The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 27

CHICAGO.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

IT TOOK JACK Cogan five days to hunt me down. I don't know why because I was where anyone with half a brain would expect me to be. In my office. At the back table in Finnegan's, drinking New York sours and watching some old film on the screen. You know the kind; girl meets boy, boy gets killed, girl saves every cent to bring him back to life, boy goes off with someone else . . .

Finnegan had turned down the lights; instantly lowering the ceiling and sending the wall into shadow. The place smelt of cigar smoke, whisky and cologne. The way you would expect a Chicago speakeasy to smell.

The bar stools held memories of those who'd already left. Little Pete, who overflowed everything except a four-seater settee; a wh.o.r.e I knew from somewhere else; a couple of soldiers; and a man who spent half an hour watching me before glancing away when I caught his stare.

He left shortly afterwards.

Maybe he had another appointment, and maybe pulling back my jacket to reveal a Colt 45 in my belt made him decide to leave me alone. That's what I thought at the time. When Jack Cogan came bl.u.s.tering into Finnegan's with his shoulders rolling and his belly jutting proudly, I knew the watcher had been one of Jack's sneaks.

"Take a seat," I said.

"Yeah," said Cogan. "I just did."

Leaning forward, he let his jacket drop open.

"Sweet rig," I said, looking at his double holster "Where d'you get it. Wal-Mart?"

Jack Cogan scowled. "From Lucky himself."

That was Lucky Luciano XI, unless it was Lucky Luciano X. They had a high attrition rate in that family. Since gang positions became hereditary, we'd seen some weird s.h.i.t in this G.o.dforsaken city; like thirteen-year-old capos running whole districts and a seven-year-old pimp managing a stable of hookers without knowing what the punters were buying.

"You're a hard man to find."

"Can't have been looking hard enough."

Jack was broad and barrel-chested, running to fat. At the moment his chest was larger than his gut, but it was only a matter of time. He tipped his head to one side, inviting me to explain.

"It's been a bad year. This is the only bar where I'm not banned." Glancing at the door, I noticed three plain-clothes officers. They weren't clients for sure. They owned all their own teeth, wore clean clothes and were sober. One of those was possible, two at a stretch . . .

But all three?

"I'm touched," I said. "You brought backup."

Jack Cogan flushed.

You can probably tell, the police captain and I go way back. In fact, we go back so far that I can remember when he was thin and he can remember when I was rich, successful and kept the key that wound up his boss.

"Al . . ." he said, and his use of my first name killed my grin faster than a gun ever could. "I need to know. Where were you between two and three o'clock this morning?"

"Can't remember."

"Listen to me . . ."

"Mean it," I said. "Had my memory wipe this morning. Last three days. s.h.i.t, I guess. Must have been, or I wouldn't have bothered to wipe them." Pulling an envelope from my pocket, I pushed it across.

You would think it was poisonous from the way Jack Cogan hesitated to touch it. Although it might have been the colour, which was purple.

"Cla.s.sy," he said.

A young woman I couldn't remember told me she didn't want to see me again. She told me this in childlike writing with tear splotches crinkling the page. So I guess we'd gone from romance to break up in fewer than three days. Impressive, even by my standards.

"You're in trouble." Jack Cogan was saying.

"Guess I am," I said. "If her brothers or father ever catch up with me."

"No," said Cogan. "I mean you're in real trouble."

"And you're bringing me in?"

"Yeah," he said. "Felt I owed you that." The captain nodded at my screen. "Watched any news recently?" His sigh answered his own question. "Guess not, or you wouldn't be sitting round here drinking those."

Without asking, he leant over and flicked channels.

My face stared back at me. Only it was me as I might have been; if I were sober and my hair was clean and I'd bothered to shave any time in the last week. This version of me wore a pin-stripped suit, with a fancy waistcoat and patent leather shoes. He was carrying a tommy gun, the traditional mark of a recognized gang boss. The gun looked old, but it wasn't. Not really. My grandfather had it made the day he moved up from consigliere to capo.

"You might want to turn up the sound."

I did as Jack suggested, and discovered what part of me already knew. The other Jonny Falcone XI had checked out with a shot to the head.

"Professional," said the presenter.

A thin woman came on to talk about Chicago traditions and that particular MO. She talked about stuff that hadn't happened as well. Gut shots, blindings, slashes to the throat, tongues ripped out, t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es removed and sewn into the mouth; nothing everybody hadn't heard three hundred times before.

Round here the bosses appointed the mayor, and they helped choose the governor, and the governor helps choose the president. It was the system that had been in place since the president realized only the bosses could make prohibition stick, because only they had a cast-iron gold-plated reason for wanting it to stick. It was what made them rich.

"So," said the presenter. "You're saying this is capo a capo, right?"

The woman hesitated. "It's what that particular MO would suggest, but there's another rumour . . ."

"What's all this got to do with me?" I demanded.

Something like sympathy showed in Jack Cogan's eyes. "We need you down the station," he said.

"We've got your fingerprints," said the man. "Your DNA and your ugly face on tape. All you got to do is sign." Picking up a rubber hose, he slashed me across the lip and grinned when pain forced its way between my teeth.

He and his companion had me naked and tied to a chair, with blood filling my mouth and three of my teeth shining like cheap ivory on the cell floor. I'd already watched myself limp down a corridor onscreen, slowly open a door and slip through it. Exactly 180 seconds later came the sound of a shot, exactly fifteen seconds after that I limped back through the door, shut it quietly behind me and shuffled my way downstairs. I came out of the wipe with one knee broken. Don't know how it happened any more than anything else that happened in those three days.

"You listening?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm listening."

He hit me again anyway; swung the hose with enthusiasm, to make me listen harder. I knew him from my old life. While the other enforcer looked like the kid of someone I used to know.

Probably was. As I said, all gang jobs are hereditary.

One point troubled me though. I'd expected Jack Cogan to do the dirty work and here I was with a couple of high-level enforcers doing it themselves. Made no sense. At least, not to me.

"Why not leave this to Jack?" I asked.

For a moment, I thought the two men were going to tell me they asked the questions. But the man with the rubber hose grabbed a chair, flipped it round and straddled it, pushing his face close to mine. "Only three people it can be," he said. "Freddy, Machine Gun or you. Now my boss knows it's not him. And Mickey's boss knows it's not him. So that just leaves you . . ."

Digging into his pocket, he extracted a pair of pliers, a switchblade, a lighter and something that looked like cotton thread, and laid the first three on the table. In the time it took me to realize the fourth was not cotton; he's wrapped it round my ear and tugged.

"f.u.c.k . . ."

Then he reached for my other ear. "Come on, Jonny," he said. It was a day for people calling me by my first name. "You know how it goes. We slice off your ears. We sever your fingers. We crush your toes and then we crush your b.a.l.l.s. a.s.suming you're too stupid to have signed before then."

The other enforcer snorted.

"So," he said. "Agree to sign and we'll get you a doctor. It's late, we're all tired, and we all know you're going to confess eventually."

The judge had a face like a sucked lemon or maybe she was constipated. Either way, she twisted her lips and shuffled in her seat; every moue of distaste and twitch of discomfort captured on camera. And there were numerous cameras, journalists and members of the public. The demand for seats for my trial had been so great the city had been forced to hold a lottery.

Now, I am sure there are prosecution lawyers who are polite, intelligent, quietly spoken and understated. The small man who stalked out into the well of the court was not one of them. Glancing around him, Mr Dalkin stopped when his eyes reached the jury box and he gazed at each juror sympathetically. I don't know why he didn't just confess, his expression said. I don't know why you're being put through this. And then he turned to me.

"Tell me," he demanded. "Why you refused to take a lie detector test."

"I didn't."

Mr Dalkin rolled his eyes at the jury and turned to where I stood behind bulletproof gla.s.s. "Then why are the results of that test not entered with the court?"

I shrugged.

"You don't have an answer?"

"I took the test," I told him. "But the results prove nothing."

"How is that possible?" he said. "How can they not show anything?"

"Because I had a memory wipe the morning after the murder."

He grinned wolfishly and flicked his gaze towards the judge, to check that she was paying attention. She was, leaning slightly forward to catch his reply. "Are you telling me that's a coincidence?" he said. "That you just happened to have a memory wipe that morning?"

I nodded.

"The defendant will answer the question," the judge ordered.

"Yes," I said. "It's just coincidence."

"And when was the last occasion you had a memory wipe before this?" Miles Dawson demanded. He was smiling.

"Three weeks earlier."

That was true and the police had already checked. In the last five years I'd had seventy-three memory wipes. Jack Cogan made the bank double-check the figure, and when they told him it was correct, he went to the clinic himself to check it was true.

"But why?" He'd asked me.

"Because I get bored."

"And memory wipes stop you getting bored?"

"No," I said. "They stop me remembering what's bored me."

He'd sighed, offered me a coffee and muttered that he was sorry. We both knew what he meant. Jack Cogan was sorry he had to hand me over to the enforcers. He was sorry he couldn't fix the jury. He was sorry he couldn't have the machine-guns that would kill me loaded with blanks and give me an exploding vest.

It wouldn't be the first time that happened.

When Mr Dalkin kept pushing the memory wipe angle, I told him how many I'd had in the last five years and suggested he confirm this with the police. He decided to move on to other matters after that.

"What you're going to see," he told the jury, "is horrific. If I could spare you this, I would. If the man in the dock had any decency . . ." The little man paused to glare at me. "He would spare you having to see this by pleading guilty. But then, if he had any decency he wouldn't have done what you're about to see."

The lights went down, the shutters were closed, and a screen on a side wall began to flicker and then clear as the clerk of the court played back the house security tape from that night. At first none of us could see anything. We were looking at the wrought-iron gates to a mansion and we were looking at them from inside. From a camera just above the front door to judge from the angle of the picture onscreen.

I hadn't seen this section of tape before. I'd seen shots of the body, close-ups of the bullet wound meant to make me confess out of horror for what I had done. But everything I'd seen began with the corridor outside the boss's study. This was outside the house itself, and at the moment the killer was a shadow outside the gate.

He limped up to the gate, slapped his hand on the lock and blinked as a flash of light read his palm and lit up his face. A hundred people, maybe 150 filled the court, and all of them turned to stare at me.

A click announced the gate had unlocked and a shuffle of gravel could be heard as the killer made his way towards the front steps. An automated machine-gun bolted to a gatepost followed him and a tiny gun satellite dropped into view, skimmed once around his head and then slipped away.

As the killer approached the front door, it clicked open for him. "Welcome," said the house AI.

The killer nodded absent-mindedly.

In the light from the hallway, his face could be seen more clearly than ever. It was my face. His hair was dirty and his face unshaven. A tatty overcoat hid a shoulder holster that became visible as he turned towards the stairs and his coat swung open slightly.

He checked his watch.

And the entire court glanced at my wrist. I wondered why the guards had given me back my Omega before letting me into court, and now I knew. The heavy black ring around the dial and the fat metal links of its strap were unmistakable.

He took the steps clumsily, obviously troubled by his bad leg. All the same, he knew where he was going and that, in itself, was significant. On the landing, he looked once into a mirror to adjust his hair slightly, brushing it out of his eyes. Then he pulled a Colt from its holster and dropped out the clip, skimmed his eye down the clip to check it was fully loaded and slipped it back into the gun, flicking the safety catch and jacking the slide.

After which, he extracted a silencer from his side pocket and began to screw it on to the muzzle of the gun. Something made him change his mind, because he shrugged, in exactly the way I shrug, unscrewed the silencer and dropped it back into his pocket. A few seconds later he was in the corridor and approaching the door.

As we watched the screen froze.

"What did you say to him?" demanded the defence attorney. "In those three minutes when he was staring death in the face. Did you mock him? Tell him he had it coming?"

"It wasn't me."

But I knew all the things I would have wanted to say.