by Jean Heller
Eric called sometime after 4 p.m. I guess he knew I was alive because I had sent him my column an hour earlier.
“It’s a very good column, Deuce,” he said. “Maybe it will beat some sense into some official heads. So how are you feeling? Sally said you were under the weather.”
I told him about the night before.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Are you sure you weren’t hurt?”
“Not until I turned to the pinot noir to calm my nerves.”
“I can’t blame you for that. Who’s staying with you?”
“My cats.”
“Well, they’ll be a big help in a knife fight. Where’s Mark?”
“On a case down south.”
“Does he know about this?”
“No, I haven’t told him. He’s got enough on his mind.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Geez, enough with the guns already,” I said. “Mark’s been on me to get one.”
“Are you going to?”
“It wouldn’t do any good. It takes two months to get the FOID card certifying you’ve passed a background check. And I should develop some shooting skills before I try to get a carry permit. This whole story will be over before I could learn which end of the gun is the dangerous part.”
“Maybe I should call the private cops we used last fall,” Ryland said.
“I don’t want to think about this right now, Eric.”
“Do you at least have a good knife you could keep with you?”
“Yeah, my dad’s Swiss Army knife.”
“One of those little jobs with a dozen tools on it? By the time you figure out which one’s the knife, you won’t need it any more.”
“No, it’s a bigger, heavier model with a very accessible three-inch blade,” I said. “It’ll do a fine job if I need it.”
“Where is it?”
“In my desk drawer, I think.”
“You think? Before you do anything else, find it, and keep it with you wherever you go. If you need it, it will be too late to go hunting for it.”
I found the knife and pocketed it. The effort wore me out.
I kicked back in the recliner in my office and picked up my battered copy of Wallace Stegner’s classic novel, Angle of Repose. I hadn’t read it in years. It was time to savor it again. Half an hour later, I was sound asleep.
My cellphone roused me. I was still sitting in the recliner. Wallace Stegner was lying on the floor beside me. One cat was in my lap, the other on the recliner kickout next to my right leg. It was dark outside.
My brain felt like a London fog in the late nineteenth century, thick and sooty and impenetrable. My stomach was rumbling, but not with wine residue. I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before.
I reached for my cell phone, a signal to the cats to abandon ship. Caller ID said, “Mark.” I didn’t want to tell him about the previous evening’s events, but I knew I would.
“Hi,” I said. “How are things going?”
“Well,” he said, “I’m back in Chicago.”
That surprised me. “The case over already?”
“Not exactly. There were two other investigators working with me, and I handed off to them to get back here. I’m calling because I’m standing on your front porch, and I didn’t want to scare the crap out of you by simply walking in.”
“Somebody called you,” I said.
“Eric Ryland. He said you’d be pissed, but neither of us cares. I’m coming in.”
Mark poached a couple of eggs for me, laid them in the center of two slices of buttered toast, and served them with a cup of green tea.
“After going more than twenty-four hours without food, that probably won’t be enough,” he said, “but let’s see how it sits on your stomach before I make more.”
“Most of a bottle of red wine isn’t food?” I asked as the aroma of the eggs and fresh toast caressed my nose.
“It wasn’t most of a bottle,” Mark said. “I found the bottle completely empty.”
“Oh,” I said. “I shouldn’t do that.”
“You shouldn’t be attacked by terrorists in your backyard either,” he said.
“I won’t do either one again, if at all possible.”
We were at the kitchen table. The cats were crunching away on kibble.
The food tasted wonderful. Mark asked about every detail of the events of the night before. I prevailed on him to let me finish eating first.
“I don’t blame you for tying one on,” he said when I finally finished the story.
I reached across the table and took his hand.
“Thanks for coming back,” I said.
“I live to serve,” he replied.
53
I was getting ready for work the next day when the front doorbell rang followed by a heavy knocking. I started down the stairs.
“Stay here,” Mark said as he rose from the bed where he’d been lacing up his boots. “Don’t come downstairs until I tell you it’s okay.”
“You think this level of paranoia is required?” I asked.
“You’re the one who faced the knife,” he said. “You tell me.”
Without waiting for an answer, he clipped his Glock onto his belt at the small of his back and clumped down the stairs. I heard the door open, and I heard talking. I could not hear who was talking, but it didn’t sound threatening.
“It’s okay, Deuce,” he called up. “It’s Don Quixote and Sancho.”
I had no idea who they might be until I got to the first landing and found myself looking down at Mason Cross and Ronald Colter.
Cross was staring at Mark.
“You really believe we’re tilting at windmills?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I am pretty sure you’re nuts,” Mark said.
Cross turned to me.
“Wanted to give you an update on the two pieces of trash we picked up in your backyard. The one I shot is going to live, which is fortunate because he’s got pertinent information on the operations of this ring. The other one knows the whereabouts of all the trafficked children in Chicago, living and dead.”
I asked a question but didn’t really want to hear the answer. “How many?”
“He’s not saying. Neither one is saying anything.”
“Meanwhile, what’s happening with any little kids they’re holding? They could be terrorized, hurting, dying. You’ve got to find a way to do something now.”
“Deuce, calm down,” Mark said. He turned to Cross and Colter. “She’s right, you know. You’ve got to get inside the shop and the mansion fast.”
Colter held up his hands, palms out.
“We will,” he said. “Search warrants are in the works. We still have no reason to think there are any children in the machine shop, but we need to be sure. We’ve got local cops and undercover guys all around the mansion. Nobody and nothing are going in or out. Even that alley where you searched the garbage is closed.”
“Aren’t you tipping off the people inside?” I asked.
“The good guys are disguised as People’s Gas crews,” Colter said. “Their cover is a possible gas leak.”
“Is the Bentley still in the garage?” Mark asked.
“You mean Paul Nagi’s car?” Cross said. “No, it’s gone. Nagi went home to Whitefish Bay; but when we got there, he’d left again. We don’t know where he is. We’ve got a nationwide alert out on him and his car. Also with the Mexican authorities and the RCMP.”
“Even the Mounties won’t be able to help,” I said, “if he got on an airplane and flew to Saudi Arabia under an assumed name with a false passport.”
Cross shook his head. “I don’t think he’d do that. His holdings in the United States are considerable. I don’t think he’d abandon them.”
“You seem to know this man pretty well,” Mark said.
“I should,” Cross said. “I turned him. I run him. He’s my mole inside the Saudi operation. This is how I know with some degree of certainty there a
re no injured or dying children in the machine shop.”
Something about all this wasn’t adding up for me.
“Why,” I asked, “would the Saudis give an American so much access?”
“He’s a cousin,” Cross said. “With dual citizenship. His father was American, his mother Saudi. They were both CIA. Somehow they were compromised and framed back in the sixties. The father was beheaded for treason. The mother was stoned to death for adultery. The son lived with a couple of cousins until he was nineteen, then he came to the U.S. to go to college at Princeton. Over the years he built up a good head of hatred for the land of his birth. Recruiting him was easy. He came to this country with the idea of retaliation against the nation that murdered his parents. But the Saudis don’t know.”
“And what if he’s playing you?” Mark said.
“If I found out he was trying that,” Cross answered in a very low voice, “he wouldn’t live to see the next day.”
Cross let his words hang in the air for emphasis.
“I’m telling you all this so you’ll back off. I’m keeping you in the loop so you’ll stay in the background and let us finish this without interference.”
“You say you’re sure there are no more children in the shop. . . ?”
“I said I was reasonably sure.”
“How about the mansion?”
“Can’t talk about it. I told you that the other night.”
“What about this loop you’re keeping me in? Either you tell me everything and maybe I back off, or you don’t, and I don’t.”
Cross shrugged and have me an acknowledging nod. “We believe there are eleven kids in the house. We’ll be going in for them as soon as we have warrants.”
Again, something wasn’t clicking.
“I thought you didn’t have enforcement powers on foreign-owned property.”
“That’s only true if the property is owned by a foreign government for the conduct of officials business,” Cross said. “This is a private home.”
“Now you know,” Colter added, “why we tried so hard to scare you away from the story. If the princes learned we were onto them, they’d simply reestablish the operation someplace new and probably kill all the children here before they pulled up stakes.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” I demanded. “Get the kids out of there now. What if something goes wrong with your plan and the children die, anyway?”
“Please step back, Deuce,” Colter said. “If we got any whiff of something happening to those children, we’d go in with or without a warrant.”
“How about the threat of death? Seems like that’s pretty likely right now.”
“As soon as the Saudis arrive at O’Hare, the plan goes in motion,” Cross said. “Part of it is rescuing the children.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“That we can’t tell you,” Cross said.
“The ‘national security’ excuse again? That doesn’t wash.”
“The Saudis are nominal allies of ours in the Middle East,” Cross said, “but the relationship is shaky. It’s not in our interest to create more strain. Any of the obvious and immediate steps we could take would have damaging repercussions. We had to put together a better way, and it’s taken time.”
“They aren’t scheduled here until Wednesday,” I said. “Why can’t the plan be carried out when they get to Washington on Monday?”
“Everything’s in Chicago,” he said. “Coordinating over six hundred miles leaves too much chance for a screw-up.”
“CentCom manages to coordinate drone strikes in Afghanistan from Tampa, Florida,” Mark said. “They must be a lot better than you guys.”
Cross gave Mark a withering look. Mark shrugged. “Just sayin’ . . .”
I smiled and started to ask, “What exactly do you . . . ?”
Cross cut me off.
“Don’t ask me for any more,” Cross said. “I can’t tell you. No one will ever be able to tell you. It’s something all of us involved will take to our graves.”
54
I sat at my desk in the newsroom trying to focus on a column, but my mind kept wandering around dropping my thoughts into wastebaskets where I couldn’t find them again. I finally decided if the column idea was that hard to hold onto, it probably wasn’t worth the effort.
I could have written about the assault in my backyard, but I figured I only got to do that once a year, and the year was young. I should save the opportunity for a time when I could actually tell people who assaulted me and why, who rescued me and how, and who the assailants were. While I knew all those answers, I couldn’t disclose them.
Then the phone rang. It was Anthony Donato.
“We found another one,” the medical examiner said. “Different place, and not buried. The little boy was tossed in a Dumpster, if you can believe that.”
“The little boy in the black trash bag?”
Donato hesitated. “Yeah. We think so.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“Believe me, Deuce, you don’t want to know.”
“Are you sure the boy in the Dumpster was a victim of the same killers?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some of the abuse is identical to others from Ryan Woods.”
I let it all pour out and into the column, venting about city and federal officials who weren’t being honest with Chicago residents and weren’t bringing the slaughter to an end. With the latest discovery we were up to twenty-six dead children, and there was no guarantee there wouldn’t be more. In fact, the longer the killers remained at large and unknown (a little fib there about the unknown part), there wasn’t a young child in the city who wasn’t at risk. I admonished parents and guardians to redouble their efforts to keep all the city’s children safe.
And I added as a post-script that a six-year-old named Joey Russell had gone missing nearly three weeks earlier and begged people to watch out for him. We would run his photo with my column.
I hadn’t disclosed anything that could tip off the Saudis. I hadn’t endangered the government’s mission. But it sure felt good to kick a few people in the balls.
I picked up the phone and called Ron Colter.
“Did you get the warrant on the machine shop?” I said and made the question sound like a demand.
“Yes, about an hour ago,” he said.
“When are you going in?
“About an hour from now.”
“I’m going with you,” I said and hung up before he could object.
The sun was sliding down the western sky by the time I fought my way through commuter traffic and got to the machine shop. Nothing was stirring on the streets except a few black cars with U.S. government license plates, two Chicago Police units, and an unmarked white car that screamed cops and probably served as Colter’s wheels. No one was making any effort at stealth. With the two men who ran the place already in custody, this would be a mission of discovery, not a manhunt.
Harry Klein, the Journal photographer, met me. We parked our vehicles well away from where the action would be and walked toward the white car. Colter met us halfway.
“Did you happen to notice those police barricades we set up to close off the streets,” he asked, “the ones you drove up on the sidewalk to get around?”
“This is a public street,” I said. “You can’t order us off.”
“Hmm, yes, actually I can. The blockades are to keep people away in case bullets start flying. Public safety trumps public access.”
“Agent Cross said there’s nobody in the building.”
Colter nodded. “That’s what we were told, yes, but the information is three days old. We can’t be positive the building is clear until we go in. So I’m telling you to get back. And if you don’t, I’ll arrest you.”
We agreed. But we only went as far as the cars, which were parked just outside the sawhorse barricades.
Colter watched and shook his head in exasperation. He had better things to do than hassle us, so he went
back to his group as a big blue SWAT van turned the corner and braked in the parking area. I heard Klein shooting the scene.
About a dozen officers climbed down carrying assault weapons, bolt cutters, wire cutters and several battering rams. They surrounded the building and made short work of the mesh over the windows and the bars across the roll-up doors.
One of the loading dock doors began to rise. As cops rolled off the outside wall and through the growing opening, shots erupted everywhere. I saw one SWAT guy go down, but he was quickly dragged from the line of fire.
As more men went through the door, the shooting got heavier. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped. Was the firefight over? Did I dare approach?
I looked back to the SWAT team member who’d been hit. With some help, he sat up against the back wall of the building. His left hand was open across the center of his chest, but I didn’t see any blood. I hoped his protective vest had taken the brunt of the round, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t damage. At least it didn’t appear to be fatal damage. The injured man was responding to conversation around him. One guy patted him on the shoulder and disappeared into the dark interior of the machine shop.
The shooting began again.
I heard glass shatter and saw one of the building windows blow out. Most of the glass was contained inside the mesh, but the slug tore a hole in the mesh and created a small fountain of glass shards that sprayed onto the asphalt.
I heard something hit the gravel about eight feet from me, and my eyes searched until they found the mashed bullet. It was big enough to make me grimace. But I took a measure of comfort knowing that whatever the bad guys were firing, the shots didn’t have the velocity to reach me after passing through glass and heavy metal mesh.
The shooting stopped for a second time as two ambulances turned into the street with lights and sirens at full intensity. Darkness had overtaken the city, and I hadn’t even noticed until I saw the flashing lights bouncing off buildings.
Two medics raced to help the SWAT member who’d fallen in the first fusillade. The man was lying flat again, his headgear off and his uniform opened at the chest. I still saw no blood. I hoped he hadn’t been hurt worse than I’d thought.