“Are you saying I’m dishonest?”
“Aldo, you just admitted your guilt to me. You never would have done that if you had any intention of letting me live once you had the money.”
Ruby had come close to me and leaned her head in so that she could listen in on the conversation. She grimaced when I said this. I don’t think she had realized until just now that Plan B was going to be our only way out. We couldn’t just give him the money.
“But Ms. Riley, we will keep each other’s secret. I will deactivate the bracelet, and give you $500,000 to keep your mouth shut about everything that’s happened.”
“I’m still the main suspect. I’d go to prison for life.”
“I’m sure $500,000 would buy you a trip to a nice quiet island somewhere.”
“I’d need like two million for that.”
Aldo sighed. “I was hoping to avoid destroying you and the money, because this has been so much work, but if that’s what I have to do…”
I tapped the hood of the car with my fingernails to get Marty’s attention. He looked up, breathing heavily. I held up one finger and mouthed “one minute” to him. He shook his head no in wild panic, and went back to typing.
“But you just said you needed the money for debts!”
“I do, but it doesn’t have to be that money. I can just do the whole thing again with another bracelet. Another Blalock. Another you. I’m sure Farnham can afford another five million dollars.”
At this, Ruby took two steps back, finding a comfortable stance while she hefted the sword to get a feel for it. I knelt next to the front wheel of the car, holding my arm in place with my hand on the hood, so she would have a clean shot at my wrist. I have never seen her look more determined.
“But Aldo—“
“I’m sorry, Miss Riley, you’ve got nothing left to offer. You yourself admitted that I was never going to let you live. It’s time to move on.”
“But Aldo—“
The line went dead, and the light on the bracelet turned red.
Thirty-five
“Ruby, give me the sword!”
“No!”
“Marty, run!”
“No, I’ve got it!”
“Time’s up.” The red light started blinking quickly.
Ruby lifted the sword over her head.
“Brace yourself,” she said. And counted aloud: “Three…Two…One!”
She swung downward.
There was a beep as the light turned green and the bracelet sprung open. I pulled away but it was too late.
The pain was excruciating.
The was an explosion of blood.
I passed out.
Thirty-six.
“And now an update on last week’s story, what was originally thought to be a gas explosion on the near west side. Authorities have confirmed an anonymous tip, acquired exclusively by this station, that the explosion was caused by a bomb, located in the apartment of Officer Kay Riley, the notorious fugitive wanted for the bombing of the Illcom and Farnham buildings in April.
“Our source tells us that police are confirming the death of Riley, based on investigation of the scene, which contained not only remains positively confirmed to be the suspect, but also large amounts of U.S. Currency, burnt and destroyed in the blast.
“We may never know all the details of the ‘Red Riley Bombings’, as they are being called, as Chicago Police are now describing the case officially closed.”
Actually, I’m not dead. Marty disarmed the bracelet just as Ruby brought the sword down. I yanked my hand back, but she still managed to cut off my pinky and ring finger.
It’s laughable that I thought I would do that by myself, then wrap the plastic bag around the stump, then walk myself into the animal hospital. The pain was a white scalpel straight into my brain, and I was out like a light. Fainted dead away. I can’t even imagine what it would have felt like to lose the whole hand.
Marty threw up while Ruby wrapped the plastic bag over my hand. When Marty recovered hmself, at Ruby’s urging, he picked me up and carried me into the animal hospital. Ruby followed, brandishing her gun. They were not happy to see us, but after a minute they set to work with the seriousness of trained professionals. Besides the nonstop yammering of dogs, and the vaguely animal smell, the place seemed clean and efficient. One of the assistants made a quiet move toward the phone, but Ruby stopped her with a raised eyebrow and a wave of the gun.
By this time, I was awake, and another argument with Ruby ensued when I refused to let them reattach the fingers. She blamed the pain killers, but I had a plan already in mind. Plan C. I gave them a false name as I set to work, and sent Marty to go get the bag of cash and my shoulder bag. The vet on duty sewed up my hand nicely. The cut was right at the knuckle, and she had to take a skin graft from the fleshy part of my thumb to do it right. I was impressed. If I ever got a dog, I’d definitely take them here, though the staff would probably run when they saw me coming.
When it was all done, we used the duct tape to tie up the staff and make our escape. I felt pretty bad about that, after the great job they had done stitching me up, but we promised them we would call the police once we were a distance away. We also left them 10,000 in cash. The incident never made the papers, so either they didn’t recognize me from the news or they thought it better to stay silent.
The next part of the plan was carried out by Ruby and Marty, while I slept the sleep of the drugged in my little college dorm. (We put the sword back right where we found it.)
Marty reactivated the bracelet. He took one million dollars, the bracelet, my fingers in a baggie, and a few other items to my apartment. I was uneasy about Marty doing fieldwork, but it turned out to be fine. The police were no longer surveilling the place, and there was no sign of Watkins or Salerno, which was good because it took him three trips to move everything he needed from the car to my apartment.
I wish I had been there to help. This, more than anything else that happened since that first night in the Farnham Building, marked a point of no return. From tonight forward, Kay Riley would only exist in police files and in the memory of a few people.
Marty tied the bracelet to four cans of gasoline, and put it in my living room on top of the pile of money. He left the fingers in the next room. It was going to be a big explosion, and they needed to be far enough away to escape damage.
Then he pulled the fire alarm to make sure everyone was out of the building, returned to his car a block away, and set off the bracelet bomb.
That’s right, I pulled a Peter Pettigrew. The police found the fingers, which matched the prints in my employee file, and they found the shredded remains of a large amount of money. The money was for Aldo’s benefit. For me to be safe, he had to assume I was in my apartment, with the money, when our phone conversation ended.
Next up was Ruby’s part in the plan, this involved going to the police. I had recorded my conversation with Aldo using Ruby’s phone. How could a telecom engineer not realize that he might be recorded during a call? And I thought I was an amateur!
Aldo was arrested. He claimed the recording was a fake, but eventually the police found Alan Watkins, whose boss at the security company had been unaware of the nature of the work he was doing for Frances. He was outraged, and was able to corroborate several of the facts that Ruby had presented.
Oh, how I wish I could have been there to see Frances escorted out of the building, by my own captain, no less. Instead, I watched it on the news, through a haze of opiates, which made me giggle uncontrollably as I watched them put him in the back of a cruiser. It would have been great to be waiting in his house one night, in the dark, for him to come home. I would have liked that, but Plan C, keeping the money, depended on Aldo thinking I was dead. Or, I had to kill him, and despite Ruby’s worries, I had no intention of becoming a hardened criminal. Criminal yes, hardened no.
Reluctantly, Ruby had also gone to Shelby Furniture to let them know that I was still alive. She thought it b
etter if they, too, thought I was dead, but in the end, she did it for me anyway. Uncle Elgort deserved to know that his help had not been in vain, and Nick needed to know I was alive.
The police exonerated me posthumously, but kept it quiet, along with Aldo’s arrest, at the urging of Ferris Farnham, who simply wanted the entire thing swept under the rug so that his stock price could get back to where it once belonged. My innocence also meant that Ruby and Martin would not be in any trouble for what they had done to aid me.
Nobody could locate Selena Salerno, but that didn’t surprise me at all. I was worried about her, which manifested itself in a series of uncomfortable and unsettling dreams. If anyone could see through this whole scheme, it would be her. But would she? And if she did, why should she care? She was a mercenary, and there didn’t seem much use in her coming forward and exposing herself to police scrutiny.
So that’s it. I chose to stay dead so that I could keep two million dollars. It seemed a fair trade for my old life and two of my fingers.
Two million? Well, I had promised a million to Marty, and I made good on that promise. And I had given Ruby a million as well, so that she could retire in luxury. The last million, sadly, we blew up at my apartment, to make sure the whole thing was really convincing.
I’m still recovering from everything that’s happened, both emotionally and physically. What do you do with your life when you are a millionaire ghost? I had a few ideas, and they didn’t include fancy new cars or jewelry. Cops are supposed to hate vigilantes, but honestly I think many of them would love to see someone step in and do the things they aren’t allowed to do. Sidestep the rules for the sake of justice. Chicago has a lot of problems, and many well-meaning people are doing their best to make things better. I’m no Batman, but surely there are some shadowy parts of the city that I can help shine some light on in my own meager way. And I had Ruby to function as my conscience, in case I ever took things too far.
First, however, I needed to learn how to use what remained of my left hand. Then I would talk to Uncle Elgort about learning some of the more nuanced aspects of being a criminal.
In the meantime, I worked out, practiced taekwondo, and caught up on a bunch of reading (with my shiny new Georgette Wrigley library card).
Plus, I was no longer wanted for murder, and I had solved the case, so it looked like Nick and I would finally be going on that date. My career as a cop was over, not to mention my career as a professional piano player, but the future was wide open, and in so many ways, I’d hit the jackpot.
Chicago Blue: A Red Riley Adventure Page 16