Free Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel by Kris Nelscott Page A

work together on this case, we were going to do so on an equal basis.
    Before that meeting, I had some logistics to figure out. We had to go in and out of the Queen Anne without drawing suspicion. If anyone at the rental agency or at Sturdy thought we were doing construction work in that building, they might get nervous. If they noticed us carrying items out of the building, they might get worried.
    Somehow, we would have to do our work — photographing, removing the three bodies, taking evidence, and taking down the brick walls — without drawing attention to ourselves.
    I figured there were two times we could work: in the middle of the night or during Jimmy’s school hours. Both had advantages. Night provided its own cover. Most people slept and did not watch what was going on in a neighboring building.
    But the moment a neighbor became suspicious, he would notice everything we did and maybe call the police. Since the neighborhood had white students as well as black families, there was a chance the police might actually show up. If they did, we would be in trouble.
    Of course, at night no one could call the rental agency or try to track down the building’s owners. And sometimes what seemed suspicious at 3 :00 A.M. seemed normal or not worth the effort to contact authorities in the light of day.
    Daylight brought its own problems. We would have to park in that alley. We would have to remove items from the building while people could see what we were doing. A call to the rental agency would show that no one was working on the building, which might lead to a call to the police.
    But most neighbors in places like that didn’t like to get involved. Most of them wouldn’t be home in the middle of the day either. And most would accept the presence of a painters’ van or carpet cleaners in the middle of the day if we could find a way to disguise our vehicles like that.
    I preferred daylight, provided we could make it work, and not just because it was more convenient for me. People got nervous about nighttime activity, and I didn’t want them to think we were robbing the place, selling drugs, or running some kind of illegal scam out of the Queen Anne.
    By the time I had to pick up Jimmy from the after - school program, I had a short, typewritten plan that I hoped would work.
     
    * * *
     
    Wednesday morning, I woke to the news that a dynamite bomb had blown the police statue in Haymarket Square a hundred feet from the pedestal. Haymarket Square was on the W est S ide, past Greektown, a place we never went. I wasn’t even sure I had seen the statue.
    But the news unnerved me nonetheless.
    I planned to keep the radio in the kitchen off while we had breakfast, but Jimmy had gotten there before me. He’d already put out the milk and cereal, taken raisins and the sugar bowl from the cupboard by the time I staggered out of the shower to make coffee.
    He looked up at me, face taut. “Somebody’s bombing stuff here now.”
    Our trip last June had ended when a bomb went off in a building I was in. I was injured, but not critically. I simply gained some scars on my legs and arms to match the one that ran down the left side of my face. For several weeks, though, I was black and blue and moved as if I had aged fifty years.
    “I got news for you,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to. “They’ve been bombing things here for a long time.”
    “I don’t remember nothing.”
    “Goldblatt’s D epartment S tor e got bombed last Easter,” I said, “and there’ve been other things.”
    Worse things, which I didn’t want to explain.
    “Then how come this one’s all over the news?”
    I sighed, rubbed my hand over my face, and wished I lived in calmer times. Poor Jim, all he got to see was the ugly side of human nature.
    “It’s all over the news for a couple of reasons,” I said. “It’s a police statue. Someone’s issued a challenge to the Chicago Police Department.”
    “You know who?” Jimmy asked as he sat at the