your throat. Amtrak runs up there too, on iron bridging painted gray to match the concrete it shades. Above and below and beyond the trains, twenty lanes of loud expressways rumble and honk in four directions. Everything at ground level vibrates, the sense of movement so strong you can lose your balance.
During the day Great Lakes sailors and bus-tour adventurers shop for trinkets and a glimpse of something that isn't here; at night it's a Mexican border town selling vice in Mandarin. Behind the pagoda storefronts and across the alley, the Outfit runs dice and card rooms, and the Chinese Merchants Association with their teenage hitmen run everything else.
Me, I'm sitting in a side-street restaurant with faded Chinese characters for an address and six tables for locals who should know better. It's dim in here, and that's unusual. The floor's dirty, and that isn't. Rice kettles and radiators steam the stale air humid. Back by the kitchen an old woman sits smoking unfiltered cigarettes down to her fingertips and has for as long as I can remember. We don't speak, her and I; we stare out the front window. Her eyes hide behind the smoke and that's probably a good thingshe hears what I hear: the echoes of a long, violent struggle between me and the devil.
The devil has a man's first and last nameyou need to believe thathe's got saliva, busy hands, and a Bible he quotes, and shoes that are always new. But he's the devil just the same.
And he's out there beyond the glass. I've seen his footprints. And so has she.
For the last seventeen years I've come to this restaurant, always alone. Every Friday night since I came on the job. Back then Patti Black was a tough-talking twenty-one, but it was bluster. At heart I was a little-white-girl orphan with bad history and worse dreams, hoping to hide inside a uniform from history that won't let you hide.
Seventeen years I've sat at this same table, looking out this same window, me and a nightmare secret that's kept me a well-armed coward. Tonight I face it: We finish here. I'm bruised and cut, there's a pistol in my pocket that doesn't belong to me, and the taste of its barrel in my mouth. You might say the clock's running. 'Cause it is.

Chapter 1

SEVEN DAYS AGO

It's Monday in Chicago, which is actually worse than it sounds.
Our bookies, palm readers, and civil servants are all doing double-shift overtime. We're in an end-of-season baseball thingthe Cubs and Sox are still alive. A planetary alignment so rare that today's Herald suggested biblical implications.
It's also election eve.
And then there's the other thingnineteen hours ago a "lone gunman" tried to kill our mayor. Three bullets. High caliber. All into the airspace surrounding his and his wife's expensive haircuts.
As you might imagine, our police department is experiencing a bit of discomfort over this. At least above the rank of sergeant there's a bit of discomfort. Below the rank of sergeant we're more focused on policing the city, saving mankind, and stealing the odd apple here and there. Don't get me wrong, I like the mayorhis wife Mary Kate's a bitch, but that's another storyand I don't think Hizzoner should die in office. And as long as my sergeant's not frustrated or hungry, neither does he: big, badass Irish Sonny Barrett.
At this moment Sonny's face is mostly two-handed sandwich. But neither the breaded steak nor the Dan Ryan's southbound trucks lumbering overhead slow his comments on my appearance. "I'm tellin' you, Patti, and no shit now, you gotta drop a few."
I'm only 5'6" and change, but I have a pistol, and although Sonny can't see it under my faded windbreaker, he knows it's there. He's seen me use it. "Really? You think?"
Sonny nods across the battered fender that separates us, eyes my figure or his opinion thereof, and keeps eating. The other five officers in our Tactical Unit (TAC) are doing the same, enjoying Sonny's lounge act with their Ricobene'smedium-sized, breaded-steak footballs with tomato sauce.
"Don't mind workin' with fat chicks, but shit."
I weigh half what he does and often think Sonny and I would be better off if he were severely wounded in the line of duty. Had he not saved my life on Seventy-ninth, over by St. Rita's, I would've shot him long ago. And I still might. See, we have sort of an unwritten rule in our crewmy personal appearance and your opinion, compliment, or critique, don't need to mingle. But Sonny's safe today and knows it. After this tailgate lunch we're serving a stolen-property warrant on a Gangster Disciples building. A warrant that requires all seven of us be alive. There are thirty thousand members of the GDs nationwide, probably a third or more headquartered in Chicago. Many, if not all, can be on the violent side of unpleasant.
I, on the other hand, am a model of self-control when responding to my sergeant. "And your freight-train ass is modeling underwear?"
My partner Cisco Pike reaches to mediate and sloshes coffee across the hood of our Ford, stammering something nobody understands. Cisco has a speech impediment when he's flustered; I think it makes him semi-adorable, but not enough for what you're thinking. Like Cisco, my fellow TAC officers are chuckling, trying to imagine Sergeant Sonny Barrett BVD-clad and runway-ready. Only I bother to wipe at the coffee.
This TAC vehicle, like all the others, is a beaterfive years on the job, one hubcap, and two-thirds of the paint it had when new. In Chicago TAC officers only drive what the detectives won't. The dicks wear department-store blazers and knowing expressions. We wear body armor and quick-draw holsters, clothes you could garden in, and tomato sauce on our sleevesalthough that's primarily Sonny. Many of the brass and media rate TAC officers only slightly above the outlaws we police. We invite both groups to ride the ghetto with us. Better still, without us. Bring the wife and kids; make a day of it.