WE MET AT THE Y at four in the morning. The street was deserted. One streetlight fritzed as it tried to decide whether it would burn out or not. The ice-covered streets reflected ambient light from the city itself, making the neighborhood seem a little brighter than it should have been.
Still, we were just past the new moon, and the sky was as dark as it could get. The air was frigid, but there was no wind and there were no clouds.
I arrived at the same time that two other vans did. One was a VW microbus, painted black and almost invisible. The other was a panel van like mine, only with a logo running along the side. Two pickups were already parked in front of the Y, along with several sedate sedans.
I should have brought Marvella with me, but I didn’t think of it.
I wore my smelly greatcoat and some gloves I didn’t care about. I also wore old shoes that I knew I could get rid of. In fact, everything I wore would get thrown away.
The Y’s front doors were locked. I knocked on the glass, and someone pushed the door open from the inside. A dozen
people milled around the main area. They were all wearing black—black pants, black ski hats, black coats, and black gloves. Most looked like teenage boys unless you actually peered at them.
Sam, the gaunt woman, towered over most of the others. I recognized both Marvella and Paulette from their shapes. No one would ever mistake them for teenage boys.
The area smelled like coffee, and someone had actually bought donuts, laying them out on a table near the front desk which was shut down. A rope cord ran across the stairs, and the lights were out everywhere but this front area.
It made the Y seem creepy and nearly abandoned.
No one talked. Someone knocked on the main door. One of the women headed toward it and in those small movements, I recognized Beatrice. She had looked like one of the teenagers to me until she pushed the door open.
Jack Sinkovich hurried inside, head bent against the cold.
“I didn’t invite you,” I said to him, wondering how the hell he even knew about this. I didn’t want him to shut us down. I wanted him out.
“I know and you shoulda,” Sinkovich said. “Marvella told me.”
She had pushed her way through the group. She looked thinner and older in her all-black costume. Her gaze met mine.
“You were going to pull off a police raid, so I figured you needed actual police,” she said.
“Jack has a family and a job. He could lose both doing this.”
“You have a family and a job too,” she said.
I turned to him. It wasn’t her decision; it was his. “You can’t do this. Think about your kid.”
“I did,” he said. “Then I thought about yours. Mine’s in Mini-fucking-sota. Yours is right here, and he ain’t got nobody. At least, my wife has mine, and she’ll do right by him if something happens to me. Your kid needs you, so that means you need me.”
“No,” I said.
“You don’t get a vote,” he said. “I’m going. Marvella told me your little plan and it’s pretty good except for the blinds.”
“The what?” I asked.
“See?” he said moving his way toward the donuts. “I figured you didn’t know.”
He grabbed a donut and a small Styrofoam cup filled with coffee. He took a sip, winced, and set the coffee down.
“Is this the group?” he asked Marvella.
“Yes.” Paulette was the one who answered. Five more women flanked her. I hadn’t seen them when I arrived. A quick count told me that twenty people filled this room.
“Okay, gather up,” Sinkovich said.
Someone muttered in the back. The question ran through the women like a game of telephone: Who put him in charge?
“I put him in charge,” Marvella snapped. “Bill’s good, but Jack knows some things that the rest of us do not. He will take care of us here. You can trust him.”
“He’s a cop,” one of the women said.
“For my sins,” Sinkovich said. “Without me, you don’t
know how to do this right. You listen up or this’ll get messy.”
They quieted down. I crossed my arms. I couldn’t get rid of him now. And, truth be told, I needed him. Just his presence was enough to reassure me.
“Bill here, he cased the joint, but he don’t know a few things that the cops do. There’s one-way mirrors all over the place in that lower level of the hotel. They’re called blinds. Like deer blinds, you know?”
They probably didn’t know. Women from Chicago’s South Side probably weren’t hunters, at least in the traditional Midwestern sense.
But I had no idea how Sinkovich knew about the blinds. I certainly hadn’t. I knew that the one-way windows had a purpose, but I figured it was security. The word “blind” implied something else.
“Them blinds, they’re money to this place,” Sinkovich said. “Lotsa money. There’re cameras in there. Usually no one’s in the blinds in the early mornings, unless there is a police raid. Then the blinds get filled up.”
He stopped, waved his donut, then set it down.
“I gotta back up. These blinds, they’re there to photograph anyone who might not want the wife or the girlfriend or the
boss or the mayor to know they’re frequenting this place, you know what I mean?”
“Blackmail?” one of the women asked.
“You betcha,” Sinkovich said. “Lotsa money in blackmail. And when there’s a raid or lemme say when there used to be a raid, a designated group of guys would go into the blinds and they wouldn’t defend at all. They’d take pictures. So Idiot Rookie Officer Yahoo gets a bug up his ass to shut down the Starlite, thinks it’ll get him a promotion inside the ranks, and instead, he either gets his butt busted or he gets compromised, offered a lotta cash to never do it again or gets his kid threatened or gets fired for cause.”
Sinkovich looked at me, just to reinforce his words. He hadn’t turned me down because he hadn’t wanted to do the job. Initially, he’d been afraid to do the job.
I wondered what changed his mind.
“And, no,” Sinkovich said, “this did not happen to me. This will be my first trip into this particular little hellhole. But I read some of the files, and talked to some of the guys when my buddy Bill here first asked me about the place, and I gotta tell you, the ruthlessness that these guys go at this stuff makes your blood cold.”
The women shifted, clearly uncomfortable. I was glad I hadn’t taken a donut. My stomach was in knots.
“So, here’s the thing. We gotta go in organized, and neutralize them blinds right off, which I’m sure Bill was gonna do.”
“I was,” I said. “I saw the mirrors, and I knew that someone was watching behind them. But I thought they were security only.”
“Oh, they are,” Sinkovich said. “Just not the kind you’d expect. I see some of you ladies got ski masks. I suggest you use them. Those what don’t got them, you keep your heads down. You don’t want no one to get a picture of your face. They got regular cameras in there and they got Polaroids, and you don’t want some jerkwad, pardon my French, to take your Polaroid, and escape out the back with it before we get to him. Because he’s gonna take that Polaroid to his bosses, and they’re gonna find someone what knows you and can identify you and they’re gonna make you pay.”
My stomach twisted. I hadn’t realized that.
Sinkovich turned toward me. “They probably already got a Polaroid or two of you, but Marvella tells me you prettied up your face some, so they ain’t gonna go after you, not for this.”
I nodded.
“So, ladies,” Sinkovich said, “here’s your moment. This’s not a game. It’s gonna be rough and someone’s gonna get hurt. Might even be you. If we’re not careful, it’ll be after the fact. So if you’re gonna leave, you do it now, before we get there. Ain’t no one gonna think bad thoughts if you walk out that door this instant.”
The women stood very still. I moved out of the way of the door so that anyone who wanted to leave could leave.
No one did.
They didn’t even look at each other. They didn’t even try to measure each other’s willingness to go in. They seemed ready to go.
Sinkovich took a bite of his donut. He watched them while he chewed and swallowed. Then he ran the back of his hand over his mouth, just like Jimmy would have.
“Really?” Sinkovich said. “You’re all committed to this little mission, even though it could cost you big time?”
“We’re committed,” one of the women said.
“Although,” another woman said. She stepped forward. I saw that it was Kim, the woman who had kicked my leg out from underneath me. “I got one request.”
“Just one?” Sinkovich asked.
She nodded. “Stop calling us ladies. It’s insulting.”
He glanced sideways at me, as if to say, Broads. What can you do with ‘em?
“Well,” he said after a moment, “I’d promise ya I wasn’t gonna do that, but I’d break my promise prob’ly in ten minutes. I ain’t gonna think about the right way to refer to you people when we’re on this raid, and you can’t think about it neither. Marvella tells me some of you ain’t fond of men, and I’m sure most of you ain’t fond of cops, and then there’s the whole white/black thing that Bill here keeps schooling me on. I’m just a walking bundle of stuff you hate to be around, which is why I got the experience of going into places like this and you don’t. So you’re gonna listen to me, and I’m gonna get you and them poor teenage girls out alive. And then you can teach me how to talk all you damn well please, okay?”
Sam grinned and turned her head away. Marvella bit her lower lip. A couple of women smiled. But Kim’s eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms. Beatrice put her hand on Kim’s shoulder.
“He’s right,” she said softly. “Later.”
“I don’t like this,” Kim said.
“Then you can go home,” Sinkovich said. “Ain’t none of you gonna offend no one if you go home. Because if you leave now, what we know is this: You ain’t committed to the task. And this task is probably the hardest thing you’re gonna do. It’s dangerous and we gotta move fast, and ain’t none of us got time to take care of one of you what gets the heebie-jeebies, got that?”
I closed my eyes on “heebie-jeebies.” That man had an ability to zero in on the most offensive terms possible.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” Beatrice said, with amusement in her voice.
“Okay.” Sinkovich shoved the last of the donut in his mouth, and had to chew with his mouth half-open. He gestured for everyone to come near.
They moved forward slowly, some looking at Marvella as if she were the one who had lost her mind.
“I don’t know you girls from Adam,” Sinkovich started, then made a small irritated noise. “I mean ladies—fuck!— people, oh, pardon my French—you see? I can’t think about this crap right now.” He took a deep breath and started again. “I don’t know you people from Adam, so I gotta trust you on something. I need four groups. I need the restaurant group. I
need the group that’s going to the sixth floor and getting those kids out. I need a group to start on floor five and clear out the entire place, and I need muscle to go with me and Bill.”
“We don’t need any help,” I said.
“The hell we don’t,” he said. “We’re going in like a bulldozer, you and me. We’re clearing blinds, we’re clearing bathrooms, we’re clearing the entire first fucking floor, and we’re taking out whoever’s in our way.”
“I thought Bill was going to go in saying a raid was coming,” Paulette said.
“And, missy, I told you, them blinds are for raids. They’d fucking fill up with security guys who would be so damn happy that you warned them cops were on the way. Wrong-o. This is why you need me. I got a badge. I got plain clothes, and you ladies, no offense, look like young men in your little black outfits. That’s a good thing. They’re gonna think half of you are rookies on your first assignment. That’s even better.”
“I don’t want them to think at all,” I said.
“Which is why, first thing we do, you and me, is trash out them blinds and smash the cameras.”
“The first thing we do is cut the phone lines,” I said.
He rolled his eyes at me. “The first thing we do inside is smash out the blinds. And we need some backup, good backup.”
“Do you want someone who can handle a gun or is good in a fight?” Marvella asked.
“Yes,” Sinkovich said.
My turn to roll my eyes. “If someone here is good at both, like Sam said she was, that’s what we need.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said to me.
“How many people do you need on your team?” Beatrice asked Sinkovich.
He looked at me and shrugged. “We just need two, right? Because we’re gonna be moving fast.”
“Two’s good,” I said. Then I stepped forward. “Before we go any farther with this, though, I’m going to be very clear. You get to empty the floors, but I’ll be following. And I’ll be the one with the matches. No one else. I want the rest of you out of the hotel as soon as the girls are rescued. No arguing.”
I looked at Sinkovich.
“And that includes you, Jack. I want you out.”
“I ain’t leaving you, Bill.”
“You are,” I said. “Because I’m going to take this from a rescue mission to a felony and you need deniability. All of you do. You honestly say that you had no idea what I did in those rooms if I did anything at all. Do you got that?”
Heads nodded. All except Sinkovich.
“Jack?” I asked.
“I don’t like it none, Bill,” he said.
“Well, I don’t like you being here either,” I said. “But I’m going to put up with it, as long as you agree to that.”
He sighed. “Jesus, you’re a hard-assed son of a bitch.”
“Yes, I am,” I said. “And this is my operation. I don’t want any of you to forget it.”