Free High Chicago by Howard Shrier Page A

were dancing in her eyes, until they narrowed and the reflecting flames grew smaller. She said, “Alarm bells. Big loud ones.”
    “He’s the owner.”
    “Okay,” she said. “I get it. You were trying to protect me, is that it? You thought I’d be uncomfortable, vulnerable somehow, eating in a place owned by a mobster?”
    She had given me the perfect out. But taking it wouldn’t have been right. If Hollinger and I were going to go anywhere, she needed to know the truth—at least about this.
    “There’s more to it,” I said.
    “How much more?”
    “For one thing, he’s not a mobster anymore. He’s out of the life now.”
    “No one gets out of that life.”
    “He did.”
    “Even if that’s true, I’d like to know how you know it.”
    The look she was giving me made me feel like we were back in the interview room at police headquarters. “He’s a friend,” I said.
    “Dante Ryan is a friend of yours? The same Dante Ryan we’ve looked at for, I don’t know, half a dozen killings?”
    If all they’d looked at was half a dozen, it had to be because of jurisdictional issues. The other killings must have taken place in Hamilton, Peel Region, or areas covered by the Ontario Provincial Police.
    “Yes.”
    She sat back in her chair, arms across her chest again. “And he’s a friend of yours.”
    “Yes.”
    “Not just a passing acquaintance.”
    “No.”
    She said, “Well. This is surprising, to say the least.”
    “You understand why I didn’t want to—”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “I never expected it would come up. Not tonight.”
    “That makes two of us. So was he out of the life when you became pals?”
    Cue the sound of a toilet flushing. Any chance I had of a relationship with her was swirling down the tank and into Lake Ontario. “No. He was still in his previous occupation.”
    “Hired killer.”
    “He worked for Marco di Pietra. I’ll leave it to your imagination what he did.”
    “Do yourself a favour. Don’t.”
    The waitress picked that moment to lay two menus on our table. Then she pointed to a blackboard where the evening’s specials were written in coloured chalk. Pink for the meat dish, yellow for the fish, white for the pasta.
    Blue for the mood.
    “Please give us a minute,” Hollinger said to the waitress.
    “No worries,” she replied.
    When she was gone I said, “I never hired Ryan, if that helps.”
    “Be serious, damn it. Jonah,” she said, trying to rein in her anger, keeping maybe half of it in check. “I’m not like you, I didn’t just fall into being a detective. From the day I started in the Niagara Regional Police, I wanted to be a detective, and from the day I made detective, I wanted to be Homicide. There are thirty-two of us, not counting support staff. We’re the elite. We do the best work, get the highest job satisfaction ratings on internal surveys. Wear the best suits. Life satisfaction isn’t always the highest—way too many of us are divorced—yeah, me too.” The first small grin. “Another cop in Niagara, ahometown boy. I left him behind when I was offered the Toronto job. The point is, they call us the Snappy Suits for a reason. It’s all men, except me. There was another woman, Carol Wisnewski.”
    “I know the Noose.”
    “She’s on mat leave now. So it’s me and the guys. If I treat the men under me well, they think I’m soft and try to get away with everything they can. If I’m hard on them, I’m a bitch. Half the meetings I go to, I could be chairing, everyone’s saying, ‘Guys … get out there, guys …’ You know how hard it is to make Homicide sergeant before the age of forty? Not easy for a man and ten times harder for a woman. I can’t afford to get blind-sided, Jonah. Not by anyone. So tell me how on earth a man like you—or the man I thought you were—becomes friends with a contract killer?”
    I was liking her better by the minute, even as she slipped farther away. “Our paths just crossed a while back,” I said