“I’ve never met Ms. Kataba,” I said. “I’ve never spoken to her, texted her, Skyped her, e-mailed her, nor heard back from her through any medium.”
“But she’s connected to Felix Herschel.”
“That could be. But in my lexicon, that’s hearsay.”
“You know Herschel. Is that correct?”
“We’ve met, yes.”
“What has he said to you about Kataba?”
“Do you know that I’m a member of the Illinois bar? My interactions with Mr. Herschel have all been as his lawyer. Everything he has said to me is privileged.”
The room was in disarray. I began walking the perimeter, looking at the books and papers that had been tossed on the floor. The azure volume of Tarik Kataba’s poems seemed to be missing. That was a relief—anything written in Arabic and Montefiore would have put out word to shoot Felix on sight.
I looked around, too, for the book that Felix had grabbed from me. I shut my eyes, visualizing the book as he’d grabbed it. Art in Copper: A Technical History. I didn’t see that, either.
Montefiore said, “We heard that Martha Simone was Herschel’s lawyer. All the pleadings and so on for his girlfriend and for him have been made by Simone.”
“Many people have more than one lawyer working for them,” I said. “Look at the U.S. president—he’s got dozens. Why can’t Mr. Herschel have two?”
McGivney cleared his throat. “Listen, Warshawski: I assume you know that Martha Simone got the Kataba girl—woman—released earlier this evening.”
“No,” I said. “I hadn’t heard that. But well done.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Montefiore snapped. “ICE and the rest of Homeland are trying to keep America safe, but you and your friends think by protecting terrorists, you’re doing something noble. Instead, all you’re doing is endangering the country.”
“Ms. Montefiore, it’s after midnight. I’m weary, so I’m not going to dissect all the flaws in your logic, starting with your conflation of college engineering students to terrorists. Tell me what happened, without any more propaganda, if you please.”
Before Montefiore could order my arrest or shoot me, a man in jeans and a sports coat spoke up. “I’m Braden Levine, lieutenant from Area One—CPD. I’m late to the party, but as I understand it, some fifteen women, all with long braids and blue head scarves, were waiting for the Kataba woman outside the detention center. ICE tried to follow her, but the women kept getting on and off the train in different groups and they couldn’t be sure they were following the right person.”
“Yes,” Montefiore put in bitterly. “Two or three would leave, but more were waiting along the route. Three rode out to O’Hare, where it turned out one of them works. Others switched from the Blue Line to the Red and Red to Green and back.”
“It was well planned, the kind of plan someone like you would make,” McGivney added to me.
“That’s a nice compliment; thank you.”
I saw the tiny Mason jar from the water purification model on the floor. I put it on the table next to the copper flask, but I couldn’t see the tubing that connected them.
“Were you involved in Kataba’s escape?” Montefiore said.
“It doesn’t sound as though she escaped,” I objected. “The immigration court ordered her release.”
“Don’t make us take you in as an accessory to aiding and abetting a fugitive from Homeland Security,” she snapped.
“I can’t make you do anything, Ms. Montefiore, but just because Ms. Kataba evaded Homeland surveillance doesn’t make her a fugitive. Anyway, why are so many officers from so many jurisdictions in Mr. Herschel’s apartment?” I asked.
“The whole situation is confusing,” said Levine. “The CPD patrol team”—he nodded toward a uniformed pair who were keeping as far to the back as they could without falling into the tiny bathroom—“responded to a report of shots in the building. When they got here, they found the locks had been shot off the door and all these little models thrown around. Whoever was here tore the place apart, looking for valuables. Hard to know what they took, if anything.”
“Shots?” I cried. “Was anyone—what did you find—”
Levine shook his head. “No bodies, and no blood. We found a couple of shell casings for a nine-millimeter Sauer. We searched the hall and the stairwells but didn’t see any signs of a struggle or a wound. We’re pretty sure the only shots fired were those that broke the locks into the apartment.”
“What do you think happened?” I spoke directly to Levine, since he seemed to be the one person in the room acting like an investigator. “Does it look as though they seized Herschel?”
“Can’t tell. My guys called in the situation and then all hell broke loose, with Homeland and the sheriff’s police showing up and trying to force them to leave. Possible murder versus national security. My guys called into the station for advice and I got the short straw. No one had thought to call a tech unit, so we did that.”
“I hope the representatives of the nation and the county haven’t touched everything in sight,” I said, “because this looks like the work of some imported creeps who trashed an apartment in the Shakespeare District. I’m thinking they also killed Lawrence Fausson, but the sheriff hasn’t wanted to look into that.”
McGivney and Montefiore started shouting at me in unison, but Levine wanted to know more about the break-in at Reno’s apartment. He said he knew Finchley. Despite the late hour, he called Finchley to get his version of the break-in at Reno’s and alert him to the fact that his perps might be active again on the South Side.
While he talked to Finch, I kept looking through the room for anything that might tell me if Felix had been here during the break-in. Montefiore asked me whom Felix and Rasima would turn to if they were in trouble.
“The U.S. government,” I said earnestly. “Isn’t that the refuge for people yearning to breathe free?”
Levine finished his call to Finchley before Montefiore could react. “He confirmed your report and he wants to send someone over to look at this place. I told him he was welcome,” Levine said, adding to the tech unit, “Prints from Reno Seale’s apartment have been processed, so see if anything here matches.”
“Felix Herschel’s phone,” I said to Levine. “He’s not answering, but I’m not seeing it here. He thought ICE was listening to his calls: Any way of finding where he is now?”
“Montefiore.” Levine touched her shoulder. “You’re monitoring Herschel’s phone, right? When did he last use it?”
After a moment, when Montefiore seemed to struggle about whether to cooperate or go all National Security Act on him, she typed something into her phone.
I moved to the doorway but waited for her answer. “The Kataba woman texted him at nine-seventeen, after she was released. He wrote plan a and that was the last communication from him to Kataba.” Montefiore scrolled through the screen.
“Warshawski texted him and left a voice mail for him to call her, someone named Kooi texted him multiple times, but he wasn’t answering. The last few hours, the phone has been moving around the city and briefly to DuPage County.”
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing. Felix was clearly laying a false scent, but what did it mean? Where was Rasima?
“He’s been making a lot of calls,” Montefiore said. “The last one was from Ninety-Seventh and Wentworth. He said, ‘Dog, you in business or what? Where you at?’”
She typed a query, waited for a response, then turned to me. “We don’t have a record of a ‘dog’ in Herschel’s list of contacts. Who would that be, Warshawski?”
Levine and his tech unit exchanged glances and looked away, smothering laughs.
“Someone has his phone, Ms. Montefiore,” I said gently. “Either he was robbed or he gave it away, but your trackers are following a drug dealer around the metro area. We don’t know where Felix is.”
That was my exit line, but I saw the laughter wiped from Levine’s face as he listened to a c
all on his vest phone. He beckoned his two patrol officers and the crime scene techs.
“That was a relay from 911. There’ve been break-ins at three South Side museums; a security guard was shot at the Oriental Institute.”
58
A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall
Sansen was standing outside his car at the top of Prairie Avenue, engine running. An unmarked car whizzed past, light flashing—Levine, heading to the OI.
“Did you hear—” I started to say at the same time he said, “Vic, a guard has been shot at the Institute. I must go down there, at once.”
“Two other South Side museums were attacked just now, DuSable and the Smart. They’re trying to find the Dagon where they think Felix and Rasima parked it. You go on south; I can take the L or get a Lyft.”
I gave him a quick kiss, remembered to take my briefcase from his backseat, and jumped onto the sidewalk as the rest of the Chicago Police squads roared the wrong way up Prairie. Sansen followed them to Lake Shore Drive. The county and federal cars didn’t move: McGivney and Montefiore seemed to be staying put, probably hoping Felix would return and drop into their arms.
A thin rain was falling. I pulled my coat collar up over my ears, wishing I’d worn a hat. The rain had driven away most of the protestors, but a few hardy souls remained, still chanting.
I jogged along Thirty-First Street as fast as I dared in my dress shoes. There wasn’t any protected place where I could stop to change into my running shoes.
Rasima’s friends had been switching L lines, and some had ridden the Green Line, which was the line that served IIT. I couldn’t believe she had been heading for Felix’s apartment—she and Felix were very aware of the surveillance against them. But what if they were going to the engineering lab. If they had made the Dagon replica, they could have stored the original there.
The original treasure of Saraqib was made from gold, and Kettie somehow had known that. Felix and Rasima couldn’t afford to make a replica in gold, but they did it in copper or some alloy, and that was how Kettie knew it wasn’t the real Dagon. Kettie wouldn’t want anything but gold. He ripped the arms off the goddess because she was worthless to him. He wanted the gold snakes.
I hoped someone was working late at the lab; I hoped they’d buzz me in. At State Street, all that went out of my head: more cop cars, the red of a fire engine’s strobes mixing with the cops’ blue. Two blocks down. Close to the engineering school.
I ran flat out, heels on my pumps squelching in the mud on the sidewalk. A man in a campus security uniform was gesticulating with a city cop while a firefighter was pulling a blanket over a figure in the road near the curb.
I pushed past them, ignoring their protests, and knelt next to the figure. Felix Herschel, looking horribly small, his face waxen as the lights streaked it.
“He’s not dead, is he?” I cried to the firefighter.
“Do you know him?” Cops converged on me.
“That’s one of our students.” A man in a windbreaker appeared next to me. He was wearing Nikes but no socks—he’d pulled clothes on in his hurry to get here.
I pushed myself to my feet. “Dean Pazdur! It’s V.I. Warshawski—I met you—”
“I remember you,” he said heavily. “How did this happen?”
“I just got here.”
I knelt down next to Felix again and put my fingers on his throat pulses. As if aware of me, he opened his eyes, blinked, and cried out in pain.
“It’s Vic, Felix. We’re getting you to Lotty. You will be fine.”
The firefighter and one of the cops joined me on the wet tarmac. “You awake, son?” the cop asked. “That’s good. Can you tell me your name?”
“Felix,” he muttered, his eyes shut.
An ambulance arrived, bells clanging. I left Pazdur providing details to the cops and hoisted myself into the ambulance along with the EMT crew.
“I’m an aunt,” I said. “His parents are in Canada.”
I woke Lotty to give her a thumbnail. She demanded to speak to the EMTs, so I handed my phone to one of them and knelt on the floor next to Felix’s head.
I found one of his hands under the blankets they’d wrapped him in and pressed it lightly. “It’s Vic, Felix. Do you know where Rasima is?”
“Light hurts my eyes,” he fretted.
“Yes, I expect you have some concussion.” I kept my voice calm. “You’ll be fine. What happened?”
“Thought we were clear. Went to engine lab—” His eyes fluttered open but he winced at the light and closed them again.
“Yes, for the Dagon,” I said. “Did Kettie jump you?”
“Big men. Grabbed Rasima and me, shoved us . . . into SUV. . . . Kicked door open. We got out but they . . . backed up . . . door hit me. Rasima—didn’t see. Where is she?”
The tech on the phone with Lotty was giving her Felix’s vitals, but the other tech told me to stop talking to Felix—his blood pressure was spiking.
I sat back on my heels, but Felix clung to my hand. “Rasima.”
“I’ll find Rasima,” I promised him.
“Sorry, Vic, sorry . . . for . . . didn’t . . . trust. Trust.” His voice slurred on the repeat and he lapsed into silence.
I stayed next to him, holding his hand, although his own fingers had gone slack, until we pulled into the ER bay. I went inside with him and gave what information I had to the ER charge nurse. The cops wanted to talk to me, too, but I couldn’t focus on their questions. I needed to find Rasima but I couldn’t leave Felix until Lotty arrived—which she did about ten minutes after the ambulance pulled in. She’s a reckless driver even at her most relaxed. Tonight, she must have beaten Indy speed records.
Lotty swept up to the desk, demanded the attending on call, and overrode the admission clerk’s efforts to put her at the back of the queue.
“Of course you may see my credentials, but it will save time if you also page Dr. Deverel and tell him I’m here.” She caught sight of me. “Victoria! Thank you. How did you come on Felix?”
Someone in scrubs came through the doors to the hospital interior and asked for Dr. Herschel. I walked—trotted—next to her.
“I have to go. I need to see if I can track down Rasima Kataba. She and Felix were nabbed together at the engineering lab; he managed to get the door of the car open and the two of them fell out. But she’s disappeared.”
Lotty nodded. “Go, go, I’ll let you know what happens here.”
59
The Purloined Dagon
I changed from my mud-clogged pumps into the running shoes I’d worn to my Force 5 cleaning shift. My tailored trousers were so stained with mud and oil from kneeling in the road that there didn’t seem a point to changing into my jeans.
I was running on fumes, but I was afraid if I came to a halt I wouldn’t be able to get back in motion. I summoned a Lyft car and rode back to Thirty-Third and State.
It was past two in the morning now, and the area was completely deserted. No squad cars, no fire engines, not even a drunk to share the street with me. Only a few lights in the IIT buildings, showing students pulling all-nighters, kept me from feeling completely alone. At least the drizzle had stopped, since I still didn’t have a hat or an umbrella.
My phone battery was low, but I needed its flashlight. Felix had fallen into the road only a few steps north of Thirty-Third; the churned-up mud along the curb showed where all the emergency crews had gathered. The Force 5 smock I’d wrapped around my head was there in the muck as well.
Rasima must have lingered, at least for a moment, hoping to save Felix. I shone my phone around and then saw the tire tracks in the ground. I could just make out an occasional footprint—small foot, moving fast.
Rasima had fled away from the street. The SUV had followed her. I lost the tracks for a bit but then found a big gouge in the wet soil where the SUV had made a U. Rasima had doubled back; she’d crossed the road. The tire tracks followed her over the median and then halted near the student center.
Rasima had been heading for the L. The SUV had turned around again in the mud and returned to State Street, but whether with Rasima I couldn’t tell.
I climbed to the L platform, checking the stairs for signs of a struggle—a dropped scarf, torn button. I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t think of any way to track Rasima further. In the morning I would go to the Lebanese-Syrian center and beg for help, but for now I could scarcely keep myself upright. A train was approaching, rattling the corrugated tunnel. I lurched on board and collapsed into a seat, blending with the homeless people slumped across the seats in their stained clothes. I kept myself half awake until we reached the Loop stops, staggered over to the Red Line, and slept until we reached Belmont.
As I walked the half mile home, I tried to stay alert to danger, but I kept thinking about my bathtub. I had just enough remaining mental presence to walk the perimeter of the building. No one seemed to be lurking, but I still went in through the alley: I’d check the front stairwell from the inside. At the top of the third flight, as I was fitting my key into the back door, I heard a movement behind me. I turned, clumsy in fatigue, trying to brace myself against the door so I’d have leverage for kicking.
“Victoria?”
I gaped at the small figure emerging from the neighboring landing. In the streetlight I could see a long braid hanging below her head scarf. “Rasima?”
I hurried her into the kitchen. She was shivering, feverish—she’d been running ever since the immigration court decided to release her.
“Felix? Is he— Do you know—” she asked disjointedly.
“He’s okay,” I said. “Okay enough. He was knocked out when the car door hit him, but he can talk; his worry was for you. Dr. Lotty, his great-aunt, is with him at the hospital.”
The worry lines in her narrow face eased; she murmured something in Arabic and squeezed my hand convulsively. I showed her the bathroom, so she could get herself clean and warm before we tried to talk further. While she soaked in the tub, I sponged myself off in the kitchen sink, changed into clean jeans, made hot tea with honey. I was going to pour whiskey into mine but regretfully decided I’d best not add anything that would knock me out.
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