Chicago Blue: A Red Riley Adventure

by Stephanie Andrews

  Alan had sat up and was trying to make his way toward the door. Drool was smeared across his cheek and he had wet his pants. I grabbed the back of his collar and tipped him back over, putting my sneakered foot on his neck. He brought his hands up instinctively to try and remove it, but I removed my foot and used my heel to kick him lightly in the nose.

  “Oww!” he hollered, but I wasn’t too worried about the noise, as it seemed the rest of the building was empty. I hopped back so that I was out of his reach, sat on the kitchen chair, and pulled off my wig.

  “So, Alan,” I began.

  “Reilly?” he groaned with a mix of surprise and disgust. He started to edge toward me.

  “Hold up right there, Alan,” I warned. “I have your gun.”

  He stopped.

  “I don’t want any more moving or squirming, okay?”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Some answers. I’ve been wandering around the city like an idiot, hoping if I ask enough questions I’ll figure out what the hell is going on. You keep popping up, so I was hoping you had some information I could use.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still in Chicago.” He shook his head. “You must not have any common sense, whatsoever.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe not, but I’m not the one taped up on the floor.” I gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t they teach you the ‘Sweaty Cleavage Diversion’ at Bad Guy School?”

  He had no decent response to this, so he just stared toward the door, wishing that one of us wasn’t here.

  “I’m not leaving until I find out who’s trying to set me up. Is it Ralston?”

  “Greg? I haven’t talked to Greg in years.”

  “But he used to work for Fitzgerald, right?”

  “Sure he did, but that was years and years ago. Besides, he’s got his own security team now, he wouldn’t have to hire us.”

  “Unless he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing.”

  “You think he blew up Blalock and Illcom? That’s crazy, Farnham would obviously be the prime suspect, and Greg with him.”

  “Maybe crazy like a fox,” I said. “So, who did hire you?”

  “No idea.”

  “Right.”

  He shrugged.

  “Seriously, above my pay grade, and I like it that way.”

  I considered this for a minute. Alan didn’t seem like corner office material, so maybe he really didn’t know.

  “But if you don’t know who hired you, how do you know it wasn’t Ralston?” Aha!

  “’Cause that would be stupid. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “But you don’t really know…”

  He shifted his weight on the floor. Sitting in your own pee was probably pretty uncomfortable.

  “No, I don’t know for sure, but—“

  “Shhh!”

  “What?”

  “Sssh! I thought I heard something.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, but there was nothing.

  “Okay,” I continued. “Why are you trying to kill me? You’re not working for the police, that’s for sure.”

  “We aren’t trying to kill you—“

  “You shot at me! Twice”

  “No, just once.”

  “On Lakeshore Drive and at the salon.”

  “That was you at the salon?”

  “Are you kidding me? You didn’t know that was me?”

  “Honestly, no. I always get thrown off by the hair.”

  Oh my god. I had been feeling smart for fooling this guy, but now I was doubting my accomplishment.

  “You just shot at a random hairdresser?”

  “No,” he snorted. “I shot the window. I just wanted to scare her—you.”

  “Well, I feel so much better, but—“ I paused again, and Watkins looked up at the ceiling. He had clearly heard something up there as well.

  I drew the gun out of the fanny pack.

  “Who’s up there!” I hissed at him.

  He just shrugged his shoulders.

  I crept back through the apartment, checking each room and listening intently. I swung open the door to the bathroom. It was small and dim in the light of the one dirty window, and spoke clearly to the fact that a man was the only current user. A bad smell, a layer of grime that would make me hesitant to touch any of the surfaces, an empty toilet paper roll in the dispenser.

  Through the filmy window I suddenly saw a pair of legs come in to view, descending the fire escape. They were wearing black shiny latex.

  Oh crap! I pulled the door shut quickly and raced back to the kitchen. She was like the Terminator and the Energizer Bunny mixed together. With a fetish model.

  I grabbed a fistful of Watkins’ hair, pulling his head way back.

  “Who is she!!” I rasped in his ear, holding the gun to his cheek. I heard the almost silent sound of the bathroom window sliding open. He grunted.

  “She’s who they brought in when we failed to get you the first time,” he said, not bothering to keep his voice down.

  I stepped to where I could see the bathroom door, and fired three bullets into it. The sound was deafeningly loud. That would give her something to think about for a few seconds. I dropped the gun into Alan’s lap and sprinted out the door and down the stairs.

  She’s who they call in…

  Well, I hadn’t been a secret agent very long, but I knew instinctively that, at least in this case, discretion was the better part of valor. I kept running.

  As I pushed out the front door Ruby screeched to a halt at the end of the walk. She had heard the gunshots all the way up the block.

  As much as I wanted to slide across the hood like a badass, I would most likely have slid off and cracked my head on the pavement. Instead I dove awkwardly, head first, through the open window of the rear passenger door.

  “Go!” I shouted at Ruby, sitting up and turning to look back toward the townhouse.

  She stood silhouetted against the lit doorframe, standing on the top step. I expected her to be holding a gun or, more likely, a crossbow or some crazy thing like that, but she appeared unarmed, her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side, watching me. I smiled.

  “Want a ride?” I yelled out the open window, but we were too far down the street to hear if she replied.

  Twenty

  The next day I checked in to the Honeywell Retirement Lodge in Wilmette. Just for a visit.

  “I’m here to read to Georgette Riley?” I said, holding up a copy of Angela’s Ashes that I had picked up at Market Fresh Books. “I’m from the Senior Reads Program?”

  The nurse at the desk was distracted, there seemed to be an issue with an older gentleman in cardiac arrest. She waved at a clipboard on the counter as she hurried away.

  “Just sign in, please.”

  I entered my name as Jane Austen and then headed down the B wing to my mother’s room. The place was clean but a bit threadbare. The framed prints on the wall, of works from the Art Institure, were so sun faded you could barely make some of them out.

  Once I was sure there were no police on site, looking for me, I ducked into a restroom off the main hall. It had been more than eight weeks now since the bombing that started this whole mess, so it seemed unlikely that they would still be putting man hours into staking out my demented mother in hope of finding me. I knew a little bit about how they budget overtime, and I was pretty sure that by this time the Captain would be under pressure to scale back the hunt.

  I took off the black wig I had worn at reception, and switched it for an auburn wig that looked, more or less, like my real hair used to look. I figured maybe today would be one of the rare days that my mother was lucid, in which case I didn’t want to confuse her with my bright red crewcut.

  Looking in the mirror, it was comforting yet strange to see my old self again. Did I even know this person now? And if I wasn’t that Kay Riley any more, then who was I? I shrugged and headed down the hall. That kind of introspection was going to have to wait until I had
a little bit more free time.

  My mother sat in an easy chair, watching a Wheel of Fortune on the TV in her room. Her hair was not even white yet, mostly auburn with some streaks of grey, but here she was stuck for the rest of her life surrounded by the elderly, her life gone away and left her.

  “Hi Mom,” I said tentatively, and sat on the edge of her well-made bed. This place was modest, no doubt, but they did a pretty good job of keeping her room clean and tidy. I had no complaints, and if Mom did, well, she never said.

  “Kay, it’s you!” She beamed, and relief flooded me as I smiled back at her. I hadn’t realized how much my heart had needed her to be present today, if only a little bit. I hadn’t realized how desperate I was to be recognized. She looked to the door. “Where’s your father?” she asked brightly. “Parking the car?

  “No, Mom. Dad couldn’t make it today. It’s just me.”

  “He never comes anymore, it seems.” She frowned as a contestant on the screen landed on Bankrupt. I’m wasn’t sure if she was frowning at that, or at Dad.

  “He’s busy, Mom.”

  “You have been, too,” she said, smiling at me. “I’ve seen you on the nightly news!”

  Uh oh.

  “Oh that, Mom, well…”

  “I’m so proud. My daughter, on the news! Some nice reporters even came and talked to me, to learn more about you for their newscast.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell them anything embarrassing, Mom.”

  “Oh, no. Only good things. Like that time you played Peter Pan.”

  “That was third grade, Mom.”

  “You were such a little darling.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  A half hour later she had dozed off while we were talking. I covered her with a blanket where she sat in the easy chair, reclining it a bit so her head wouldn’t slump forward, and then turned off the TV. I found a box of tissues and used them liberally. These visits always wore me out.

  Then I got down to business. Her bookshelf held about 300 books—Mom had always been a great reader—and it took me a few minutes to find what I was looking for: Mom’s address book.

  Each year someone on the Honeywell’s staff helped Mom send out Christmas cards, so I knew that she must still have it. Most of the other memorabilia of our life as a family had come to me when my Dad died, and was now sitting in a box under my bed.

  I took the address book over to the window, where I could see better, and began thumbing through it. It was hard not to stop and think about each person as I saw their name. What were they thinking of me now? If I got caught, or killed, they would forever think that I had become a criminal, like my Uncle Patrick. That I hadn’t followed in my father’s footsteps after all.

  It wasn’t until near the back that I finally found what I was looking for. The listing simply said, “Uncle E.” and listed an address. No phone, no email.

  I copied the address into my phone and put the book back in its place on the shelf. I switched out the red wig for the black one, picked up my book, and then leaned down and kissed my mother on the forehead.

  “Bye Mom,” I said softly. “I’m going to fix this, I promise.”

  I sat in the parking lot in Ruby’s borrowed car, searching through my satchel until I found what I was looking for: Aldo Frances’s business card.

  I had been thinking a lot about my conversation with Martin, and how much I was relying on him and Ruby, because I knew I could trust them. But now, as I began to look for Uncle Elgort, it occurred to me that there were several people on my side, and that maybe I didn’t have to do everything by myself.

  “Mr. Frances,” I said, when he answered the phone. “It’s Kay Riley. I have a question for you. Are you a Cubs fan or a White Sox fan?”

  Twenty-One

  Uncle Elgort was probably somebody’s uncle, but he wasn’t mine. But that’s what people in my Dad’s neighborhood had always called him. If Uncle Elgort asked you for a favor, you did him that favor. It was an unspoken understanding. My Dad had bristled against this, knowing instinctively what those kind of connections led to, and so he made a point of moving out of the neighborhood soon after marrying Mom. His brothers, Patrick and Nicholas, however, did not.

  Patrick, as I may have mentioned, went on to be a fairly hopeless car thief, and is still in jail to this day. I didn’t mention that Nicholas, who became a very successful businessman, was close friends with Uncle Elgort’s son Eldon. They attended Northwestern together, and had extensive business partnerships in the two decades afterward, until they were killed in a fire at their offices one horrible Easter Sunday.

  Dad didn’t take to Eldon, because of his father, and this had led to a frosty relationship between Uncle Nicholas and Dad. In fact, I only saw him at family holidays when I was a kid, and only met Eldon once or twice. I had never met Elgort. Not long after his son died, he retired from all his business holdings. He hadn’t been a “person of interest” to the Chicago Police for years. It’s unlikely they even knew where to find him these days—he would be a very old man at this point.

  But Mom knew, because she had to make sure everyone got a Christmas card, come hell or high water.

  The furniture shop was four stories tall, with three floors of showroom (Three Amazing Floors of Bargains!!) and offices on the top floor.

  I noticed the shatterproof glass in the front door as I entered, along with an overabundance of surveillance cameras for a furniture store. A bell rang as the door closed behind me, and I hadn’t gone more than a few feet before a strikingly handsome man, with greying temples and big brown eyes, stepped from between two wardrobes and greeted me warmly.

  “Good afternoon, madam. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Oh, not just at the moment,” I said in a soft voice, pushing my glasses up on my nose. I was wearing a mousy brown wig, with a pale-yellow sweater over a white blouse. A black skirt and some conservative brown shoes rounded out my ensemble, along with a small brown purse. I would have felt safer wearing some of the excellent tactical gear I had bought using Alan Watkins’s credit card, but it would have seemed a bit out of place in a furniture store, even one like this one.

  “Well, I’m Don Shelby, one of the owners. You just give me a call if you need anything.” He was only about 40, but he acted much older, and had the deep, tanned skin of someone who spent a lot of time on the golf course or on a yacht.

  I cased the building carefully, while stopping every so often to try out a sofa or an easy chair. On the third floor, I spotted a door marked “Office” that wouldn’t have attracted attention except for the fact that it looked very secure, and had a keypad lock. Set above it was yet another video camera, this one pointed straight at anyone who would be approaching.

  I wandered slowly back down to the first floor until I found Don Shelby again, near the front door. He was intently studying his smartphone, and as I approached him from behind I could see that he was scrolling slowly through stock prices.

  “Excuse me?”

  He jumped a bit, and then turned toward me, putting on his best smile.

  “Ah hello, I trust you found some excellent bargains during your tour. Is there something specific I can help you with?”

  “Actually,” I said, “no. Though it is all very lovely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I was just, I was wondering. If you are one of the owners, I wonder if maybe you are related to an old friend of my parents, from ages ago.”

  His smile hardened just slightly.

  “Perhaps,” he answered in the same smooth tone. “Who is it you were looking for?”

  “Uncle Elgort?”

  His smile faltered for a moment, and he looked at me more closely, assessing, looking for any detail that would identify me as a threat.

  “Hmmm,” he said, recovering himself as he walked over to a multi-line phone that hung on the wall above an old roll top desk. “I haven’t heard anyone use that name in a very long time.”

  He picke
d up the phone receiver and punched a button.

  “Margaret? Yes, just checking dear, are we all clear on the sales floor? Yes? Okay, thanks. Go ahead with a one five then, would you?”

  Shelby hung up and turned to me with a much more serious look on his face. The smile was gone. At the same time, I heard a loud click come from the front door.

  Shelby started across the floor toward me, and I started for the door, knowing already that it was locked. And it was. I turned back to him with a bright, innocent smile on my face, but that clearly wasn’t going to work because he was already pointing a revolver at me. It looked like an old Smith and Wesson.

  I had been prepared for this, but it was still scary as hell. He gripped my arm above the elbow and dragged me around the corner and out of sight of the storefront windows.

  Before I could twist around, or find any position from which I could conceivable disarm him, he pushed me roughly forward onto a bed. It had a lovely walnut headboard, but that wasn’t my top priority right now. I started to roll over.

  “Stay,” he warned, with a knee in my back. I stayed, though it was infuriating to not be able to see him. I started to raise my head, but he pushed me back down. He ran his hand down my back and under my arms, and then up my skirt.

  “Whoah, fella,” I quipped.

  “Be quiet,” he suggested, removing his hand.

  I started to raise my head again, and he grabbed it again, so roughly that my wig came off revealing my bright red buzz cut. Shelby grunted in surprise. I heard him step back and then I heard the contents of my handback spill out onto the floor.

  He grunted again.

  “Who is this person who claims to be a friend of Uncle Elgort?”

  “Georgette Riley. My mother. Georgette. Riley.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “We’ll see,” he said, as he roughly pulled my hands behind my back and cuffed me with my own police handcuffs, which had spilled out of my bag.

  He strode around the corner, back to where the phone was, and I heard him talking in low tones. I suppose I could have made a run for it, but I really wanted to talk to Uncle Elgort, so I just lay there and wallowed in the special self-pity that comes from being restrained with your own handcuffs.