The Blade Itself

Evan leaned on the car door and glanced around. He nodded. “Not bad. They let you walk around with the keys?”

“It’s my job. Come on.” He turned toward the trailer, O’DONNELL CONSTRUCTION neatly lettered on one side. It felt weird to walk the yard without his hard hat. Behind him, he heard the sound of a car door opening, Debbie getting out. He turned back, caught Evan’s eye, and shook his head.

“Baby, wait in the car, okay?” Evan didn’t make it sound like a question.

Da

“Sure.” Evan looked around, moving to the couch, lifting one end and then dropping it with a thump, like he was gauging the weight. “Seems private.”

“This area is still pretty industrial, not many homes yet. The owners got the land cheap, so they’re rolling the dice on lofts.”

“Money in that?” Evan looking curious, like he might invest.

“No doubt. Used to be, people wanted to live in the suburbs. That’s why Daley Senior put the housing projects in the city. Except now people are moving back, everybody wants to live downtown, ride the El to work. So everything changes. You know the Green?”

Evan nodded.

“Cabrini Green is one of the worst projects in the country. Something like ninety percent unemployment. So bad they have those chain-link walls on the hallways, so the cops can see inside from the street.” It had always made him a little sick, the people walking out their own front door to an exposed hall like a cage. Kids leaning against the wire with forties in their hands and anger in their eyes. “But it’s on great land. Close to the city, the trains. The only thing wrong with the area where the Green sits is the Green. So Daley Junior, he’s been tearing down what his father built, one at a time. Technically they’re building mixed-income housing, but what you got, there’s a strip mall half a block away now with a Starbucks, the parking lot full of expensive cars. Lofts going for three hundred grand.” Da

Evan shrugged, his interest gone. “Sucks to be poor.”

“Yeah.” Da

“All right. We snatch the kid, get a blindfold on him, bring him here. Tie him to the couch.” Evan paused. “What happens if a cop comes by, sees the cars?”

“Nothing, so long as we don’t act stupid. They see cars in here all the time.” Da

“I make it.”

The words came too quickly, not the easy toss-out Da

“She knows she’s babysitting. I told her she’d see twenty large on it. She doesn’t know who the guy is.”

Da

Evan shrugged. “Whatever. She’ll do what I tell her.” He moved to the couch, dropped down, put his feet up on the counter opposite. Leaned back with hands laced behind his head. “You know what I like about this?”

“What?”

“Keeping the man’s kid in his own trailer.” Evan’s face split into a hard smile.

Later, back in his truck, the seat sun-warm against his back, Da

Enough. He’d been over this a million times. Given the choice between losing everything he cared about but standing on principle, or bending the rules in a way that didn’t harm anyone, well, that wasn’t any kind of choice at all.

Besides, he was starting to think they could pull it off. His problem would be solved, and Karen would never know a thing. And while he’d happily trade the money to get Evan out of his life, having a quarter million in a safe deposit box couldn’t hurt. In fact, he was starting to entertain a strange sort of hope, an old excitement. The looming black clouds might turn out to be a summer storm, hard and fast, but gone without doing any real damage.

Before he’d left the trailer, Da

“It doesn’t matter what kind of car it is,” he said, giving Evan his assignment. “So long as it’s decent-looking. The neighbors will notice a beater.”

“Sure. And afterward?”

“Park it in front of Cabrini-Green with the keys in it. Give somebody a stroke of luck.”

Evan liked that.

“I’ll bring masks and gloves.” Da

Oh yes. “One more thing.”

“What?” Evan said, bored already. Always happier to be doing the job than thinking about it.

“Don’t bring a gun.” Da

Evan shrugged. “Okay.”

Da

“We going tomorrow?” Evan sounded surprised, turning to look up.

“What, you got somewhere to be?”

21

When they were ten, they’d played a game called Pisser. It was a made-up game, but it lasted for almost two years, until Bobby Doyle missed his jump from the roof of a two-story CVS to the fire escape of the building next door and broke both wrists.

When Da

The leader of the game was the Big Dick. It was a title they fought to earn, though mostly it meant that as they went about their lives, they kept their eyes open for the right kind of opportunity. Say, a new skyscraper going up in the Loop, the concrete and glass of the curtain wall only half finished, the dark silhouette of a tower crane looming sixty stories up.

Boom. Call a Challenge.

Meet at seven o’clock, the yard deserted except for the security guys drinking coffee in their trailer. Squeeze under the chain link on the far side, keeping low until you’re in the building. The first floors would have actual staircases, what would become the fire steps. After that, plywood ramps. When those ran out, grab the A-frame of the crane, hoist yourself over the rail to the gridwork stairs, and start climbing.

At twenty stories, your calves burn.

At thirty-five stories, you’ve come farther than the outside wall. The wind hits.

At fifty stories, five hundred swimming feet of vertigo, people on the street are just dots. Cabs are those mini-Matchbox cars you can put a dozen in your pocket.