by Wally Duff
“Follow me.”
I grabbed my backpack and we went down the hall, stopping at the second door. It was locked. All I had to do was insert the gun’s picking needles into the lock and go to work. It took less than thirty seconds, and I opened the door.
“I’ll start the hack and lock the door when I leave,” she said.
“Great,” I said, as I turned around and went back to the rest of the group.
111
Eight minutes later, Linda walked into the playroom with a tray of dishes piled high with sandwiches, chips, and fruit. I sniffed and spied a stack of chocolate chip cookies.
I stood up to help her serve and grabbed a cookie. “Did you make this?” I whispered.
“You know me better than that,” Linda whispered back. “I called John Benker, my mother’s caterer, and he prepared everything. All I did was put it on Hannah’s plates.” She glanced around. “You better get going.”
Once I was back upstairs, I used my equipment to unlock the door again to let myself into Micah’s study. On the opposite side of the room sat an antique French desk with a computer on the top. The hard drive hummed, and it appeared the download was finished. I stepped into the room, closed and locked the door, and dropped the tools into my backpack.
Sitting down at Micah’s computer, I followed Linda’s instructions to shut it down. Before I could remove the flash drive, I heard a key in the lock and then the door opening behind me. That was followed by a sound I recognized — a bullet being chambered into a gun’s barrel.
I turned around. A bearded young man stood in the doorway. He pointed a gun at my chest.
Oh, my, God!
It was Hannah’s driver/manny. He wasn’t smiling. “I want that flash drive from Dr. Mittelman’s computer.” He had an English accent.
I have to distract him.
My voice croaked. “Do we know each other?”
My heart pounded so hard I thought he could see it banging against my sternum.
“No.”
I cleared my throat. “But I’m sure I’ve seen you in the neighborhood.”
He gestured toward the computer with the gun. “Enough! Give me the flash drive.”
“Flash drive?” I asked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” he said, stepping into the room. The odor of cigarettes drifted in with him.
My backpack!
Maybe I could fool him with what I had in it. I stood up and used it to block his view of the computer.
Unexpectedly, Hannah appeared in the doorway. “Tina, your daughter began whimpering, and I came looking for you,” she announced. “What is going on?”
The man turned around to face her. He lowered the gun to his side, hiding it from her view. I reached into a side pocket of my backpack and palmed the flash drive I’d shoved in there after my failure to access Lorenz’s hard drive.
“I was touring your fabulous home,” I said. “It’s exactly what Carter and I have been hunting for, and honestly, I was stealing a few of your decorating ideas.”
Along with the contents from your husband’s hard drive.
“In Micah’s office?” she asked.
As my lie took on a life of its own, I began to do a mini Tina-two-step. I continued to clutch my backpack in front of me to conceal what I was about to do.
“Carter and I are into offices. You know how writers are.”
My right hand touched the computer as Hannah turned to the man.
“Farhad, Tina is a guest in my home. You do not have to worry about her. She is no threat to me or the children.”
He glared at her. “My job is to help you if there is a problem, and this is what I am doing.” The gun remained at his side hidden from Hannah’s sightline.
While they talked, I switched Linda’s flash drive for mine. I stepped forward and took Hannah by the arm. I guided her into the hallway and ignored Farhad.
“I love how you’ve displayed your family pictures,” I gushed.
She turned back toward the office. “Let me show you how Mr. Berry, our interior designer, did it.”
I glanced over her shoulder as Farhad reached out to remove my empty flash drive. I clamped my hand on her arm and rotated her toward me, hoping she wouldn’t see what he was doing.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “Let’s join the kids.”
As we stepped further into the hallway, Hannah glanced at the office door. “This is strange. Micah always locks the door to his office. It is off limits to the children. Was it unlocked when you came in?”
“It was. It’s possible he didn’t lock it because he has so much on his mind.” I turned around. “I’m sure Farhad can lock up for you.”
“I will.” He flipped the empty flash drive up and caught it. “I have what I need.”
112
“Did you get the flash drive?” Linda asked, as we walked out of Hannah’s front door.
“Have it in my backpack, but now what do I do with it?” I asked.
“Meaning the keystroke logger on your computer.”
“I do. I don’t want the feds to know what we’re doing.”
“Let’s go to my house and use my computers.”
“I hoped you would say that.”
Twenty minutes later, we walked into Linda’s computer room. Her nanny took over and played with our daughters. I shivered after going from the mid-nineties outside heat to the frigid room, which was no more than sixty-five degrees. The air smelled artificial. And there was a low hum from the servers. Three computer screens sat on her desk. On the far wall were six more wall-mounted units.
“I feel like I’m on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise,” I said. “How long did it take you to build this?”
“When I gave up on music in college and switched to computer science, my parents went a trifle overboard one Hanukkah. It was my first expensive computer. They kept adding to it.”
I handed the flash drive to her. “Let’s do it.”
She inserted it into her main computer. I pulled up a chair and watched over her shoulder. There were three sections.
“The first one is titled ‘The Hamlin Park Irregulars,’ ” she said.
“I recognize this,” I said, pointing at the screen. “It’s background information about me, Carter, and Kerry.”
“But not your names.”
“And you’re in there with your family.”
“But we’re not named either.”
“Cas is in here, too, with her family.”
“And Molly with hers but, again, without any of their names.”
“Wonder what the ‘Hamlin Park Irregulars’ means?” I asked.
“Micah spent a lot of time in England,” she said. “I bet he became a fan of Sherlock Holmes and his Baker Street Irregulars. He might have used this as a code name for all of us.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe he worried that a keystroke logger had been installed on his computer.”
But who would do that?
113
The second section had a spreadsheet with five vertical columns. There were twenty-two rows in the first column, each row beginning with two capitalized letters. It took half an hour to analyze the data.
“The first column has to be initials of the breast surgery patients,” Linda said.
“But I don’t know a stripper with the initials SK,” I said. “Or the next two, TT and HG.”
Using my burner phone, I called my stripper expert and put him on speaker. Linda leaned close to listen.
“Tony, do you know any of the stripper’s names from the Twenties?”
“Know ‘em all.”
“Do any of them have the initials SK, TT, or HG?”
“That would be their stage names.”
“Which are...?”
“Donna Allen’s stage name was SK for Special K. Sammy Simmons is TT for Topsy Turvy. And Corky Gibson is HG for Hoot Gibson and her 45’s.”
I checked the second column of the spreadsheet. There were two different six-digit numbers next to SK. I saw the same thing by TT. Each of the next eight initials only had one six-digit number. I remembered the identification numbers on Molly’s implants.
“Do you have access to Donna’s autopsy report from the murder book?”
“Got it right here.”
“What does the medical examiner report about her breast implants?”
I heard him flip through the pages of the murder book. “ME wrote there were a couple of numbers on the pieces of the implants recovered at the scene. He followed that lead and discovered the implants came from the Nagor Company in the UK. He talked to their head man who said that the implants had to be specially ordered because of their large size.”
I pictured Molly’s saline implants. “Did the man from Nagor mention a valve of some kind?”
“Implants were ordered with a valve for the filler to be injected during surgery.”
“Did he say what the filler was?”
“Nothing in here about that.”
“What were the numbers the medical examiner recovered?”
“He found an eight and two. According to the company, there should have been six. ME indicates he was lucky to find any numbers considering the force of the blast.”
“Did the Nagor guy say when the first ones were delivered and where they were sent?”
“June twenty-first, but apparently he wouldn’t give the ME any more information without a court order. Why all the questions?”
“Working the story. Like you said, I used to be a big shot reporter. I’ll let you know what I find.” I paused. “And I do not have a fat ass!”
114
“Okay, we have the name problem solved,” I said.
“And we have the serial numbers of the implants, the dates of the first surgeries, the two revision surgeries, and the sizes of the implants that were inserted,” Linda said.
“Plus, the schedule for the twelve implants to be done on the other strippers later in August,” I said. “Do you think the strippers are mules carrying drugs in their new breasts?”
“Nine girls couldn’t carry enough drugs to make this whole operation profitable. What are we missing?”
We went back to the spreadsheet.
“The fifth column is the only one we haven’t figured out,” she said, pointing at the computer screen.
“It lists CTDSP along with 70 cc of SAE 10 non-detergent motor oil twice on June twenty-third, with 70 cc and 135 cc in all the other entries.”
“What’s CTDSP?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Until we figure it out, we can’t go much further.”
“Let’s check the last section.”
It was written in an encryption code.
“Can you crack this?” I asked.
Her fingers raced over the keyboard. “This was done by an expert. I’m having trouble opening it.”
“What now?”
“The solution might be in Micah’s computer.”
“This is from Micah’s computer.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, right. I mean the one in his lab.”
“What do we do?”
“You play with those letters. Use that computer on your left. I’ll work on this.”
I took out my knitting and began a new row as I went over the entire saga in my head. Twenty rows later, I had it.
“Oh my God!” I said. “I figured it out.”
“What?”
“CTDSP stands for the chemical formula cyclotrimethylene trinitramine; dioctyl sebacate; and polyisobutelene.”
“Which is?”
“C4.”
115
“I am such a dummy!” I said. “Tony told me the police lab found heroin residue on al-Turk’s garage door, which convinced me that he was a drug dealer using the Twenties to launder money.”
“But he’s not?” Linda asked.
“He still could be, but it looks like he’s a terrorist having Micah inject C4 as the filler for the breast implants.”
“Do you think he purchased the strip club to give him an endless supply of young women to unwittingly carry the bombs?”
“It makes sense. Tony said C4 can be molded into any shape. From my research on the abortion clinic bombings, I discovered the viscosity of C4 can be varied by making it into a slurry using SAE 10 non-detergent motor oil as a solvent to dissolve the chemical binder of the C4.”
SAE?
“I think I can prove it. Can you access the files from my computer?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
In two minutes, she put up the pictures I snapped while the two men unloaded the boxes into al-Turk’s garage. On one box were the letters “SA”. She enlarged the letters. We could now see part of an “E,” proving motor oil had been delivered to his garage.
“The SAE is listed in the fifth column of the spread sheet along with the CTDSP,” she said.
“The implants were ordered with valves, allowing the C4 to be injected into them without the patients knowing what was in the chemical makeup of the mixture.”
“Do you think Micah harvested eggs from the strippers during the surgery?”
“Great question. I’ll call Corky.”
I put her on speaker. I needed a simple question first. “I’m still helping Detective Infantino with the investigation. He needs your address here in Chicago.”
Corky told me, and I entered it on the computer. I pointed at my files, which Linda still had up on one of her screens. It was the same address for the apartment building behind the Twenties. I mouthed “more proof” to Linda.
“Got time for one more question?” I asked.
“Sure, if it helps catch the creep who did this to Donna.”
“Didn’t you say you had menstrual cramps after your breast surgery?”
“Did I ever. That pain was almost worse than my chest.”
“Did you have any vaginal bleeding with it?”
“Yeah, I did, and it’s kinda weird, you know? That part of me is a long way from my boobs.”
“Did Mittelman say why it happened?”
“He said it was the way he did the operation and, since it was free, we should stop complaining. We were afraid he would tell al-Turk and we shut up.” She paused. “Oh, and he gave us gigantic shots in our butts a month before he did our boobs. It killed. Sammy got a bruise so big she had to put makeup on it.”
Gotcha, Micah.
I hung up. “He used those strippers to provide his supply of human female eggs.”
116
“Looks like we were wrong about Micah being such a nice guy,” Linda said.
“No kidding,” I said.
“As an officer of the court, I have to advise you that we need to tell those girls they might be walking bombs.”
“But what if we’re wrong and their implants are full of silicone and not C4?”
She pulled out a yellow legal pad from her desk. “Let’s list what you have.”
“Don’t you want to use your computer?”
“I’m a lawyer. This is the way I always do it.” She paused. “Just like you do with your knitting when you need to relax and think.”
“Ten girls received breast implants, all done by Micah in an outpatient surgery center owned by a shell corporation, which is controlled by the Arun Corporation,” I began.
She wrote it down.
“The Arun Corporation also owns al-Turk’s home, two vehicles he uses, a GMC, and the apartment building the girls live in rent-free.”
She shrugged. “You haven’t shown me any concrete facts.”
“The money came from JDL and Associates in Luxembourg.”
“And?”
“And what do we know about them?” I asked.
“I still haven’t been able to crack into their computers,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Okay, how about this? Sammy’s breasts were redone because Mr. al-Turk didn’t like t
hem.”
“What does that prove?”
“Maybe he needs them to be as natural as possible to pass a manual inspection at the airport, if it comes to that.”
“Or he simply wants his strippers to have more realistic breasts to please his customers.”
“What about the human female eggs?”
“Good. What do you have other than what Corky just said?”
“Micah injected the strippers with chemicals one month before their surgery,” I said. “The drug forced a hyperovulation cycle. He harvested the eggs when he did their breast surgery, all without their permission or without them knowing about what he did to them.”
“Or was it a vitamin, or an antibiotic as part of his pre-op protocol?”
“What about Lorenz? Did al-Turk get rid of him because he was a fed and on to him? Did that give him an opportunity to see whether Donna’s breast implant bombs worked?”
“If her implants were bombs.”
“Is al-Turk going to detonate the boob bombs again tomorrow, but this time with the girls sitting next to unsuspecting passengers flying in nine planes all over the country?”
“But that’s a stretch,” she said. “Are the breast implant bombs powerful enough to bring down nine modern planes? How can al-Turk be certain the bombs would accomplish his goal?”
“I have an idea.” I called Corky again.
“Got time for one more question?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Where is your ticket?”
“In my purse.”
“No, I mean where are you sitting?”
“Let me look.” I heard her moving around. “Here it is: 22A.”
“Is it an exit row?”
“Uh-huh. Mr. al-Turk did it to give us extra leg room.”
“Thoughtful of him. Thanks for your help.” I turned to Linda. “An explosion next to the emergency exit door could blow it out and the plane would crash.”
Linda put her pen down. “You still don’t have enough.”
“I’ll call Tony.”
“Will he shut down O’Hare with no documented evidence of a possible terrorist attack?” she asked.