Chicago Blue: A Red Riley Adventure

by Stephanie Andrews

  “I guess I am a little jumpy,” I said. And then giggled. Jumpy was hardly the word.

  He laughed as well.

  “So, what are you doing out here?”

  “Staking out the Farnham Building.”

  “I can see that. Waiting for Ferris Farnham?”

  “No, Greg Ralston, actually.”

  “The security chief?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Wait a minute, how do you know about Greg Ralston?”

  “I don’t really know any—“

  “Are you checking up on me?”

  “No, I—“

  “You are! You’re following me.” I poked my finger into his chest.

  “Uncle Elgort—“

  “Doesn’t think I can do this on my own? Is that it? Scared little girl?”

  He just paused, looking at me until I stopped talking.

  “He’s worried about you. He, we, don’t want to see anything happen to you.”

  “Why?”

  “He feels guilty, of course.”

  I absorbed this for a minute.

  “About Uncle Nick?”

  Nicholas sighed.

  “It wasn’t Uncle Elgort’s fault. Not directly. I suppose you realize that I’m named after your Uncle Nick?”

  “I suppose I did, on some level. I hadn’t really made the connection until the other week at the furniture store. I’m afraid to say I’d kind of forgotten about the Shelby family until all this happened.”

  “I see.” He rubbed his chin with his hand.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, indignant. “It was ages ago. And Uncle Nick was closer to Eldon than he was to his own brother.”

  “Of course he was.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Because Dad was a cop, and didn’t think it looked good to be hanging around with the mob?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then what?” I searched his face, which had an incredulous look on it.

  “Your Dad never told you?”

  “My Dad’s been dead for twelve years!”

  “Eldon and Nick were more than close, they were a couple.”

  “A—”

  “Exactly. They tried to keep it quiet, but Uncle Elgort figured it out. And, for the record, he was fine with it. Some of his associates weren’t, though.”

  “The explosion…” my mouth was hanging open in astonishment.

  “Exactly. Uncle Elgort has always assumed it was in retaliation for something, or just for being gay. Anyway, he’s always blamed himself for not being able to protect them.”

  I was stunned. Not by their relationship, that was no big deal, though maybe if you are in organized crime there’s still some lingering prejudices. No, I was stunned that for all this time, I had believed that Uncle Nick died in a gas explosion. That it was an accident.

  I thought about the old man, Uncle Elgort. When you’re the head of a crime syndicate, and somebody blows up your son, it’s inevitable that you think it’s all your fault. Even if Eldon and Nick had been into some bad stuff, Elgort would argue they were only in that business because of him.

  “You still here?” asked Nick.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I do that sometimes.” I turned and looked at him on the bench next to me, and something stirred within me. I was starting to really like this guy. “Would you like to get dinner, later?”

  His eyebrows shot up.

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Umm…yeah?” It honestly didn’t seem that strange to me. “We aren’t actually cousins or anything, you know. If you’re not interested, fine, I just felt…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I felt like we were connecting.”

  He turned toward me.

  “Actually, it seems like we’ve mostly been bickering.”

  “Exactly,” I countered.

  He sighed. It was not a sigh of deep emotional infatuation. It was the kind of sigh you give a misbehaving toddler.

  “Or not,” I said hastily, and began to gather my stuff.

  “It’s not that, Kay,” he said gently. “It’s just, aren’t you a little busy right now?”

  “There’s some down time, you know. Sitting on benches. Sitting in cars.” I put my water bottle back in my shoulder bag. “There’s a lot of sitting. Plus, you’re following me around anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Look, Kay. I like you, I really do.” His eyes were big and brown. I hated getting dumped before I even got going. Especially by someone with eyes like that. And hands.

  “But…”

  “But I’m not going to get entangled with you while this is all going on. You’ve got to be on your game all the time. This is urgent.”

  “That’s why I brought it up now,” I pressed on. “I could be dead next week. Hell, I could be dead or in jail tomorrow, and then I would have missed my chance.”

  “Be that as it may,” he began.

  “Be that as it may?” I interrupted him.

  “What?”

  I started to laugh. “You just ‘Be that as it may’ed me.”

  He smiled. “Sometimes I sound like an old man.”

  “Old woman.”

  “Okay. But my point is the same. If you clear your name and solve this, I’ll take you to The Drake for the best dinner of your life.”

  “Not The Drake.”

  “What’s wrong with The Drake?”

  “Long story, which you’ll never hear if you wait until I’m dead!”

  “I’ll have to take my chances,” he said. He touched my shoulder gently. “Be careful, Kay,” he said, and turned and walked away.

  I stood watching him walk away, fantasizing about that dinner, and after dinner, and after that. However, before my fantasy got too far along, I was snapped back to reality when Greg Ralston exited the building across the street. I jumped up, tossed my Tabaq wrapper in the garbage can, and headed off in pursuit.

  Twenty-seven

  He was on foot, so I followed on foot, staying well back though he seemed focused on where he was heading. He barely looked up or around.

  I needed to see Ralston interact directly with someone, anyone, who might be masterminding this: Salerno, Watkins, or someone else from Pershing. Or like I said, maybe he was masterminding it, in which case I needed to see him do something mastermindful. Something I could take to the police.

  I followed him around the corner to La Salle and then right on to Goethe. He seemed to be heading towards the lake, likely to one of the office buildings there, but who knows? It occurred to me for the hundredth time that I really hadn’t done my homework. Who was Ralston, really? I needed a researcher on my team, and not just a hacker like Marty. I needed to take the time to know the people I was up against, so I wouldn’t keep making the same stupid mistakes.

  Face it, I was an amateur. An amateur spy. That’s what my biography would be called: Kay Riley, the Amateur Spy. With any luck, I’d get a documentary on the History Channel. What’s-her-name from Game of Thrones would play me during the staged reenactments. Ygritte.

  They’d have to be staged re-enactments, because of course I’d be dead. Because I suck at this. Nothing but luck and a little shenanigans had gotten me this far. And a little help from my friends. Everything was just moving too fast. I vowed that after today, I would slow it down, create a strategic plan, and execute it. Maybe with a PowerPoint presentation. And if that didn’t work, I’d get out of town and out of the country. You don’t need that much money to live in Central America, do you? The sun would be a problem. My skin just doesn’t tan. How about Saskatchewan?

  Up ahead, Ralston turned right and cut through Goudy Square Park, a little playground that I knew from my patrols; teenagers like to hang out there after dark and do the things that teenagers do. A flash of the blues usually got them to move along, without me ever getting out of the cruiser. I followed him into the park.

  As I was passing beneath the trees I heard—felt, really— a whooshing s
ound behind me as something dropped from above. I spun, forearm up and fist clenched, miraculously making contact. Something, maybe a gun, clattered to the cement walkway.

  A flat hand struck me in the chest, and I staggered back several paces, struggling to keep my breath moving in and out. The Pakastani food in my stomach gurgled, but stayed put.

  In front of me stood Selena Salerno, laughing. She was wearing black boots, with tight red latex pants. Her long brown hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a fitted, short-waisted black jacket. I glanced quickly to the side to see a black plastic box shattered on the ground. It had a velco strap.

  “That’s my taser!” I gasped, regaining my breath.

  “You shouldn’t leave your things lying around,” she laughed. She spoke with a delightful Spanish accent.

  “Did you kill Alan Watkins?”

  She scowled. “I don’t kill people,” she said.

  Well, that was encouraging, at least.

  I looked quickly around, but my options were terrible. Ralston was nowhere to be seen. I doubted I could outrun Salerno, and the odds of beating her in a fight only seemed about fifty-fifty. She was in incredible shape, but I had been training a lot, and felt pretty good about my rudimentary taekwondo. I’d learned it in police training a decade ago, but I remembered most of it.

  I could scream for help, but I was a wanted fugitive, and besides, the playground was deserted. Where were all the kids? The nannies? It was the middle of the afternoon for crying out loud.

  “So, red’s the color today, huh? Really blends in.”

  “You didn’t see me coming.”

  I ignored that.

  “Just needed a change of pace?”

  Salerno laughed again. “Actually, Riley, you’re exactly right. Sometimes the white suit is out of the question. It’s refreshing to be working with another woman. I feel like we understand each other.”

  “Nice jacket,” I said, continuing to stall while I waited for a plan to come to me.

  “Sometimes I need pockets,” she shrugged.

  “But you didn’t the other day, when you were stealing corporate secrets from Ferris Farnham.”

  “Oh, boohoo.” She tossed back her ponytail. “Poor Ferris Farnham. He thought he was going to control Illcom, but he was wrong. He’s a big baby.”

  I edged slightly away, toward the jungle gym, but she matched me step for step, smiling like the Chesire Cat the whole way.

  “What was that document, anyway,” I asked, offhandedly.

  “A take-out menu.”

  She took a step toward me, and I took another step back, into the woodchips, used as cushioning for kids who take a digger off the play structure. I was getting backed up against a wall, here. I had no choice. I was going to have to fight her.

  “You’re hilarious,” I said, and then kicked wood chips at her face, leaping at her with a sliding side kick.

  Selena Salerno sidestepped like a ballerina, spinning on one strong, perfect leg while bringing the other one through the air so that her booted foot connected with my head.

  A white light exploded in my vision and I went down, hard, to the ground. Jesus Christ what had I been thinking? Of course she could fight! She wasn’t a gentle dancer. She was a latina ninja, or whatever the Spanish word would be.

  I rolled onto my stomach and tried to get to my hands and knees, but my head felt the size and weight of a Mini Cooper, and blood was trickling into my left eye. I tried to wipe it with my left hand, but lost my balance and fell onto my side. I opened my right eye to see her squat down beside me. With a yank, she ripped the long black wig from by head and threw it aside. My glasses were already long gone. I felt her fingers in my red hair, which had grown just long enough for her to grip. Convenient.

  “Ah, si,” she said. “Red Riley, there she is.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I mumbled, trying again to get to my hands and knees. She helped me by pulling hard on my hair, dragging me forward until my head clanged against a metal post of the jungle gym, causing the stars to come out again. My vision kept whiting out, making it hard to retaliate as she kicked me in the ribs, rolling me onto my back. She straddled me then, bending down, her face looming and her ponytail falling in my face. She grabbed me under the arms and pulled me up to a sitting position, leaning me back against the metal bars.

  She kicked my legs apart, wider, until I heard and felt my skirt rip, and then she knelt between my legs, her face just inches from mine. She ran her fingers through my hair again.

  “I like the real you better,” she said. I could only groan as my head lolled to the side.

  She reached into her pocket and took out something big and round that glinted in the sun. Oh great, I thought through a haze of pain and blood, I was going to be handcuffed, again. She’d leave me here, chained to the jungle gym without my disguise, for the police to find me. Well, it was better than being killed, I supposed.

  Salerno stood and walked away, out of the park, looking back once to blow me a kiss, her boots clacking on the cement.

  I looked down at my wrist, and realized I had been wrong. It wasn’t handcuffs. It was worse.

  On my left wrist was a wide, gleaming copper bracelet, with a green light glowing in the center like a precious emerald.

  She had turned me into a bomb.

  Twenty-eight

  I was a bomb. The idea just kept pounding through my head. I struggled up to my knees and looked again at the solid green light on the bracelet. I was a bomb.

  I searched the ground around me. The eyeglasses were crushed, and the wig was useless—snarled and full of woodchips. I crawled over to my shoulder bag and found some tissues that I could use to wipe the blood out of my eye. It seemed to be coming from the upper left of my forehead. I found some old napkins and held them tightly to the spot. My head spun. I was a bomb.

  I looked more closely at the bracelet. It was thick and clunky, presumably full of some kind of explosive, or maybe it was made out of explosive. I didn’t know. It had a hinge, but no clasp. It must slot into itself and lock shut. There was no way to open it. My breathing wasn’t getting any calmer. My blood was pounding. The only other notable feature was a small jack, like for a pair of earphones.

  I was rooting in my bag for more napkins when a phone rang loudly, right behind me. I screamed out loud and whirled to find no one there, but ton a nearby seesaw rested a black flip phone. As I stared at it, it rang again. I didn’t scream this time, but I still jumped about a foot.

  It wasn’t my phone. Mine was still in my shoulder bag. But it had to be for me. There’s no way some soccer mom just happened to leave her phone behind, and it just happened to ring right at the height of my crisis. Besides, nobody used old phones like that anymore. Selena Salerno had left it for me.

  The phone rang again as I moved cautiously toward it. Still holding the napkins to my head, I reached down with my other hand and picked up the phone, flipping it open with one hand.

  “Hello?” I said, expecting to hear her accented voice.

  “Don’t hang up, Officer Riley!” said a computerized voice.

  I hung up. What the hell was going on? I thought I was being so careful, running around the city with my sexy clothes and my dark hair, but somebody had known where I was all along, and what I was up to.

  The phone rang again. And rang. I just stared at it until, all of a sudden, the green light on the bracelet turned yellow. I answered the phone in a panic.

  “Okay, okay, okay!” I spat into the phone. “I’m here, okay. I get it.”

  The yellow light turned back to green, a color I’ve always loved.

  “That’s better, Officer Riley,” said the monotone robot voice.

  “Who the hell ar—”

  “Please don’t talk, Miss Riley. Just listen.”

  I bit my tongue, spinning in a circle to see if anyone was watching me, but they could be anywhere. Anywhere on the planet. Using me as a bomb.

  “What?” I said back into the p
hone. “Sorry, I missed that part, I was distracted figuring out how I’m going to find you and rip your goddamn heart out of your chest!”

  “Now, now. Remember. I talk, you listen. First,” the voice continued, “you are to make NO phone calls on this phone, or on your other phone. We are watching, and we are listening. We will know.”

  “Is that the royal we, or are there a bunch of you cowardly assholes?” I kicked the seesaw in anger. It didn’t do much good.

  “Enough. It’s time to get moving. You are going to go back the way you came, and you are going to meet with Ferris Farnham.”

  “So you can use me as a bomb, to blow him up? I was there the last time, you know. Carter Blalock didn’t follow your plan. He blew himself up instead. What makes you think I won’t do the same thing? You’re going to kill me anyway, right?”

  “I have no intention of killing you, unless you fail to follow my directions. Do as your told,” the voice intoned without inflection, “and the bracelet will fall off and you can go back to being a fugitive from justice. You might want to consider a change of venue.”

  “This is my goddam city.”

  “Suit yourself, stubborn woman. Though I suppose that is why you are still alive.”

  “Damn right!”

  “For now,” said the voice, and the bracelet light turned yellow for a brief second, then back to green. A warning.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. It was difficult to argue with someone who never raised their voice or got angry. “I’ll do it.”

  “Of course you will.”

  “If you’re not intending to blow me up, what are you sending me to Farnham for?”

  “You are simply a courier. He is going to give something to you, and you are going to deliver it where I tell you to. After that, you will be free to go.”

  I didn’t believe that for a minute.

  “What am I picking up?”

  “Five million dollars.”

  Woah.

  “Alrighty, then,” I said nonchalantly. “What do I do once I get to the building. I’m a bit of a wanted woman.”

  “Don’t worry, just keep your head down. Put on a hat, I believe you have one in your bag. Greg Ralston will meet you at the front door. They are expecting you.”