“Awake yet?”
I cracked a couple of teeth with a straight right. He spit out a knot of blood. His arm was spasming despite himself.
“Fuck you.”
I twisted the blade. He grunted. Then smiled.
“Need to do better, Kelly.”
“Don’t worry, I will.”
I pulled the knife out. He couldn’t help but look down at his ruined hand.
“Up here.”
He glanced up. I slashed his left check to the bone. His left eye trembled in its socket.
I slashed the other cheek, taking a flap of skin from the jawline as well. Gilmore was shivering. Still smiling, but now a little shocky.
“Kill me.”
“In due time.”
“I did them all.”
“I know.” I moved forward with the knife. And pretty soon I knew the rest.
CHAPTER 58
“Fruits and vegetables. That’s what it says, Kelly. Fruits and vegetables. Like it’s one category.”
I was sitting at the bottom of the fire escape, watching Johnny Apple peel his namesake with a knife and expand on the reason why.
“Doctor tells me more vegetables. I say, ‘What does that mean?’ He shows me the pyramid. With the categories.”
“Fruits and vegetables?”
“That’s right. I figure one covers for the other. Now, I love apples.” Johnny took a bite and held up the aforementioned fruit. “Good for six or seven a day. Cunt of a wife tells me I’m a dumb fuck. Like I need her to tell me that? Says they need to be green and leafy. Green and leafy? What the fuck is that?”
“Vegetables?”
“Exactly what she told me.”
“It’s not fruits or vegetables, Johnny. So maybe you can’t substitute one for the other.”
“You don’t like the categories?”
I shrugged. Johnny finished his apple. I finished my smoke. Then Vinny DeLuca’s hitter took a look up the stairs.
“He up there?”
“Yeah.”
“Wrapped.”
“Bubble wrap.”
Johnny chuckled. “Bubble wrap. Federal Fucking Expresso. Bet it does a nice job.”
“Where are you going to take him?”
“Better if you don’t know. Don’t worry. He won’t never be heard from.”
I stood up. Johnny put out a hand. It was full of knuckles and rings. “You don’t have to go up.”
“I got a few things I need to grab.”
Johnny shrugged. “You all right?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t look it.”
“Let’s get him out. I’ll feel a lot better.”
We went upstairs. Johnny Apple commented on the fine packing job. Then he threw the bundle over his shoulder, took it downstairs, and dumped it in his trunk. He slammed the lid and offered his hand on a job well done.
“Got something else for you, Johnny.”
The hitter’s face went blank. His hand dropped to his side. In Johnny’s line of work, no one likes surprises.
“It’s in the basement,” I said, and pointed the way. Johnny took out his gun and insisted I go first. The door to the cellar was unlocked. I pushed it open. The black duffel bag with gold trim was right where I’d left it. Johnny Apple tucked his gun into his belt and zipped the bag open.
“It’s the dope Gilmore lifted from the Korean. I counted twenty-six kilos. The Fours already took delivery on number twenty-seven. Pretty much makes your boss whole.”
Johnny zipped up the bag and carried it out to the car, where he locked it in the trunk beside Gilmore. Then he climbed behind the wheel.
“You hear me, Johnny?”
“I heard you. Not sure if my boss is gonna hear you. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I do. And I think I can live with it.”
“We’ll see. Be good, Kelly.”
“Bye, Johnny.”
Johnny Apple drove off the lot and disappeared around a corner. The rain had stopped, and the sky had cleared. I sat on the black iron stairs and had another smoke. Watched the muddy parking lot dry in the early afternoon sun. After a while I went up the stairs and walked through Gilmore’s computer a second time. Then a third. When I had what I needed, I slipped out the back door, found my own car, and left.
LOOSE ENDS
CHAPTER 59
The crisis ended with a press conference. After seventy-two hours with no new infections, the feds linked arms with the mayor and took a collective bow. There was a lot of vague talk about vaccines. Sixty Minutes ran a piece on CDA Labs and the emerging bioterror-industrial complex. The reality, however, was that the pathogen had just expired. Apparently of natural causes. No one seemed to understand why. And, for the moment anyway, no one really cared. Immediately after the press conference, work crews began to dismantle the quarantine fences. And the backlash began.
BioKatrina, the press called it. From the White House to City Hall. A core meltdown at all levels of government. The New York Times ran a piece offering a glimpse inside Chicago’s quarantine zones. Three hundred forty-three dead from the pathogen. Another two hundred from the dogs the pathogen let loose. There were just a few pictures that got through the government net, but the Times had them. A block of buildings reduced to chunks of rock and raw timber. Three bangers on “patrol,” smiling and pointing guns at the camera. A single body, curled in an alley, while residents, faces and mouths covered, picked through the deceased’s effects. This was America, the editorial intoned. This was ourselves.
The piece got a lot of attention for a day or two. Then was forgotten. And why not? There was money to be spent. Money to be made. Talk show hours to fill. Fresh blood in the water.
The finest minds would be enlisted. Billions pledged to the effort. It was the challenge for a generation. Render America a fortress. Impervious to a second biological attack.
I watched it all on TV, sitting among crates of booze in a single room above my local, an Irish bar called the Hidden Shamrock. I kept an eye on who got nervous. Who got their names in headlines. And who didn’t show up at all.
On the day I killed Gilmore, Molly had hit my cell five times. After that, it was mostly no one. Except the mayor’s office. And Rachel. I didn’t answer any of them. Save one.
On the second day, I got my shoulder patched. Then I drove north on Lake Shore Drive until it ended. I snaked along Sheridan, through Rogers Park and into Evanston. The folks at Northwestern were more than helpful. I knew what I wanted and found it exactly where I thought it might be. The registrar’s office was even kind enough to make copies for me.
On the morning of day three, the politicians held their press conference. I arrived at Grant Park just after five that afternoon. They were expecting a couple hundred thousand people and got almost a million, spread out on the same patch of ground where Obama had held his rally on the night he was elected. As darkness settled over the city, the crowd grew quiet. Huge flat screens flickered to life and filled with the names of those who had died. A female voice read them aloud, one by one, over the loudspeakers. After the first few, the crowd caught on and began to repeat each name. They swayed back and forth as they chanted, the litany of the dead moving like a prayer through the park. People lit candles. Strangers clung to one another. They wiped away their tears, then cried some more and even laughed. Meanwhile, the world watched.
I hung on the edges of the crowd long enough to hear Theresa Jackson’s name. Then I turned to leave. A young woman was nearby, a news credential around her neck, shooting video with a small camera. I tapped her on the shoulder.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Missy Davis.” She stuck out her hand. I put Marcus Robinson’s notebook in it.
“You got someone in your newsroom who works gangs? Someone older than forty?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“Give them the notebook. Tell them it came from inside K Town. Tell them to get inside the burned-out buildings. Check
out the doors and windows.”
“Doors and windows?”
“And check out the name on the cover.”
I left before she could ask any more questions or get her camera up and running. Maybe something would come of it. Maybe not. All I knew was I’d gotten rid of another piece of the case. And that felt like a good thing.
On day four, I drank lukewarm Budweiser and scrolled through Peter Gilmore’s laptop. Followed by Rita Alvarez’s work file. Around three o’clock I walked downstairs to the bar. A man was there, drinking a glass of beer. He had a stack of videotapes with him. We talked for a bit. Then I took the tapes upstairs and began to watch. I went to bed at eleven and slept until four-thirty the next morning. I woke up in the cool darkness and smoked a single cigarette. The street below me was asleep. I made my first call.
Our mayor wasn’t happy. I told him it might be important. And it needed to be just him and me. He said he had a full day. Speeches to give. People to see. A city to rebuild. He agreed to meet me at the Palace for coffee.
I got off the phone and stared idly at a half-dozen bottles of well vodka. Then I gathered up the belongings of the man I’d killed and set out for the West Side.
CHAPTER 60
If you ever wondered what it was like to walk onto the canvas of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, I’d suggest the Palace Grill on the corner of Madison and Loomis at a little after 5:00 a.m. Two cops, one fat, the other fatter, sat at one end of the long counter. Each had a newspaper, a plate of eggs, and coffee. At the other end was an old man, wrapped in an overcoat and peering into a bowl of oatmeal. Behind the counter was a skin-and-bones cook, standing guard over an empty grill, waiting for the breakfast crowd and a little conversation. I took a seat at a table in an area that looked like it was closed off. The counterman didn’t look my way, so I wandered up and ordered a coffee. He had just filled my cup when his ears stood up like a pointer’s in full flush. I didn’t need to turn to know who had just walked in.
The mayor went right for the table I had already staked out. The two cops took one look, got up, and left. The counterman pushed my coffee almost into my lap and ran to serve the mayor all the flapjacks he could eat. I gave the two of them a minute and then joined Wilson.
“You like this place?” I said.
“I come here now and then. Usually right after it opens. Thanks, Lenny.”
The counterman slipped the mayor’s joe onto the table and disappeared in a haze of grease. The mayor dumped sugar into his coffee and stirred as he talked.
“They were lucky. Just on the edge of a quarantine zone. Saw a good surge in business from all the cops working the perimeter.”
“Someone’s gotta make a buck.”
Wilson raised his eyebrows but let the comment pass. “Where you been hiding?”
“Never mind,” I said. “How’s everything holding together?”
Wilson shrugged. “You think I know? One minute we got dead people everywhere. Then it just stops. No more dead. No more sick. Now the feds tell me they‘re pulling down the fences.”
“You wonder how all that happened?”
“You think I got to be mayor by asking dumb questions?”
“You just take the bows.” I nudged the morning Sun-Times across the table. Wilson’s picture was on the front page.
“And I take the lumps, asshole. It’s the job. Now tell me what is it that can’t wait until the sun comes up?”
“You know this guy?”
Wilson looked at a photo of Peter Gilmore but didn’t touch it. “No. Should I?”
“He’s responsible for the release.”
Wilson took a second look at the photo, then back up to me. “Who is he? And why are we talking about this in the Palace?”
“I promised I’d give you a heads-up.”
“Only if my office was involved.”
I spread my hands, palms up, and sat back. Wilson swung a look around the diner.
I stood up. “Maybe you want a pat down?”
Wilson gestured me back into the booth. His face looked like a wall of old plaster, cracked from too much heat and trailing long threads of asbestos everywhere.
“When are you going to the feds?” he said.
“I’m not.”
A pause. “What’s my involvement?”
It wasn’t the sort of thing any politician wanted to ask. Certainly not if your name is followed by the title “Mayor of Chicago.” And definitely not if it involved the deaths of a few hundred Chicagoans.
“I can’t lay it all out,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not resolved yet.”
“And you’re going to resolve it yourself?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Wilson tapped a finger beside Gilmore’s picture. “Who is he?”
“Peter Gilmore. Former CIA.” A lift of mayoral chin at that. “Specially trained in the handling and release of chemical and biological weapons.”
“Who hired him?” Wilson said.
I shook my head.
“Why?”
Another shake of the head.
“I thought you told me this concerns my office.”
“It does. Just not directly.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I think, Your Honor, that might very well be up to you.”
Lenny was orbiting at the edge of the universe with a plate of toast. Wilson waved him in. Lenny dropped off his order, freshened everyone’s coffee, and scampered away. Wilson pushed the toast aside, tapped his fingertips together, and waited.
“Mark Rissman,” I said.
“He’s picking me up here in a half hour.”
“Rita Alvarez has been investigating him for a year.”
“I hope you’re not telling me the pathogen release was put together by that puke?”
“No.”
“No shit. So why are we talking about him?”
“Rissman’s the guy from your office who was working with the Korean. Steering medical supply contracts and getting kickbacks.”
The mayor furrowed his considerable brow until he looked a little bit like Leonid Brezhnev. “You telling me Rissman was the guy who ordered the bags?”
I laid a finger on the photo. “Peter Gilmore was on the other end of the hospital scam. He worked the body bag order with Lee as a side deal. One that would have made both of them some quick cash.” I pushed some paperwork across the table. “These are documents from Gilmore’s computer. Alvarez’s legwork pretty much confirms Rissman wasn’t involved. At least initially.”
“So Rissman didn’t know about the body bags?”
“Not until we found them in Lee’s cellar. Then Rissman must have put it together.”
“And knew Gilmore was implicated in the pathogen release,” Wilson said.
“That’s when Rissman decided to drop the anonymous note to Danielson, fingering you.”
Wilson squeezed his eyes together while his nose sucked up most of the air in the room. “He set me up to take the fall.”
I was going to ask how it felt but let the moment pass.
“There was a file on Gilmore’s computer titled ‘City Hall,’ ” I said and slipped a flash drive onto the table. It disappeared into the mayor’s hairy fist. “There are also some photos.”
I took out a folder. Inside were photos from the mayor’s suite in the Colonial. Himself, clad head to toe in his NBC suit. Another with the protective mask off, drinking a Diet Coke, smiling. A third as Renee put on makeup. In the background were the camera and the fireplace setup from which he addressed the city during the crisis.
“After the tip to Danielson didn’t work, Rissman went to Gilmore himself and cut a deal. He’d keep quiet about the bags if Gilmore would help to take you down after the crisis was over. That’s what the photos were for.”
Wilson flipped through the pictures. “He thinks these would have taken me out?”
“That’s not all. In return for hi
s silence, Rissman wanted Gilmore to create a paper trail that would link you to the body bags. Gilmore had all the paperwork. The Korean was dead. It would have been easy enough to drop it all in Doll’s lap.”
“And the weasel grabs my chair. Where’s the documentation on the bags?”
“It’s on the flash drive. Hard copies are in the folder.”
Wilson held up one of the photos. “Are there any more of these?”
“That’s all I have. One more thing. Gilmore was going to kill Rissman. Then blackmail you with the photos himself. At least that seemed to be on his to-do list.”
“But Gilmore’s gone?”
“Yes, Gilmore’s gone.”
A pause. “And you don’t think Rissman knows who Gilmore worked for on the pathogen release?”
“I know he doesn’t. But I do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m gonna take care of it.”
Wilson spread his thick fingers. “And all of this?”
“I can keep Rissman out of it. Or I can turn him over to the feds.”
“If you did that, then I’d go down.”
“There’s no evidence you knew what Rissman was up to.”
“I didn’t. But politically—”
“You’d be fucked, Mr. Mayor.”
Wilson took a sip of his coffee. “What do you want?”
“Cover in case what I do today goes south.”
“What kind of cover?”
“I want my friends protected. Rodriguez, Rita Alvarez. And Rachel Swenson. Especially Rachel.”
“From who?”
“If I fail, you’ll know.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
I shrugged. “We see what happens.”
Wilson dropped the flash drive into his pocket. “You got a deal.”
I got up to go. The mayor stopped me with a hand.
“Want to tell me what you have planned for today?”
“Want to tell me what you have planned for Rissman?”
“Fair enough.”
I left the diner, sticking the mayor of Chicago with the bill. And that was a first.
CHAPTER 61
The West Side was still closed to local traffic, so I went as far as I could on the Ike. A handful of people were parked on the side of the road. They had coffee and cameras with long lenses. I had a flat bottle of Knob Creek in a paper bag. I pulled it out of the glove compartment and twisted off the cap. My eye followed the angle of the sun as it sliced up the highway. I thought about Wilson and felt the quicksand under my feet. Then I looked down at the bottle. Neat, square, and more than willing to help me dig the hole a little deeper. I shoved it back into the bag. Then I turned off the car and got out.
We All Fall Down Page 21