Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Twelve

The visitor's line at the Cook County Jail is longer than I remember.

I don't spend much time at the jail. When I write about crime, much of my reporting involves the dead and the immediate aftermath of their deaths. Inmates in the county jail for serious crimes tend to lawyer up quickly. And once that happens, there's no point in me showing up.

Still, the deputies know me well enough to offer to let me skip the line. I decline. I don't want to draw attention to myself. The Regular Joe metal detectors are fine by me.

Besides, I have weird superstitions about the place. Like I'm a jinx or something.

My last story involving the jail was a real-life Bonnie and Clyde-style breakout.

Timothy Henderson was a major gang leader. At one time he ruled the Black Rock Rangers, which controlled the narcotics, gambling, and, believe it or not, property flipping rackets in all of central and southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. The significance of that was the Rangers were independent. And no amount of menacing from nationally known gangs like the Crips and Bloods could convince the Rangers to affiliate.

That's powerful.

The Rangers would probably still be ruling much of the Midwest unchallenged if not for Henderson making the mistake of being on-site for a major deal with a new cocaine supplier.

The new supplier? DEA actor.

One of the first commandments of drug lording is only do business with people you know well. And if you're unsure, send an underling.

Henderson got impatient 'cause he was greedy.

He didn't really make national headlines though until his girlfriend initiated an affair with the owner of the specialty fabrication firm that made the windows and frames that separate inmates from guests in the visiting rooms. The hardware holding those windows in place requires one-of-a-kind lug wrenches that you can't get at any hardware store.

Chantal Hollander managed to slip a set of the tiny fiberglass wrenches into her purse after just one sweaty romp on the machinist's workbench.

Next, she did what everyone in local, modern law enforcement had thought was impossible, like sink-the-Titanic-impossible. She waltzed into the jail, strolled through security with the tools in a ziplock secreted in her vagina, met with Henderson, and ten minutes later walked out of the jail hand in hand with her man who sported a wig and the new warmup suit she'd worn in beneath her own baggy sweatsuit.

It was the stuff of legend. And for three weeks while the cops and U.S. Marshals looked for the couple, I chronicled their exploits - a stolen car here, a burgled mini-mart there. A bad check for a by-the-hour hotel, a check-skip at a four-star restaurant.

They were eventually caught in Arizona at one of those dusty roadside motels along Route 66, the kinds of places with quarter slots attached to the Magic Fingers massage beds.

And while I probably should have been worried about retaliation, Henderson himself relieved me during his preliminary hearing.

When the judge asked if he had anything to say or would he like to be smart and let his lawyers speak for him, Henderson smiled ear-to-ear, turned to face me in the gallery, and said, "Mothafucka, you are good! My lawyer - my good lawyer will be in touch. When they make that movie, I want you to write it!"

I was flattered, but I have yet to hear from the "good" lawyer. Instead, I hear from Henderson. All. The. Damned. Time.

I had to ask him politely to quit calling me collect.

Naturally, that offended him.

That was four months ago. I'm hoping he's gotten over it. Otherwise, this will be a short visit.

###

"I thought I'd be hearing from you."

Bad cop-movie one-liner. Great.

I nod humbly but tap my fingers atop the stainless steel table impatiently.

"Listen, Tim. I —"

"Shaka!"

"OK, Shaka. I — wait, what?"

Henderson sits up ramrod straight in his conspicuously crisp yellow inmate jumpsuit. Like, who has access to an iron in this place?

He places his arms akimbo, fists on his hips, and explains. "Timothy Henderson was my slave name. The name my oppressors gave me. They have conspired to enslave me again. But I refuse to go down easily."

I mean, the system is crooked, Timothy-Shaka, but I think you're here because you got greedy. You tried to wholesale more drugs than even the government was willing to tolerate! You or your goons allegedly killed rivals to maintain dominance. And worst, you embarrassed the powers that be by escaping. Also, your mother gave you that name.

"While my legal team is, ahem, working on things, my spiritual guides in this facility have shown me my true heritage. I come from a long line of royalty. Hmmph!"

Queen Elizabeth is going to love this. Competition for Prince William to be the next on the aluminum throne.

He must've read my mind. "I am descended from the great African leader Shaka Zulu! And we have taken his name."

"Um, OK, Shaka. Do y'all have a new last name, too?"

"Bright Star."

OK, then.

"Well, Bright Star, I need —"

"You need to know why. Isn't that what you used to tell me all the time?"

He's not lying. Over hours of conversation and chess matches permitted by jail guards befriended on the outside by Bright Star's lawyers, I used to tell him that the key to me bringing solid, accurate stories to fruition is finding out why.

"In newspapers we have this thing called a bad break," I once told him. "It's when a story's page layout has been slightly miscalculated, so a word breaks in the wrong place, continuing on the next line. Instead of pan-try on the break, think pa-ntry."

But I have my own little personal definition of a bad break. It's not when a single word gets broken. It's when an entire story gets left hanging because I've stopped writing and moved on before I've fully answered the why.

Bright Star reminds me of that conversation before critiquing my recent reporting and telling me that if this were a game of hot-cold, where hot means you're closer to a clue and cold means you're further away, then I'm ice cold.

"Nice of you to say, because honestly, I can use some unbiased feedback. But you, my friend, are a different kind of biased. Why do you care? And what are you going to do about it."