Partners

Crump Street bordered the south side of the Flea Market and it was lined with cars parked for the night. Tee Ray was walking briskly along the sidewalk, trying to muster the courage to call Tox and tell him he was finished for now. He had just earned $300 and wanted to go find his son. A sudden movement to his left and across the street caught his attention. A figure jumped from between two cars and yelled, “Police! Freeze!”

Tee Ray froze and threw both hands into the air.

“On the ground!” the cop yelled, and Tee Ray went to his knees, his hands still as high as he could reach. The cop sprinted across the street and emerged on the sidewalk a hundred feet in front of Tee Ray. He was white and stocky and was wearing jeans, a Blackhawks jersey, a rapper’s cap, and combat boots, and he appeared to be alone. He clutched a black pistol with both hands and aimed at Tee Ray as he advanced. “Get down!” he yelled.

“Don’t shoot, man!” Tee Ray said.

The cop kept coming in a low, awkward crouch, as if dodging gunfire, then he fired. The first shot hit the sidewalk in front of Tee Ray and sprayed flecks of concrete into his face. “Don’t shoot!” Tee Ray screamed as he frantically waved his hands over his head. The second shot grazed the bulky right shoulder pad of his oversized Goodwill overcoat. The third shot nailed his left elbow and spun him around. He screamed in pain as he scrambled desperately to crawl under a parked car.

“Don’t move!” the cop yelled. He fired again, and the fourth shot hit the side of the car. Tee Ray managed to get his.38 out of his pocket. He fired twice. The first shot missed everything. The second shot, a miracle, hit his assailant in the right eye.

3.

Buck Lester had been an Eagle Scout, an honor student, an all-state wrestler, and a decorated Marine. He had crammed a lot into his twenty-eight years and had joined the police force after spending six boring months behind a desk. His time in Iraq had instilled a need for excitement, and once he became a cop he had quickly completed SWAT training and landed a spot on the undercover narcotics unit.

Narcs never work alone. Never. But on the night Buck was killed, his partner was spending half an hour with his favorite street hooker in a flophouse not far from the Flea Market. Alone, Buck became bored and got tired of waiting. He crept through the streets of Little Angola, with one eye on the southeast corner of the Flea Market. He had been ordered to make a couple of arrests that night. A quota needed to be filled. When he saw the black guy with the oversized overcoat, he knew he had a mule.

His partner’s name was Keith Knoxel, a ten-year veteran with a thick disciplinary file. Knoxel had finished his business with the girl and was walking toward the Flea Market to find Buck. He heard voices close by, then gunfire, and ran to find it. Buck was on the ground, twitching, when Knoxel arrived. Knoxel aimed his gun at the black guy, who was crouched on the curb near a car.

He wished a thousand times he’d pulled the trigger.

The black guy stood, leaned on a car, tossed his weapon, threw up his hands, and said, “He tried to kill me, man.”

“Shut up!” Knoxel yelled.

Tee Ray’s elbow was burning and bleeding. To keep from getting shot again, he fell forward and lay facedown on the sidewalk, arms and legs spread as wide as possible. He was aware that the second cop picked up his gun. He was aware that the first one was groaning and gasping, the low, sick sounds of someone breathing their last. The second cop was barking into his radio.

Soon enough, Tee Ray heard sirens.

4.

Sebastian Rudd’s law office had once been a Moose Lodge, then a tattoo parlor, then a bar that catered to low-end lawyers. The high-end crowd gathered for drinks in the fancy clubs atop the tall buildings where they worked or in the private clubs in midtown, places few street lawyers would ever be welcome. And that was fine with the street lawyers, as it was with the big-firm boys.

When the bar went down in a foreclosure, Sebastian finagled a loan and bought the building. It wasn’t much of a structure, more of an old clapboard house with additions stuck hither and yon, but what it lacked in architectural virtuosity was more than made up for in location. It was directly across the street from the city jail, a hideous, monolithic high-rise with inmates on fifteen floors and cops and lawyers crawling like ants around its doors.

Just down the street was the Old Courthouse, the heart of the city’s judicial system. Around the corner was the federal building, it too packed with courtrooms and judges and lawyers. One block over was the Central Police Station, another beehive of endless activity. And scattered conveniently among these buildings were all manner of shops owned and rented by bail bondsmen, private investigators, and street lawyers.