With that behind her, all she wanted was to sweat it out, an honest purge. She had a plan to ditch the conference once stores opened so she could replace her heels with something too expensive. She would put it on the company card. Because fuck it. That’s why.
She had been pleased to find the gym empty and that the treadmills faced a wall of glass overlooking the Chicago River. It was a gray morning and foggy over the water. The sun was only an orange coal warming the horizon. The river below was a glossy black ribbon. Her forehead bumped the glass when she leaned to take in the view and her fingers squelched when she rubbed the greasy spot away.
She picked out the newest treadmill and started her warm-up. She ignored her reflection as she pounded out four miles in half an hour. When she’d finished, she found a stack of hand towels and dried her face. In a mini-fridge were complimentary bottles of water. Once her heart had quit rattling her ribs, she started a half-ass circuit of the Nautilus machines. Her head wasn’t in it. She was still demoralized about her presentation.
After the failed panel, she’d removed her damaged heels and pitched them. She’d gone to her room and flopped face-first on the bed, intending to cry her eyes out. A good cry could be cathartic, and she’d earned a complete breakdown. But she couldn’t work up enough feeling and fell asleep instead.
Sometime after dark, she’d wandered groggily to the bathroom and sat on the toilet, removed her makeup, showered, and raided the minibar for an eight-dollar jar of almonds and a five-dollar sparkling water. She’d rummaged through her suitcase until she found her favorite oversized sweatshirt. Outside her room, a couple giggled as they drunkenly knocked along the corridor, on their way to a shared bed, she had assumed.
“Good for you,” she called. She’d belched, laughed, and had fallen asleep with almond crumbs dusting her chest and stuck in her teeth.
In the gym, she stared at the shoulder-shrug machine and chose to give up on the weight circuit. She could feel the cry she intended the night before, and she didn’t want it to hit her in a public place.
She walked to the indoor pool and took a stroll around the perimeter. She kicked off her running shoes and sat with her legs dangling in the water, up to her knees. The water was neither cool enough to refresh nor warm enough to relax. She swirled her feet, stirring the pool for a while.
The sun was mostly up and illuminated the vast sky over Lake Michigan. The view out the floor-to-ceiling window worked a powerful spell, persuading her that drifting in the pool could heal what ailed her. She thought briefly of stripping and slipping her naked body in the lukewarm water. She could almost feel the buoyant water lifting her, cradling and rocking her, comforting her. But she’d slammed the brakes on the daydream at the thought of her bloated panel participants blundering in and finding her. Her skin had crawled. She stood, dried her feet, and hustled out.
She exited the way she’d come, out the same doors, up the same halls, to wait in front of the same bank of elevators. Once inside, on a whim, she’d jabbed the button for the lobby.
On the first floor, she marched across the grand entry, ignored the people who watched her pass, and went out the revolving doors. She approached a man in a maroon uniform with gold epaulets.
“I need coffee. Bad. Is there a good place within walking distance?” She folded her arms over her chest to shield herself from the chill. Doing so made her compressed cleavage swell.
The bellhop gawked. To compose himself, he pulled off his cap. “Complimentary coffee is available in the restaurant over there.” He aimed his cap into the hotel.
“I’d like to get some air. Make an outing of it.”
“Nice morning for it,” he said. He kept his eyes far away from her chest as he scanned the world around them. “I don’t do fancy coffee. But there’s probably someplace good thataway.” He nodded toward some distant buildings.
“Thanks so much.” Anna Beth walked in the direction he’d indicated.
She crossed a covered drive where cabs waited to snatch tourists and whisk them to one of the airports or some popular destination in the loop. The driver in front of the line, a Sikh by the look of his head wrap, was leaning on the hood of his car and smoking. He pitched his cigarette to the ground, stopped short of grinding it out when he realized she didn’t want a ride. He snatched the cigarette, inspected it, blew on it, and returned it to the groove in his lip.
Anna Beth tightened her ponytail and looked both ways before crossing the street. A man in a work van waited for her to cross. She found a winding path that cut through a green space along the lakeshore. The fog was lifting and a breeze came off the lake. The sheen of perspiration on her forehead dried and pulled her skin taut. She breathed deeply, felt satisfied. She was enjoying herself despite the conference debacle and her personal history with the city.
It had been her senior year of college the last time she’d visited. She and Ramon had taken a trip over Thanksgiving. They’d left Pittsburgh and skirted Lake Erie, stopping in Toledo the first night. At an aquarium they walked through a glass tunnel, surrounded by dark water and sea creatures. While Anna Beth was pointing out a graceful ray, a shark surged and startled a yelp from her. She’d felt embarrassed and claustrophobic, and they’d left. Throughout the evening Ramon had ridiculed her by repeatedly humming the theme to Jaws. She’d laughed it off the first few times. But he’d pushed it, and she hadn’t been in the mood for sex at the shitty roadside motel they’d found.
The next day, they’d arrived in Chicago around lunchtime. It was blowing wet snow. The sidewalks were crowded, the streets damp with dark slush. They hadn’t packed clothes for the weather. Ramon bought her a coat with matching insulated gumboots at a thrift store in Edgewater. They’d eaten as much deep-dish pizza as they could stand and gone to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see a traveling exhibition of Wayne Thiebaud paintings. The lush colors and repetitive shapes of desserts were delightful, but it was the rolling hills, warped perspectives, and vivid blue shadows of San Francisco street scenes that had enticed her.
After the exhibition, Ramon had suggested they find another cheap motel. Instead, Anna Beth got a room at the Blackstone. During her pre-trip research, she discovered the hotel had once been associated with Al Capone, and that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used money from his lucrative Transcendental Meditation empire to buy the building in a failed attempt to convert it into condos. After sitting vacant for years, it was renovated and back in business.
On the walking trail, a yellow Labrador pulled a jogger around the bend of the path ahead of Anna Beth. She sidestepped and let them pass. The man, who wore extra-short shorts, wheezed and nodded and tried to smile. Anna Beth smiled in return. But her head was still elsewhere.
That night at the Blackstone, they’d sat in the bar, drinking Cuba libres and eating fresh-cut potato chips hot from the fryer. They talked about the future: they agreed that children were not in the cards, they would definitely buy investment property, and international travel was a priority. She laughed at his bad quips, grinning until her cheeks ached.
Back in the room, after sex that was more athletic than usual, she’d been compelled to ask for Ramon’s hand in marriage. He was hesitant, but he accepted. They showered together, which led to more sex. She’d fallen asleep in his arms. Spent. Content. Safe.
The pathway ahead of her forked in two directions. One trail continued along the lake, where she could see a woman removing a baby from a stroller. The mother hoisted the infant, threw him in the air, and caught him, smiling into his ecstatic, flushed face. The infant’s overexcited laughter did not delight Anna Beth. She turned her eyes away. That path was not for her.
The other way led down a pedestrian tunnel, under a road congested with morning commuters. She followed the path with her eyes. It appeared to come up in a neighborhood of high-rise apartments. This is where the bellhop had directed her.
Her intuition told her the tunnel was not a safe place. Her body told her she was tired and needed caffeine, o
r her shopping excursion would be interrupted by migraine-level stimulant withdrawals. She fast-walked toward the tunnel.
She hadn’t thought of that asshat Ramon in years. Or that’s what she always told herself each time her mind wandered back to the man she’d once wanted to marry. The engagement had been short because of the inconvenient fact that Ramon was already engaged. He’d broken it off with Anna Beth in a tearful confession, in which he offered to pay for half the hotel bill. Only half.
The breakup had led to a long depression. The depression, and the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud, had eventually persuaded her to move to San Francisco. For her, the idea of a real relationship was dead. Ramon had killed it.
Her mother used to tell her, “Be careful whom you choose to care for. Because they hold the keys to your heart.” Her mother had been talking about motherhood, to make Anna Beth feel guilty about something. Anna Beth had felt the emotional jab but had also tucked the advice away.
Her footsteps echoed as the path dipped under the road. Her legs felt heavy and her shoes registered every stone. Her early morning had caught up to her. Ahead, the path exited on a narrow street with a sidewalk down one side, loading docks along the other. She put her hands on her thighs, letting her slender arms pump her tired legs. She wanted to be buff. She wanted a round butt, but she hated squats. She wanted to have defined arms and cut shoulders like those fitness freaks she followed on Instagram. She wanted tattoos and a Jet Ski and house on a lake so she could use her Jet Ski. She wanted a man, if only temporarily.
She exited the tunnel; her feet moved steadily under her.
She jerked her arms in a defensive seizure before her mind knew why. The violent collision jarred all thoughts from her head. An unstoppable force had her throat. The impact stole her control, knocked her off balance. Whiplash momentum carried her across the street and crushed her to the pavement between dumpsters.
Her ribcage lost its shape. Her air was gone.
She dug at the vise clamped to her throat, scratched with her nails. Tried to scream but had no wind. Tried to inhale, but no oxygen got to her lungs, no room in her body for her burning air sacs to inflate.
She bucked and arced. Her head scraped the ground. Something gouged her scalp.
Her legs scrambled, her feet kicked. Her toe struck something so hard it sent a flash of white pain shuddering through her system. Her adrenal glands did their best. It wasn’t enough. She shoved with weak arms. She had no strength.
Through the corner of her eye, she watched a strip of sky slowly eclipsed by a face. Her loose hair obscured the view, but his eyes didn’t look angry. His breathing slowed as she stopped struggling. He made sounds, like comforting a baby. “Shh. Shh, shh now. That’s it. That’s it. Shh.”
She watched a drop of perspiration form on his temple. Saw how gravity pulled it down his cheek to the edge of his jaw, where it hung over her without falling.
The pressure in her skull grew. Her eyes bulged. She gagged, a raw sound. She smelled flowers. When blood traced a hot line down the back of her neck, it felt like a caress. Then there was only letting go before she burst.
A last tiny pop of static fired her brain. For a sliver of a moment, she believed Ramon was there. He was killing her. Killing her all over again.
Competitive Rivalry
Moe turns Taibbi down a one-way street and has to squeeze the brake and clutch immediately. An unmarked patrol car backs directly at her. She fumbles her thumb for the horn button; when it sounds, it’s a goat with laryngitis. Shit! She straddle-walks the bike backward as fast as she can.
The patrol car stops hard, the red glare of taillights bright in Moe’s face. The transmission grabs, and the car races ahead and bounces through the center of a few potholes before leaving the block and a fog of exhaust fumes behind.
Moe settles her rump on the seat. She taps the bike into first and lets her feet drag the crumbling pavement. Her hands ache from the drive over. I need smaller hand controls. She bumps onto the curb and knocks down the kickstand. The drive was more harrowing than expected. Her thighs hurt from pinching the bike as she swiveled and shifted and held on for dear life. Her body feels battered from maneuvering the weight of her new transportation. Still, I made good time.
She pats the side of the bike’s gas tank before dismounting, pleased with the decision to buy something with a motor. She hangs her Vicky helmet on the handlebar and tries to read the situation, automatically composing possible phrases for her impending article. She sees a couple police milling behind a flapping piece of yellow tape. Further away, three plainclothes cops are working, one silver-haired, a short guy in a stark white dress shirt, and a gargantuan man in a horrible khaki blazer. They focus on the space between two dumpsters. Moe can see one more cop at what must be the far end of the crime scene.
She starts to pull her press credentials, stops as her attention is drawn down the street where the unmarked police car exited. A white news van is angling into the one-way block from the wrong direction. The driver has second thoughts. The van backs out and takes the long way around. The van reads: “TV13 Chicago News in Action!”
Moe’s expression curdles. She puts her press pass away and adjusts her bag strap. Maybe ten minutes in this traffic. That’s her most optimistic window of time before she’s overrun by a production crew angling for gruesome video for the midday broadcast.
Moe approaches the tape barrier and makes a show of rubbernecking. She recognizes the silver-haired man; his wire-framed glasses and sweptback hair mark him as Dr. Majors from the medical examiner’s office.
“You’ll have to stay back,” a broad man with a smooth head says authoritatively.
“What’s going on?” Moe addresses the younger officer, a fit and freckled ginger with a flattop he clearly takes seriously.
“It’s a crime scene,” Flattop explains uselessly, but not unkindly.
“Oh really? How long? I gotta get to work,” she lies.
“Might take a while. You best find a way around,” says Flattop.
“Sorry for the trouble,” the short Michael Jordan puts in. He doesn’t actually sound sorry.
Moe slips her phone from her bag and checks it, giving the impression she’s worried about getting to work. There’s a clock ticking in the back of her mind, one that ends with the fucking Action News team elbowing her out of the way.
She casts her gaze between the two officers. Beside the distant dumpsters, she can see shoulders and backs, gloved hands, and maybe a pair of bright running shoes on a prone body. The colors indicate women’s shoes.
She puts her phone away and turns as if to leave, lets the men relax their guard. She calls this move “The Columbo.” She turns back, “Oh, is that the pathologist down there? I’ve seen him on the news. Must be a body. Right? Oh my god, what happened? Should I be concerned? Am I in danger?”
“Hey, listen, we can’t tell you about the body,” Flattop says, flustered. That’s confirmation. The bald officer scowls.
“So there’s a body.” Moe says. “A woman? I’m a woman. Should I be worried to walk alone? You have to tell me. For my safety.”
“You need to go,” says irritated Michael Jordan.
“I can stand here. Besides, the public has a right to know.” She hears the news van’s door slide open behind her. She peeps over her shoulder and sees what she feared: her nemesis, Sophia Garcia, in a dress like a sausage casing, a mic clasped in a hand tipped with manicured fingernails, primping her curls in the van’s side mirror. Moe knows the cameraman by sight, but not by name. He is, like most of his professional tribe, of formidable height and mass, an asset when jostling for a shot. He’s busily organizing equipment and throwing a battery pack over his shoulder. The officers spot the news van too.
While the cops brace for the coming onslaught, Moe pulls out her credentials.
“Ruther is not going to like this,” Michael Jordan says.
Moe knows Inspector Ruther is head of a special task force. She’d shou
ted questions to him at several crime scenes and press conferences. He’d never given her a printable response.
“Can I quote you on that?” Moe asks. “Detective Ruther doesn’t want the press to get wind of this case. A body was found, but homicide isn’t in charge. Last I heard, Ruther was focused on sex trafficking. Is this related?” She waits for an answer. Nothing. “What makes this death more important than the seven shooting deaths in the past forty-eight hours?” Nothing. “Listen,” Moe says, “these TV13 assholes are the worst.” She makes an educated guess and says with conviction, “From chatter on the police scanner, you got a white female, DOA.” She throws it out to see if they will deny it. They don’t. Figures. If the Special Crimes Unit is involved, it’s because the mayor smells trouble. “This thing is about to go public. You might as well give me something …”
Sophia is suddenly there. She backs her round ass toward the officers while holding the mic. “How’s my light?” she asks.
The cameraman snaps a light on his rig. “Better now. Turn a little left. Other left.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re good.”
“Let’s shoot the intro, then some interview tape. You have the body in the shot?”
“As much as we’re going to get. Let’s try one. You’re ready to rock in five, four, three …” The patrolmen scatter. The cameraman finishes his countdown by holding his fingers in front of him: two fingers, one finger, and a finger pointing at Sophia.
“This is Sophia Garcia reporting for TV13 News in Action! I’m at the scene of a vicious, early morning attack that ended in the death of a woman. We are only blocks from Chicago’s historic Water Tower Place in a popular shopping district. We will share the details of this tragedy as they develop, exclusively on TV13 News in Action!” She holds a big smile for a count of two, lets the mic fall away like it’s too heavy. “How was it?”
Half Dead Page 5