Free We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey Page A

almost two years. As I drove, the memories tiptoed in. A sexual assault here. A couple of bodies over there. A rape and murder made to look like a house fire two doors down from that. In Chicago, the West Side was known as the worst side, and there was a reason. Lately, however, things had begun to change.
    I pulled up to a stoplight just gone red. Kitty-corner was a condo development with units starting at three hundred K. The building was brand-new and half empty. It sat on a piece of ground that had once served as the neighborhood’s de facto garbage dump. In 1998, it was known simply as the Lots. My thoughts ran back to the spring of that year and the bodies I’d found there. Nine dead faces. Nine soft bags of flesh.
    A car beeped, and I jumped. The light had turned green. I shook off the past and hit the gas. Western Avenue flashed by. Then California. And Kedzie. The whitewash of gentrification began to blister and peel, and the old life reemerged. Currency exchanges fought for storefront space with Mexican diners that served menudo on weekends. A couple dozen whole chickens turned on a spit in the window of Harold’s Chicken Shack. A man carrying a thirty-pack of Keystone Light stopped in front of the shack and watched the birds turn. After a while he sat on a bench, popped a beer, and had a talk with himself. All of that, however, was a tangled sideshow to the main piece of business in this part of town—the cash-and-carry drug trade.
    Kids in oversize coats and baggy jeans hung their shingles on every corner, touting rock and blow to customers in cars, hustling orders and giving directions to pickup points for product. Their bosses, maybe a year older, sat on stoops and huddled in doorways—keeping track of inventory, counting cash, and watching their corners. Another level up, captains drove SUVs, whispered into cell phones, and cruised the territory. It went on that way for a good thirty blocks—a business that generated tens of millions of dollars a year, launched more than a few political careers, and probably helped to finance the half-empty condo developments rising up a mile or so due east.
    Such is the circle of life on the West Side. NPR loved talking about it from a distance, which was where NPR did its best work. I didn’t have that luxury. So I slipped my gun from my holster and put it on the seat beside me. Six blocks later, I found the address I was looking for. I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t a Korean grocery store. I got out of my car and read the handwritten sign stuck in the front window.
    PARK PLACE FINE FOODS
    OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, UNTIL IT GETS DARK
    JAE LEE, PROPRIETOR
    It was just past six. The day was almost gone, and the place looked deserted. There were iron bars set in concrete over the front windows, a sliding steel gate covering the door, and probably a couple of Dobermans inside guarding the twenty-two dollars and whatever else Jae Lee kept in his till. I walked down an alley that ran alongside the building. Lee was out of either money or common sense, because the side door to his place was covered by nothing more than thin steel mesh. I peeked inside and saw a display of Bacardi rum next to a lottery machine.
    At the back of the alley sat a lopsided truck with the words SILVER LINE TRUCKING printed on the side. I took another look up and down the alley. Nothing but cracked blacktop and blank brick walls. I walked around the truck. The rear door was unlocked, so I rolled it up. The inside was empty.
    I sat down on the curb and pulled out the piece of paper Rita Alvarez had given me. On it was Lee’s name, the address, and the words “Silver Line Trucking.” It was all I could get out of the reporter, and it didn’t seem like half enough. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and went back to the store for another look through the glass. This time I noticed a foot sticking out from behind a counter. I took out my gun and put a shoulder to the door.
    The man I