what they’re thinking, don’t you? They’re thinking maybe you’re in here coppin’ to doin’ the kid. It’s the year anniversary, you know. Weird things happen. Wait till they hear this story.”
I thought of the photo of the boy in my pocket.
“I went by there on the way over,” I said. “There’s flowers.”
“They’re always there,” Washington said. “The family goes by there all the time.”
I nodded and for the first time felt guilty about taking the photo. I didn’t say anything. I just waited for Washington. He seemed to ease up some. His face became softer, relaxed.
“Look, Jack, I gotta do some checking. And some thinking. If I tell you I’ll call you, I’m gonna call you. Go back to the hotel, get a massage, whatever. I’ll call you one way or the other in a couple hours.”
I nodded reluctantly and he stood up. He held his arm across the table, his right hand out. I shook it.
“Pretty good work. For a reporter, I mean.”
I picked up my computer and left. The squad room was more crowded now and a lot of them watched me go. I guess I had been in there long enough for them to know I wasn’t a crackpot. Outside it was colder and the snow was beginning to come down hard. It took me fifteen minutes to flag down a cab.
On the ride back I asked the driver to swing by Wisconsin and Clark and I jumped out and ran across the snow to the tree. I put the photo of Bobby Smathers back where I’d found it.
12
Larry Legs kept me twisting in the wind the rest of the afternoon. At five I tried calling him but couldn’t locate him at Area Three or Eleven-Twenty-One, as the department’s headquarters was known. The secretary in the homicide office refused to disclose his whereabouts or to page him. At six I was resigned to being blown off when there was a knock on my door. It was him.
“Hey, Jack,” he said without stepping in. “Let’s take a ride.”
Washington had his car parked in the valet lane in the hotel drive-up. On the dash he had placed a Police Business card so there was no problem. We got in and pulled out. He crossed the river and started north on Michigan Avenue. The snow had not abated as far as I could tell and there were drifts along both sides of the road. Many of the cars on the road had a three-inch frosting on their horizontal surfaces. I could see my breath in Washington’s car and the heater was on high.
“Guess you get a lot of snow where you come from, Jack.”
“Yeah.”
He was just making conversation. I was anxious to see what he really had to say but thought it better to wait, to let him tell me at his speed. I could always pull the reporter act and ask questions later.
He turned west on Division and headed away from the lake. The sparkle of the Miracle Mile and the Gold Coast soon disappeared and the buildings began to get a little more seedy and in need of repair and upkeep. I thought maybe we were heading toward the school Bobby Smathers had disappeared from but Washington didn’t say.
It was completely dark now. We went under the El and soon passed a school. Washington pointed at it.
“That’s where the kid went. There’s the yard. Just like that, he was gone.” He snapped his fingers. “I staked it all day yesterday. You know, a year since the disappearance. Just in case something happened or the guy, the doer, came back by.”
“Anything?”
Washington shook his head and dropped into a brooding silence.
But we didn’t stop. If Washington wanted me to see the school, the view had been quick. We kept heading west and eventually came upon a series of brick towers that somehow looked abandoned in some way. I knew what they were. The projects. They were dimly lit monoliths against the blue-black sky. They had assuredly taken on the appearance of those that were housed within. They were cold and despairing, the have-nots of the city skyline.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“You know what this place is?”
“Yeah. I went to school here—I mean in Chicago. Everybody knows Cabrini-Green. What about it?”
“I grew up here. So did Jumpin’ John Brooks.”
Immediately, I thought of the odds. First of just surviving in such a place, next of surviving and then becoming a cop.
“Vertical ghettos, each one of them. Me and John used to