We All Fall Down

by Michael Harvey

  I met Molly at a coffee shop in Printer’s Row called Stir. She was bundled into a short black coat, her hair a riot of red tucked under a knit cap. It was 6:00 a.m. We were their first customers. The coffee was fresh and wonderful.

  “Have you slept at all?” Molly said.

  “I had a busy night. How about you?”

  “I have something.” She took a perfunctory sip from her mug, eyes never leaving my face.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “A DNA profile from the cigarette butt you gave me.”

  I looked out the shop’s front windows. Cold water beaded up and ran in broken rivers down the other side of the glass. Thick wrappings of morning fog floated off the lake and filled the crooked streets. A cop siren whooped once and was squelched. At the end of the block, three unmarked cars had blocked off the intersection. I watched, fascinated, as their blue lights pulsed like muffled heartbeats in the gloom.

  “Did you hear me?” she said.

  “I heard you. That was quick.”

  “I ran it last night. Got a little lucky.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I pulled it from the filter.”

  “Saliva?”

  “Probably.” She reached down for a file in a leather case at her feet. The black grip of a gun was tucked neatly into her jeans at the small of her back. Scientists with guns. The latest thing, apparently.

  “It’s a good profile,” Molly said. “Male. Sixteen distinct loci.”

  “What are the chances of an ID?”

  “Already on it. Homeland now requires that all employees and private contractors working in classified areas submit genetic samples to keep on file. I was able to run our profile through their database.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “You’re probably better off not knowing.” Molly flipped open the file and pulled out a photo. The face looking back at me was maybe mid-forties. Long, thin nose and sharp chin, eyes of mixed color, and black hair, shiny with a shock of white running through it.

  I took a sip of coffee. “Who is he?”

  “He’s the guy from your photo.”

  “You sure?”

  “Take a look.” Molly laid the photo Vinny DeLuca’s men had snapped against the profile picture.

  “Could be him,” I said.

  “Well, he’s a match for the cigarette butt. Name’s Peter Gilmore. Former SEAL. Now in private practice. CIA started using him about ten years ago on some black ops. Strictly a pay-as-you-go thing.”

  I picked through the file. Names, dates, operations.

  “What else?” I said.

  “He has expertise in the deployment of chemical and bioweapons.” Molly paused.

  “Yes?”

  “And he worked with Danielson. A little more than five years ago.”

  I looked out the window again. My reflection looked back, carved out of smoky gray and cold, blowing rain.

  “Michael.” Molly had slid a little closer. “You okay?”

  My gaze moved across the line of her jaw and fine fuzz on her cheek.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “You don’t look so hot.”

  “It’s nothing. Rodriguez got back a ballistics report. The bullet you took came from the same weapon as the slug I found in Lee’s cellar.”

  “What does that tell us?”

  “Maybe he was targeting you. Maybe me.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Molly tapped the photo. “So this is the guy.”

  “Seems like it. Now we just have to find him.”

  She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and pushed it across the counter.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve got a friend inside the Agency. He gave me an address. Says Gilmore uses it sometimes when he’s in the city. At least he’s used it before.”

  “And you think he’s there now?”

  “It’s a long shot.”

  I put the note in my pocket. “I’ll check it out.”

  “I’m trying, Michael.”

  “I know.” I smiled for the first time and took another sip of coffee.

  Molly fidgeted in her seat.

  “Is there something else?” I said.

  “There is, but I need you to be straight with me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ellen was able to slip out of the lab last night. Now she’s off the grid and isn’t picking up her cell.”

  “And you want to know if we met?”

  A nod.

  “We had a drink. Talked for a bit. Then I put her in a cab.”

  “We need her, Michael.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. Ellen’s one of this generation’s brilliant minds.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “I was number three in my class at CalTech, so that’s not a problem. I’m still not Ellen.”

  “She was going to pick up her sister’s ashes. That’s all I know.”

  Molly wasn’t buying it. I could feel her anger wedged into the small space between us and knew things were about to get worse.

  “Now I’ve got a question,” I said.

  “Great.”

  “Could Minor Roar have escaped from your lab?”

  Her eyes lashed onto mine. “What do you know about Minor Roar?”

  “Ellen told me about it.”

  “Goddamnit.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “How about none of your business?”

  “How about answer the question, or I call Rita Alvarez with a story?”

  “Enough.” There was iron in her voice now. Chicago steel. And I knew, for the first time, who had the grit to take CDA where it needed to go.

  “If Minor Roar had escaped from our lab,” Molly said, “it would have presented itself in Chicago. There’s no evidence of that.”

  “Ellen told me it shares an almost identical DNA signature with the released pathogen.”

  “ ‘Almost’ is the key word. There are dozens of organisms that have a similar genetic structure to what we’re seeing on the West Side.”

  “So it’s a coincidence?”

  “Not a coincidence. Just a different branch on the same genetic tree. But definitely not Minor Roar. Or somehow sprung from Minor Roar.”

  “Does Ellen agree with you?” I said.

  “Of course she does. Now, where is she?”

  “I don’t know. Ellen also told me she left you a possible vaccine. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Hold your press conference and be a hero.”

  “You think that’s what this is about?”

  I didn’t respond.

  Molly inched closer. “Is that what you think?”

  “I try not to.”

  “If Ellen contacts you, please let us know.” Molly pushed the folder on Gilmore an inch in my direction. “Meanwhile, there’s Mr. Gilmore.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Find him, Michael. And you’ll find the person behind the pathogen.”

  CHAPTER 55

  I drank my coffee and watched Molly melt into the morning fog. My cell phone chirped. I didn’t recognize the number and didn’t answer.

  I left the shop and walked north on Plymouth Court. The unmarked cruisers were still at the end of the block. Lights still flashing. I walked over to a silver Crown Vic with tinted glass. Vince Rodriguez popped the locks, and I eased into the front seat.

  “You responsible for this?” I said.

  “Shooter sees all the blue, he thinks twice.”

  “Thanks for helping out.”

  “Not a problem. Molly Carrolton just walked by.”

  “I know.”

  “You want someone on her?”

  “Leave her.”

  “All right. You want to tell me who it is that wants to pop your ass?”

  “Might be better if you didn’t know.”


  “Might be better if I did.”

  Rodriguez was right. At least from where he sat. So I told him about the man with the limp.

  “His name was Robert Crane. Homeland Security ID. I suggested he take an early retirement. He was more than happy to disappear.”

  “Probably should have killed him.”

  “That what you would have done?”

  “No. Sounds good, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Someone in Washington is nervous, Vince.”

  “If they only knew how little you know.”

  “Not quite.” I pulled out the report on Gilmore and tossed it across the car. “Molly got a DNA hit on the cigarette I gave her. Former operative for the Agency.”

  Rodriguez’s eyes glowed as he read through the file.

  “She also got an address.” I took out the slip of paper Molly had given me and held it between my fingers. “Says he might be holed up there right now.”

  Rodriguez whistled. “Goddamn.”

  “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Molly’s address turned out to be a small warehouse in an industrial park on the northwest edge of the city. The park itself had been shut down for a couple of years. Yet another TIF project, waiting to go into someone’s patronage pocket.

  Rodriguez had wanted to come with, but we both knew it was better if he didn’t. So I drove to the address alone and sat in an empty parking lot. Storm clouds grumbled overhead, and it smelled like rain. The package Ellen had given me lay on the seat beside me. I pulled it open and reread the note she’d written. Ten minutes later, I locked up the car and walked toward the warehouse.

  The west side was a long face of tired brick. There was a loading dock at the south end, with a double set of rolling doors secured by a heavy chain and padlock. Beside the dock was a single green door. I crept up and turned the knob. Locked. I thought about trying to pick it. Then I just kicked it in.

  The room was large, with high ceilings and wooden stairs that led to an open loft. Dull light filtered in from windows cut just under the pitch of the roof. The rest of the room was painted in varying degrees of shadow ending in black. I ran my hand across a wall of rough stone. The floor was broken cement and dirt. The smell of stale grease and cut metal hung in the air. To my left was a large dark lump. I reached out and felt the curved groove of a lathe. An old machine shop.

  My eyes drifted up and into the loft. A lamp lit a desk. There was a laptop on it, and a spread of papers. To the left of the desk was a fire exit. The door was ajar, rocking lightly on its hinges.

  I took the steps two at a time. My eyes swept over the desk on my way to the door. I pushed it open and stared down a run of black iron stairs that led to a dirt parking lot. The lot was empty. I hadn’t heard a car start. And I should have. Instead, there was gun in my ribs and a voice at my shoulder.

  “Why aren’t you more surprised, Kelly?”

  He stripped off my coat and checked to see if I was wearing a vest. Then he lashed my wrists together and threw me in a chair. I could see out a window to my left. An old tree, polished branches naked against the darkening sky. A hard patter of sudden rain. I looked back at the man I knew as Peter Gilmore. He was long and angular, with hard, crusted features and a salt-and-pepper buzz cut. My gun was in one hand. His own, in the other.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What was that?” I said.

  “Why weren’t you more surprised when I stuck that gun in you?”

  “Next time I’ll make sure to faint.”

  “You come here alone?”

  “Go on outside and check.”

  He seemed to think about that, then shifted my gun to his belt.

  “I got a question,” I said.

  “I bet.”

  “Why?”

  “That all you want to know?”

  I nodded. Gilmore shrugged. It was my dime. And it wouldn’t play for very long.

  “Money,” he said. “If you knew that, maybe you wouldn’t be in the chair.”

  “The body bags?”

  “A little cash on the side.”

  “What about the Fours’ drug stash?”

  “Now that’s gonna be a lot of cash on the side.”

  “It was a mistake, Gilmore.”

  “You’re gonna lecture me about mistakes?”

  “Whoever paid you to release the pathogen isn’t gonna like all the extras. Gonna get around someday to thinking you’re a liability.”

  “Insurance, Kelly. Gotta have it. And I do. But thanks for the concern.” He waited a beat, to see if I’d make things any more fun. Then he tightened the skin around his eyes and pulled back on the trigger.

  The first round hit me in the shoulder. My head snapped to the left and back. I could see the desk behind Gilmore, tilting crazily in liquid swirls of light. I leaned to the right and managed to keep the chair upright. His eyes were back, flat and empty, sitting at the other end of the gun barrel. I zoomed in on the cut iron of the hammer pulling back a second time, then snapping forward. A boom in my ears. Compression in my chest. And a Chicago summer floated in. Grass cut fresh. I was kneeling in the on-deck circle, looking back to talk to my coach. Jimmy McDonald hit a single. I turned at the sound and caught his bat flush in the temple. I fell to the ground and looked up. There was nothing there. Nothing but blue sky, and my brother’s voice.

  Except this wasn’t a bat. It was a bullet. And Philip wasn’t here. Just me. Falling backward. The desk toppling until it was standing on its head. Then a row of rafters, slabs of scarred wood, laid across the ceiling. After that it was over and down, heels first through a hole in the floor. The tunnel, black and smooth. The fall itself, fast. A long way up, I could still see the gun. Eyes like boreholes above it. Hammer falling. Always falling. There were voices in my ear. Images reflected in the stygian gloom. I tried to stop my fall, but couldn’t. Silence pressed against my skin. The physical weight of falling. And the wind. Without a shred of pity. Then the fall stopped. I lay in the darkness. Darkness became light. And then they were one. And that one was nothing.

  CHAPTER 57

  My eyes moved under their lids, then opened. I saw tiny honeycombs of white. Soft cells stretching around my face, enveloping. A voice scratched at my consciousness. I wiggled my hands, pinned to my sides. I was lying on what felt like a wooden floor, wrapped head to toe in plastic bubble wrap. The voice scratched again. It was Ellen, talking through a micro-receiver tucked into my ear.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” I whispered and hoped Gilmore wasn’t standing over me giggling.

  “Good. Just give me a minute.”

  The package Ellen had given me contained a “smart shirt”—one of CDA’s prototypes made with a weave of carbon nanofiber. Testing showed it could take a .40-caliber round at fifteen feet. I moved my shoulder. Deflect, yes. Entirely bulletproof, no. All in all, however, no complaints.

  “Michael, the shirt detected some loss of blood and released a little Adrenalin into your system. Your vitals look fine, but I’m going to give you another spike. Should wake you up. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I was shot twice. Might have gotten clipped in the shoulder. Or at least bruised.”

  “Can you move?”

  I wiggled my fingers again. “Give me a minute.”

  Ellen fell silent. I felt for the small knife I’d stashed in a pocket along my thigh. Gilmore hadn’t bothered to check me for weapons. Why would he check a man he’d shot point-blank in the chest? It was a couple of minutes’ work to get the knife into the palm of my hand. Another minute to cut myself loose. I was in a small room, just off the main space on the second floor. Someone was typing in the next room. Gilmore. Probably figured he’d finish up some paperwork, wait until it got dark, and dump me somewhere. Fuck him. I crept to the door and took a look. He was fifteen feet away, back to me, working at his desk.

  I edged out of the room and across the floor. I had the knife. There was
a gun at Gilmore’s elbow. It was still raining, harder now, and the sound of it against the windows covered my approach. I got to within two feet before I saw his shoulders tense. He grabbed for the gun and turned. But it was too late. I cracked him across the side of the head with the brass butt of the knife. He fell sideways off the chair and hit the floor hard. I was on him quickly. He tried to turn his body, but I was behind and had the leverage. I slipped my good arm around his neck, fitting his Adam’s apple into the crook of my elbow. Then I squeezed.

  He snapped his head back, hoping to break my nose. I kept the pressure on. He struggled to his feet. I stayed with him. We circled backward and to the right, locked together in a staggering sort of dance. His arm swept a stack of papers off his desk. His hand pawed at my face. I bit his finger. He went to a knee. I hung on. It had been fifteen seconds. His brain was begging for blood. Oxygen. He tried once more, rearing up, slamming me into a wall. Then he crumpled to the floor and was done.

  I flex-cuffed one arm and leg to a chair. He sat forward, head lolled against his chest.

  “Ellen?”

  “I’m here.”

  She had listened to the struggle and never said a word.

  “I’ve got him tied up.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Who else knows I’m here?”

  “No one. Just like I promised.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, Michael.”

  “I’m gonna shut down this comm for a bit.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  I looked down at Gilmore. He was starting to come around.

  “He’s got a lot of paperwork here. Hang tight until I check back in.”

  I took out the earpiece and shut down the transmitter. Then I pulled out my knife. Gilmore’s head was just starting to lift off his chest. I spread his free hand out flat and took a final look out the window. The rain was sluicing off the roof and running past the windows in tiny waterfalls. I drove my knife through the meat of his hand until the blade buried itself in the wooden desk.

  The scream made me feel almost sorry for the one who had killed so many. But not quite. He thrashed around for a second, not realizing his predicament and only causing himself more pain. I kept my hand on the hilt and leaned close.