Skin the Cat Read online

  With Lilly and Brant now in the fourth grade, I salvaged my role as an active father in their lives once again. The new closeness with my kids forced me to see the hard truth, that indeed I had cut and run, choosing planes over recitals and a career over family. The kids blossomed with the newfound joy that dad’s back, and we elastically snapped back together fast. Emily and I on the other hand, not so much. We found ourselves in a much murkier place. She often seemed separate and alone. Simultaneously both present and missing. Even in the sunlight, shadows crossed her face. Maybe she was dealing with her own shame. Or worse yet, maybe she missed that little prick. Maybe she’d fallen in love. But I couldn’t go there. My brain would explode inside my skull. Plus, I refused to save her from herself or her consequences. Besides I had plenty of my own problems. Like would I ever feel anything other than prickled queasiness whenever she brushed against me? And go ask all the broken and busted storage cabinets in my garage when my spontaneous fits of rage might subside. Never mind the more mundane details, like say, sleeping arrangements. Would Emily and I stay in the same bedroom ever again? Or even sleep in the same bed? Make love? While the questions perforated our marriage like a thousand termite holes, good things were also starting to happen. Just recently I developed the ability to look Emily in the eyes again. Not just a glance, but to really hold her gaze for a moment or so. I mean, we weren’t holding hands on strolls yet. Nowhere near it. And she was upstairs I was downstairs. But the value of sustained eye contact with my wife could not be dismissed. It seemed like the only glue left that might hold us together. Even if the healing process that lay ahead seemed to drag on forever, and at times stung a lot more without a bottle of booze handy.

  But sobriety brought unexpected gifts. For instance, a couple months following my discharge from inpatient rehabilitation, my boss Sema Rodriguez surprised me with an invitation to lunch on West North Avenue. Over the course of a Mediterranean spicy chicken shawarma, fresh oven baked naan, whipped hummus with fresh dill and chai tea with cream, I found myself rehired on a probationary status as a demoted yet functional field agent. Yes, I would have to hit the pavement again on my feet like the early days. Yes, the pay was almost a third of what it had been. But I was bringing home a paycheck once again. I no longer had to fly away from my family. After considering all the pluses and minuses, it was one hell of a good deal.

  Sema immediately tested my pledge to be a worthwhile (and sober) field agent by handing me a new case assignment, a bizarre insurance fraud case which due to its deeper criminal undertones involved heavy collaboration with the Chicago Police Department. And honestly, I wanted to be grateful to Sema but this was a “now you have to prove yourself to me” case. It was every private investigator’s worst nightmare. See, the looming perception was that the CPD were territorial assholes who detested the practice of “private agency collaboration,” especially when it came to working with those “know it all” private detectives who were lone wolves in the trade.

  The source of the hostility sprang from the higher ranks of bruised badges and bureaucratic egos running for reelection: “We aren’t good enough so one of the Mayor’s buddies went and hired Johnny-on-the-spot to do our job for us… the right way.” But being on the other team, I saw it differently. Basically, our pay-for-fee clients, in some cases very large corporations, purchased high-end resources like private investigation agency services (aka me) to produce optimal outcomes, which in turn increased shareholder value, the mantra and lifeblood of all corporations. It boiled down to this: With tax-funded public servants, hundreds of cases were being worked on at a time, and who knows if yours got shuffled to the back of a file cabinet drawer or if anybody actually cared about it. With us you bought a better product. And quite a few cops at the CPD hated our guts for it. End of story.

  And for me making amends to my boss and getting my career back? Sema assigned me a high-profile investigation regarding the nationally renowned and missing Harvard physicist, Dr. Harold Emory Lassiter, his dead wife and her missing two million-dollar life insurance policy. Evidence had surfaced that Lassiter was indeed the killer. He was on the run. And I was brought on the case to catch him. Now after a couple weeks on this very frosty Spring morning, I’d single-handedly tracked the suspect to Belmont Harbor to a specific boat. Everyone was positive the guy was no longer in the United States. But outlaws? They always come home. Always. I saw him. He didn’t see me. And so I made the call.

  Within thirty minutes a motorcade of several unmarked black SUVs belonging to the Chicago Police Department SWAT team slow to a stop at the main entrance of Belmont Harbor. The lead driver stuck his arm out the window and punched a code into a box. A green light spun on a post and the crossing gate suddenly jerked to life. The procession moved quietly in single-file, each vehicle giving a soft bounce over a speed hump as they followed yellow arrows leading to a parking lot near the water’s edge. There the marina stretched across the harbor’s rippling black water, the vast aluminum grid of perpendicular intersections leading to hundreds of boat slips. Rows of sailboat masts replicated themselves into the distance like an army of white spears aimed at the sky. The burning fog of Lake Michigan filled the horizon, where the Sears Tower loomed high in the Chicago skyline.

  I hopped out of our cruiser and grabbed my shoulder holster to unsnap my gun. The gun wasn’t there. And it hadn’t been there since rehab. But it didn’t stop me from trying to grab it. My right to carry a gun on the job had been revoked for now. Terms of my probation. My actions, my consequences. My internal voice was often filled with recovery talk. And as long as I wasn’t drinking, I assumed this was a good thing. Jogging left and dropping behind a row of plastic recycling bins, I fell in with a plainclothes CPD tactical unit moving on foot. High above, a Blue Heron scaled a massive updraft and tilted on a gentle wing, where it hung stationary on some invisible boundary line like a warning. Maybe even a boundary line that divided the past and the future. Maybe the bird hanging there, telling me to turn back. But there was no going back to the dead past. The pain. I shrugged it off.

  The tactical team eased by a one-story facility building, crept behind a cage filled with rowing oars and life jackets, staying low and always moving. We circled the harbor on foot. Rapid. Silent. Trying to get the jump on Lassiter. Me hoping he was there to begin with. We reached the dock marked “D” as in “Dipshit did you think you could kill your wife and get away with it?” Now onto the floating gangplank, we crossed over the water where our leader, the universally despised Sergeant Cummings unlocked a steel mesh door and waved the four-man team through. When I attempted to slip by, he chest blocked me, and pushed me back and slammed the chain-link gate closed, grinning with hate. Ten years working together and all we shared professionally together was mutual contempt and disdain. We were two men that operated from opposing bases, him sucking up to bureaucratic authority, a real company man, swinging dick, reactive, in your face, getting off on the chain of command and power, never seeing more than one step ahead at a time. Me, always seeing the bigger picture, the best I could at all times anyway, challenging group think at every turn. Admittedly a lone wolf. Cummings and I mixed like oil and water.

  He stuck his finger through the chain-link, licking his teeth, smiling. “Detective, this is where you fuck off.”

  “You wanna be a prick, out here?” I sighed throwing my hands up. “Like you want to do this right now Cummings?”

  “Don’t like being told what to do, huh?” his lips went electrically pink against brilliant white teeth, snarling.

  “Suit yourself,” I said and slowly lifted my middle finger between his eyes and held it there. “I already got what I want. My information equals my arrest. Your crew can do the heavy lifting.” I gave yawn, faking boredom. But my blood boiled with anger. Hunting Lassiter day and night, 24-hour days, broken naps, turning over every scrap of evidence, chasing down false leads, living off Styrofoam cups of coffee, the grueling investigative work str
etching over weeks now. Why the enthusiasm? This case meant my reinstatement. And man, oh man, I really wanted to see Lassiter go down with my own eyes.

  “Righhht,” Cummings stretched the word out. “Burns you up, don’t it?” He gave me that ugly little laugh that went hawk, hawk, hawk. “Tell me, how it feel to be all locked out’ the glory?” He pushed his face against the chain-link. Hawk, hawk, hawk. “You know- and I know- you ain’t cuff him, you ain’t got shit Shade.”

  “Not on this one Sargeant,” I licked my lips and gave him my back, hiding the surge of stomach acid hitting the back of my throat.

  “Oh yeah?” He bobbed his head. Hawk, hawk, hawk. “Different criteria…huh? Sheeeyut white boy you don’t spin a tale.” Hawk, hawk, hawk.

  “Just remember my friend,” I spoke into the wind like he didn’t even exist. “You can brag all you want about slapping on the handcuffs. But the Tribune? It always gets the story right. My information my arrest.” On this I faced him again and pointed at the boat, arm fully extended, taking on a ‘fetch-boy’ tone. “Now go get my guy.”

  Cummins’s eyes went all crazy. He shook the fence hard with all ten fingers and half-shouted. “Hey cracker-mother-fucker! I ain’t your nigger!”

  “Well then,” I grinned. “Whose nigger are you?” I turned and walked down the plank and stepped off the dock like a winner. But I was burned up. Pissed. Cummings had rocked me. Feeling the rage come on, I bit my lip hard and waited for the taste of blood. I thought of the bird. That Blue Heron. Maybe “God” didn’t want me here. Besides, I had no gun. I couldn’t shoot back. But Cummings could. Better his ass blown off than mine.

  I made my way back across the dock and jogged over the face of a long asphalt slope to a slight elevation that gave me a bird’s view of the entire tactical operation. The agents moved within a few slips of the target, where I imagined the world renown Lassiter was most likely lounging in his dead wife’s robe, having a prime-rib and champagne breakfast on his dead wife’s thirty-two foot Sea Ray 320. From my vantage point, the SWAT’s physical approach directly from the rear, stern-side only where the route remained glazed-over in patches of ice, seemed horribly precarious even for am impulsive man of Cummings. The dock’s narrow width forced a single-file advance, a real bottle-neck scenario that reminded me of unwitting cowboys led into a canyon where an ambush awaited. A single snowflake materialized from the sky, trickled down and burned the skin just under my eye.

  On the northwest side of the harbor, two men sat in swivel chairs casting lines from a purple and red metallic flake bass boat. On the far side of the opposing bank, near the mouth of the bay, a man wearing a rumpled toboggan and a twisted scarf sat in a shitty, open-bow aluminum skiff with a sputtering outboard engine. He looked on quizzically, mesmerized by the field agents as they closed in to the target. The two bass fisherman cast line and cranked lures, totally oblivious to what was unfolding right before them.

  Inside the slip now, Cummings fist-pumped twice. The tactical team froze. With pistols double-clutched and compact machine guns aimed low, the sergeant touched his chest, patted the top of his head and pointed to them, and waved his palm low beside his hip. The agents fell in one by one, each slipping over the lip of the boat and onto the deck of the Sea Ray. The team gathered around the sliding glass door of the main cabin. Cummings hopped aboard, fingers ticking off a three-count and smashed his boot into a curtain of shattering glass. Something flittered in my peripheral vision, deep in the distance and far across the bay. The old man in the crappy, banged-up aluminum boat suddenly stood and yanked an object from his coat. What are you doing? What on earth is that? A phone? He began punching at it wildly. My hair stood on end, and I cupped my hands over my mouth to scream.

  The orange fireball engulfed the boat and the men in it- the explosion so intense it broke a heat wave across my face. The Sea Ray was there one moment and then it was gone. A second explosion, and the sky just above opened in black sheets. The concussion shook my chest. Inside the spinning embers came the screams of men. Dock lines melted and snapped like over-tightened guitar strings, their torched ends sizzling in the water. Only two agents stumbled outward from the fiery mayhem, their faces and bodies on fire, screeching as one by one they plopped into the gray water like charred statues. A plume of black smoke disgorged straight up into the atmosphere, opening like the head of the giant mushroom, the daylight within the harbor turning everything a sickly, post-apocalyptic yellow tinge. Lights and sirens blaring, three cop cars burst into the marina parking lot. Blue uniforms rushed the dock, hysterical, arms flapping, yelling into phones, and diving headlong into the icy water.

  The man inside the skiff pitched what I wagered to be a phone into the water, squatted down, revved the outboard motor, the nose pitching up at the sky as the engine whined. The craft sliced a deep white line across the liquid surface as it veered into a long arc, gaining speed to exit the harbor’s mouth where it vanished into Lake Michigan. I broke into a dead-ass sprint, legs pumping faster, feet drumming against the cold pavement. Almost forty years old and I was proud of my lanky physique. I still worked out every day but recently lost ten pounds thanks to my wife’s affair. I wore my thick, straight hair close-cropped on the sides, fuller on top, the bangs usually pushed up by sunglasses I wore more on my head than my face. Fair skinned, blue eyes, a hair under six-foot-tall, wide shoulders, narrow hips, people always complimented my bone structure often saying I reminded them of a better-looking actor or rock musician. I worked hard on my body and it showed.

  I caught sight of the boat in my peripheral vision, there in the distance and dashed over the edge of the parking area, scrambled up an embankment, over a massive corrugated drainage pipe and hopped a chain-link fence where I dropped off a steep ledge and landed hard. The impact triggered a spasm in my left side, the remnants of an old motorcycle injury. I ground my knuckles deep into the hip socket to soften it. Crouching low behind a thatch of pine trees, the man in the silver boat swung into plain sight, and glided toward shore at high speed. Hidden in the landscaped pine, I clamored across the mulch at full-limp, my hip on fire. A sign marked “LFT Access” gave way to a pedestrian ramp that led to the Chicago Lakefront Trail, the famous paved recreation path that ran for miles along the waterfront.

  The aluminum skiff came sweeping in and bounced hard against the cement embankment, the impact nearly tossing the driver out against the rocks. He was frantic but managed to shut off the engine and steady the boat. Scrambling onto the walkway, he peeled off his outer coveralls to reveal a crisp suit and tie worn beneath. A young woman wearing earbuds seemed entirely oblivious to the crazy wardrobe change as she jogged past, almost brushing him. He balled up the discarded clothes, pitched them into the lake, turned up the ramp, and came up the pedway fast…directly toward my position. And I recognized him: Lassiter. I slapped at my shoulder holster. No gun. Shit.

  Scanning the immediate surroundings, on the edge of a maintenance parking lot, a portable cement mixer sat partially covered with some industrial sheet plastic. I keyed in on a wooden two-by-four resting beside it, limped over, snatched the plank up, its weight heavy and unwieldy in my hands coated with dried cement. All the while Lassiter rose up the ramp, coming ever closer. Head on a swivel, I cast my gaze all around. Lassiter and I were completely alone. Incredibly he didn’t see me yet. Wincing against shocks of hip pain, I skipped to the top of the pedestrian ramp exit gate and crouched low behind some shrubbery. Dress shoes clicking up the walkway, the man breathing hard. The blue eyes from the mugshot. The famous physicist. Lassiter. I clutched the board over my shoulder, cranking it back like a baseball player swinging for the fences. He came bobbing up the ramp, head giving a slow turn, his eyes going wide just in time to see me take a full swing. Like a batter swinging for the fences, the board sailed through space, unfettered and flying free. Lassiter’s eyebrows tightened with confusion, mouth going slack as the alien object edged into his visual field, relentle
ssly moving in, so slow but ever nearer and closer. The plank and his face collided like two celestial objects meeting in space. Lumber and flesh collided with such purpose it seemed the two were trying to become one. The physicist’s facial bones caved in geometrically to accommodate the rectangular shape of the two-by-four, the nose compressing boxing-glove flat and teeth discharging into the air like spilled diamonds. His body orbited around the point of detonation, a floating astronaut with legs swinging skyward, the slow rotation of a weightless backflip, a man disconnected from everything, caught spinning and spinning forever. Until he smacked down on the concrete as still as a corpse. I dropped the board and flopped him over. What had been a famed physicist was now merely a wheezing pile of torn fabric and blood. Adjusting him on his side, I cleared his pathway and unpocketed my phone and dialed for help. “This is Detective Bardane, I’m just north of the harbor, at the next LFT access. I have the suspect in custody.” I hesitated feeling for a pulse. “And send an ambulance right away.”

  I gazed into the distance at the smoke cloud metastasizing over the harbor skyline and wondered if Cummings might be dead. Lassiter gurgled and moaned, coming around enough to narrow one eye on me. Scared and overwhelmed, face smashed, he put his hand out. And for reasons I can’t explain, I took it. “Professor,” I grunted. “Was it all worth it? You killed your wife for…for what? Some money? And now this? Here? Whether we want to admit it or not, we all have to live by the rules of the cosmos. No one is beyond it, Professor. This human thing. We’re all trapped.” I drew my hand away looking back toward the lake and sighed. “I can’t change it.”

  “Hold it right there, don’t make a fucking move.” The voice cried. “So much as move a finger and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” My face was pushed into the ground with handcuffs snapped on tight. Rookie cops. I gave it a quick calculation and grinned. With this bust, my full reinstatement was ensured. A throng of cops were moving in, murmuring and exchanging holy fucks. Somebody shouted in our direction. “Hey, why do you guys have Detective Bardane in cuffs?”