Chapter 5
Union found his position at ten-thirty—a shadow between two dumpsters in the alley across from Kowalski's Auto Repair.
The sedan had left at eight, Eddie's watchers apparently satisfied that Diane was done for the day. Amateur move. Anyone running a real surveillance operation knew the night shift was when things happened.
He settled in to wait.
The neighborhood quieted as the hours crawled past. Traffic on Archer thinned to occasional headlights. The Polish deli on the corner closed at nine. By ten, the only sounds were distant sirens and the ever-present rumble of the L.
Union had done this before. Countless nights on picket lines, watching for scabs trying to sneak through after dark. Parking lot stakeouts during contract negotiations, documenting company thugs who thought they could intimidate workers without witnesses.
Different targets now. Same patience.
At eleven-oh-seven, a gray van turned onto the block.
Union pressed deeper into the shadows, his phone already in hand. The van rolled past the garage once, slow and searching, then circled the block and parked three spaces down from the customer cars in Diane's lot.
Two men got out.
The first was stocky, maybe forty, moving with the confidence of someone who'd done this a hundred times. He carried a tool bag and headed straight for a Honda Civic parked near the bay doors—the same car Union had seen Diane working on that afternoon.
The second man was younger, nervous, his head swiveling to check the street every few seconds. Lookout. Not a very good one.
Union raised his phone and started shooting.
The stocky man—Varga, had to be—slid under the Civic without hesitation. The scrape of a creeper on asphalt, then the sound of tools being selected with practiced ease.
Union photographed everything. Varga's face when he'd emerged from the van. The license plate. The tool bag. The younger man's profile as he paced the sidewalk.
Twenty minutes.
That's how long Varga worked under the Civic while Union documented every second. Whatever he was doing—brake lines, fuel system, steering components—he took his time. Thorough. Professional.
A man who took pride in sabotage that looked like negligence.
When Varga finally slid out from under the car, he was smiling. He said something to the lookout that Union couldn't hear, then they both climbed back into the van and pulled away.
Union gave them a thirty-second head start before following on foot.
His bike was parked two blocks over—far enough that the engine wouldn't give him away, close enough for a quick pursuit. He reached it as the van turned south on Halsted, and he followed at a distance, keeping other vehicles between them.
The van led him through Bridgeport and into Brighton Park, the neighborhoods getting rougher as they went. Union knew these streets—had walked picket lines at factories that no longer existed, watched communities hollow out as the jobs disappeared.
At midnight, the van pulled into an industrial lot behind a windowless building on Kedzie.
Union killed his engine a block away and approached on foot.
The building had been a machine shop once, back when Chicago still made things. Now it was something else entirely. Floodlights illuminated a fenced lot where three cars sat on blocks, their hoods open, men moving between them with the efficiency of a disassembly line.
Chop shop. Processing stolen vehicles under floodlights at midnight like they owned the whole damn neighborhood.
Union found a position behind a rusted shipping container and watched.
Varga's van had pulled inside the fence, and the saboteur was talking to a man in coveralls who seemed to be running the operation. Money changed hands. Varga laughed at something, clapped the other man on the shoulder, and headed for a back office.
Union counted heads. Eight men working the cars. Two more on what looked like security, though they spent more time smoking than watching. Varga and the lookout made twelve.
He photographed everything—faces, vehicles, license plates, the building itself. Building a target file the way he used to build files on scab operations during union campaigns.
Know your enemy. Know their numbers. Know their patterns.
Then hit them where it hurts.
He stayed until one-thirty, watching the operation process two of the three stolen cars down to frames and parts. Professional work, he had to admit. Whoever ran this shop knew what they were doing.
Didn't matter. They were still stealing cars in Wolf territory, and they were still threatening a woman who'd rather die than sell her father's name.
Union rode back to the compound through empty streets, the map Diane had drawn burning a hole in his cut. She'd given him the locations. Tonight he'd confirmed one of them, seen Varga in action, documented the whole operation.
Now it was time to bring it to the table.
Alpha was still awake when Union walked into the clubhouse.
The President sat alone at the bar, a whiskey in front of him and paperwork spread across the scarred wood. Running a club meant running a business, and Alpha handled both with the same cold efficiency.
"You're out late." Alpha didn't look up from his papers.
"Had something to check on." Union pulled up a stool and dropped his phone on the bar. "You're going to want to see this."
Alpha set down his pen and picked up the phone, scrolling through the photographs with an expression that gave nothing away. The chop shop. The stolen cars. Varga's face.
"Brighton Park?"
"One of six locations I know about. Maybe more." Union pulled Diane's map from his cut and spread it on the bar. "Eddie Bartosz. Runs the biggest chop shop network on the South Side. Been operating for eighteen years."
Alpha studied the map. "And you're bringing this to me because?"
"Because he's trying to absorb a legitimate shop in Bridgeport. Kowalski's Auto Repair. Woman who runs it won't sell, so he's sabotaging her customers' cars. Three people almost died."
Something flickered in Alpha's eyes. "The shop where Lakeshore sent you."
"Yeah. Diane Kowalski. Her father built that garage from nothing. She's been running it alone for five years, and she'd rather burn it down than let Bartosz turn it into a front."
"Sounds like your kind of woman."
Union ignored that. "Bartosz has twenty-plus men, six shops, connections to junkyards and buyers across the Midwest. He's been staying under our radar because he kept his operation quiet and didn't make waves."
"And now?"
"Now he's putting civilians at risk in our territory. Threatening an honest business owner. Sending men to corner her in her own garage."
Alpha's expression hardened. "He touched her?"
"Bruises. Threats." Union's hands curled into fists on the bar. "She's been fighting alone for six months. Checking every car for sabotage. Losing mechanics because they're scared. All because she won't bend to a bully with more muscle than principles."
Silence stretched between them.
Alpha was a man of few words, but Union had learned to read him over the years. The way his jaw tightened. The way his fingers drummed once on the bar, then stopped.
"What are you recommending?"
"I'm recommending we treat this like what it is.
" Union met Alpha's eyes. "A hostile takeover of an honest shop by a corrupt operation.
Bartosz has been running his network in our territory without permission for eighteen years.
That's eighteen years of stolen cars, destroyed businesses, and workers getting squeezed while we looked the other way. "
"We didn't look the other way. We didn't know."
"We know now."
Alpha picked up his whiskey and took a slow sip, his eyes never leaving Union's face.
"You want to go to war with Eddie Bartosz over one garage."
"I want to go to war with Eddie Bartosz because he's a parasite who's been feeding on our territory. The garage is just how I found out about him." Union leaned forward. "But yeah. I want to protect that shop. I want to protect the woman running it."
"Why?"
Because she's got grease under her fingernails and steel in her spine. Because she reminds me of every honest worker who ever stood against a boss with more money and fewer morals. Because something about her makes me want to burn down everything that's ever threatened her.
"Because that's what we do," Union said instead. "We protect our territory. We eliminate threats. And Bartosz is a threat."
Alpha was quiet for a long moment, studying the map, the photographs, the evidence Union had gathered. The President's face was unreadable, but Union knew him well enough to see the calculation happening behind those cold eyes.
"Bring it to church tomorrow," Alpha finally said. "Full table. We'll vote on it."
"And until then?"
"Until then, keep watching." Alpha drained his whiskey and stood. "And keep that woman safe. If Bartosz is as aggressive as you say, he's not going to wait for us to make a move."
Union nodded. "I'll handle it."
"I know you will." Alpha paused at the door to the back hallway. "Union. This woman. She's not just a job to you, is she?"
The question hung in the air.
Union thought about Diane's hands, permanently stained with grease from twenty-four years of honest work. Her voice when she talked about her father. The way she'd stared down Eddie Bartosz's threats and told him to go to hell.
"No," he said quietly. "She's not."
Alpha nodded once and disappeared into the darkness.
Union sat at the bar alone, staring at the map Diane had drawn him, thinking about hostile takeovers and honest workers and a woman who'd rather die than sell her father's name.
Tomorrow the club would vote.
Tonight, he'd make sure she was still alive to save.