Free We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey

relax.
    “Good boy.”
    “That’s a big order, Lee. Goin’ to the county?”
    Lee shook his head. “No. Side order. Very important.”
    Marcus ran his eyes around the store. To his left was a shelf full of cans of SpaghettiO’s and cellophane packages of kitchen sponges. Marcus could never figure out Lee’s system for shelving things. Or maybe there wasn’t one. The Korean had turned his back to the boy, counting the rest of the money he’d pulled from his sock. He was talking a steady stream about the order. Something about delivery for tonight. The Korean swatted at a fly, but missed. Marcus watched it land on the Korean’s ear. The street outside was empty. The clock on the wall was broken, stuck at 3:00 p.m. Marcus took the gun out of his pocket and stood. The Korean flicked at the fly again.
    “Marcus, I need for you  … ”
    Lee turned just as the boy fired. The gun was louder than Marcus remembered, and he jumped in his sneakers. Lee fell in one piece, like a small, sturdy oak. He knocked over the stool on the way down and groaned in a way that embarrassed Marcus. Lee grabbed at the boy’s leg and looked up, asking with his eyes if Marcus knew how this had happened. Then the Korean let go and rolled onto his back. Lee had taken the bullet just under his left cheekbone. He was still alive, staring at the ceiling, but couldn’t seem to talk. Marcus squatted beside him.
    “Sorry, Lee. But they was going to kill you tonight anyways.”
    Marcus rolled the Korean onto his stomach and shot him twice more in the back of the head. He took a heavy set of keys out of the dead man’s pocket, walked over to the basement door, and pushed it open. A run of wooden stairs plunged into the darkness. Marcus hit an overhead light and played his hand along the crooked bricks as he walked downstairs. The room was long and narrow. The boxes were stacked along one wall. Beside them, a forklift and a dolly.
    Marcus thought about opening one of the boxes but figured that could wait. Whatever was inside was worth something. Marcus knew Ray Ray’s dope was probably somewhere in the basement as well, but left it alone. The boy was ambitious. Not a fool.
    He walked to the very back of the room and pulled at a section of drywall. It was loosely attached and came free with a single tug. The neighborhood always wondered how the Korean moved his merchandise. How he managed to never use the same stash house twice. Behind the drywall was the answer, in the form of an iron door large enough to drive the forklift through. Marcus took out the Korean’s keys and found the one that fit. Then he pushed the door open and turned on the light. Winding away from him was a tunnel made of broken cement and soft dirt. It burrowed into the neighborhood, branching off into a series of smaller tunnels, each leading to a different abandoned building. Lee had made the mistake of showing him the network only a week ago.
    Marcus turned back to the forklift. He was about to fire it up when he heard a twinge of sound on the stairs. Marcus snapped the light off and crouched in the darkness. A flashlight flared, painting the cellar in shapes and shadows.
    “Come on out, son. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
    The voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel. Marcus sneaked a peek. The man was tall. White. He wore a long brown leather coat, carried a rifle, and had a black mask covering part of his face. From where he sat, Marcus thought the man couldn’t see him. Until the man brought the rifle up to his shoulder and pulled back on the trigger.

CHAPTER 16
    A hard wind whipped over the West Side, scouring the streets and covering everything else in a fine layer of grit. A cloudburst of cold rain followed, turning the grit to mud and sending people into doorways and bus shelters until the squall blew itself out. I flicked on my wipers, cruised past the United Center, and kept going.
    This stretch of the West Side had been my beat for