The Blade Itself Read online

  “Your girlfriend will love these,” she said as she wrapped them.

  “Hope so. I’m kind of in the doghouse.” He passed her the American Express.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I keep making eyes at blondes.” He winked to let her know he was easy, not to sweat it. “Anybody tell you you’ve got a great smile?”

  She blushed, and giggled, and forgot to ask for his ID.

  At the Mobil station across the parking lot, a bored teenager lounging behind the counter sold him cigarettes and pointed toward the Metra. It was a beautiful day, and he took his time walking there, smoking and checking out the new models of cars as they whizzed by. They hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. Funny, only seven years, but he’d half thought they’d be hovercars.

  The Metra looked exactly the same, grimy tracks and clean trains, the seating double-stacked to pack in rush-hour commuters neat as a matchbook. It was only about three, so the train was less than half full. Four dollars and ninety cents bought a ticket to Union Station. He took a window seat and propped his boots on the row in front of him. The speed made a blur of the scenery, reds and yellows and oranges melting like candle wax.

  An hour later, he stepped into the graceful halls of Union Station. Rush hour was beginning, and a crowd of commuters already pushed through the marble corridors. Clothes were different, and hairstyles. From a bench he watched the crush of everyday people. Everyone had a mobile phone to one ear, tiny things like something out of Star Trek. As they flowed complacently along, they whined into the phones about their little emergencies. Called home to say they were running late, not to wait for them. Glared at watches and sighed at the lost time.

  Assholes.

  At the Amtrak counter he used the old guy’s Visa to buy a ticket to St. Pete, Florida. No luggage. He smiled, walked around the corner, and threw the ticket in the trash, tossing all three credit cards in after it.

  Then Evan McGann stepped out into a spectacular Chicago afternoon, two grand in jewelry in his pocket and a money clip filled with a righteous two hundred and twelve dollars – counting the remaining four the state had provided to bring him home.

  4

  A Man in Mind

  Nothing clicked today, and it didn’t help that Danny couldn’t focus.

  In front of him, five skeletal stories of structural steel rose to cut the sky in neat rectangles. A yard hand strode across a beam forty feet in the air, his orange jacket stark against swirling gray clouds. In one corner, a welder knelt over a torch, sparks cracking as flame kissed metal. The wind made plastic sheeting snap.

  Evan was back in town.

  Not the problem, he reminded himself. The problem was that on the schedule he’d prepared, this building had a roof and walls. In reality, it stood exposed. The materials they’d been waiting on hadn’t shown, and winter was fast approaching.

  Still. Evan was back.

  “We get our shipment next week, we’re fine.” The foreman, a burly guy named Jim McCloskey, moved a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other as he spoke. His son stood beside him, lips turned up in a permanent sneer. “You know these things, Dan. Never on time. But it’ll get here.”

  Being called “Dan” always set his teeth on edge, like he was back in school, the nuns preaching arithmetic and the Holy Trinity in the same breath. Father and Son making two he could deal with, but the mathematics of the Holy Spirit had never quite added up for him.

  “Everybody in town is fighting to finish before the freeze,” Danny said. “There’s what, four high-rises going up in the Loop? Plus office parks out by the airport, the new hospital. All we got is a midsized loft complex and a couple of restaurants.”

  “Even if it’s the week after, we’ll be okay. Ruiz and my boys have already got the floors, some of the wall studding, a lot of the stuff we usually do later. Once the steel arrives, we’ll get the exterior up pronto.”

  Danny shook his head. “It’s getting cold already.”

  “Just an early chill.”

  “Sure. Seventy again before you know it. We’ll be working in bathing suits.”

  The younger McCloskey snorted. “You mean we’ll be working.”

  Danny stiffened, then turned slowly, letting his gaze slide like he had all the time in the world. Gave the kid a street stare that mingled boredom and threat, like a predator who wasn’t hungry but would consider a sport kill. The kid’s eyes flicked to the building, back to Danny for a fraction of a second, then quick down to his feet. He muttered something vague. Danny held the stare as he spoke. “Why don’t we finish in the office?”

  Neither McCloskey needed to be told whom he was talking to. Danny turned and walked to the trailer that served as the on-site office, a single-wide with cinder blocks stacked as a staircase. As he pushed open the thin door, dry air and the smell of burned coffee washed over him. Space heaters blew on either side of a cluttered desk, below cheap horizontal blinds. A tired green couch ran along one wall; Danny’s boss, Richard, liked to joke that his son had been conceived on it, usually slapping backs and braying with laughter as he said it. The trailer, one of several owned by O’Donnell Construction, moved from job to job, a gypsy home for the men who built Chicago. Danny took off his hard hat – project-manager white, as opposed to McCloskey’s blue – and walked to the Mr. Coffee.

  “I’m sorry about that, Dan. He’s a good kid, a worker. He’s just young.” McCloskey stood like a supplicant, hands folded and eyes down.

  Danny laughed. “You think I brought you in here to chew you out about the boy?”

  McCloskey shrugged.

  “Don’t worry about it. I mouthed off to a few guys in my day. I imagine you did, too.”

  “One or two.” The foreman smiled.

  “It’s forgotten. No, I wanted to talk privately is all. Jim, I’m sorry, but I’m going to recommend to Richard that we put this site on hold for the winter.”

  “That’s a mistake. We’ve got two months, maybe more. We can get it done.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m telling you, I think we can.”

  Danny paused. McCloskey was a good man, a thirty-year veteran. No point pissing in his yard. Besides, the kid’s jibe had touched a nerve, damn him. All those years of listening to Dad, dirty-nailed and half dead in the kitchen, giving his mother an earful about the goddamn management, how they came in and messed with a man’s livelihood, then drove off in a shiny new truck. That was the way most managers worked – contracting was fiercely competitive, and the unspoken rule was that the less the grunts on the ground knew about the abstractions of economics, the better.

  Screw that.

  Danny gestured to the card table. “Let me level with you.”

  McCloskey looked surprised, then nodded, set down his hat and took a seat. Danny laid it out, the hard facts of the business. How if they split their resources trying to finish this site, they risked not getting the other two enclosed. Once the walls were up, crews could work inside, hanging drywall, rigging electrical, and detailing.

  “Dan, no disrespect, but I got yard boys out there know this stuff.”

  “What they don’t know is how high the stakes are now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Money’s tight. The economy, the whole Internet thing, it hit us, too. We had two projects default on final payments this year. Not bad people, just ran out of money.” Danny sipped his coffee. “You remember the office building over on Racine, our big score? That was one of them.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Exactly. Listen, I’d love to see this place humming over the winter. But it’s a bad play. Something goes wrong, we can’t get the other two ready…” He let it dangle, gave McCloskey time to make up his own mind.

  After a pause, the man spoke. “My crew?”

  “I’ve talked Richard into moving them to the other two. We’ve thrown some big bids for next year. We may have to go to shifts, but nobody loses their job this winter.”

&n
bsp; “Me?”

  “We have work for you. And you’ll get to finish here, Jim.”

  McCloskey nodded slowly, the splintered toothpick in his mouth bobbing. “All right. I’ll tell the boys.”

  He rose with quiet dignity, and for a moment Danny remembered his father mopping up the last egg scraps and straightening for work. He’d always taken a moment to glance around the kitchen, as though confirming everything was in the right place – wife washing dishes, son rubbing sleep from his eyes, sunbeams playing through the curtains. He’d nod, just barely, giving man-to-man respect to God for keeping an orderly world. Then he’d grab his hard hat and leave, his step marked by the shuffle from his bad knee.

  McCloskey opened the door, paused. “Dan. Thanks.”

  “No worries. One thing, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Call me Danny, would you?”

  The foreman smiled, nodded, and stepped out. The shutting door cut off the crackle of welding and the wind’s whistle.

  Danny took a sip of the godawful burned coffee and rocked the folding chair back on two legs. He felt good. He’d done what needed doing, protected the company and saved Richard’s ass – again – but he’d done it right. For a moment, he imagined how his father would have felt being included in a conversation like that, treated like a man in mind as well as body.

  He suspected the old man would have liked that quite a bit.

  The thought made him grin. Then, unbidden, a stretch of the Eisenhower arose in his mind. Soft flakes of snow. A squeal of tires. His smile wilted.

  A clatter from outside brought him back to the moment. Forget it. Square up the paperwork here, then head back to the office. Forward motion. Forget Dad, and forget Evan.

  So he was back in town. So what?

  Danny was done with him.

  5

  Little Boxes

  Danny hadn’t really been in the mood for a drink, and at first he’d told McCloskey he had to get home; then, seeing what it had cost the foreman to invite a manager out for a beer, he’d said what the hell, there was time for one or two. They’d ended up at Lee’s, a workingman’s bar on Division with press-paneled walls and a faded newspaper cutout of an American flag pinned above the bourbon. A shovel-faced bartender poured their shots while he yelled at his granddaughter to change the damn music before it attracted yuppies. The girl, a petite thing with Kool-Aid hair, smilingly ignored him, nodding to the mellow electronic textures she’d put on the boom box.

  They’d been there half an hour, chatting about nothing in particular, before McCloskey got serious. “Listen, Dan – Danny, sorry – about this afternoon. I want to thank you again.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Really.” As McCloskey extricated a toothpick from his vest pocket, Danny took the opportunity to change the subject. “What’s with those, anyway?”

  “The picks?” McCloskey grimaced. “Smoked two packs a day for twenty years. Quit a couple back. My youngest daughter. Chew one of these instead of lighting a straight.”

  “It help?”

  “Some. But anything you do that long, you never get all the way over it.”

  Danny nodded, sipped his whiskey, enjoying the bite. “How many kids you have?”

  “Nine. You believe it?”

  Danny laughed. “I’m Irish.”

  “So cheers, then.” They clinked glasses and threw down the whiskey. McCloskey gestured to the girl, and she came over with the bottle. Up close Danny saw a diamond stud in one side of her nose. She smiled as she poured copper into the heavy-bottomed glasses.

  Danny said to her, “Can I ask you something?” She narrowed her eyes, but nodded. “This music.”

  “Bugging you? I can put on that shit-kicker stuff we usually play.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. Just curious what it is.”

  “It’s trip-hop,” she said. “With dub influences.”

  Danny smiled over at McCloskey. “Used to be it only took one word.”

  “Tell me,” the foreman said. “You should hear the stuff my kids listen to.”

  “So now can I ask you something?” The girl set the bottle down, looking at Danny.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You guys aren’t planning any trouble, are you? Because if you are, you ought to know we keep a pistol under the bar.”

  He squinted at her, surprised. “No, no trouble. Just here for a couple of drinks.” A tingle ran up the backs of his hands. “Why?”

  “Because that big guy’s been eye-fucking you since he came in.”

  Tension locked his neck muscles. Over the stereo, a woman’s voice whispered something about black flowers blossoming. Slowly, Danny spun on his stool.

  He loomed near the back wall, feet apart like a boxer. His gaze smashed through the cigarette smoke and gruff laughter to hit Danny with physical force, and Danny’s fingers slipped a little on the glass, splashing some of the whiskey on his shirt. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then with measured steps, Evan started over.

  “Someone you know?” McCloskey spoke with the quiet of a man who could handle himself.

  Danny’s mind raced. What the hell was Evan doing here? And what was he supposed to do now? Introduce the foreman like they were all buddies? Spin the stool away and pretend Evan didn’t exist? Who was this guy walking toward him, and what did he mean to Danny Carter, regular civilian?

  “It’s okay,” he said, not sure it was.

  And then Evan was there. Prison had boiled him down, hardening the angles of his face and neck. Whip-cord muscles bulged against his sweater. His curly hair was neatly kept, the sides slicked back.

  His dark eyes betrayed nothing at all.

  “Long time.” Danny struggled to keep his game face, his heart thumping.

  Evan flicked his gaze over to McCloskey, then back again. Danny turned. “Jim, would you give us a minute? Evan’s an old friend.”

  The foreman drew himself up on the stool. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  The man hesitated, then stood. “You know, I should probably get gone anyway. The wife’ll be expecting me.”

  Danny nodded. “Thanks for the drinks.” He kept his eyes locked on Evan’s as the foreman stood, paused, and then walked toward the door. For a moment, Danny felt an urge to call the guy back, but instinct kicked in, and instinct had only one rule. So he played it cool. “Buy you a beer?”

  Evan smiled thinly. “Same old Danny. Slick as shit.” He pulled the stool out of his way and leaned on the bar. He looked awesomely fit, his movements spare but powerful, like inside he was all coiled springs.

  “So.”

  “So.”

  “Bad?”

  Evan shrugged.

  The granddaughter came over with beer and whiskey, her eyes framing questions Danny ignored. It was like that nightmare he had: One minute, he’d been in the life he knew, then without warning, here he was sitting beside his childhood friend and former partner. He didn’t know what to feel. He wasn’t scared exactly, but he had that knife’s edge thinness he used to get on the job, the sense that things could go either way. There’d been moments standing in some stranger’s living room, flashlight in hand, when it’d come on him, this sense that fate wasn’t a guide written in a celestial book, but rather a tightrope, a narrow and shaking line above the abyss. One wrong breath could overbalance you.

  “How about you, Danny? How you been keeping yourself?”

  “I’m good. Better than ever.”

  “Yeah?” Evan glanced over with a smile. “You a millionaire, gonna remember your friends?”

  Danny grinned, surprised. The conversation came easier than he’d expected. It was almost fun, trading snaps and sparring. “Sure. I’ll buy you a house next to the mayor.”

  “Daley don’t live in Bridgeport these days. Left ’bout the same time I did. Different places, of course.”

  “I left, too,” Danny said. “I’m on the North Side now.”

  “No shit.”
/>   “No shit.”

  “And you’re not in the game anymore.”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.” Evan took a long pull of beer.

  It wasn’t, but Danny didn’t see any point in saying that. So he reached for the whiskey, held it up to Evan. “Cheers. To being out.”

  They clinked glasses. Danny had always felt you could go too far trying to read someone’s soul in his eyes, but still, something he saw in Evan’s reminded him that they weren’t exactly buddies anymore. After all, the guy hadn’t turned up by accident. Danny thought about asking what he was doing here, decided he didn’t want to haul the answer out in the open, where they would have to deal with it directly. Sometimes a mutual lie was easier for everybody.

  “You still seeing that same woman, the one you were getting serious about?”

  “Karen,” Danny said. “Yeah.”

  “Long time. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, I thought maybe I saw her.” Evan took out a pack of Winstons, tapped one free, lit it with a shiny silver Zippo. “At the trial.”

  Danny’s heart went to his throat.

  “I’d only met her the once, but I’m pretty sure it was Karen. Yeah?”

  Danny had wanted to sneak in himself, one last gesture of solidarity, but couldn’t have imagined a more boneheaded play. So he’d cooked dinner, opened wine, and asked Karen for the biggest favor of their relationship. Her older brothers had been rough guys that had landed in County more than once, so it wasn’t a totally alien world. Still, he’d expected a refusal. Instead she’d just stared at the candles and asked, in voice so soft it was nearly a whisper, if he had quit for good.

  Until that moment, he hadn’t been sure. Not in his marrow. But when she’d asked him, this half-Italian bartendress with ambitions to manage the place, this woman who knew his past but still trusted in their future, that was it.

  He’d promised, and she’d gone to the trial. Watched the pawnshop owner testify from a wheelchair. Looked at photographs of the woman’s face, one eye swollen shut, nose broken, as the police described how they arrived just in time. And when it was all over, her cheeks white and a little tremble in her voice, Karen had made the only ultimatum of their relationship. If he ever slipped, she’d walk without a backward glance.