33
I STOOD WITH MY EAR to the locked door and listened. Helpless, hoping they’d move along. But they didn’t. Their voices dropped and I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I pictured them walking up and running their hands over the Lexus.
Finally, one spoke up in a louder voice. “Gots to go, man. Shirley be—”
“Fuck Shirley, man. This here moth’fucker be worth some’n’. Wait here. I go git Zorro. Zorro got a lift man do it without a scratch.”
“Nah, man. I gots—”
“Five, ten minutes, man. An’ y’all fat ass best be here or Zorro see to it y’all won’t be worryin’ ’bout no Shirley or nobody else.” His steps disappeared back toward the Tahiti.
“Fuck you, fag,” the other man said, “and Zorro, too.” But he said it softly, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
* * *
IT DIDN’T SEEM LIKE five minutes later that I was outside the building.
We’d talked about breaking into the office to get to the phone. But I didn’t want the police involved. Besides, they might not get there in time to scare off Zorro & Co., and Barney’s wife would be highly pissed if her LS400 was gone.
Every window I could find was either glass brick, or reinforced glass in panes too small to get through, with heavy-duty iron frames. Except those high windows in the gym, where there were large panels of frosted, pebbled glass. So Suzanne and I had opened up the bleachers on the west side of the gym and I stood on the top row to reach the bottom part of a window on the north end of the building, around the corner from the Lexus.
I pretty much destroyed a heavy brass fire extinguisher breaking through the thick glass. It was reinforced, too, like the other windows, with what looked like chicken wire embedded in it. There wasn’t that shattered glass sound when it broke, so probably no one would hear it way around the corner. The outside window ledge was twelve or fifteen feet above the ground. I had to hang by my hands and drop the rest of the way, landing on dirt, fortunately, not sidewalk.
It must actually have taken me more than five minutes to get out, though, because by the time I rounded the corner there was already a man in the driver’s seat of the Lexus, and one in the backseat. A third man was opening the front passenger door.
I was mad as hell, and yelled something—God knows what—and a head turned and stared out the back window at me. The man by the passenger door turned, too. The building’s outside lights were on now and I could see him clearly. Tall and thin and dressed in black … and damn if he wasn’t wearing a Zorro hat. He had a thin mustache and light brown skin full of pockmarks and scars. He was smiling, with possibly the most disturbed-looking smile I’d ever seen.
The Lexus’ engine kicked in just then—so much for high-end security systems—and I thought Zorro would get in the car and they’d all drive away. But instead, he said something I couldn’t hear, smiling and keeping his eyes on me all the time, and the man in the backseat got out. He was short and fat and dark-skinned, with long braided hair and one of those gang jackets.
“Get away from the car,” I said. “You’ll be much happier if you do, believe me.”
“‘You’ll be much happier if you do, believe me.’” Zorro parroted my words, in a mocking, imitation white man’s voice.
“Exactly,” I said.
“Uh-uh, man. We takin’ this car.” In his own voice now, mean and cocky and filled with contempt. “Y’all go on an’ run back home now, where you belong, or we take care o’ your white ass first.”
I could have turned away and let them take the damn car, but I felt insulted and frustrated and in no mood to back off. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have made any difference to them if I had—but I’d have been better off.
“Better call out your driver,” I said. “The two of you aren’t enough.”
Zorro’s hand dipped into his pocket and came out again, and a blade flashed in the light. “Oh, we got plenty.”
Even as he spoke, my own hand went under my jacket toward the Beretta, but his grin widened and something about the way his eyes wandered off my face reminded me … counting Zorro and his “lift man,” there should have been four of them. And I suddenly knew where the fourth man must be.
I stepped to my right, ducked and pivoted, and the narrow side of a two-by-four, that might otherwise have crushed my skull, glanced off my left shoulder. His momentum carried the attacker forward and he was in front of me. As he struggled to regain his balance, I shoved him hard in the back and he stumbled toward Zorro and the fat man.
Zorro slid out of the way. His smile never wavered as he came at me with smooth, supple movements—like a deranged cat—slicing the knife back and forth, carving Z’s out of the narrowing space between us. He moved more quickly than he seemed to, and I jumped backwards—and crashed hard into the building behind me. He reached in and slashed at my face and I raised my left forearm and felt the slice of the blade across my wrist.
He paused. “Do it hurt, man?” he asked, and then smoothly closed in on me again.
I pulled the Beretta and shot him in the chest.
The rest happened in seconds. Zorro down on both knees, crying and moaning and coughing up blood. Not smiling now. “Fucking hospital,” he kept saying. The driver had never left the Lexus, and the other two dragged the wounded man between them and loaded him into the front seat and slammed the door.
“Wait!” I yelled. “Call 911. The paramedics. They’ll know what to do.” I was certain I wanted Zorro to live more than they did—maybe even more than he did himself. “Wait for the goddamn ambulance!”
But they didn’t wait. The two of them scrambled into the backseat and the Lexus roared away. I ran out into the middle of the street, chased it a few steps, but then stopped and stood there and watched, hoping they knew where they were going, hoping they’d get there in time. They drove very fast and I could see they had a green light and clear sailing at the corner.
Just as it passed through the intersection, though, a blinding white light filled the interior of the LS400, like a strobe, silhouetting two dark heads through the rear window. The white light faded at once into orange, as the back of the car seemed to leap up off its tires. Then, with its rear end humped up in the air, the car exploded a second time, bursting now into red and yellow, blue and orange and white all at once. In the shimmering light I saw a thousand fragments of debris—human and automotive alike—falling through the air, already on their way down.
How long does it take for a car to blow up? One second? Two? But these were seconds that took forever, until what was left in the intersection was a flaming mass that wasn’t a car at all anymore. It was twisted metal and molten fiberglass; plastic and fabric and rubber, burning, billowing up into thick black smoke.
And the flesh and hair and bone burning with it? Not the flesh and hair and bone intended; but human, nonetheless.
CHAPTER
34
I STOOD A MOMENT AND WATCHED, but sirens were already drawing near and I went back around the corner to the community center’s rear doors. The city was repairing curbs on that street and they’d started putting in forms for the new concrete, so there was lumber lying all around—including lots of two-by-fours. It must have been one of those that almost split my skull.
I pounded on the locked rear doors with a two-by-four until finally Suzanne answered. “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Get Jimmy close up to the doors.”
“I’m right here,” he said.
“You heard the explosion?” I asked.
“Yes. It sounded like—”
“It was the car I came in, a Lexus. I parked it behind your van. Whoever set the bomb figured I’d eventually get out of the building, but locking me in would give them time to place the device and get away. It had some sort of delayed switch. The car’d been running several minutes before it blew. The guys who took it … they were in it.”
“My God!” Suzanne said.
“Before the explosion,” Jim
my said, “I heard a gunshot, too.”
“It’s that kind of neighborhood,” I explained. “Gangs, taverns, fights. Lots of gunshots, all the time.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I guess so.”
“I’m leaving. You don’t want everyone to know I was here, do you? That you’d agreed to talk to me?”
“No,” he said, “but it was your car that was blown up, so there’s no avoiding—”
“Not my car. I borrowed it. Maybe the real owner will report it stolen—which it was. The only people who know I was here are whoever locked me in and placed that bomb. They won’t bring it up.”
“I don’t want you to lie to protect me,” Jimmy said. “There’ve been too many lies already.”
“You’ll have to make your own decision about what to say. But the truth is you didn’t let me in, and we didn’t get a chance to talk. Anyway, when can we meet?”
There was silence, and then, “Maybe Suzanne and I should think it over again.”
“It’s such a difficult decision,” Suzanne said. “What it might mean, not just for us, but the kids, and—”
I didn’t want to go there. “I better be on my way. I’ll find a phone and call 911 and tell them someone’s locked in here. And … Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll want to have the police check everything.”
“I don’t understand,” Suzanne said. “Check what?”
“What he means is the van,” Jimmy said. “We should ask bomb and arson to check it for explosives.”
* * *
A CROWD HAD ALREADY GATHERED at the corner. Fire trucks and ambulances were screaming up; squad cars from every direction. Everyone wanted the best possible view. Pretty soon there’d be press and TV people. I mean, hell, there were dead bodies to be seen, right? Or bits and pieces of them anyway.
As for me, I didn’t want to see any more. What I’d seen already would be playing itself out for me in my head—over and over—for a long time. I turned and walked west a couple of blocks, then south. I was pretty conspicuous in that neighborhood, but if anyone noticed me, they stayed away. The way I felt, I must have looked like someone to stay away from.
On Sixty-third Street I found a phone outside a little all-night grocery and called 911 about someone locked in the gym. When I hung up a cab driver was just coming out of the store with a cup of coffee. He wanted to go view the carnage, too, not take me for a ride. But I offered to double the fare to Evanston and he couldn’t resist. He wanted the money upfront. I gave it to him. I’d have given him double that again if he’d demanded it.
I just wanted to go home. The Cavalier could wait in the parking garage where it was. I’d call Barney Green to tell him about the LS400, and to see if his people had had any luck finding what I needed for my upcoming chat with Maura Flanagan. And I could ask him who to get to check out the Cavalier. Maybe he’d know a security firm that had nitrate-sniffing dogs.
CHAPTER
35
WHY I WAS SO ANXIOUS to get home I don’t know, because all I did was smear some antibiotic ointment on the cut Zorro opened on my wrist, call Barney Green, and then lie on my couch and watch a car full of people burst into flames, over and over.
Tuesday I moved around in a fog, doing what I had to do, and then Wednesday—still pretty much sleepless—I was back at the disciplinary commission. This time I was stuck in a tiny, windowless room by myself with piles of documents, on the pretext of going through them to make sure I had all the same records the commission had.
Paging through piles of paper was the sort of mind-numbing task lawyers did a lot of, or—if they were in a firm with junior lawyers—made someone else do a lot of. That was why I’d never have asked for my license back except to please Lynnette Daniels, and why I’d have dropped the idea the minute she left, if some creep hadn’t tried to frighten me into doing just that.
Now, though, I had additional motives for staying with it: like to find out who beat Yogi up, to protect Yogi from Breaker Hanafan and get my hundred grand for putting Richie Kilgallon in the pen, to liberate Stefanie from Richie … and maybe even to help Jimmy Coletta get on with bringing a bit of hope to some kids who otherwise had none.
The trouble was, of course, that Yogi didn’t give a damn whether I caught his attacker, or even whether I protected him or not; Breaker’s money I could live without; Stefanie was an adult who should handle her own domestic problems; and Jimmy and company were responsible for the whole damn mess in the first place. So much for my motivation.
But what the hell, the car I’m supposed to be driving explodes, scattering what were meant to be bits of my body like confetti all over the south side. How could I walk away from that? Not to mention my shattered and irreplaceable Expulso toilet bowl.
Those were some of the thoughts going through my head as I sat there and stared at the stacks of file folders in front of me. I had no intention of looking at any of them. The only papers I cared about just then were the ones in the large manila envelope I’d picked up at Barney Green’s office and brought with me.
In the center of the envelope I’d printed the words “The Honorable Maura Flanagan,” and below that “Personal & Confidential.” I’d stapled my business card up in the return address corner, with a note written on the front of the card: “We’ll do lunch. Today. Vincent’s, Beaubien Court.”
It had been eleven-fifteen when Stefanie met me in the reception area and took me to my little cubicle and left me there. It was twelve-ten when she knocked and opened the door. “Find everything you need?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think—”
She closed the door and I was alone again. What she’d just told me was that the meeting of the Illinois Blue Ribbon Committee on Revised Ethical Rules for Attorneys, with Maura Flanagan present for the supreme court, would be taking a break soon, and that Stefanie knew this because the catered lunches had just arrived.
I slipped the large envelope down the front of my pants, then went to the door and opened it. Sure enough, in the hall just a few feet to my right, were two metal carts. One held the food—two platters of sandwiches, another piled with fruit and cheeses fanned out in display, and a fourth full of cookies and what looked like brownies—all held down tight under clear plastic wrap. The other cart was loaded with cans of soft drinks, an ice bucket, and two large carafes for hot beverages. Beyond the carts two women in white aprons were standing and chatting softly.
I nodded to the caterers and turned to my left, where the hall deadended at a closed door. Behind that door was the Blue Ribbon Committee. The last time they met they’d adjourned about noon, according to Stefanie, but had lunch brought in so they could get back to work quickly. There’d be fifteen or twenty of them, she’d said, all very important people, top guns in the legal community from around the state. “Gosh,” I’d said.
And I said the same thing again when the meeting room door opened and the caterers started toward their carts. “Gosh,” I said, moving quickly, “those look heavy. Let me help.”
Before they could object I was pushing the cart full of food down the hallway with one hand, and pulling the drink cart behind me with the other. At the same time people were trickling out of the meeting room, headed for a cigarette or a rest room before lunch. They looked pretty ordinary for very important people, especially when they flattened themselves against the wall to avoid being hit by a fast-moving, apparently out-of-control food cart.
Up ahead, just inside the door, was a cluster of top guns who’d thoughtlessly chosen that inconvenient spot to stop and chat. “Comin’ through!” I called. “Comin’ through!” I made it very clear I wasn’t going to stop, and they scattered.
I’d worked up a bit of speed by then, and as I entered the room I faked a little stumble over the threshhold—there was no threshhold—and pushed the cart even faster, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the door. “Oops, sorry!” I called, and then had to swerve, of course, to avoid the wi
ndows. The front cart caught the corner of the long conference table full of papers and started to tip, sending the platters of food sliding. The cart itself stayed upright, though—despite my best efforts—and only one platter of sandwiches actually crashed to the floor. The drink cart didn’t tip over, either, but the carafes teetered dangerously when the cart banged into my hip. I reached out toward one of them, but somehow couldn’t steady it and—darn!—it went crashing to its side, sending hot coffee cascading over the side of the cart and onto the conference table, where it spread out and streamed down to the floor.
“Gimme a hand here!” I called. When the sandwiches hit the floor, the taut plastic wrap must have split open and what looked like sliced turkey and maybe tuna salad and mayonnaise and God-knows-what were all over the carpet, with steaming coffee soaking through the whole mess.
There was a lot of talk and confusion, with the catering ladies fussing and yelling for towels—and blaming me, of all people—and a whole blue ribbon committee of take-charge people crowding around, snatching coffee-sodden documents from the table and mostly getting in each other’s way.
I pulled the envelope from my pants and headed toward the far end of the long table. A man and a woman stood near another door at that end of the room, both of them staring at me. I recognized Maura Flanagan from a photograph, and had a feeling the man was Clark Woolford.
“Justice Flanagan?” I said, and when she nodded I handed her the envelope. I leaned in close to her. “Ask for Mister Remorseful,” I whispered, and then went out the nearby door.
It was a different hallway, but it led back to the same reception area where Stefanie had met me an hour earlier. I stopped at the desk. “Tell Ms. Randle I had to leave. It’s those people,” I said, nodding back behind me. “They’re making such a racket I couldn’t concentrate.”
* * *
VINCENT’S WAS ON BEAUBIEN COURT, directly across from the building lobby, so Maura Flanagan—assuming she showed up—could get back to her meeting quickly if she wanted to. It was the sort of downtown restaurant where the drinks—outrageously expensive—were large and strong enough to give you a buzz while you convinced yourself that “just one” at lunch couldn’t hurt. The place was quiet, dimly lit, and far enough from city hall and the courthouse that people could be pretty sure the U.S. Attorney hadn’t taped a microphone to the underside of their table. In their fearless struggle to save the world from crooked politicians, judges, and lawyers, even the Feds couldn’t bug every table in every restaurant in the Loop. Could they?
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