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tells my cheek, "He can’t hear you."
    "He can hear a .38." I’m still glaring at him.
    "He’s deaf, Patti."
    I glance at Julie. "He’s a deaf comedian?"
    "He’s a poet. The comedian’s going on now."
    I glance at the stage; there’s a girl with a bad haircut mounting it. The deaf poet is walking away, his back to me. I start to yell an apology but realize that won’t do much good. Julie’s eyes are burning my cheek. I look. Her frown’s bigger than before.
    "
Shit
. I’m sorry."
    Julie spoon feeds guilt across the bar. "
Men,
thinking they can compliment a single woman sittin’ alone at a bar."
    My phone vibrates my hip. It’s the superintendent of police. He wants to see me, at the Berghoff Restaurant, State and Adams. NOW.
     
     
     

Chapter 3
     
MONDAY, DAY 1: 11:00 P.M.
     
     
       Eleven p.m. at the Berghoff Restaurant is a strange place to meet the superintendent of police. Then again, somebody doesn’t take a shot at the mayor every day. And in Chicago, the mayor appoints the superintendent of police, who appoints all our big bosses, from the captains to the chiefs. So, if the mayor goes, by bullet or ballot, so does most of the brass.
    I’m a patrolman, a ghetto cop. Why talk to me?
    The homeless man facing me at Adams and Wabash doesn’t answer. I’m in the Loop and completely out of my element. The Loop is the financial district where all the rapid-transit trains come together overhead in a—you guessed it—loop. If you saw the car chase in
The French Connection,
that’s how it looks. Except better, since we’re in Chicago, not New York.
    At my back two lions guard the Art Institute; tonight they’re animated, peering through the banks and insurance companies at my ass and licking their lips. Like most civil servants I’m a little leery uptown: I owe mortgage payments to one of these skyscrapers and car payments to another. It takes two more blocks of imposing buildings before I figure the superintendent’s summons: This is about Kit Carson. Lt. Milquetoast phoned his golfing buddies at IAD and I’m about to get—
    I stutter-step to avoid a second homeless man dressed similar to me. I apologize and he demands money or "some pussy." I decline both and continue west. Maybe the superintendent uses the Berghoff to avoid the reporters camped at HQ 24/7. The Berghoff’s basement dining room would be a good spot to meet with outsiders. Could be he just wants to chat when his dinner’s over.
Right
.
    Much more likely this is about—
much more likely?
Who’re you kidding? There isn’t one thing about this summons that’s "likely." Or it could be the superintendent just wants me to mow his lawn.
    Our superintendent is…how do I say this…a bit unusual, a nice fellow who could easily have been a professional wrestler or governor of Minnesota. His name is Jesse too and his close friends still call him Chief. Chief Jesse Smith is of distant Native American extraction. He’s a Hohokam, so the "Chief" part works both ways and you gotta be careful. The other 85 percent of him is the standard mix of white European and not all that happy.
    He’s also childless and thirty years divorced from an upwardly mobile woman who’s now married to the wealthiest radiologist in Illinois. Other than the chief’s marital choices, I like him and he likes me—I’m sort of the daughter he never had; he was my boss in 6 before becoming the fearless leader of our 13,500 blue uniforms. Unlike Lieutenant Carson and the
little dicks
in the department—
dick
is short for detective;
little dick
is a bit less flattering—Chief Jesse does not think I’m a grandstander. Chief Jesse has, however, made the occasional comment on my attitude. I think "therapy" was mentioned in one heated exchange; it was off the record, but not real far. Other than this lapse in judgment, he is an astute judge of character. Definitely a man I listen to when he has something to say, especially when it’s prefaced with my name.
    Nine