In total he lasted just over ten minutes, past the point where the brisk breeze whipping off of Lake Michigan began to nip at his ears and the chaos of the tourist crowd in front of him started to impinge on his nerves. Rising slowly, he kept the phone out in front of him, his head angled downward as he walked to the opposite corner of the park from where Wynn had disappeared.
Melting into the flow of foot traffic was easy enough, Celek letting it carry him two blocks north before turning inland and going three more. From there he passed through the front door of the Hard Rock Hotel he was staying at and caught the elevator up to the top floor.
When he had first signed on with Jacoby, the agreement was for him to be as inconspicuous as possible, to keep expenses to a bare minimum. Often that had meant eating McDonald’s for days at a time, staying in places that made the Holiday Inn he had given Wynn a hard time about look like a five-star resort.
As years had passed and his boss’s star had risen, access to discretionary funding had come with it. Celek had been upgraded from a guy just paying the bills to one doing quite well, with a large expense account to boot.
Still not quite the $25,000 a night suite at the Atlantis in the Bahamas, but certainly enough to afford one of the more upscale locales along the Magnificent Mile in downtown Chicago.
Exiting on the 20th floor, Celek walked past a glass case containing three original Keith Richards guitars, all signed, with full-sized pictures of the legendary Stones lead behind them. Always more of a Who man, he walked right past without glancing over, descending the dim hallway to his room and stepping inside.
By the time he made it there, the phone in his hand was vibrating with an incoming call from the man himself.
“Celek.”
“How was it?” Meyers Jacoby asked, the question short and clipped, just short of a snap.
“Chilly,” Celek responded, “a little crowded, but all in all not too bad.”
The response had slid out naturally, Celek still settled into the mode he reserved for dealing with people such as Wynn. He could feel the skin around his eyes tighten just slightly as he heard the response in his ears, thinking of issuing a quick apology, but deciding to wait in the hopes it had been missed.
It wasn’t.
“What did you just say?” Jacoby asked, this time the words coming out very much as a snap.
Walking quickly to the bathroom, Celek closed the door, making sure it was loud enough to be heard over the line.
“Sorry, boss. I was in the hallway and had to cover for a minute. In the room now, we’re all good.”
Whether or not the thin ruse was accepted there was no way to know, no sound coming in over the line.
Opting to move on before any further discussion could be had, Celek said, “It went about as we thought it might. He’s jumpy as hell, asking a lot of questions, not really seeming content with any of the answers.”
“What kind of questions?”
“The usual,” Celek said.
This was far from the first time they had found themselves in such a position, men like Wynn being cut from a certain mold. Guys that liked to think themselves a different breed, living off the grid, abiding by their own code.
In truth, they were all very much the same, or at least all existed within just a couple degrees of one another. The questions they asked, the way they reacted to things, the best methods for manipulating them, were almost always identical.
“Who am I? What do you want? Will they be left alone once it is over?”
A sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough sounded out over the line. “It’s been sixteen years since we had even the slightest interaction, he suddenly think I’m looking for a new drinking buddy?”
Alone in his hotel room, Celek raised his hands to either side, a silent signal that he had no idea what exactly Laredo Wynn was thinking.
Didn’t particularly care to, either.
A moment of silence passed, Celek ceding the floor, waiting for his boss to process whatever he was chewing on.
“Did he take the bait?” Jacoby eventually asked.
“The bait?” Celek said, his eyebrows rising slightly. “That I don’t know. He did take the key though, so that’s a start.”
“Yeah,” Jacoby conceded, “that’s a start.”
In the background a voice could be heard, followed quickly by the muffled sound of a hand being smashed over the line. Several moments passed before it was removed, the air becoming clear again, the sound of a door slamming shut audible over the line.
Such intrusions were becoming more and more common with each passing day.
Both sides were long past commenting on it.
“Where are you today?” Celek asked.
“Charlotte,” Jacoby replied, a sigh rolling out with the word, making it quite clear that the man had no desire to be there any longer than necessary.
“Damn good barbecue down there,” Celek said, wishing he was someplace warm munching on pulled pork instead of sitting in Chicago freezing his ass off.
“Yeah, assuming I could actually touch any of it,” Jacoby answered. “Nobody wants to shake the hands of a politician with grease and barbecue sauce all over his fingers.”
Extending the phone an inch from his head, Celek rolled his eyes, letting the movement rock his head up an inch toward the ceiling.
His boss could make all the excuses he wanted about shaking hands and kissing babies, but the truth was his vanity would never allow him to indulge, even in something as wonderful as smoked meat. Never would he consider having a bad picture taken of him enjoying a sandwich.
Even less likely was him taking the risk of gaining an ounce, the pride he took in his appearance something that was beyond absurd for a man of his age.
“Right,” Celek said, letting the matter drop. He paused a moment, allowing the subject to clear as he walked across the room and slid a thin silver laptop from his travel bag. Setting it up on the desk, he remained standing as he called to life a video program, a black-and-white image arising on the screen before him.
“Are we done?” Jacoby asked over the line. “I do have other things on my calendar for the day.”
Celek gave no response as he remained focused on the screen.
In the foreground was an open swath of concrete, a steady flow of foot traffic moving in either direction. Framing the top edge of the screen was a white sign, the bottom half of a word printed across it in plain black letters.
Standing as the centerpiece of the spread was a bank of lockers. Aligned in even squares, they were arranged ten across and stacked five high, a total of fifty placed in a tight grid. Under the monochromatic color scheme of the camera they appeared to be dark charcoal, though Celek knew them to actually be navy blue.
Across the front of them was an amalgam of random graffiti, all of it touting various street gangs in the area.
“Celek?”
“Just one second,” Celek replied, “your boy should be arriving any time now.”
A grumbled response came back a moment later, the answer a smart retort about the reference to Wynn being Jacoby’s boy.
Celek paid it no mind as he remained focused on the screen, watching, waiting, for two full minutes before a familiar figure came into view.
“Phase Two is under way. I’ll keep you posted.”
Chapter Seven
I walked out of the park in the opposite direction from where I’d entered. Again, I knew Celek could easily enough track me – he’d already proven that – but there didn’t seem to be any point in helping him along.
Instead I took off at a fast diagonal, not once turning around to look at him as I made my way past scads of tourists, all of them snapping pictures and speaking animatedly. Using them as cover, I marched straight through the middle, allowing their sheer volume to consume me, obscuring me from view of the self-assured bastard undoubtedly sitting in the same spot, twisting his ring and watching me go.
Just the way I didn’
t want to make his job any easier, he for sure wasn’t about to let me see which direction he went either.
Once I was beyond the boundaries of the park, I made a quick loop back toward the parking garage. One of the many upsides of driving to Chicago was that it had enabled me to have my truck on hand, or more importantly, all of the trappings that generally came with a working farm truck.
Lining the back end of the bed was a chrome toolbox filled with various hammers and pliers, mallets and pipe wrenches. In the bed was some leftover baling twine, a few lengths of barbed wire. Under the front seat was a tire iron.
In the glove compartment was Clarice, brought along only at the request of Rae, an option I would avoid if at all possible, just as I had since mustering out a decade before.
For this particular stop, my attention was focused on something far more innocuous, not requiring me to even unlock the vehicle as I reached into the bed and took up an old pair of canvas gloves. Stuffing them into the back pocket of my jeans, I retreated from the garage and bought a tourist map from a souvenir shop on the corner, using it to direct me toward Union Station six blocks due west.
The further I moved from Millennium Park, the thinner the sidewalk traffic became. Occasionally it thickened up again around a particular restaurant or store, but by and large the bustle of the mob fell away behind me. In their stead was the much lighter fare of the working crowd, most of them back behind their desks as the clock rounded toward 2:00.
Fighting the urge to check over my shoulder, I used the various storefronts around me as mirrors, checking my backside every block or so. Not once did I expect to see Celek, nor did I ever view him, knowing that he most likely already had the final destination scouted out, was posted up somewhere just waiting for my arrival.
For all I knew he was still on that park bench, intent to stay until he saw me arrive.
No point in worrying. Not without a damn thing to do about it.
Just as the cheap map in my hand suggested, Union Station appeared less than fifteen minutes after I’d started walking. A grand old building made of concrete and brick, it stretched several city blocks in length. A series of archways were carved along the top of it, high above doors of various height and width, the whole thing resembling a miniature version of Soldiers Field sitting just a mile or two away.
Parked out front was a long line of taxi cabs. Entering and exiting on the backside of the structure was a host of buses. Stretched through the middle of the building, and extending out in either direction, were dozens of railroad tracks, the entire thing appearing to be a monument to all things transportation.
If somebody wanted to get in or out of the city, this was their place.
Stepping inside the structure, I put my back against the wall and paused for a few moments, allowing my eyes to adjust to the decrease in sunlight. From there I drifted to a vendor stand and ordered a lemonade, using the extra time to check over the surroundings.
From what I could tell, nobody seemed to have been inside waiting for me. Only a handful of individuals could be seen at such an odd hour, the place sitting in a lull, waiting for the end-of-day rush to begin.
Content that I was alone, I discarded the overly tart drink and moved to the lower deck, following signs toward cities named Downer’s Grove and Naperville. Never had I heard of either, trusting that I was moving in the right direction as I descended one floor below street level.
Again the light overhead dimmed as I made my way down the stairs, passing by a janitor shuffling along with a mop and bucket and a trio of homeless people huddled under moth-eaten blankets. None so much as glanced up to me as I continued walking, winding my way through the annals of the cavernous building.
A full ten minutes after entering I found what Celek had pointed me toward, the bank of lockers tucked away in a corner, a dying relic to a time long ago. Nowadays, nearly every such thing in the country had been removed, stripped out of bus stations, train depots, and airports as an obvious place for terrorists to hide a bomb or illicit package.
Somehow this single bank had managed to survive the purge, the exterior of them making it clear that they had seen better days, had not been serviced in quite some time.
Most likely an oversight, earmarked long ago to be discarded, but never gotten around to.
Coming up from the left side, I stopped just short of them and cast my gaze around, paying close attention to the line where the ceiling and walls met. Undoubtedly there was some form of camera tucked away up there, watching my every move, but given the dim lighting and the long shadows splashed over everything, there was no way to be certain.
A simple fiber optic camera could be no larger than the head of an eraser, completely obscured with ease.
I remained rooted in place, making a show of checking my surroundings, more so Celek would know I was aware of his presence than in any hope of actually spotting something. Content that the point had been made, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the gloves, letting him see me put them on, sending the message that while I was aware of what he was doing, I had no intention of making it easy.
There was still no way for me to know exactly what lay inside that locker. I didn’t fear it being a trap of any sort, the opportunity to take me out having presented itself too many times in much easier ways for them to bother with so much cloak and dagger.
That didn’t eliminate the concern, though, that I had been brought in as a patsy, the camera nearby taking pictures, wanting nothing more than for me to leave behind a trail of fingerprints, to be seen holding something nefarious.
Walking perpendicular to the lockers, I counted down the numbers in my periphery. Reaching into my pants pocket, I fished out the locker key and stopped directly in front of number 12, the slightest hint of a smirk appearing on my face.
Twelve, just like the old unit number I had served with on that damn day so many years before.
Based on outward appearance, the locker was no different than any of the others facing me. Most of the original blue exterior was covered over by an elaborate amount of spray paint, all of it neon green or yellow.
A thick layer of dust seemed to cover the entire thing, only a few small smudges around the key pad indicating that anybody had used it in ages.
Feeling my heart rate rise slightly, I took a step forward. Every part of me wanted nothing more than to drop the key on the floor, leaving it for somebody else to find, letting whatever they had stowed away for me be the concern of the next person to pass. Just as surely - and with equal fervor - I wanted to raise my right hand overhead and wag my middle finger, letting Celek know what I thought of him, and his boss, and their entire little game.
For whatever reason the vast minority of me - the part housing every bit of pragmatism I had - won out and I did neither. Taking the last two steps forward, I inserted the key and turned it, hearing a metallic click as the locking mechanism released and the door swung open toward me.
An instant later that single iota of pragmatism evaporated, completely obliterated as I raised both hands high overhead and waved both middle fingers.
If I knew where the camera was, I would have torn it off the wall and stomped the damn thing to bits.
If I’d brought along the tire iron or one of the hammers with me, I would have ripped into the metal façade of the lockers with every ounce of venom I could muster.
Neither was possible, so I merely stood where I was, both hands extended high overhead, and stared down at what was waiting for me inside the locker.
On the bottom of it sat a single black duffel bag, the top zipped shut, no markers or insignias of any kind visible.
Taped to the back of it was a picture of Rae, wearing the same sports bra and jeans she had been the day before, leaning against the support beam on our front porch, watching me drive away.
Chapter Eight
I’ve always prided myself as a man that avoided clichés. Hailing from Texas, serving in the military, it hasn’t always been easy
, but I’ve done my best to get by without them.
Walking away from Union Station, with the strap of the duffel bag slung over my shoulder, the picture of Rae in my back pocket, I had no problem admitted I was seeing red.
Blood red.
Any thoughts of sightseeing, of even acknowledging the tourists filing by on either side of me, fled from mind as I set a course right down the middle of the sidewalk. With a glower on my face and my hands balled into fists by my side, the throngs seemed to sense exactly the state of mind I was in, parting for me to pass without a word.
Ignoring crowds and crossing lights, I made it back to my truck in just over half of what it had taken me to get there. My first inclination upon climbing behind the steering wheel and slamming the door shut was to call and tell Celek to stick the whole thing up his ass. That whatever game he was playing, whatever cute joke he thought was being made by involving Rae, had had the opposite effect.
I was out, and I would burn down the house of anybody that tried to stop me.
Even if it was the damned White House.
Somehow in the midst of all that angst though, a tiny flicker of the previous pragmatism rose to the surface. It told me to at least check the bag first, that if I was going to blow them off, I should do it all at once.
Despite the cool temperature inside the cab of the truck, sweat lined my brow, streaming down either side of my face. My breaths, short and fast, sounded out through my nose, the only noise as I placed the bag across my thighs and unzipped it.
Right on top sat a single manila folder, the clasp on it sealed shut. No writing or markings of any kind was visible on the outside.
Setting it to the side, I moved down further into the bag, finding a change of clothes immediately beneath it. One item at a time I lifted them free and held them up, finding a polyprolene shirt, a pair of jeans, gloves, and a watch cap, all of them solid black. Just like the bag, and the envelope, there were no markings of any kind, no insignia or anything that might reflect light.
The Subway ; The Debt ; Catastrophic Page 35