Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Forty-Three

When I arrive at the Midway Monday morning, exactly one week after the Detroit connection and possible sex trafficking became national news, it is with unnecessary apprehension.

Next to law enforcement agencies, newsrooms are the worst places to try to keep secrets. Journalists are inherently defective when it comes to zipping lips.

So, I'm not surprised that colleagues are giving me funny looks. I am surprised though that behind each look comes a pat on the back and an encouraging statement.

Hang in there, Blake! We've got your back, Wilson! Eff management! We're on your side! You only did what all the rest of us don't have the nerve to!

It is a nice feeling, but a cold dose of reality awaits me at my desk, in the form of lumpy Limpett, who is standing in front of my chair, arms crossed, a sheaf of papers in one hand.

I crack no jokes, nor even a smile. He obliges me by also keeping a sober look about him.

As I close to within a few feet I can see that the papers are printouts of my working draft of the latest installment of the triple homicide story, as well as about three dozen pages of notes I've compiled while looking into the killings and looking for the alleged witness.

I make a mental note to quit leaving my work laying around for any old body to read it, and I stand toe to toe with my nemesis.

Limpett is surprisingly gentle - so much so it's worrisome.

He tells me he's been catching up on the triple story and thinks I'm close to a breakthrough... on the shootings, not the bigger picture.

"Why don't you head down to PP and really work this one," he says in a tone that suggests he's asking and ordering at the same time. "Play this one right and it could make it to Page One."

As if Page One means anything to me anymore, when there's a chance I could very soon be on Page None.

Nevertheless, I nod with a moderate smile and gently but firmly yank the papers from Limpett's hand.

"I'll get right on it," I say, turning my back on him, but he's not done.

"Wilson, I think the best angle is for you to hit up next why exactly the Carr girl might have been out with those boys that night. Do her parents have anything to say? 'Cause everything else, you know, I mean if there's anything else it will be handled appropriately till, uh, you know."

I rarely see Limpett at a loss for words.

Regardless, I have no intention of following his suggestion. The angle he's suggesting calls for the condemnation of a teenage girl for being a teenage girl. Or maybe subtle digs at the adults in her life. It's not their fault that her friends were murdered.

Still, 1 PP isn't a bad idea.

###

I call the storage area of the records bureau of the Chicago Police Department the black hole. The bureau is in the basement of the five-story police headquarters building. It's a relatively new, relatively modern, high-tech facility. But the area where the records are kept is a sub-basement, two levels below the surface. And it is dank, smelly, nearly as dark as its nickname suggests, and easy to get lost in.

The police officers and clerks who've been banished to the records bureau often joke that "finding where the bodies are buried" is not just a figure of speech down there.

Journalists can spend hours at a time on the sublevel because while police department employees look for the usually mundane records that Average Joe and Jane request, our requests are often more complicated and can take hours to find. So they either drag their feet on our records or trust us to go down and dig around ourselves.

The blessing is you might strike gold and be able to keep it – meaning, if you find a juicy document, you won't have to worry about a police department bureaucrat redacting all the good stuff before you've had a chance to read it and take notes. Hell, with the advent of smartphone cameras, you can capture anything you find. But to use the information and be taken seriously for it, you need a copy of the official record. And that means taking found records up to the main basement to the cops forced to act as bureaucrats, who will then forward the documents you found to the Office of the Chief of Police. After several days, the Chief's aide-de-camp will look at your request and summon the Chief's media relations director, along with a staff lawyer from the Office of the City Attorney, and together they will gleefully wield black magic markers and strike as much useful information as they can from the documents. It doesn't matter if they have no justification for removing the good stuff. The law in most states covers them if they claim with a straight face that releasing the "good" stuff would hinder an ongoing investigation or a cold case that might be revived someday.

The curse comes in not knowing when to give up. The football field-sized room is a disorganized maze of teases, always leading the searcher to believe he's just one moldy box away from finding his gem.

Limpett knows all of this and knows and figures I'll be at records at least a few days hunting for some overlooked incident report around the shootings.

But I'm more interested in the service records of the cops who shook up Turner.

I make better progress than I'd anticipated and head back to the surface with nine names and about forty cell phone pictures of police service records and two federal investigations in hand.

Time to cash in my last chips. I whip out my phone and hope for a decent signal.

"Big Balls!"

"Who dis?"

I know damned well that Johnson, the professional hustler, knows it's me, but I play along.

"Blake Wilson from the Midway. We need to talk again."

He pauses for a moment, and I can almost hear the suspicion.

"Go ahead. Speak," he finally says.

I decline and offer to take my questions about the recent transfer of trap house titles from Black Rock Property Investments to Ball Street Realty, LLC, to one Shaka Zulu Bright Star.

Johnson has a change of heart and agrees to meet me in twenty minutes at Coffee Makes You Black.

"But you buyin', partner. My time is valuable."

I decline again.

"Nah, you're buyin' the biggest, fanciest coffee they have. That's the least you can do for me after you holding out on me...and for me saving your life."