by Julie Hyzy
On the ride back to my car, still parked in the Tuck Inn’s lot, I thought about Lucy. I was torn. I wanted to call her, to apologize to her personally—but calling her now, when I still couldn’t make time for her, seemed somehow worse than waiting. After all, I reasoned, Aunt Lena had probably come up with some diversion, and a call from me now would only serve to remind Lucy of my absence. Unsure of how to handle the situation, I chose to wait.
Lulinski made sure I got safely into my car, and waited till I pulled away, in the direction of Maya’s, before taking off again. He’d said something about following up with the station regarding Grady before we left.
* * * * *
Maya drove faster than I expected, zipping through the scatter of slower-moving vehicles heading north on the Dan Ryan expressway. We’d taken her car, a late-model maroon Toyota, since it bought us free parking in the Banner Bank lot. In typical March fashion, the morning promise of spring had dissolved into yet another overcast, cold evening. Gray sky, gray streets, and a certain heaviness in the air sat like a chunk of bad food in my gut.
Wearing jeans, sweatshirts and black leather jackets, we could have been two young women out for a night of fun exploring Chicago. Instead, we were on a mission, and the nervous tension put a damper on conversation.
She’d cracked her window open, slightly, and the breeze that sneaked in had a promising feel to it. Maya’s hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, not moving, though the air current danced tendrils around my face.
“What if we’re wrong?” she asked, her eyes on the road.
“We’re not wrong.”
She blinked acknowledgment, still staring straight ahead.
I blew out a breath and watched the landscape zoom by.
My cell phone buzzed just as we passed fifty-first street overpass. Fitting, since it was Lulinski on the phone. “Hi,” I said, then added, “The eagle is in flight.”
“Ha ha,” he said, without mirth. “Listen, we need to hold off on the plan for tonight.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Maya’s face went slack and she glanced over at me with panicked eyes.
I shook my head, in a “don’t worry” movement.
“I can’t get down there for another couple of hours. I’m in the middle of taking a statement from one of the guests at the Tuck Inn motel. Guy just came in. Says he might’ve heard a scuffle, might’ve seen somebody leaving Bart’s room. Didn’t think much about it until he found out about the murder. Wants to come in and do the right thing.” Lulinski snorted.
“You don’t believe him?”
“I can’t afford not to. Says he’s thinking he might’ve heard gunshots. Thought they were tire blowouts, except there were two of them. There’s enough here for me to want to follow up.” He paused. “And, they picked up Grady. They’re bringing him here.”
“Where did they find him?”
“Back in town. Caught him leaving Diana’s hospital room.” Lulinski covered the mouthpiece and spoke to someone nearby. “Look, I have to go. Grady should be here in another hour or so. If I get finished with my motel witness and get the rest of this shit done, I can be down there by seven.”
By seven I planned to be home, making amends with Lucy. “We’ll be fine by ourselves.”
Maya nodded, and her teeth were clenched. “Let’s just get this done.”
“Alex.” Detective Lulinski’s voice was serious. “I don’t want you getting yourself into another situation.”
“We won’t. I promise,” I said. “If anything goes wrong . . . anything at all, I’ll call you, okay?”
I heard him blow out an exasperated breath, but before he could argue, I interrupted. “We’re just about at the twenty-second street exit,” I said. “By the time you’re ready to go, we’ll be finished. Okay?”
He mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“What?”
“Keep the phone on. All the time,” he said. “I’m going to call you to check periodically.”
“Deal.”
Maya and I made great time, pulling in just before four-thirty. As she handed her parking ID to the young black man in the booth, he looked up at us in surprise. “Ms. Richardson, what are you doing here, working on a Sunday?” he asked, with a bright smile.
“Hi, Jared,” she said, smiling back. “I just need to pick something up.”
He handed back her pass with his left hand, while operating the gate lift with his right. The red and white angle-striped bar began to rise.
I poked her arm
“Oh, Jared?” she asked, still smiling.
He seemed happy that she wanted to talk with him further. “Yeah?”
“Anybody else come in? I mean, is anyone else from the loan department working here today?”
His face clouded momentarily. “No, can’t say that anyone else has been here. Why?”
As we’d arranged, she forced a show of disappointment. Had Jared’s answer been different, I would have piped up with a sudden remembered engagement elsewhere.
Maya sighed. “Darn. I have to talk to Mr. Riordan about something,” she said. “He hasn’t been in today at all?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Well, thanks anyway,” she said. And with a wave, we drove in.
Chapter Twenty-six
Our footsteps made echo-ey clicks in the tall atrium, their hollow tip-tap sounds bouncing upward from the marble floor and along the walls that reached heavenward toward the skylit roof. All four glass-walled elevators sat at the ground level, doors open, like wide, hungry mouths. Not one had any interior lights on, and I hesitated before stepping in.
“This one,” Maya said, pointing to the one nearest me. Heading toward the security desk in the corner of the lobby, she reached around to unlatch a short door just behind it, allowing her access to the controls. She worked quickly, face down-turned, concentrating. I moved closer to her and stood, leaning on the chest-high cherry wood half-circle, watching as she inserted one of her keys into a metal control box.
“There we go,” Maya said, her head popping up, eyes alert. The elevator chimed. “Our chariot awaits.”
“No security staff?” I asked, looking around as we stepped in and pressed the button for the tenth floor.
She shrugged. “He must be making the rounds. We have a skeleton crew here over the weekends. You saw Jared—he’s our first line of defense at the garage. During last year’s budget cuts, we slashed the weekend security down to a bare minimum. It’s dead here on Saturdays and Sundays. Since everything’s under lock and key, anyway, and we have alarm codes everywhere, the bank directors said, ‘What’s the point?’”
The gold doors slid closed with a solid click, leaving us in vacuum-like silence. No music. Nothing.
She was right about it being dead here. I glanced down as the glass elevator rose slowly upward. The atrium lobby was darker than I’d ever seen it, the only light in the place came from low-beam security lamps and the evening-gray sky above.
Maya stared at the numbers above the closed door, her smooth dark face set in concentration. I wanted to talk, to lessen the tension somewhat, but I had nothing to say.
We both jumped at the “ping” that signaled our arrival at ten, and when the doors opened to the dark corridor, Maya stepped forward, whispering, “Come on,” she said.
My eyes became adjusted to the darkness, appreciating the occasional pale bulb that graced the floorboards, illuminating the door to the loan department enough for us to see.
She unlocked it, with yet another key. “I don’t want to turn on the lights in Owen’s half of the office,” she said. “There’s no way I can explain us being in there. If we hear someone coming, we can just pretend we’re on our way out.”
The loan department itself was small, and once we passed the reception desk, Maya led me to the right side of the office where six-foot tall cubicle walls separated work areas. “I sit over there,” she said, pointing to the left.
It looked li
ke there were six desks between the two departments, three to a side. Maya’s end of the office, the west corner, had a view of the atrium lobby along one wall of windows, a view of the street on the other. Owen’s northeast corner view overlooked the cold streets below on both sides, and, bathed in blue light, we moved toward his desk.
The feeling that had come over me while staring down at Barton’s suitcase full of dirty underwear rushed up, again. “You know,” I said, “the faster we’re out of here, the better.”
Even in the dimly lit room, I could see the anxiety in her eyes. “Yeah. This is creeping me out. Like I’m doing something illegal,” she said. “Any time I’ve come here before I’ve waltzed right in and never thought twice about it.” She made a slow circuit of the room with her gaze, still whispering. “Right now I feel like someone’s watching our every move.”
I’d been in my own office late at night, many times. Contented, quiet times. Despite the fact that I’d been keenly aware of my aloneness, I’d never been afraid. Never felt a sinister force pressuring me to get out, the way I did now.
“Where are the files we need?” I asked.
“The files,” she said, and I could tell that my question had focused her again. “This way.”
I slid my jacket off as I walked. Anxiety made me sweat, and the heavy lining inside the leather added to the heat prickles dripping along my back. Maya noticed my movement and shook her jacket off too, sticking her tongue out and fanning her face.
She headed for a four-foot tall, three-drawer filing cabinet, its back to the windows. Pulling out yet another key, I questioned her about it. “You have keys to Owen’s files?”
She shook her head, concentrating on the ring of choices. The keys’ jangling and our breathing were the only sounds in the room. “All the files operate with the same key. Makes things easy for the support staff.”
Dropping our jackets and purses on a nearby chair, we pulled open the middle drawer, labeled “L - Si”. About two feet wide, its folders hung perpendicular to the edge of the drawer. Maya moved toward the end of the alphabetical file, and flipped through the last ten inches of records, using the tips of her fingertips, sometimes adjusting her position to make the most of the room’s scant light.
“Hang on,” I said, reaching for my purse. I pulled out my Mag-lite. Though small, its high beam would make all the difference in our expediency.
“Here we go,” she said at last. “Siewicz, Ursula.”
I thunked the drawer closed with my hip, and we opened the manila folder on top of the cabinet, both of us scrutinizing the signature on the enclosed application by flashlight.
“It doesn’t look anything like the same handwriting to me.”
“Me either,” Maya said. She let loose a long sigh. “Okay good, now let’s take a look at the repayment reports and we should be all set.”
I tapped the original document. “Can we take this with us?”
She started shaking her head before the words came out. A look of angry frustration crossed her face. “Darn it anyway,” she said, moving toward a location along the window that straddled the two sides of the loan department. “I knew we were going to want copies.” Stepping close to a copier, she reached beneath an overhang at the back of it and flipped a switch that made it light up and break into a series of hums and clicks. A half-minute later the sounds quieted, but the digital screen warned that the machine wasn’t ready for use, yet. “This thing takes forever to warm up,” she said. “I should have turned this on when we first got here.”
“Don’t worry, we have more to do,” I said. “Where are those payment schedules?”
“Those,” she said, tapping a finger against her lips, “ought to be over along this wall.” I followed her to a perimeter wall. A low table held at least a dozen flat files. Oversized cardboard covers, in light blue and navy, they were binders that could be expanded as more and more sheets were added. The ones before us held thick computer printouts, some of them fatter than a phone book.
She flipped up the binders on two before finding what she sought in the third one. She paged down several inches and said, “Hmmph.”
“What?”
“Give me that list of names and account numbers we drew up.”
I did.
She worked at comparing the information for a solid minute while the hum of the copier finally lessened. Again, we were in deep, dark quiet, with only Maya’s page-flipping breaking the silence, the narrow beam of light I held, focused on the sheets before us. I pulled in a breath when Maya glanced up. “It’s here,” she said.
“You’re sure?”
Her dark eyes never leaving mine, she nodded solemnly. “Part of me wanted it to be a big mistake. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be wrong, till now.” I wondered if she could hear the trembling in her voice. “Owen has gotten away with . . .” her eyebrows came together, “millions.”
“Let’s get these over to the copier and get what we need,” I said. “Couple minutes, we’re outta here, right?”
She handed me the fraudulent application for Ursula Siewicz, then turned to unfasten the thin metal arms that bound the computer printouts tight. Sliding the restraints to one side, she lifted up one of the skinny metal arms.
“You hear that?” she asked. Even in the darkness I could see the tension in her neck muscles as she strained forward.
I shook my head, listening, too. “I didn’t hear anything.”
We waited a long moment before breathing.
“It’s okay,” I said, “I’m just as nervous as you are.”
She returned to her task, sliding those tiny metal restraints the other direction, in order to free the second arm, but this time, I noticed that her fingers shook.
Across the room, a phone jangled, splitting the silence with its shrill ring.
I yelped, as did she. I reached out a hand, grabbing Maya’s arm to steady us both as the phone rang again. “Just the phone,” I said.
Her head canted and she stared across the night-blue expanse. “I think that’s my phone,” she said, her voice hoarse. Her fearful eyes widened so much that I could see white all the way around her pupils. She clutched my hand. “Who would be calling me? Is it Owen? Does he know I’m here?”
After five long rings, it finally stopped, but the noise echoed in my mind in the sudden silence. I let go of Maya and tried my best to keep my voice soothing and low. “Let’s get this done.”
She nodded, but looked unconvinced.
“Ten minutes,” I said. “we’re back in your car and on our way home.”
“Ten minutes,” she repeated so softly I could barely hear the breathy words.
“Come on.” I opened the lid of the copier, placed the application face down on the glass, and hit the square green button. The machine whooshed to life, shooting a bright-light glow out from its edges as it scanned the page. “Let me get one more,” I said, and hit the button again.
Maya held onto the inch-thick computer printout up to her chest like a school girl, and as soon as I finished, she lifted the lid and set the original in place. “Two,” she said, changing the setting and starting her copies.
There were over fifty accounts listed on each page of the report, so within minutes, we had all we came for. “Okay?” I asked, as Maya lifted the last original from the glass. “We done?”
She nodded, rearranging the pages back into their proper folds. “I’ll put this back, you turn off the copier, okay? The switch is behind it.”
One second later, the copier was utterly still, and the deafening silence returned, keeping us in whispers. “Almost ready?” I asked, as Maya slipped the silver brackets back over the top of the report then moved to lock the drawers we’d opened.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I’d just shoved all our copies in my purse and we’d donned our jackets when Maya made a little noise that stopped me.
“What?”
“We didn’t put the original application back.”
“Damn,” I said, digging it out from my stash.
As Maya pulled out her keys again, I heard their now-familiar jangle.
And, I heard something else.
My hand shot out, of its own accord, silencing the musical clinking of the keys in Maya’s hands. She stared at me. She’d heard it, too.
It was the elevator. And it was moving.
I shoved the original application back into my purse and grabbed Maya, pulling her toward her side of the office. I had the vague idea that if we were on that side, and pretending to leave, then no one would be the wiser about our true purpose here today.
“Turn the lights on,” I said.
“I can’t,” she said, pointing to a corner near the door. “Too far.”
I heard the sickeningly recognizable sound of the elevator doors opening. Someone had gotten off at this floor.
Flashlight off. I stuck it into my back pocket as we ran toward her desk, and once there, I slowed us both to a stroll, trying in vain to control my breathing. “We’re okay,” I whispered. “We’re on our way out. Remember that.”
Her head nodded, but her eyes were wild with panic.
We stood there, in front of her desk, me slightly in the lead with a protective hand extended behind me, like a parent would reach for a child before crossing the street. I felt every nerve in my body go taut, standing there, listening. Realizing that anyone in the hallway would be nearly invisible to us, but that if we stepped out beyond the cubicle separator, we would be backlit by the wall of night-sky windows, I yanked at Maya’s arm. Forget trying to explain our being here. “Get down,” I said.
We waited and listened for long minutes. Nothing. Not a breath, not a footstep, not a word.
“Maybe it’s nothing.” Maya’s hopeful whisper seemed over-loud in the quiet.
I swallowed. Shook my head.
Pressing a finger to my lips, I pulled at her jacket sleeve, indicating she should follow me. I swung my purse so that the strap crossed my chest, to keep it from swinging free as we crawled. I turned to Maya, indicating she should do the same.
The oppressive heat made breathing through my mouth a necessity. Perspiration collected along my hairline, under my arms, and across my waist. As sweat droplets made their way down my forehead into my eyes I shook my head to clear my vision. We could continue creeping along the floor, and, if we were very careful, make our way back to the elevator.