Chapter 5 - The River Gate
The shipping yard at the southern tip of Goose Island was four acres of cracked asphalt, rusted sea containers, and corrugated iron warehouses that smelled of creosote, stagnant river water, and decaying fish.
It was 3:15 in the afternoon.
The rain had returned, driven sideways by thirty-knot gusts coming off the lake, turning the oily grit between the rail spurs into a slick, black paste.
Gavin Mercer stood inside the open bay of Warehouse 4, wearing a heavy shearling jacket that smelled of wet sheep and cigar smoke. He was pacing behind a row of wooden pallets loaded with fifty-five-gallon drums of industrial solvent, a short-barreled Remington shotgun dangling from his right hand by the pistol grip.
Beside him stood eight men. None of them were the cheap bar bouncers he used on 14th Street; these were Victor Kray’s dock fighters—thick, bearded men in insulated work coats, carrying heavy iron pry bars and short-barreled submachine guns wrapped in oilcloth.
“Where is he?” Mercer barked, spitting a mouthful of brown tobacco juice onto the concrete floor. “You said the tracking beacon on the Lincoln was active!”
“It was active until forty minutes ago, Gavin,” a man named Keller answered from behind a bank of commercial radio scanners. “The car stopped at the Evanston clinic. Then the signal died. Somebody found the puck under the rear bumper and dropped it in an industrial microwave.”
Mercer cursed, swinging the shotgun up to rack the slide with a violent, metallic clack. “The girl is in that clinic! She’s with the old lady! We take four trucks up the parkway, we drag her out of the room by her hair, and we leave the building burning so Devo understands who—"
The heavy iron doors at the southern end of the bay didn't open; they disintegrated.
A forty-ton Mack dump truck, its front bumper reinforced with eight-inch structural steel channel, smashed through the rolling corrugated barrier at forty miles an hour.
The sound was apocalyptic—a shrieking crescendo of tearing sheet metal, shattering concrete, and the deafening roar of an uncapped twelve-liter diesel engine screaming at redline. The truck didn't stop in the opening; it ploughed forty feet into the warehouse, crushing two of Mercer’s pickup trucks into flat, accordion-pleated scrap before coming to a halt against a mountain of shipping pallets.
Before the dust had settled, the side doors of the Mack cab flew open.
Four men in tactical black, carrying suppressed HK416 carbines, dropped into the bay. They didn't shout. They didn't give warnings. They fanned out in an immediate, textbook diamond formation, their muzzles sweeping the shadows beneath the crane rails.
Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.
The suppressed shots sounded like heavy staplers hitting wet leather.
Two of Kray’s dock fighters dropped instantly, both struck in the high thoracic cavity, their weapons clattering against the concrete before their bodies hit the oil-slicked floor.
“Kill them!” Mercer shrieked, scrambling backward behind the solvent drums, firing his Remington blind toward the truck.
The twelve-gauge blast tore a three-foot hole in the Mack’s radiator, spewing a boiling cloud of white steam and glycol into the air.
Through the mist walked Lucian Devo.
He was not wearing body armor. He wore his charcoal overcoat, unbuttoned, his hands tucked casually into his pockets, his stride unhurried, measured, immune to the chaos around him.
Beside him walked Marco, holding a four-foot crowbar forged from blackened hex-steel.
A third dock fighter lunged from behind a forklift, brandishing an iron pipe. Marco didn't even raise his firearm; he stepped inside the man’s swing, drove the curved end of the crowbar into the hinge of the attacker's jaw with a sickening, wet crunch, and swept his legs out from under him in a single, fluid arc.
The man collapsed, unconscious before his skull bounced off the floorboards.
Mercer was crawling now. His shearling coat was soaked in diesel fuel from a ruptured drum, his face smeared with black grease, his shotgun empty on the floor thirty feet behind him. He reached the rear service door that opened onto the river bulkhead, his fingers clawing for the rusty padlock.
A boot landed on his right hand.
The bone in Mercer’s metacarpal snapped with a dry, sharp pop.
Mercer let out a high, girlish shriek, rolling onto his back, clutching his crushed fingers to his chest.
Lucian stood over him.
The smoke from the Mack truck drifted between them, smelling of sweet coolant and hot iron. Lucian’s face was completely calm, his gray eyes reflecting the amber halogen lights overhead like twin pieces of polished slate.
“Gavin,” Lucian said softly.
“You’re crazy,” Mercer wept, thrashing against the concrete. “Victor Kray will kill you for this! He’s got two hundred men on the South Side! He’s got the whole longshoremen’s union!”
Lucian reached into his overcoat pocket. He didn't pull out a pistol.
He pulled out a heavy manila envelope, tied with red legal string, and dropped it onto Mercer’s chest.
Mercer blinked through his tears, staring at the paper. “What... what is this?”
“That is the bill of sale for the South Side grain terminal,” Lucian said. “Signed by Victor Kray thirty minutes ago in my office on Kinzie Street.”
Mercer’s breath hitched. “Kray... Kray sold me out?”
“Victor Kray is a businessman, Gavin,” Lucian murmured, stepping closer until his shadow completely covered Mercer’s face. “He understands the difference between a twelve-percent margin on Canadian wheat and forty years in a federal penitentiary for conspiracy to commit murder. I gave him the wheat. He gave me your warehouse keys.”
Lucian went down on one knee, his trousers un-creased, his eyes locking onto Mercer’s twitching pupils.
“Where is the ledger?” Lucian asked.
“What ledger?” Mercer sobbed. “The girl took the book! She took the forty-two grand!”
Lucian’s left hand shot out. His fingers clamped around Mercer’s throat, not squeezing to kill, but pressing into the carotid artery with the precise, agonizing pressure of an interrogator who knew exactly how many seconds of consciousness remained.
“Not the clinic ledger, Gavin,” Lucian whispered, his voice dropping into a register that made Mercer’s bladder release onto the concrete. “The little black notebook you kept in the false floor of your Lincoln. The one with the names of the three detectives who took five hundred dollars a week to look away from your back-room rings.”
Mercer’s eyes rolled back in his head, his hands clawing at Lucian’s wrist, but the grip was like iron set in concrete.
“In... in the desk,” Mercer choked out. “Office... second floor... under the safe...”
Lucian released him.
Mercer collapsed forward, coughing violently, vomiting bile and blood onto his own boots.
Lucian stood up, wiped his fingers on his white linen handkerchief, and looked over at Marco, who was leaning against the forklift, wiping red grease from the crowbar.
“Take the notebook,” Lucian commanded. “Deliver the copies to the internal affairs bureau at midnight. And call the city demolition contractor.”
“And Mercer?” Marco asked, pointing his chin at the shivering figure on the floor.
May you like
Lucian looked down at the man who had ordered Brin Callaway’s ribs broken for forty-two thousand dollars.
“Leave him his boots,” Lucian said, turning his back on the river. “Let him walk to the county line. If he is still in Cook County when the sun sets, tell the boys at the bridge to drop him in the ship canal.”
