The Fifth Floor

by Michael Harvey

  “I know. Is there somewhere private we can go?”

  Teen took me to a small room with beige walls, a table and chairs, a Mr. Coffee, and some vending machines.

  “We should be okay in here,” she said, and sat down. I followed suit.

  “Now what is it, exactly, that you need?”

  “Josiah Randolph’s diary,” I said. “You know about that?”

  “Of course. I work on the Omnibus system. Keeps track of all our primary source materials. Would you like to see a demonstration?”

  “No.”

  I gave my response a little punch. Teen jumped in her seat.

  “Oh.”

  “Mr. Randolph showed me Josiah’s diary the first time I was here,” I said.

  “He’s awfully proud of his ancestor. Do you know Josiah almost lost his life trying to save Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation?”

  “I’m happy for him. Thing is, I don’t think Randolph showed me the whole diary.”

  Teen shifted in her neatly laundered chinos and ducked my eyes. Exactly what I was hoping for.

  “Teen, how long you been working here?”

  “Going on sixteen years.”

  “As a volunteer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse the expression, Teen, but do you like getting treated like the shit off Lawrence Randolph’s shoes?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I saw enough, Teen. You’re here to contribute, consult, be part of the team. Not go get coffee for an academic lightweight. The emperor lost his clothes a long time ago. Isn’t it time someone let him know?”

  I waited. Teen fidgeted. Looked at the door to the break room, a door I had had the good sense to shut before we sat down. Then Teen looked back at me. I could see the girl. First in her class at high school. College, a given. A woman of letters. Except it was 1962. Her parents didn’t approve of women going to college. What, really, was the point? So Teen settled down, settled in. Just settled. Married the architect, who, at the time, was just out of school, a friend of the family, and lived down the block. Three kids and some four decades later, it was a good life. A respectable life. But she had more to offer. Much more than a gofer for Lawrence Randolph. Here was her chance. All I had to do was wait.

  “What is it you want, Mr. Kelly?”

  “I want you to step out, Teen. Help me find the rest of the diary. Find out why primary source materials are being sanitized by your curator. Find out what kind of game Lawrence Randolph is running.”

  “He’s a real prick, you know.”

  I smiled and moved closer. I thought she’d be willing. I didn’t realize how much so.

  “I know all about Josiah’s diary,” Teen said. “Every year, we run internal audits of all our materials. Part of Omnibus. You want to see?”

  “No. Tell me about the diary.”

  She started up again. Then stopped. Gave me a look she probably figured to be crafty.

  “Will I get my name in the papers?”

  “You want your name in the papers?”

  “Of course.”

  “Consider it done. Now, what about the diary?”

  “Okay. Each year I help to run an internal audit. It’s done on all the full-time staff, including Mr. Randolph. It’s done without their consent and without their knowledge.”

  Teen’s eyes lit up as she dug into the details. “I noticed the discrepancy three years ago. In the society archives, we have more than a hundred thousand primary source documents. More than twenty million pages of material. As I cross-referenced the Omnibus catalogs, I noticed one entry for Josiah Randolph’s diary under ‘Chicago Fire.’ Then I noticed a second entry titled ‘Diary Fragments’ and filed under ‘Miscellaneous.’”

  “‘Miscellaneous,’ huh?”

  “Yes, ‘Miscellaneous.’ I tracked down the woman who had made the entry into Omnibus. Lovely girl. She’s a senior now at Northwestern.”

  “Where did she find her ‘Fragments’?”

  “Actually, it’s a funny story.”

  “Amuse me.”

  “As I said, she was just a college kid. Didn’t know any better. So she sits down at Mr. Randolph’s desk. It was a day like this.”

  “He was out of the office.”

  “Yes. She opens up his desk and begins to sort through his personal papers.”

  “Unheard of.”

  “Slightly. Anyway, she found two keys in one of the top drawers. The first unlocked the bottom drawer of the curator’s desk. The second opened a strongbox she found inside.”

  “The miscellaneous fragments?”

  “She told me they were in the box. She noted their existence, locked up the box, and returned the keys to the curator’s top drawer. Then she made a notation about the materials in Omnibus.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else would you expect?”

  “What did the fragments say?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “She didn’t read them?”

  “The purpose of an Omnibus audit is to catalog, not evaluate. She noted the number of pages, got a general sense of what she was looking at, and moved on.”

  “What about the discrepancy?”

  “What about it?”

  “Why didn’t anyone follow up?”

  “Follow up how?”

  “Ask Randolph what the fragments were? Why he kept them under lock and key in his desk? How they were different from the rest of the diary he’d made available to the public?”

  “This is not an inquisition, Mr. Kelly. Omnibus is designed to catalog.”

  “I know. Catalog. Not evaluate.”

  Teen smiled. “That’s correct.”

  “So no one ever followed up with Randolph?”

  “I doubt anyone even knows about the Omnibus notations except for myself and the young girl from Northwestern.”

  “Randolph doesn’t know?”

  “Certainly not. He’d blow his stack if he knew anyone was poking around his personal papers.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, and stood up. Teen got up with me.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Randolph’s office.”

  “To do what?”

  “Poke around his personal papers.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Not really. But it might be.”

  My volunteer thought about it. Then she led the way out of the break room and up the front stairs. She nodded and smiled at a half-dozen staff members we passed along the way. Finally she stopped at the closed door to Lawrence Randolph’s empty office. Inside was the price of admission. To life beyond the front desk and a daily set of marching orders. To getting past men who nourished their egos on the carcasses of those who were polite enough to serve. To a seat at the table—some sort of table—any sort of table. It was a price the volunteer was apparently willing to pay. Perhaps even eager. Teen gave me a final look, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open. A half hour later, I had what I needed. I sat Teen down, told her who I was and what I suspected. At least, some of it. Then I called Hubert.

  CHAPTER 40

  So show me how this works.”

  Hubert Russell met me at the Starbucks on North and Wells, two blocks removed from the historical society. It was a little past noon. I had a black coffee and my laptop open. Hubert sipped at a vanilla skim latte and was at the wheel.

  “Pretty simple,” Hubert said. “I’ve loaded my program onto your hard drive. Now I click on the icon and put it into active mode.”

  Hubert moved the cursor over a skull and crossbones blinking on my screen.

  “Nice icon, Hubert.”

  The kid smiled. My Mac began to whir, then whine.

  “Warming up,” Hubert said.

  We got a soft beep. My screen went black for a moment and then re-formed with a single bar graph fluctuating on-screen.

  “See that graph?”

  “I do.”

  “That represents signal strength. Means th
ere is one person in range of us who is using a WiFi connection.”

  I looked across the mostly empty coffee shop at Teen. She waved and continued to tap away at her laptop.

  “Well, we know who that is.”

  “That’s right,” Hubert said. “Now if I click on the graph, watch what happens.”

  Hubert clicked. Bits of information began to fly across the screen.

  “As we speak, your computer is sucking Teen’s dry. Copying all her files, programs, passwords, e-mails. Everything.”

  “And she doesn’t even know it,” I said.

  “Look at her.”

  I did. Teen waved again and smiled. I motioned for her to come over. She shut down her laptop and the graph disappeared on my screen.

  “How much of her hard drive did you get?” I said.

  Hubert began to open up files taken off Teen’s computer.

  “Actually, we got all of it. With this program the poach usually takes less than twenty seconds. See, what happens is there’s a flaw in the router that lets you go WiFi. I drop in a decoy and trick the computer into thinking it’s talking to itself. When really—”

  I held up a hand.

  “Enough, Hubert. I believe.”

  I wanted to pat him on the head but thought better of it. Instead, I checked my watch as Teen drew up a chair.

  “What time does he come in?” I said.

  “He’s in here just about every day around one,” Teen said. “Says he likes to get some ‘alone time’ out of the office.”

  “Always brings his laptop?”

  Teen nodded.

  “Okay. Teen, you and I are out of here. Hubert, you sit tight and wait for our boy. You got the picture I gave you?”

  Hubert showed it to me.

  “Good. When he fires up his laptop and jumps online, you take it all.”

  “No problem.”

  The kid from Land Records winked. Teen giggled. Then the volunteer and I walked out of the Starbucks and down Wells Street. I stopped at the Up Down Tobacco Shop and bought a couple of Montecristos. Then we moved over to Topo Gigio’s and had a beautiful lunch. Hubert joined us an hour later for tiramisu. As did the entire contents of Lawrence Randolph’s laptop.

  CHAPTER 41

  Rachel Swenson and Vince Rodriguez agreed to meet me at my office. It was a little after eight p.m. Neither was entirely sure why they were there. But they both showed up and that was enough for now.

  “What is it that couldn’t wait?” Rodriguez said.

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  I threw the Sheehan’s Masters had given me across the desk. Rodriguez took a look at the book while Rachel read Taylor’s note. It had been two days, and no one had heard a thing from Dan Masters or Janet Woods.

  “The binding’s been sliced open.” The detective ran his hand along the book’s spine.

  “You noticed that.”

  Rodriguez slanted his face up and across the room. “What did you take out of there?”

  I couldn’t tell them about that. Not yet, anyway. Still, I needed their help, which made matters difficult.

  “Rachel, I need to ask you a favor. Actually, I’m going to need favors from both of you.”

  Rachel passed Taylor’s note across to the detective, along with a look that told me it might be a long hard swim upstream.

  “What do you need?” she said.

  “You remember the prints I told you about? The ones I was going to compare to the break-in at my flat?”

  Rachel nodded. I pulled out a sheet of paper and slipped it across my desk.

  “The detective here ran them for me.”

  Rachel ignored the report. “Just tell me what it says, Michael.”

  “The partial has only six points of identification. All six matched a print on the set I sent over.”

  Rodriguez grunted from his hard-backed chair in the corner.

  “I told you it doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “The match means nothing. You need at least nine points for it to hold up in court.”

  I lifted a hand.

  “Hear me out,” I said. “Two weeks ago a man walked into the Chicago Historical Society. Asked a volunteer named Teen for a look at their Sheehan’s first edition.”

  “How many people ask to see that book?” Rodriguez said.

  “Exactly. Anyway, the volunteer is a nice lady. Do-gooder from the North Shore. Tells me this man was dangerous looking. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Then I realized how the phrase translates out of white-upper-middle-class American speak.”

  “And dangerous looking means?” Rachel said.

  “Black. I went back and double-checked with our volunteer. The guy was black and big.”

  “Let me guess,” Rachel said. “Our suspect on the print happens to be black.”

  “And he has a history of breaking and entering. Not to mention violent assault.”

  “I assume you showed his photo to your volunteer friend?” Rodriguez said.

  “Along with six others. Took her all of five seconds to pick him out.”

  I threw a picture across the desk. It was a news photo from Mitchell Kincaid’s rally. Behind Kincaid and to his left was his head of security, an angry young man named James Bratton. Big and black—and the man who shot Rachel Swenson with a rubber bullet in the middle of the night.

  “I saw Bratton on the news,” I said. “At the Kincaid rally last week. Didn’t register at first. Then it did. It was ten years ago. I was still a uniform. Arrested him for B and E and assault. He used a crowbar to crank open the first-floor window of an old lady’s home on the West Side. Punched her once or twice and took some costume jewelry and cash. Less than a hundred bucks. He pled out and took six months. Records were sealed because he was only seventeen.”

  Rachel lifted an eyebrow and picked up the photo. “A juvie?”

  “I told him already,” Rodriguez said. “None of this is admissible. Especially not if his reporter pal lifted juvie prints out of the system.”

  I kept my eyes on Rachel, who kept her eyes on the photo. Then she looked up and spoke.

  “Michael isn’t thinking about the criminal end of this. Are you, Michael?”

  “Are you?” I said.

  “If Mitchell Kincaid’s security chief broke into your apartment and shot me, his boss’s political career is over before it ever got started. Is that what you think happened?”

  I nodded, trying to fit as much regret into the gesture as humanly possible. “I think Bratton was after evidence that would have implicated the mayor’s ancestor in a land grab that turned into the Chicago Fire. Johnny Woods was after the same thing. If Bratton got it, I imagine he would have leaked it to the press at the right time.”

  Rachel shot the picture across my desk with a flick of her fingernail.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “You realize what this would do to Kincaid’s campaign?”

  “It would ruin him.”

  “Is that the goal here?” Rachel was leaning forward in her seat now, palms rubbing a shine across the wooden armrests.

  “No.”

  “What is it you want, Michael?”

  “I want you to approach Kincaid,” I said. “Ask him to meet with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Couple of reasons. First, you can do it privately. Discreetly. Second, I don’t think Kincaid knew what his staff was up to.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “For now, let’s say I agree. That’s why you approach him. Show him what I’ve got. Ask him to sit down with me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rachel said. “Help him write his withdrawal speech?”

  Rodriguez jumped in. “And what am I supposed to do? Break-in aside, Bratton might be our guy on the Bryant murder.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I picked up the Sheehan’s again. Here is where the trust came in. Either it would work, or I’d hav
e to let it go and hope for the best. Where Chicago politics was concerned, that was usually a loser’s bet.

  “There’s more to this than either of you know,” I said. “Just give me another day or two. Let this thing play out, and we might be able to save Mitchell Kincaid’s career.” I glanced over at Rodriguez. “And catch our killer.”

  Rachel waited for the detective, who lifted his shoulders.

  “I can play along, Your Honor. How about you?”

  Rachel took another look at the Sheehan’s and then back at me. “What was in the book, Michael?”

  “Set it up with Kincaid,” I said. “You’ll find out then.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Rachel agreed to make the call and left. I tried to give her a hug but got nothing more than a shoulder and the side of her face. Ah, sweet romance.

  “The judge doesn’t like being kept in the dark,” Rodriguez said.

  “Think so?”

  The detective chuckled. “You must not keep much of a social life, Kelly. But, I guess that’s your problem. Can you pull all this off?”

  “There’s a chance.”

  A bottle of Powers Irish surfaced from the depths of a drawer. Rodriguez poured himself a dose and drank it in a single go. Then he stood up and leaned his face across the desk. Rodriguez could be a big man when he wanted to be.

  “What was in the book?” he said.

  I tasted the edges of my whiskey and leaned back in my chair. I was looking for a bit of leverage. If not in the Powers, at least in the geography of the moment.

  “Let me deal with Kincaid. Then we go after the rest of it.”

  “You sure his security chief’s not our killer?”

  I nodded.

  “This involves the Fifth Floor, doesn’t it?”

  “How would you feel about that?” I said.

  Rodriguez sat back down and turned his chair to look out the window. When he spoke, his voice came from somewhere down the street.

  “Not fucking good, Kelly. Not good at all.”

  “If it goes bad, I’ll take the weight.”

  A smile flickered at the corner of the detective’s mouth. “Who the fuck made you the hero?” he said, reaching for the bottle without looking at it.

  We both sat quiet. Drank and listened. For something beyond the sound of traffic. All we heard was our respective careers, and perhaps our lives, spiraling down the sewer hole that doubled as the feeding tube for Chicago politics and power.