by John Shirley
He looked around, saw no one watching the car, which was parked half a block from the Emergency Room. It seemed there was no APB on it yet; might continue that way all day, with luck, if no one inventoried that car lot.
He used the universal car-door remote he’d rigged up, signaling the car’s locks. It chirped in response, unlocking, and he hurried to it. He got in, triggered start, and drove away, careful not to go too fast or too slow. He didn’t want to attract the cops.
The car had a GPS system, voice activated. “Chicago’s Fastest Responders, nearest office,” he told it.
The GPS responded, informing him that the office was less than a quarter mile away.
He took a right, drove down a boulevard for a couple minutes, and there it was,
CFR: Chicago’s Fast Responders: Ward Office 6.
He parked out behind the sprawling one-story cement block building, and went in. “Not taking any more applications today,” said the ginger-haired, freckle-faced man behind the counter. The man was poking at a smartphone as he spoke.
“Applications?”
The clerk glanced up at him. “You aren’t here for the job?”
“No. Um—a friend of mine was picked up today by CFR. Trouble is—there’s some, uh, miscommunication about what hospital he was taken to.”
The guy sighed and rolled his eyes. “Not my responsibility.”
Wolfe fished a twenty dollar bill from his pants’ pocket, folded the bill and tapped it on the counter. “Just take a minute.”
The twenty vanished. “Whatever. Where was this?”
He told the counter clerk the street corner and gave Pearce’s name—though that might not be the name found on Aiden Pearce, who probably had as many I.D.s as he needed.
The clerk peered into a computer monitor. “Nope. Nobody picked up on the waterfront at all today. Nobody on that corner, nobody on that street. Mostly we’ve had guys picking up gunshot vics over at Washington Park. As usual.”
“Nobody by that name anywhere?”
“Nope.”
Wolfe kept asking questions and kept getting nope, nope, nope and no. CFR denied ever picking up anyone on that corner, at that time or any other time today.
“And we got no employees named Collingswood. Not one.”
“And the ambulance number? One-oh-three?”
“Not in use today. Being serviced.”
“Serviced. Right.”
Wolfe turned and walked silently out.
Aiden Pearce had been shot. Then he had disappeared, as if he had been taken away by a ghostly ambulance, and spirited to a ghostly hospital.
Either that, or those guys had been with the assassin...and Pearce was dead. So maybe he was a real ghost, now, instead of the ghostlike vigilante he’d been. A real ghost——for good.
Wolfe decided he wouldn’t believe that till there was proof.
He walked out to the corner of the building, preparing to go back and borrow the illegally borrowed car one more time before he abandoned it...
And that’s when the dark Crown Victoria pulled up in front of him. Wolfe knew an unmarked cop car when he saw one.
#
Aiden Pearce was quite alive, but was almost wishing he weren’t.
It was the burning pain in his head. It was the throbbing; it was the nausea. That’s what made him wish he were at least unconscious.
The bullet, he was told, had only nicked his skull. But it had given him a concussion, not a terribly severe one that required hospitalization, but no concussion is good. Scalp wounds appear to bleed a lot of blood, more than they really do, so he’d gushed out impressively.
“Doc” Morrsky, a onetime doctor who’d had his license pulled for selling Oxycodone, had done the diagnosis and stitches, telling Pearce, “Yeah, you’re okay, just a scratch and a concussion.”
He hadn’t offered Pearce any Oxycodone. Right now, Pearce wouldn’t mind a few hundred milligrams.
Pearce was lying on a bed in one of his safehouses, on the South Side. His head ached as if it had been shot a moment ago. One of the EMTs had given him a local anesthetic. It wasn’t quite enough.
He could hear Pussler in the next room, yapping to his girlfriend on a cellphone——Pussler the fake EMT who’d kept Wolfe back, at the site of the attempted murder.
“Hey baby, I got some cash, I got a job today, we can score for sure,” Pussler was saying.
Pearce sighed. Was Pussler, a junkie ex-actor, as much as Morrsky was an ex-doctor, the best he could do?
The other two guys had been the real deal, EM techs from CFR in Pearce’s pay—guys Pearce now owed five grand each. Since Pearce had been skimming cash, through hacking, from a couple of gangsters who had no clue who was doing it, he would be able to pay them off. And goofy on dope or not, Pussler had gotten the job done. He was one of Pearce’s go-betweens on the street; he’d been on call, had gotten the pre-loaded emergency text, and he’d responded quickly. Because Pearce had suspected someone was stalking him, shortly after he set out for the meeting. So he’d told Pussler to get with the ambulance escape team, and stay close for a getaway with good cover, if he needed it—he didn’t expect to be shot.
Stupid, he told himself. Shouldn’t have risked it.
If someone had set him up—who was it? Pussler just didn’t seem that complicated—and for some reason Pearce trusted him. There was Clyde Merwiss——a programmer who worked with Pearce sometimes, had for about four months...But he hadn’t known about the meeting.
So——had Mick Wolfe set him up for the gunman?
If Wolfe had set him up, he was a better actor than Pussler. Mick Wolfe had seemed glad to see him. Had even tried to warn him.
Had, in fact, saved his life. Wolfe’s warning had given Pearce a chance to duck from the line of fire, so he’d only caught one round, and only glancingly.
Luckily the gunman had seen all that blood splash from the scalp wound and thought he’d done better than a graze...
Pearce had done a hack into the cameras on the street, before getting out of his own car and walking down there; he’d checked to see who was meeting him; who it was, exactly, who knew that old code phrase.
The street camera had shown him a vaguely familiar face. He’d used the ctOS facial recognition system, and it confirmed: Mick Wolfe. Colin’s boy, whom Pearce had last seen when Mick was in his early teens...
Pearce took out his smartphone, wiped some dried blood off it, and then went to his ctOS penetration mode...
Time to find out what Mick Wolfe had been up to.
#
“What’d you say your name was, officer? Actually——could I just see that badge again?”
A big pink-faced man with a flattop and a square jaw, the detective growled to himself but reached inside his gray suit jacket and pulled out his gold badge again, held it up in his scarred, beefy pink hands. “Tranter. Lieutenant Tranter. That enough stalling?”
Wolfe memorized the badge number.
“Sure, detective.”
Tranter put his badge away. “Now fork over your I.D., wise guy.”
Wolfe only had one set of I.D. so far, besides a driver’s license. But he wasn’t exactly wanted for anything. He pulled out his military I.D., hoping the detective was sentimental about soldiers, and passed it over.
“This Army I.D.’s expired.”
“Yeah. I was discharged.”
Tranter handed it back. “I’m investigating a shooting. An...alleged shooting. You were at the hospital, asking about someone who may or may not be involved in the shooting.”
“And you found me here? Man, ctOS is fast.”
“It is. Facial ID. Camera on the street, in the hospital and out front here. Your I.D. card confirms it. But...weird thing is, when you got close to that corner, ctOS cameras snowed over. Just lost the picture! We didn’t see what happened after that.”
“Not my fault the cameras fritzed.” This was interesting. Cameras had gone down, when he’d gotten closer to Pearce. Tha
t wasn’t Wolfe’s doing. Was it Pearce’s? Had Pearce blocked the local camera feed?
Tranter was looking Wolfe distastefully up and down. Taking in the unshaven jaw, rumpled clothes with disapproval. “Where you going at this instant?”
“Me? Tell you the truth, I was going to commit a misdemeanor. I was going to pee behind the building. Man, I got to go. They wouldn’t let me use their bathroom in there.”
“You weren’t going to that car parked in back?”
“Me? No.”
“So the Acura’s not yours?”
“Naw. I look like a guy could own a nice new car like that? I heard freckles inside talking on the phone about his new Acura. Leasing. You wouldn’t believe what he’s paying.”
Tranter nodded, but it was not necessarily a nod of agreement. It might be a “this dude is full of crap” nod.
“What’s your interest in Pearce?” Tranter asked.
“Me? Oh, he was a friend of my dad’s from when we lived in the Yards. I’m trying to find a job, thought he might get me one. Went to meet him on the street—that’s the spot he asked for. But he never showed. Someone said somebody’d been shot...”
“Who said that?”
“A bum. High smelling guy with a big brown beard.”
Better keep all these lies straight...
“I can check your whereabouts, you know. Where you been around town?”
Wolfe shrugged. “Suit yourself. I really got to pee. You going to give me a ticket if I pee right here?”
“What? You’re not peeing here!”
“Okay. I’ll just grip myself and squeeze it shut.” He grabbed his crotch. He didn’t want Tranter to put him in the back of his unmarked cop car and run that license number.
“And don’t do that either!”
“Can’t hold it much longer, detective.”
Thinking about it, Wolfe was pretty sure that if Tranter had already run the plates on the Acura, he’d find out it wasn’t registered or leased to anybody; he’d figure it was stolen, and Wolfe would already be in handcuffs for just being a suspicious person heading toward a stolen car.
Tranter must not have seen any ctOS footage of him getting into that car, either. They hadn’t followed up on him that far. But they would...so Wolfe needed to get out of here, first chance.
Third time today he had to get out, fast. At the scene of the shooting, at the hospital, now here. He was feeling like a rabbit. He was still too much a soldier to feel okay about that.
But there was no way he was taking on a Chicago police detective, hand to hand——at least, not today.
“So you heard from a ‘bum’ there was a shooting where you were expecting to see Pearce...”
“Yeah! He saw the name of the ambulance company—if there’s one thing these old alcoholics know, it’s ambulance companies. I had an uncle used to drink all weekend, and one time—”
“Okay, Wolfe, shut up and listen. I’m going to be checking you out. I’m gonna need an address, cell phone number, driver’s license number and if you push it I’ll get your fingerprints.” He took out a small notebook and pencil, wrote down some numbers from the military I.D., and handed the card back. “Come on, start with the address.”
Wolfe gave him the right information—he could always change motels.
“Okay,” Tranter said, putting the notebook away. “Here’s the thing—this Pearce is the subject of an ongoing investigation. Very bad-guy stuff. Do not, repeat, do not pursue finding him. Word I got is, the guy is dead anyway. We expect his body to turn up on the shore of the lake any time now. We got patrol boats out watching for it.”
Sounds like bullshit to me, Wolfe thought. Me and this cop are dueling liars.
Tranter went on, “So, waste of time for you to look for the guy. You don’t want to get mixed up in his stuff. Tell you something, you know what the best thing for you to do is, right about now? Go to the bus station, use their restroom, then buy a ticket for a long, long ways away, and use that ticket fast. You know what I mean?”
“Sure do.”
“And no peeing in this parking lot! Now get your ass out of here.”
“You got it, detective. I’m gone. Heading for St. Louis. Or maybe Los Angeles...Never been to Los Angeles. I’ve got a cousin there—”
“Yeah, whatever, just get the fuck out of here.”
Wolfe turned and walked off, hurrying like a guy who needed to urinate.
Hurrying felt right anyway, just now.
#
Pearce used his newest signal-riding program to disguise the source of his smartphone inquiry. It picked up on a wifi PC receiver some distance off, and made it look like that was the source. If he triggered any red flags with his search he didn’t want to be traced to this safehouse. Not when he’d already come within an quarter inch of having a bullet through the brain once today.
There was Wolfe’s data, now. Military record came up first.
Mick Jeremiah Wolfe. Army, Special Forces, Delta Force. Decorated. Six years deployed...Middle East, North Africa. Classified missions. Electronic Technician. I.T. specialist; microwave transmission tracker...Expert on Satellite Surveillance enhancement...
Classified? That was interesting.
Two stints in a field hospital with wounds from small arms fire. Then volunteering each time to return to operations.
Kid seemed to have done his dad proud.
But...suddenly the record got ugly. Arrest for suspicion of embezzlement of federal funds. Started with a not guilty plea in the military court. Insufficient evidence. Prosecuted for assault, perjury. Pled Nolo Contendere for those charges.
What assault? There it was: fistfight with an officer, assault, perjury, resulting in...a year in the United States Disciplinary Barracks up north of Leavenworth. Military prison. And then...
Dishonorable discharge.
Not so proud after all. “Oh kid, what did you do?” Pearce muttered.
Who was this officer he’d gotten into the ruckus with? Verrick, the document said.
A Major Verrick. Definitely not a good idea to punch out a Major when you’re a mere NCO.
Pearce remembered a dirty-faced boy, maybe thirteen, running up and down the sidewalks. Every so often the boy would see Pearce on the corner, ask cheerily, “What’s up, Aiden?” Young Mick Wolfe wanting to seem like an important guy on the street.
Verrick. The name rang a bell. Pearce did a simple search for the name in Chicago, along with Army, and came up with Roger Verrick, the new head of Blume Security for Chicago. He was also a significant shareholder in Blume and a supposed innovator in security technology. A cross check confirmed it—the same guy. There was his picture: curly brown receding hair, lined face, nearly lipless smile, broad shoulders. Former Major in the US Army, Delta Force, his family had long term investments in Blume, he’d joined the corporation after retiring from the military about a year and a half ago.
That was some pretty damn quick advancement at the Blume Corporation, right out of the box. But then Verrick had inside connections through his family. And maybe he’d brought some military tech out with him to sweeten the deal. Had he smuggled out classified tech? It was possible. That possibility was something to remember.
If Verrick was the new head of Blume Security, he would be very aware of Aiden Pearce. Pearce didn’t have a big problem with the Blume Corporation——in fact, he relied on the company—but there had been Blume factions who had gotten on Pearce’s bad side; factions who had connections with the Club. Namely the Chicago South Club which was otherwise known as the Irish mob—formerly run by the late, not-so-lucky Lucky Quinn. Quinn’s son was rumored to be planning to take the Club over now...
Had this been a Club attack on him, today? Was Verrick connected with the Club? Could be that Verrick arranged the attempted hit through Mick Wolfe. Maybe Verrick had found out Wolfe had known Pearce and after making a deal with Wolfe, he’d gotten a thug from the Club to take a shot at him.
But if Wolfe had bee
n setting up the hit, why warn the target that someone was about to shoot him down?
Maybe he’d had a change of heart at the last moment.
Pearce’s gut told him that Mick Wolfe hadn’t been involved in the attempted hit, though. There had been astonishment in that voice when Wolfe had warned him. Wolfe had seemed genuinely surprised by the assassination attempt...
But how had they known where he was going to be, if not through Wolfe? Could be that someone watching for “the vigilante” had spotted him driving through the area, and made a call. The tail had responded to the call, and started following him. That faint tingling in the back of his neck had warned Pearce; the van seen once too many times in the rearview mirror...
Before he’d parked and walked over to where he was to meet Wolfe, Pearce looked around for that van, and hadn’t seen it. He’d decided it was safe, but just to be sure he put his phone on camera scramble, once he got onto the block where the meeting was to be. He didn’t want ctOS to know exactly where he was.
He had known he was taking a chance—an unusual chance, going out there. But though the message’s sender hadn’t identified himself, Pearce had suspected that the code phrase had come from Mick Wolfe. He’d heard the kid was back in town—not such a kid, an ex-soldier in his mid-twenties now. And Wolfe was probably almost the last person alive who knew that code phrase.
Pearce felt he owed something to Mick Wolfe. Because the bomb blast that had taken Mick Wolfe’s father out of the picture was just another crime that had been, indirectly, Aiden Pearce’s fault. Back in the day, when Pearce was a teen in the South Yards gang, Colin Wolfe had warned Pearce that he was going to the police to give evidence. Colin had been his friend—and he’d given Pearce a chance to cover his tracks, move to another territory.
But a fellow gang thumper had warned the bosses that Colin was going to rat on one of their operations. Same guy who got the job of taking care of the “rat”.
And—boom. The whole top of Colin Wolfe’s house had been blown away, dissolving into a ball of fire and raining debris.