sore that it was painful to climb down from the pickup and hard to walk, but I made it to the curb, flagged a cab, got my cousin tucked away. I gave her a twenty and told her to get home to bed, to call me in the morning before she tried to go to the office.
I climbed into the front seat next to Marty. “Who are you, by the way? And how did you guys show up like that?”
“Marty Jepson,” Tim said for him. “He was a Marine staff sergeant in Iraq. He’s one of the gang who Chad and me met at the VA. I texted Marty as soon as Petra and me left you, and he was at Plotzky’s, so he hustled over to help out.”
“Bless you, Staff Sergeant. Was that you who shot out the Mercedes’ tires?”
“Yes, ma’am. Tim here thought the guy who was passed out back there by the L might have a gun, so I crawled over and found it and shot into the rims—fastest way to deflate tires. What do you want me to do with these bastards, pardon my French?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to drive them down to Thirty-fifth and Michigan, give them to Detective Finchley, see what he can pin on them. They must have records for extortion or murder or something.”
The men began spewing invectives, curses in two languages. If their English was any guide, they didn’t think much of me in Ukrainian, either.
“On the other hand,” I said, “if we learned a couple of things from them, like why they thought I had a piece of interesting property, and why Anton Kystarnik is interested in whatever it is, we might let them go off into the night.”
“We can’t interrogate them here,” Tim objected. “There are people all over the place. Besides, the cops might find us.”
“Where do you want to go, ma’am?” Jepson asked.
I thought of Mexico City—sunshine, sleep—but I told him to head toward South Chicago, the poverty-stricken corner of the Southeast Side where I grew up. “We can talk on the way.”
I turned painfully in the seat to look at the captives in the back. “Which one of you is Ludwig?” I asked.
“Bitch, we don’t tell you nothing.”
“Want me to hit them?” Tim asked. “They have a few punches coming, judging from how they were roughing you up.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “We know what they are—creeps who work for Anton Kystarnik—and we know their names are Ludwig and Konstantin. Now, which one of you is which?”
They stared at me, sullen, silent.
“Okay,” I said, “just so we can call you something, you, by the window, you’re Konstantin, and your pal is Ludwig. We can find you easily enough if we need you again. Go on over to Lake Shore Drive, Marty, and head south.”
A cell phone rang in Ludwig’s pocket, and he reached for it. Tim knocked his hand away, and we listened to the phone ringing. Konstantin’s phone started next, a sound like a buzz saw.
“What does Anton think I have?” I asked over the ringing.
“We tell you nothing . . . You or your boy toys, you dried-up cougar!”
“A dried-up cougar? Is that a step up from a bitch or a step down?” I wondered. “Anyway, so far you and your pal are oh for nothing, so let me explain where we’re going.”
We had reached Lake Shore Drive and were heading south, passing the enormous exhibition halls that made up McCormick Place. “You know those high-rise projects the city’s been tearing down? They were home to old-line gangs like the Vice Lords. The city’s relocated a lot of the residents to South Chicago, and the gangs who are coming in have unsettled all the power relationships on the Southeast Side. It’s not a good place for strangers, especially white strangers, to wander around after dark.”
All the time I was talking, both their cell phones kept sounding. I wondered if Anton was trying to reach them, trying to find out if they’d killed me.
“When we get to Ninety-first Street,” I said, “take a right. We’ll drop these creeps off at Houston—that’s where I grew up. Ludwig and Konstantin can see who will drive them north again. Maybe they can flash a bankroll and hire a ride. But maybe that wouldn’t be so smart. Because a bankroll—”
“We don’t know.” That was Ludwig. “Rodney, he calls us, texts us, tells us we are looking for you. Someone is tracking your GPS in your phone. They—”