Brush Back

We sca

We posted Scanlon’s and Mandel’s photos, spun a narrative based on my guess about the use of Say, Yes! funds, to send Hurlihey to the state legislature, and finished by writing, Stay Tuned for More Details.

We finished at 8:56. At 8:57, while we were still at the copy center computer, my phone rang again.

“Not seeing anything on your Facebook page, Contreras,” the ugly voice growled.

“Not there,” my neighbor said. “Got a website. You check it out. For the next hour, you can only get to it with a password. You turn over Bernie—Bernadine—and if she ain’t been hurt, I’ll take it down. You screw up, the whole world will see it and I’ll be adding details. Password is ‘ScumbagYes.’”

There was a pause while the caller went online. “We won’t meet you in Calumet Park, too exposed, too easy for you to get cops into the Coast Guard building. We’ll wait for you on Stony, where it dead-ends at the river. Be there in thirty with that letter you’re saying Scanlon wrote.”

“Sixty,” Mr. Contreras said. “I’m ten miles away from you.”

We heard muted talk in the background. “Forty-five. We see cops coming, the kid goes over the retaining wall into the Cal.”

“They’re already there,” I said flatly to Mr. Contreras when he’d hung up. “It’s the perfect ambush spot: there’s only one way in.”

I put the original of the “widows and orphans” letter into an express pack and sent it off to Freeman.

“Don’t be calling the cops,” Mr. Contreras begged as we hustled back to the car, “’cause they won’t know to come in quiet and next thing you know, these bastards’ll toss little Bernie overboard.”

“We can’t drive in,” I said.

“You go

He was right. The clock kept ticking. I drove fast and dangerously, ru

At 103rd, the top of the marshes along the Calumet River, I crossed over to Stony Island. We were at the start of a stretch of swamp, park, golf course, waste dumping and heavy industry, dotted with ponds made by the overflow from the big lake and Lake Calumet. If the thugs were in place, they were three miles to the south.

Move, move! I ordered myself savagely. Mr. Contreras was almost weeping with anxiety. My own state: sick, terrified, head a balloon bouncing ten feet from the ground, body in motion, body in motion will stay in motion, at rest—will rest forever.

I spied a canoe in the underbrush, jumped out of the car, saw the canoe was chained to a log. The old man still had enough strength to shatter the lock with a rock. I took the paddle stuck in the mud underneath it.

Stealing, no, borrowing, stuffing it any old way into the Taurus’s trunk, bouncing it down the road to the top of Dead Stick Pond, smashing through the fence around the pond, launching the boat. Mr. Contreras watching while I climbed into waist-high filthy water, fa

At the south end, I climbed out again into water brown with waste, purple-green with industrial oil, boots soaked, squelching through mud, up the bank to the wall separating the road from Lake Calumet. I could see the smokestacks of ships on the far side of the wall. The dredges and cranes at work on the hidden docks covered the noise I was making.

I used to walk that wall with Boom-Boom, while we dared each other to jump off under the noses of the freighters in Lake Calumet. We used to boost each other up. Back then, we wore dry clothes and shoes, but I could do it alone today in sodden jeans and mud-caked boots.

I found a place where the concrete had crumbled, exposing rebar. Put a toe in, hoisted myself into place. This was so easy, my third wall in twenty-four hours, I could join Cirque du Soleil. I straddled the wall, crabbed across, lay flat when I got in squinting distance of the road. The goons’ car was on the shoulder, tilting downward into the ditch, hidden from street view by the shrubs and tall marsh grasses.

Fifteen minutes from launch, five over our limit. I pulled out the Smith & Wesson, took off the safety, placed the spare clips on the wall in front of me. Right on time, the Taurus engine roared as Mr. Contreras floored it and drove headlong toward the wall. He swerved a second before he hit it and fishtailed, knocking the rear end against the wall.

The doors facing the wall opened and the dogs jumped out.

Gunfire rattled from the underbrush. The Taurus’s windshield shattered. I aimed at the flash of light in the weeds, emptied half a clip, saw movement in the brush, fired again, reloaded, slid from the wall, jumped across the ditch to the enemy car, shot out the tires. A savage growl behind me: I turned to see Mitch fling himself against a thug sneaking up behind me. Mitch knocked him to the ground. I stomped on the man’s arm, forced him to drop his gun, kicked the gun away, kicked the thug’s head hard enough to knock him out, hit the road as more gunfire erupted.

“Down,” I ordered Mitch, panting, “down!” He loped off instead, heading across the road to Dead Stick Pond.

I didn’t know where Peppy was, didn’t know where Mr. Contreras was, had to concentrate on the gunfire still coming from the thick grasses.

Furious shouts from behind the retaining wall. Heads appeared—men in hard hats, men with walkie-talkies, cell phones. The gun roar filled my head; I didn’t know what they were saying, kept my eyes on the car, on the underbrush. Saw movement in two places, ducked low, shot at the feet as they appeared. And then the hard hats were over the wall, moving into the brush, surrounding the punks.

Police cars screamed in. Pierre arrived with a team from the private security firm Tintrey, the FBI alongside them. By then we had found Bernie, where the thugs had tossed her bound body. It was Mitch and Peppy who led me to her: the goons had dumped her in the mud along the edge of Dead Stick Pond. Mr. Contreras tried to follow us to Bernie, but he was too dazed and exhausted; he collapsed onto the backseat of the Taurus. The hard hats, guys who’d been working on the barges below us on Lake Calumet, were talking excitedly to the cops, helping them hoist the thugs into squad cars.

Bernie was still alive, but with a very weak pulse. My own exhaustion was overwhelming me; I fumbled at her bonds with thick clumsy fingers until one of the hard hats saw what I was doing and came to my aid. A sheet of gray water seemed to envelop me, making it hard for me to move or think. I could see Mitch and Peppy anxiously lick Bernie’s face and hands but couldn’t decide if that was good or bad and couldn’t move my arms to stop them.

Pierre appeared and pushed the dogs away, lifted Bernie. I saw his mouth move but couldn’t hear any words. A helicopter materialized and Pierre and Bernie shimmered away into it. The water pulled me down, into the grasses, the mud, the rusting cans. No more responsibilities. How good it felt to drown.

FIFTEEN-DAY DL

I was out for the better part of two days. The concussion I’d suffered under Wrigley Field, the lack of rest, the more-than-strenuous race around Chicago had me unconscious long before an ambulance drove me to Beth Israel Hospital. Lotty’s anesthesiologist gave me a cocktail that kept me deeply asleep while the worst of my wounds healed.