The Brotherhood Page 2

  She taught kindergarten during the first two years of their marriage and planned to return to her career when Josh and any more children were school-age.

  Something about the way things had turned out confirmed in Boone’s mind that an ordered life was rewarded. He owed that to his parents, he guessed. Having a goal, a plan, and following through paid off. He wasn’t sure of the precise definition of the American dream. All he knew was that he was living it.

  Did he deserve it? Sure, why not? He knew his own mind: he was a justice freak, and everything was working out the way he had hoped and planned. He and Nikki even found a great church, Community Life on the Near North Side. It was a large, multicampus, cross-cultural congregation pastored by a man not Boone’s senior by more than ten years, Francisco Sosa. The engaging leader had persuaded Nikki to teach Sunday school while Josh was in the nursery, and Boone to get involved with junior boys’ ministries when his schedule allowed.

  Boone had to admit he found it disconcerting to hear Pastor Sosa discuss “the Lord” as a constant presence in his life. It wasn’t that Boone didn’t consider himself devout. He prayed before meals, prayed when he was in danger, went to church, tithed, and served. He just wasn’t obsessed with spiritual things or so up-front about them. Of course, he also spent at least eight hours a day around men and women with the worst language on the planet. Most were also closet drinkers and divorced, some many times over. Jack Keller had three ex-wives. No wonder he was that rare old-timer who still loved the job and had not grown disillusioned or jaded, despite being the very definition of a grizzled veteran. The job was all he had.

  One Sunday after Boone—in uniform—had spoken to Sunday school classes about his job, Pastor Sosa told him that he saw something in him that could really be developed. “You’ve got a gift for communicating. Hone it and use it.”

  The pastor also said he thought about Boone often and prayed for him when he knew he was on duty. Boone thanked him, but the truth was, that kind of talk made him nervous. He got the impression that Sosa assumed Boone prayed before every shift. Which he did not.

  3:10 a.m., Saturday, January 21

  Boone and Keller were on patrol when Keller pulled in front of an all-night convenience store for coffee. While Boone sat waiting in the passenger seat, he noticed a pickup truck slowly maneuvering into the alley behind the storefronts on the other side of the street.

  He radioed Keller. “Jack, you on your way out? Just spotted a suspicious truck.”

  “I’m nuking a bagel. Should I come right now?”

  “I’ll check it out and call if I need you.”

  Boone got out and jogged around to the driver’s side, then pulled the squad down the block, switching off his headlights before turning into the alley about three hundred feet behind the pickup. He gradually gained on the slow-moving truck as it cruised, stopped, started, and repeated the cycle. He suspected the two occupants were casing the area with burglary in mind and radioed in the license plate number.

  Finally Boone eased up behind them and turned on his blue lights, calling out over the PA for them to remain in the vehicle. He approached cautiously, pausing by the rear left bumper and watching to see if they were reaching for anything. When he stepped to the window, staying back so the driver had to crane his neck to see him, Boone asked for license and registration.

  The driver was a big redheaded man in coveralls. His license appeared in order, but it bore an Arkansas address. The truck had Illinois plates.

  “What’re you boys doing out here tonight?” Boone said.

  “Looking for the Piggly Wiggly store, but we must have the wrong address. We got a friend who works there all night, and somebody told us it was around here.”

  Boone had never seen a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Chicago, though he knew of a few in the suburbs. “You find that registration?”

  The passenger made a show of digging through the glove box. “No, the wife must have taken it out. It’s usually in here.”

  “How long have you lived in Illinois, sir?”

  “’Bout six months.”

  “And what is your current address?”

  As the man was hemming and hawing, obviously pretending to try to come up with it, headquarters reported back to Boone’s walkie-talkie in code that told him the truck was stolen. He was about to make two serious collars, and he imagined himself herding the men out of the truck and into the back of the squad.

  Boone had formulated the orders he would bark and was ready to cuff the men one at a time, but suddenly he couldn’t speak. Something inside cautioned him to go by the book, to engage his partner, call for backup, and take no unnecessary risks.

  Nothing he had seen scared him about these suspects. They were big, sure, but he hadn’t detected alcohol, nor did he suspect they had guns stashed—though of course he would pat them down. The more Boone imagined himself making this double arrest alone, the more he liked the idea of the admiration that would ensue from Jack and their watch commander, not to mention everyone else in the district. Maybe he would even be cited.

  He intended to instruct the driver to step out of the vehicle with his hands up and the passenger to stay where he was. But instead he said, “Turn off the engine and hand me the keys.” The man slowly handed them out.

  Boone radioed Jack, told him where he was, and asked him to call for backup.

  “What’s the problem, Officer?” Redhead said.

  “Just sit tight and we’ll straighten this out.”

  Eventually the pickup was impounded, and the suspects were on their way to central booking, charged with grand theft auto. Boone’s shift was long over, but Keller had to stay at headquarters for a morning meeting anyway, so he said he would finish the interrogation and write the report. “Don’t worry; you’ll still get credit for the collars.”

  “I appreciate it, Jack, but you know the collars I really want.”

  “Don’t start with this again, kid. You can’t force it. You don’t take it to the gangs. You wait till they bring it to you.”

  “That’s the problem! We ought to be taking it to them. Wade in there, show ’em we won’t be intimidated. This is our city, not theirs.”

  “Good way to get yourself killed, Boones. But I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the passion.”

  The middle of the next afternoon, when Nikki allowed Josh to crawl on the bed and wake his dad, Boone roused to see her with a page in her hand. He roughhoused with the giggling Josh, then asked her what it was about.

  “Something strange from my mother,” she said. “Found it in my e-mail in-box this morning and printed it out.”

  Josh squirmed into his lap as Boone sat up and studied the paper.

  Nikki, maybe this is nothing, but I can’t sleep, and I certainly don’t want to call and disturb you. Is Boone working tonight?

  At twelve fifteen this morning I was awakened from a sound sleep with such an urge to pray for Boone that I had no choice but to slide out of bed and kneel to do just that. Now you know we’ve never knelt to pray, and I’ve never had a vision or a dream or any urging like this. But it was so overwhelming that, as I say, I had no choice.

  Call me when convenient. Needless to say, I’m dying to know if it was something serious or just something I ate.

  Love, Mother

  “Hmm,” Boone said. “Interesting.”

  “Well? What can I tell her?”

  “Pretty quiet shift, actually. Only two incidents. One was a drugstore owner telling us that a kid ran off with some phone cards just before he closed at midnight. The other was a stolen vehicle, but it turned out to be routine, and that was around three fifteen.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty sure. I would have remembered anything dangerous.”

  “Boone, three fifteen here is twelve fifteen in Anchorage.”

  “Well, that’s true. But like I say, turned out to be a standard GTA, no resistance, no danger.”

  That night when Boone showed up
for his shift, Keller asked him to sign off on the arrest report from the previous night. “You’ll get a kick out of the end.”

  Boone sat and read it through. The last paragraph read:

  Offender 1 told reporting officer that arresting officer was “lucky he waited for backup. If he had tried to take us himself, we were going to jump him and shoot him with his own gun.”

  2

  Street Cred

  Within a year after Boone’s first collar, he began making a name for himself in District 11. He thoroughly embraced the department’s CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) approach, which encouraged officers to work with community leaders and other city agencies to prevent crime rather than just react to it.

  As Boone’s duties finally grew to include interacting with gangs and drug pushers—as he had always wanted—he found himself also an enthusiastic supporter of PRIDE (Police and Residents in Drug Enforcement). That meant a lot more interaction with the public and a chance to once again stand between the innocents and those who would terrorize them.

  It still wasn’t enough. Boone obsessed over going on the offensive. Why did the police always have to wait, to react after the fact? With enough intelligence and paid informants, couldn’t they get inside these guys’ heads and be waiting for them next time? A cop could dream. Boone could see in Keller’s eyes that he was tired of hearing about it every day.

  By the following summer, when Boone reached his eighteen-month milestone with the Chicago PD, he had become one of the most celebrated PPOs in the history of the infamous 11th district. Any complaints by arrestees were quickly proven false—usually by Jack Keller, who seemed as proud of his young partner as he would have been if he himself had been so frequently feted.

  Keller benefited, too, from how visible Boone had become. While they had been mired in the first watch and often had to come in during the early evening for community meetings as well, exuberant public support brought them to the attention of the brass. Now rumor had it that Keller was going to be urged to apply for the recently vacated role of deputy chief in the Organized Crime Division.

  “You gonna do it, Jack?” Boone said. “I hate to think of breaking in a new partner.”

  That made Keller laugh. “The truth? I wouldn’t go unless they let me take you.”

  Meanwhile, Drake and Keller were rewarded with a move to second watch, which put Boone on what Nikki called a schedule meant for a human being, and they celebrated his freedom to sleep at night and spend time with her and Josh from when he got home late in the afternoon until bedtime.

  Keller got the biggest kick out of a call that saw Boone wind up on the front pages of newspapers all over the country and even get a spot on one of the network TV morning shows. A 911 call came in from an eight-year-old girl who had taken over steering the car when her mother collapsed at the wheel. Fortunately, the mother’s foot had slipped off the gas, so the girl was steering a slow-rolling car with one hand and screaming to dispatch on a cell phone with the other.

  The incident happened close to where Keller and Boone were patrolling, and when Keller spotted the vehicle, his plan was to carefully pull the squad ahead of it, allowing it to lightly bump him, and stop it that way.

  Boone said, “Hold on. Let me try something first.”

  He leaped from the squad, raced down the street to overtake the vehicle, opened the door, and was somehow able to reach in and downshift, slowing the car even more. Finally he held on to the frame and, hopping on one foot, got his other leg inside to reach the brake. Boone wound up being interviewed along with the grateful mother, who had suffered an adverse reaction to medication, and her heroic young daughter.

  With everything else came Boone’s salary increase to nearly sixty thousand dollars a year. While no fortune, it was something to build on, and Boone took advantage of the CPD’s home purchase assistance benefit. A Realtor from church helped the Drakes find a cozy Cape Cod in an old-fashioned neighborhood not far from work with, yes, just enough yard to mow.

  After church one hot summer Sunday, Pastor Francisco Sosa asked Boone if they could talk sometime, suggesting they meet after a youth activity in the middle of the week. “Sure,” Boone said, “as long as you’re not going to ask for more of my time. Josh is nearly two now and into everything, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.” Sosa assured him it wasn’t about that.

  That Wednesday night, Boone had finished helping supervise a junior boys’ basketball game when he saw the pastor waiting for him. They repaired to the pastor’s study, a book-filled chamber surprisingly understated for the senior pastor of such a vast inner-city fellowship. For some reason, even before Francisco Sosa got to the point, Boone felt self-conscious, awkward, out of his element. It was almost as if he had been called to the principal’s office without knowing what he had done.

  During the ice-breaking small talk about his job, his family, and Chicago sports, Sosa seemed to be peering into Boone’s soul. Finally the pastor said, “Life could hardly be better for you, could it?”

  Boone sat across from him, bouncing one foot. “Can’t argue with that. And believe me, I’m grateful.”

  Truth was—and Boone assumed Sosa somehow knew this—that was something he would have said only to his pastor. When it came down to it, Boone believed he himself had created the life he enjoyed; he had established parameters, guidelines, goals, and practices that resulted in success.

  “I need you to know, Boone, that I appreciate your faithfulness here and your willingness to work with the boys.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m impressed, too, that you’ve never acceded to their wishes that you show them your gun.”

  Boone chuckled. “I’d like to keep my job. We’re expected to carry a weapon at all times, even off duty, but it’s not a toy to be showing kids.”

  “You know the boys have come to me, asking me to tell you to show it to them.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “I know, and our treasurer—who works with our insurance company—is thankful too.”

  “I just hope it gives you a little sense of security to know I’m armed when I’m sitting in services too, with the crazy stuff you hear about happening in churches.”

  “Let’s pray you’ll never need it around here,” Pastor Sosa said.

  “I heard that.”

  “Well, that’s not why I asked to see you. I want to talk to you about something else. Passion. You follow?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re passionate about your job, aren’t you?”

  “I live for it.”

  “And Nikki?”

  “My life.”

  “And Josh?”

  “I’d die for him.”

  “I love that about you, Boone. I really do.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “I want to know if you love the Lord with the same kind of intensity.”

  Boone shifted in his seat and cocked his head. “Well, sure, yeah. ’Course I do. I became a Christian as a child, never doubted, been a churchgoer forever.”

  “I know. But I’ve never heard you speak of your faith, or your ministry here for that matter, with the passion you seem to have for the rest of your life.”

  “Humph. I guess it’s true I’m not comfortable talking, you know, like some do. Like you do. I’m not ashamed of my faith or anything, but it’s just not me to talk all spiritual. But that doesn’t mean I’m not passionate about my faith.”

  Sosa fell silent and seemed to study Boone, which made Boone all the more uncomfortable. The pastor was smiling and looked like he cared. Why else would he pursue this? It couldn’t have been any easier for him to confront Boone than it was for Boone to talk about such things.

  The pastor pulled his Bible from the desk and set it in his lap. Boone had seen him do this before, and it amused him, because it was clear that Sosa had memorized the most familiar passages. He didn’t open it, but he sure quoted it a lot.

  “The Scriptures say t
hat we believers will be known by our fruit and how we love each other.”

  “Uh-huh, I know.”

  “Do you share your faith with people? Coworkers, friends, unsaved relatives?”

  “Not as much as I should.” In fact, no.

  “And are you in the Word and praying every day?”

  “Well, not every day. Again, not as much as I should, but I’m working on it. Your sermons get to me.”

  “Do they?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You’ve got a pretty sweet life, Boone. But you know the majority of the people we minister to need God and don’t have him. They need Jesus. And even when they come to faith, they will not likely ever enjoy the kind of lives you and I enjoy. Know what I mean? It takes passion to reach them and to persuade them that their eternal destiny is more important than their earthly circumstances.”

  Boone nodded, wishing Sosa had asked only for more of his time. Now he just wanted out. Sosa wanted him to be something he was not, and yet Boone couldn’t—wouldn’t—admit it. He was perfectly willing to keep coming to church, giving, serving. But the rest of it . . . Yeah, he could be more spiritual. Meanwhile, yes, his life was great, but the truth was, he could take the credit for that.

  Suddenly Pastor Sosa stood, his dark eyes alive. “Well, that’s all I wanted, Boone. Let me pray for us and I’ll let you get back to that beautiful family.” He reached for Boone, who stood and moved close so Sosa could throw an arm around his shoulder.

  “Father,” Sosa began, “thank you for loving us and caring about us. Fill us with your passion for souls, for your Word, for communing with you. Help us love people the way you do. Amen.”

  “Thank you,” Boone said, feigning as much earnestness as he could muster. Sosa seemed to buy it, embraced him, and let him go. Boone had never felt so relieved to be finished with anything.