The South Side Tour Guide Page 3

  Christ!

  Harden considered calling Kamila, but he didn’t want her to haul Olivia cross county. Embarrassed and angry that he had to postpone his teleconference, he marched out of the office with the ripe taste of rage on his tongue.

  Strangled with fury, Harden found Mason standing next to Mr. Phelps’s assistant, Gabe Jackerman. He kept a civil tone in front of Gabe, but once he pulled out of the parking lot with Mason strapped in the passenger seat, Harden’s anger coalesced into a fist inside his gut. He barely noticed the purple bruise germinating over Mason’s left cheek.

  “Not one word, you hear me. I’m too angry with you right now to handle this properly. So you just sit there quiet and don’t even move a hair on your head.”

  Back at home, he set his briefcase and laptop on the foyer console and, before he’d even loosened his tie, pointed up the stairs. “You better spend your time saying your prayers.”

  Kamila was putting dinner into the oven. She flashed him one of her soulful expressions.

  “Another fight,” Harden said before she’d even asked.

  “Is he good?”

  “He’ll be okay, maybe some ice.”

  Kamila retrieved the cold compress from the freezer and began wrapping it in a hand towel. Harden appreciated the house’s rare silence before he had to face Mason. Kamila wasn’t one for much speaking, most likely because English was a second language to her.

  He glanced out the window at Olivia swinging in the backyard next to the burr oak. He’d bought the kids the swing set three years ago to lighten their emotional upheaval. Yet he’d also purchased it for himself. It’ll give them a reason to get out of the house.

  The sight of his daughter lifted his spirits. He loosened his tie and tapped the windowpane. She looked up and waved back.

  After letting his temper cool, he took the icepack from Kamila and made the arduous trek to Mason’s bedroom to pronounce a punishment, one he hoped would be the last.

  Mason, still in his soiled baseball uniform, sat on the edge of his twin bed, his gaze cast to the blue shag carpet. Harden studied his son’s bruised cheek from the doorway. The swelling had spread to his upturned nose. Deep down, Harden hoped Mason had given the other boy an equally big wallop but refrained from asking. “Here, put this on your face.”

  Mason took the icepack from Harden’s outstretched hand, but he let it dangle between his knees.

  Harden peered around the bedroom. Red, white, blue, and neat and orderly. Too orderly for an eleven-year-old boy.

  “I thought you were done with this,” Harden said to him. “Mr. Phelps tells me the county might bar you from playing if this happens again. Would you like that? What will you do for the rest of summer?” What will I do?

  Mason shrugged. “He deserved it. Mike called me a—”

  “I don’t care what he called you. Every time you react to what some bully says to you, I ultimately pay the price. Do you want that for me? Christ, Mason, I had to cancel an important meeting because of this. I could lose my job,” he said. “Then what do we have, huh?”

  More silence.

  “You better shape up, Mason. I’ll put you in one of those military schools. You just wait and see.”

  Mason lifted his blue and black cheek to his father. “You can’t do that.”

  “Then smarten up. You’re stronger than this, Mason.”

  Harden had lost count of how many lectures he’d given Mason over the past few years to discourage his angry outbursts when the other kids teased him. His pool of punishments was running dry. Poor kid. The past few years had been torture enough.

  Rather than confine him to his room without dinner (Harden’s old standard), he told him he couldn’t play any of his electronic games for a week. As a bonus for Harden, he wouldn’t have to hear Mason complain if they failed to work.

  “Now get that uniform off and clean up,” Harden added. “And stay up here until I call you for dinner.”

  Downstairs, Kamila poured Harden coffee. Silently, she set it before him at the table, where he tried to clear his head. Harden disliked the overt service from Kamila. He’d hired her mostly for the kids and to straighten the house—he needed that for mental peace. But she doted on him more and more.

  Olivia interrupted his short moment of calm and leaped onto his lap, nearly spilling his coffee.

  “Watch out, Olivia.”

  “Come help me write my play.”

  “How much have you gotten done?”

  “Most of it, but I need you to correct grammar.”

  “Okay, okay. Wait a bit now. I just got home.” He repositioned her so that he could feel his legs. “What did you do today?”

  Same old question. No one ever asked Harden how his workdays went, not even Kamila. Good enough, he figured. He had little to share with them about his days at Marshall Farming Enterprises.

  He was more interested in Olivia. Especially since Mason’s old troubles had crept to the foreground again. The bright boy had fallen far. Last school term he’d shown signs of improvement, but Harden worried he might be slipping again with the latest clash. He needed to ensure Olivia didn’t follow after her brother.

  “I played in the backyard, and I tracked a rabbit to the creek,” she said while twiddling with his loosened necktie. “Did you know the creek is almost empty?”

  Harden removed her hand. “We need rain.”

  “Where do the fish go?”

  “They hide in deep gullies protected by stones. They’ll be okay.”

  “What about the rabbits? Where do they drink when there’s no water?”

  “They know where to look. Don’t worry about them.”

  “Where do they look?”

  Harden set Olivia onto her feet with an exaggerated movement. “The refrigerator, where else?”

  Olivia giggled. “You’re silly, Daddy. Rabbits don’t have refrigerators.”

  “That’s why they use ours.”

  Even the staid Kamila smiled at Olivia’s joyful reaction. Kamila made one of her unusual gestures (hand raised, palm down, and a clawlike movement with her fingers), and Olivia shuffled to her. She said something to her, and Olivia raced off. Kamila used Bosnian commands around the children that only they understood. Harden supposed Kamila had instructed her to wash her hands before dinner. Olivia returned minutes later, the front of her T-shirt wet, waving her play before Harden’s eyes.

  She hopped on his lap again, and together they read through the play, neatly typed and printed from the family computer. He suggested minor revisions until his lap went numb.

  “Go make the changes while Daddy gets out of his work clothes before dinner.”

  Upstairs, he slipped into his sweatpants and T-shirt and pondered how much easier life had been with a wife. He found few women as intriguing as he once had Lillian. He gazed at their portrait on the bureau. How much time had passed since then? Twelve years?

  “A mother’s the best thing for the kids,” Harden’s own mother had told him many times. “Lillian’s gone. Isn’t it time to move forward?”

  “But he needs to find the right girl, Mom,” his older brother, Lance, would often insert on his behalf. “Give him space.”

  “I’m just thinking about Olivia and Mason.”

  “So is Harden. That’s why he doesn’t want to rush into another marriage.”

  Crushed between their shoulders, Harden had listened to their discussions of his personal life too often. In many ways, his life had unraveled without his noticing, too late to fix it.

  He’d even stopped worrying over his nonexistent sex life. He’d been with only two women since Lillian. Two short, quick interludes. The first, a woman from Dubuque, he’d met through an old college friend. They’d enjoyed a simple dinner, and afterward she’d agreed to follow him in her car to Burr Oak Farm. She’d waited patiently while he’d thanked his sister-in-law Holly for babysitting and then undertook the cumbersome job of tucking the children into bed. Perhaps he’d rushed things. She�
��d appeared stiffer once he’d come back downstairs and sat beside her.

  They had talked until the moon left wedge marks on the carpet. By one, they’d ended up in the basement bedroom to avoid waking the kids. The first woman to have lain beside him since Lilly. He’d made sure to lower the noise level. She’d bailed before sunrise. At breakfast, he’d never noticed if Mason or Olivia had suspected anything. A few days later, his two text messages to the Dubuque woman went unanswered.

  The other woman he’d met while on a rare business trip to Rockford, Illinois. Separated from the children, the seduction of the saleswoman from St. Louis had come easier. Their encounter had fulfilled him more, but in a way that had made it worse. She too had ignored his voice messages.

  The smell of roasting spiced meat told him dinner was close to ready. Another one of Kamila’s Bosnian recipes. She made so many meat dishes Harden worried he might metamorphose into a side of beef. Sausages, ribs, kabobs, anything but pork. She even put ground beef in her homemade pastries. Although Harden confessed he adored her delicate pita breads.

  On the way downstairs, he poked his head inside Mason’s bedroom. The icepack lay unused on his night table where a small puddle accumulated. Changed into shorts and a T-shirt, Mason twiddled his thumbs at his desk. His tanned hands looked forlorn without a handheld electronic device in them.

  Mason refused eye contact with Harden even when he uttered his name and draped an arm over his shoulder to walk him to dinner.

  Things could be a lot worse between father and son, he imagined.

  A lot worse.

  Kamila had dinner waiting for them buffet style, as was her custom, and Harden waited for the storm door to slam shut behind her before they served themselves. He asked Mason to lead grace, for Harden never felt comfortable speaking prayers aloud himself. Hypocrite, he considered himself. Although raised Catholic, as were eighty percent of those in northeastern Iowa, he never put much faith in religion. Nevertheless, he made sure that Mason and Olivia attended Mass each Sunday, even if it meant asking his mother to take them on his behalf.

  Church—something Harden had at one time believed he could live without. That was, until he found himself alone with two kids.

  Chapter 5

  ANDY had carried a total of thirty-seven passengers for the week, translating to nearly thirteen hundred dollars. That Friday was his largest load to date. Fifteen squeezed inside his van. Five from the suburbs, three from Indiana, two from Connecticut, two from Germany, two from Japan, and a solo traveler from South Carolina. They had all read about his business in the newspapers and on the Internet.

  Streetlamps reflecting off the damp pavement from an earlier rain shower gave the night that added verve Andy loved for his passengers. He anticipated another fast-paced tour. The air was hot and steamy, and local inhabitants streamed onto the sticky streets. His cell phone, tuned onto the local police scanner, crackled and hissed. Most weekends, violence was common enough he’d come across a crime before the police or dispatchers ever got word. Muggy South Side weekends always provided action.

  Litter stuck to the wet streets, and the stench from the overflowing garbage bins wafted inside the van. He stayed clear of the occasional police cruisers before they spotted him. By now, the area had become familiar with Andy’s sleek black van with “Andy Wingal’s South Side Tours” etched on the sides. Pedestrians and drivers waved and honked or flashed him and his passengers the digital salute.

  He took the typical streets that crime logs showed had the most homicides. From his experience, dawn on Saturdays and Sundays proved the deadliest. That was when burned-out partiers stumbled about, desperate for transportation, money, and more drugs. But few passengers wanted to remain out beyond three, so he kept to the “high profile” sections of the South Side, searching for some midnight action.

  The first came from a group of youths throwing empty pop cans at a small convenience store. The passengers ducked, and laughed, and snapped photographs. The owner had long slammed shut and locked the metal shop gates, but the youths apparently had some ongoing grudge against him. Andy had witnessed his shop targeted before.

  Vacant lots. Cracked and battered driveways that led to nowhere. Boarded-up homes and apartment buildings. The passengers snapped photos or filmed through the bulletproofed tinted windows while craning their heads to view one of Chicago’s most infamous ghettos.

  Andy’s ears had become acclimated to the sound of gunshots versus a car backfiring or a firecracker set off. One such sound came from the east. He turned in that direction, careful to maintain a safe speed, and alerted his passengers to a possible shooting.

  Hushed intensity filled the van, along with fear, excitement, perhaps even self-loathing.

  “Like exploring the homes of Hollywood stars,” Andy had once replied to his friend Skeet, who’d asked why on earth Andy wanted to embark on a business cruising the dangerous South Side hoods. “Some people show mansions of the rich and famous. Some show where the Amish live. For me, it’s the ghetto. We’re all marketers to the curious, one way or the other.”

  He passed through a block with clusters of evergreens and maple trees abutting well-kept bungalows and Victorians. Andy had noted the intermittent manicured side to the South Side. Like small towns plucked straight out of the pastoral Midwest and dropped in the midst of a slum.

  One house in particular struck Andy as anomalous to those on adjacent blocks. Tall trees, planter boxes overflowing with pink and lavender flowers, lattice trim, gingerbread overhang, contrasting white shutters against the blue wood panels, and a white picket fence neatly framed the proud owner’s home. The eternal push and shove for normalcy and beauty in a sea of decay.

  Another distant gunshot rang out. This time many of the passengers had heard it and expressed their enthusiasm.

  “I think it came from that way,” one of the men from Indiana said, pressing his finger to the window.

  Andy made a U-turn and turned onto a darkened street where weed-choked vacant lots outnumbered habitable homes. Few of the homes kept their lights on in rooms facing the street. Many South Siders used their living rooms as storage while the families gathered in other rooms, away from the possible stray bullet that might shatter their front windows and take out an innocent life.

  Shadows stalked them as Andy continued at a prowler’s pace. At any moment, frantic prey running for his life might appear, hunted by one or more gunmen. Three or four blocks in, the headlights hit a dark mass lying in the middle of the street. He idled closer, pulled to the curb, and shifted to park.

  The passengers gasped. Two women sniffled back tears. He heard the mutter of German and Japanese and the snap of a few cameras.

  They’d missed the shooting but beheld the aftermath. An eerie corpse left unnoticed, facedown in a puddle of blood.

  He turned off the van, instructed his passengers to stay put, and hopped out. Woopa woopa echoed through the dark street as he locked the doors with his automatic key and jogged to the scene. He peered around, fell to a squat. A fresh kill. He could not see a visible wound, but the bullets must have penetrated his head and torso. Blood puddled by his right side and head and had begun to stream down a gutter gushing with rainwater.

  The victim appeared no older than seventeen. He did not look like the typical street punk or gang member. He wore tight jeans, from what Andy could see, rather than the loose clothing popular with gang members. No gang colors or emblems were visible. Perhaps that’s what had made him a target. Shot dead for no reason other than abiding by the good side of the law. A bunny rabbit surrounded by ravenous foxes.

  Poor kid. Probably never stood a chance.

  Screaming sirens from Ashland sent Andy scurrying for the van. He revved the engine and headed north on Aberdeen toward Sherman Park, away from the shrill of the police. He called 911 to ensure they knew where to look for the victim. Once again, he clicked off before the operator had a chance to ask for his name.

  The passengers remained sp
eechless during most of the drive north on the Dan Ryan Expressway. But once the multicolored stalagmite-looking skyscrapers loomed in full view, the tension released, and they began chatting and chuckling about what they’d experienced.

  Admittedly, the homicide unnerved Andy more than he’d have expected (he’d seen plenty of dead bodies that summer), but he maintained light banter with the passengers while he dropped off those staying at downtown hotels. The Japanese man, stepping off the van, said with a chuckle, “We have no urban decay like that. We better than you.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Andy said while he took the man’s five dollar tip and slid the door shut after his wife.

  He collected sixty dollars total from the out-of-town tourists and headed north along Lake Shore Drive for the Clock Tower parking lot to drop off the remaining six passengers. Andy again expressed his delight that they had gotten their money’s worth. “Like I warned, you might get what you pay for.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” the man from Skokie said with a low-key tone. “I’m still shaking. I got lots of pictures. My relatives in North Dakota won’t believe it.”

  With his passengers driving off or wandering toward Broadway through the Lake Shore Drive pedestrian underpass, Andy gazed into the Chicago night, a canopy of expanding light. Under the half moon, the city beat with a harried pace. He could feel the city’s hot and steady breath on him. Each exhale loaded his pockets with more riches.

  The night had proved exciting. Even better for Andy since Ken and the cops had stayed clear of him. He glanced at his wristwatch. Two o’clock. An early night for a Friday. But the passengers had expressed satisfaction with the one dead body, a ghastly image for anyone.

  Pocketing the one hundred dollars in tips, he turned for his van. Before he reached the driver’s door, two police cruisers jolted to a halt behind him. Like a cornered deer, he jerked around, startled by the flashing lights and quick-pulse sirens.