Ralston, again!
“Is this you, Greg Ralston?” I asked suspiciously.
The computer voice laughed, or at least said “ha ha ha.” It wasn’t very convincing. “We’ve met twice, Ralston,” I said into the phone, “and you had no idea who I was.”
“You do not know me, Ms. Riley. Mr. Ralston is acting on Ferris’s behalf, and he will make sure you get to the top floor safely, and back out of the building as well.”
“But—”
“No more, now. Do as you’re told. You are being watched. If you disobey, you will be eliminated and I will simply use someone else, like Ms. Martynek, or her nephew.” The phone went dead.
Damn. Damn!
I started moving out of the park and back toward the Farnham Building. I pulled my Cubs hat out and put it gently on my head, using it to hold the napkins against the gash in my forehead. I had about six blocks to figure out a plan to get out of this, protect my friends, and solve the mystery.
How hard could that be?
Twenty-nine
See? Only took me two blocks to solve the mystery and formulate my plan. I’d need to go through with the pick-up to confirm my hunch, though.
Meanwhile, I looked up ahead and across the street, my eyes seeking out the building I was looking for, and there it was: an old Jewel Osco drugstore. I crossed the street and made my way in the front door.
Two things happened immediately. The light on the bracelet turned yellow, and the flip phone rang.
“What are you doing, Riley?” the computer voice said, actually sounding a bit alarmed, as far as soulless machines go.
“I’m bleeding all over the place.”
“Return to the street.”
“No, I can’t see anything. Your chupacabra split my forehead open and I’m all out of napkins. I’m going to buy some gauze and tape and take it to the bathroom.”
“We don’t have time for this,” said the voice.
“Then blow me up, hotshot,” I said levelly.
There was silence for a long moment, during which I thought I might pee myself in fear. Finally, the voice spoke again.
“We are watching the entrances.”
“Gotchya.”
“We are monitoring the phones.”
“Yup.”
“You will not talk to the cashier, or indicate in any way that you need help.”
I looked up at the cashier, who had been staring openmouthed at me since I walked in. Was it the blood? Or was it the generous amount of thigh that was protruding from my ripped skirt? Perhaps saying ‘blow me, hotshot’ into the phone was conveying the wrong image. I smiled at him and started down the first aid aisle.
“Okay, Hal,” I said into the phone, “and don’t forget, there’s a window in the women’s bathroom. You’d better have Simone Biles cover the back alley.”
“If you are not back on the sidewalk in five minutes, I will blow you and the entire drugstore to very small pieces.” He hung up.
“Okay,” I said brightly into the phone. “See you later honey!” I picked up the bandages I needed and headed for the back, quickly. I didn’t have much time.
I used to come into this store frequently, to get a snack when I was on patrol, back when I ate candy, which I absolutely do NOT do anymore. Especially peanut butter cups. Sure enough, at the back of the store, next to the bathrooms, was an old payphone. Maybe the last one in this part of the city.
I rushed to it and threw down my bag, rummaging for some quarters. I called Ruby and told her everything in a rush, hoping she heard at least half of what I was saying and what I was asking her to do.
I hung up while she was in midsentence, not really giving her a chance to object, and rushed into the bathroom. I removed my hat and the bloody napkins, washed out the nasty looking cut, and taped some clean gauze over it. I washed the dirt and the remaining makeup off my face, and stared at myself for a long moment in the mirror. I was surprised to see that I looked more angry than afraid. Because I certainly felt afraid.
Okay, angry was good. I could work with that. I didn’t want to wear the hat anymore, because my head was aching so badly, and to some extent, I felt ready to be myself again, and didn’t like all this hiding. On the other hand, I realized that if I was detained by the police, blowing me up would be the easiest solution for this bastard.
So I put the Cubbies hat on, grabbed my bag, and exited the drugstore, turning again toward the Farnham Building. I must have been convincing, because the yellow light turned back to green.
My eyes roved back and forth, both sides of the street, but I didn’t see anyone watching or following me. They were really good. Nor did I see any police.
Two more minutes, and I walked through the revolving door into the eight-story atrium of the Farnham Building, my eyes drawn inevitably up up up to the magnificent ceiling.
“Miss Riley?”
I jumped, and brought my gaze down to the strong, dark face of Greg Ralston.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
Thirty
Once again, I was standing next to Greg Ralston in the Farnham elevator. I was beginning to hate this building. I sang “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…” and then stopped.
Ralston turned his startling dark eyes and matching scowl on me. I couldn’t tell if it was in recognition, or if he was just an ornery bastard who didn’t enjoy a good musical.
“Greg, do you ever take Valerie out to the Goodman to see a play?” I don’t know what was wrong with me, blood loss maybe, or gallows humor. Suddenly everything was funny, and I couldn’t help pushing his buttons.
He was less cheerful about it. He grabbed my upper arm, hard, and turned to put his face right in mine.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” he growled at me.
“Is Mexican art your favorite? Or was that Valerie’s choice?”
That did it. He pushed me back against the elevator wall, his outstretched right hand pushing firmly into my chest, his left hand raised as if to strike me.
I raised my hand up between us.
“Look at this, Ralston.” His eyes were drawn instantly to the bracelet.
“You know what this is. Carter Blalock showed you one just like it when he came here that night. He asked you to go get help. And maybe you did, maybe you ran to call Aldo Frances, the smartest person you could think of.
“Or maybe you didn’t call anyone, because you knew that if Blalock and Farnham died, your girlfriend would find herself in a much more powerful position.
“But you didn’t call the police. Some receptionist working late called us. And then it was too late.”
His hand against my chest didn’t waver or lighten its pressure.
“We’re going up there to threaten Farnham, and you are either a part of it, or you aren’t. And if you’re not, you can’t stop it. If you didn’t know you were a part of it, then maybe somebody is using you. Someone you trust.”
He pushed a little harder on my chest. His outspread fingers spanned the entire distance between my shoulders. His eyes were glowing with anger.
Just then the elevator dinged. We had reached the 25th floor. Ralston pulled back and dropped his arm, turning quickly and yanking me from the elevator. He dragged me across the reception area toward Farnham’s office, but he kept glancing over his shoulder toward Archer’s door.
“Hi Janice,” I said brightly, waving as we passed the desk. The receptionist looked at me strangely, but didn’t respond. Ralston put one huge hand on the back of my neck to steer me in the direction he wanted to go, knocking my hat off in the process. I didn’t try and go back for it. The time for disguises was over.
Inside Farnham’s office, things didn’t seem very zen, though the little buddhist shrine was still in the corner. Farnham was standing near his desk, and Valerie Archer was leaning with her back against the plate glass window. They had clearly been having a heated discussion, and had retreated to their respective corners just befo
re we entered.
As I was frog marched to the center of the room, I couldn’t help but glance up at the ceiling. Was the marvelous Ms. Salerno crouched up there, listening to every word? Probably not, as she certainly knows I could explode at any moment. Still, she could have planted a camera or microphone last time she was scurrying about up there. It would be best to be careful what I said.
“Easy, Greg,” Farnham said, when he saw the way Ralston was hauling me around. Ralston let me go. He glanced at Valerie and then back at Farnham. Was it possible that Ferris didn’t know about the two of them? What a moron.
“You can go now, Greg.”
Ralston didn’t move.
“She’s wearing an explosive device,” he told Farnham in a level voice. Across the room, Archer gasped.
“Like Carter?” asked Farnham, but he didn’t move.
“Exactly. And she doesn’t have control over it,” he added. “And, she’s insane.”
I puckered my lips and blew him a kiss, then began to walk toward the filing cabinets.
“Don’t move,” Ralston threatened.
“Or…?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure I can break a few bones without setting the bomb off,” Ralston retorted.
“Greg!” It was Valerie Archer, her delicate sensibilities shocked.
“You can go, Greg,” repeated Farnham. “And take Janice downstairs with you. You’d better clear the 24th floor as well, just to be safe.”
“I think Miss Archer should come as well,” Ralston said.
“There are reasons she needs to stay,” Farnham said, without taking his eyes of Ralston. “It’s going to be fine, Greg.”
I looked at Valerie Archer, who looked like she would just as soon leave with Ralston. For a while, she had been on my suspects list, although when I got a chance to be up close to her at the museum I crossed her off. My intuition said she wasn’t a killer. And, if she were the villain, and was standing there in the room as the payoff went down, she was way out of my league. That would be one stone cold move.
“It’s going to be fine, Greg,” she said, unwittingly parroting what Farnham had just said.
Ralston balled up his fists. If this were a cartoon, there would be steam coming out of his ears. And everything would be funnier.
“Go clear the people out, Greg. Just in case.”
Greg Ralston turned without a word and left the office.
“Bye Greg!” I called to him as the door was closing. I turned to look at Archer. “He’s a real sweetheart.”
“Officer Riley,” said Farnham, cutting me off. “You seem awfully relaxed considering the situation.”
“Well, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
“You’re hilarious,” said Farnham.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, feigning innocence. “Heard that one before?”
“Greg was right about you,” he said. “You’re insane. But Aldo was right about you, too. He said you were tenacious, and inventive.”
“You talked with Aldo Frances?” I asked, dropping my act for a minute.
“Yes,” said Farnham, and sat on the edge of his desk. “As you probably know by now, Carter and I were closer friends than we let on, and we’d both known Aldo a long time. In one way or another, he’s responsible for most of the technology breakthroughs that we have depended on over the last twenty years. He was concerned that an outside company was trying to destroy us both.”
“Pershing.”
“That’s right.”
I glanced at the ceiling. “I’ve met some of their people,” I said with a grimace.
“He also said he was sorry that you got drawn into this, and I must add, so am I.”
“Me too,” said Valerie Archer. I looked again at her. I could see sweat glistening on her forehead and her upper lip, and her chest was rising and falling noticeably with her breath.
“Does she really need to be here?” I asked Farnham. “In case, you know…” I held up my wrist.
“This is about the future of the company,” said Farnham. “A company she might one day run. She needs to know what it takes to be a leader.”
“Wow,” I said, drawing the vowel out for a long three seconds. “I was starting to like you, but turns out you are a real dick.” I turned back to Archer. “You know he had a stock deal with Blalock? If anything happened to Farnham, and vice versa. You’d never have become CEO.”
“We were just having that discussion when you came in,” said Archer, and her voice had a frosty touch to it.
All three of us jumped a foot when the flip phone rang. I fumbled it out of my pocket and dropped it on the rug. Stooping to pick it up.
“Oh oh, it’s Dad,” I quipped. “We must have missed curfew.”
I opened the phone and pushed a button.
“Go for Riley, big daddy. You’re on speaker phone.”
“You should have left by now,” said the droning computer voice. “Is there a problem?”
“No problem, we just got caught up chatting, is all.”
“Yes, I see Miss Archer is there with you, looking lovely as always.” Valerie’s eyes opened in alarm, she turned and looked out the window, and then backed away from the glass as quickly as she could. The voice spoke again.
“Do you have the money?”
I raised my eyebrows at Ferris Farnham, though it made the cut on my head hurt.
“I have it,” said Farnham loudly. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a large black duffel bag. He set it on the desk and unzipped it. I looked in and saw an outrageous number of 500 dollar bills, banded in stacks of ten thousand dollars.
“Wow.” No sarcasm that time. That was an impressive amount of money. “I didn’t know they still made $500 bills.”
“They don’t,” said Farnham. “These were a bitch to find.”
“Is it untraceable?” asked the voice.
“How should I know?” I asked with exasperation. “I’m not a bank teller.”
“It’s fine,” cut in Farnham. “It’s everything you asked for. Now where is the document?”
“You’ll get it, after Riley is safely out of the building.”
Farnham’s face grew red.
“That was not the deal.”
“And yet,” said the voice on the phone, “you are standing next to a bomb. I have changed the arrangement. The five million dollars is now for your life, and the life of Miss Archer.”
I hefted the bag onto my shoulder, it must have weighed about forty pounds, and was almost as large as I was.
“This is going to be inconspicuous,” I said wryly. “What’s going to keep them from just following me down the street?”
“A good question,” the voice responded, and a second later there was a sudden cracking sound from the window. Valerie shrieked as one of the pictures on Farnham’s bookshelf exploded with a shattering of glass. I swiveled back to the floor to ceiling window to see a hole the size of a marble, with a corona of cracks around it.
“As you can see,” said the voice from the phone, “I have covered my bases. Being a criminal mastermind is actually quite fun. Nobody except Riley leaves the office or even moves a muscle until she is out of the building, and has delivered the bag to me.”
Farnham was apoplectic by this point.
“Who the hell are you? Is this how you do business?”
The voice chuckled. “It’s all business, is it Mr. Farnham? And how about you, Miss Riley, the police officer. Have you solved the crime?”
I looked down at the phone in my hand.
“No,” I admitted, “but I’ve got it narrowed down.”
“Oh, please, do go ahead.”
“Valerie Archer, Arthur Vincente or Aldo Frances for greed, as each would move up if their bosses died, but only if they both died because of the stock agreement. Someone from Pershing for the same reasons. Ralston to move forward the career of Valerie Archer”—Farnham raised his eyebrows in surpris
e at this, and Archer looked down at her feet—“or Maria Vincente for revenge, or Belinda Blalock for being cut out. The voice modulator means we don’t even know if you’re a man or a woman. Or it could be some unrelated combination, one party after the document, only after Blalock’s death at the hands of another party.”
“Congratulations, Ms. Riley, you have just accused almost everyone involved.”
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Janice, the receptionist, but other than that, yeah, I suck at this.”
The voice laughed its metallic ha ha ha..
“On the other hand,” I added in my defense. “I’ve been kind of busy trying not to get killed for the last two months.”
“Enough,” said the voice. “Miss Riley, I want you and the bag of money back on the sidewalk and heading east in five minutes.”
“What about us?” demanded Farnham.
“You will sit tight in your office for one hour, and maybe I won’t shoot you, or use this rocket launcher I brought with me to destroy the entire 25th floor.”
Woah. Could be a bluff, but then again, the preparation on the part of this guy, or gal, had been outstanding.
“Okay, Dad, over and out,” I said, and I closed the phone and slipped it in my shoulder bag. I hefted the duffel again and put it over my other shoulder. Damn, it was heavy. I was going to look like a stumbling fool walking down the street this way.
“You can’t leave,” said Valerie Archer, coming forward to put her hand on my shoulder. “He’s going to kill you.”
I lifted my hand up to show the big bracelet attached to my wrist.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much choice.” I leaned close to her and whispered, “I didn’t really suspect you,” and smiled. I moved to the door, turning back to Farnham.
“Ferris,” I said, “you’re my hero.” And I left.
Thirty-one
I stepped out into sunshine; it must have been right around 5pm, the light was slanting down between the buildings. I started north on Orleans St, sweeping my vision left and right, looking for people looking for me. I figured the phone would ring any minute, and I was right. I had to stop and put the duffel bag down to answer the phone.
Chicago Blue: A Red Riley Adventure Page 14