The Keepers

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  Wabiszewski empathized with the mayor’s uncertainty. “We struggled with how best to bring it to your attention, sir. The entire situation breaks reality, but several things were said that Mace Reid took as direct threats against his well-being.”

  “Reid is the dog handler I spoke to, right?”

  Wabiszewski nodded as the mayor steered him down another hallway in the maze that was City Hall’s fifth floor.

  “Tell me about him?”

  “Mace is a good guy—scared shitless, of course—but solid, honest, and wants to do the right thing.”

  Weeks came to a stop in front of a door with no label or number on it and began bumbling with keys on a chain. “This serves as a back entrance to my office suite. It’s what I take when I sneak out early or come back after a liquid lunch.”

  The mayor led Wabiszewski down a short hallway, past a closet, a coffee station, a microwave and fridge, and then into an empty reception area the size of a basketball court. Brown leather couches and chairs lined the walls, with coffee and end tables peppered about. A couple of magazine racks that would make the Harold Washington Library green with envy stood at opposite ends of the room, likely for antsy visitors to peruse whenever the mayor ran late. A nameplate on the solid oak desk centered in front of the windows read Shelly Talcott.

  “This is Shelly’s domain—my executive admin. I told her to get lost till two. Don’t touch anything on her desk, don’t drop a wrapper on the floor, because, god knows, I’ll hear about it.”

  “I think I’m dating Shelly’s sister,” Wabiszewski said.

  Weeks chuckled and opened the door adjacent to Talcott’s desk. “This is my inner chamber, I guess they call it.”

  Wabiszewski glanced about another room the size of a basketball court. Weeks’s office had dark mahogany walls, a plush cherry carpet Wabs took as Berber, an L-shaped oak desk that made the one in Talcott’s reception area look like a newborn, and a couple of partially open doors along a far wall. The mayor’s desk faced inward, a wall behind his throne displayed several family portraits. On each side of the portrait wall stood palatial floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the chief executive officer to watch over his fiefdom. Expensive uprights stood in front of the desk for visiting dignitaries, of which Wabs found it difficult to believe he was one.

  “Bigger than my first home, but this is where the sausage gets made. There’s a bathroom,” Weeks pointed at one of the doors across the room, “if you need to take a leak. That other door’s a bedroom in case I need to nap or stay overnight for emergencies. To be honest, I’m thinking of subletting and pocketing the cash.” The mayor placed a hand on Wabiszewski’s shoulder. “Please have a seat.”

  As Wabs took a chair in front of the desk, the mayor continued, “I wanted to talk to each one of you separately, just in case you have anything to tell me—anything at all—that might be easier to voice without Officer Gimm or the dog handler in the room.”

  Wabiszewski looked sideways at the mayor, who’d remained standing in the doorway. “Yeah, about that, we hammered out exactly what we wanted Kippy to pass on to you, something that would fit in less than five minutes. I know the two of you talked at greater length about the situation, but I’m with Officer Gimm on this—a hundred percent. Kippy and I see eye-to-eye.”

  “Then I guess it’ll be a pretty short conversation,” Weeks replied. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “For today’s discussion, I’m going to need a fresh pot. I’ll grab you a bottled water—don’t say no,” Weeks said. “And make yourself at home.”

  The mayor disappeared in his quest for caffeine, and the door shut quietly of its own weight. Great, thought Wabs, taking down a crooked cop at the highest level of city government and all I get is a bottle of water out of the deal. I should have held out for a case of Heine. Wabiszewski looked again around the room. He wished he was good at math so he could calculate the square footage of the mayor’s office.

  He glanced at the portraits on the wall behind the mayor’s desk. The largest frame was a picture of Weeks’s family—a pretty blond wife and a boy and a girl who both looked to be about ten years of age. Another portrait was of the mayor’s father, obviously in healthier years, before the heart attack had cut his life short.

  There were a couple of glass picture frames on the mayor’s desk with their backs to him. Wabiszewski nudged one around with a forefinger. It was a picture of the kids, both in white gym shorts and shirts, holding tennis rackets—perhaps at tennis camp. Wabs remembered Kippy’s background brief, something about Carter Weeks having been a hotshot tennis player in high school or college or both.

  On a good day, were he feeling generous, Wabs might consider tennis a real sport.

  Wabiszewski turned the picture back around and nudged the second glass frame toward him. It answered his question as there stood a younger Carter Weeks, late teens or thereabout, clutching a giant trophy that sported crossed tennis rackets at the top. Wabs figured young Weeks had taken a state tourney or something. On one side of him stood his proud father, grinning from ear to ear at his son’s athletic achievement. On the other side, also smiling broadly, was … oh, fuck!… a decades-younger Gerald Callum.

  Wabiszewski grabbed the picture in both hands, swallowed the lump in his throat, but there was no confusion. None at all. He recognized Police Superintendent Gerald Callum. A thought flashed through his mind—he had to warn Kippy. Then he spotted something reflected in the glass frame … some kind of movement behind him … Callum’s driver.

  A strap looped around Wabiszewski’s neck. He then shot up from his seat like a fish pulled to dock, his feet no longer touching the floor, the picture frame dropping to the carpet. Wabs’s elbows shot backward, jackhammering at the big man’s ribs.

  Gasping for air that refused to arrive, Wabs shot his elbows back again … and again, but it was like hitting a tree. Both hands then shot to his throat, clawing at the strap as it tightened, and tightened more. Wabs felt the strap sink into his flesh, crushing his throat and cutting off blood to his brain; his eyes began to bulge, and Wabs grabbed at his revolver, but by then he had no juice, and Callum’s driver slapped his hand away with the kick of a knee as though batting away a fly.

  In Wabs’s final seconds, his legs jerked outward, one hitting the mayor’s executive desk—where the sausage gets made—and his other kicking over the frame of Weeks’s kids at tennis camp.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Do we have to do the girl, Uncle Cal?”

  Police Superintendent Gerald Callum, a man Carter Weeks considered his uncle in every shape, manner, and form excluding blood, stood a step inside the mayor’s office while Weeks was a step outside, remaining in Shelly Talcott’s domain. Both had been watching Cordov Woods as he’d loaded an IKEA box the size of a dishwasher on the far end of the room, next to the door leading into the mayor’s private quarters.

  Two empty IKEA boxes waited inside the mayor’s side room. Cord Woods had generously strapped down the top lid with packing tape and was now using up the roll by strapping tape across the sides and top and bottom. Nothing would be left to chance when the three boxes were carted back to the freight elevator, brought down to the underground parking lot, loaded into a van, and taken to a place from which none of the cartons’ inhabitants would ever be seen from again. Jethro, their computer savant, would scrub any security video of Woods wheeling a pushcart through back hallways as well as any images of Woods in the elevator or of Woods loading the boxes into the van in the basement garage. Officers Gimm, Wabiszewski, and the dog man’s names would also be expunged from the retirement party list posted on the lobby guard’s PC.

  There would be no record of the three of them ever having set foot inside City Hall. Later that evening, Cord Woods and Jethro would pay a visit to each of the trio’s residences, which would then be sanitized. All in all it was a perfect plan, considering it had been organized on such short notice.

  “Officer G
imm is the brains of the operation,” Callum told the man he considered his nephew. “We got rid of the brawn; it was a smart move to do Wabiszewski first. In a few minutes we’ll be saying au revoir to Gomer and Lassie. Gomer’s a joke, but this little gem,” Callum held a tranquilizer gun up for the mayor to see, “is for his dog and contains a dose that would put a rhino into a coma.” Callum shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Carter, but Gimm’s the real threat here. She ran that Jonny Whiting thing; she’s the one that could sink us.”

  “Becca Drake’s going to press me.”

  “Why?” Callum said. “Officer Gimm wanted to discuss gender pay disparities. You told her you thought the wages were equitable, but you’d have your bean counters crunch the numbers and get back to her … and then you never heard from her again.”

  Mayor Weeks took a deep breath. “It just seems so … wrong.”

  “It is wrong, son,” Callum said, nodding agreement. “I’ll never try to talk you out of that notion. But in a way it’s good you see it firsthand—up close and personal. Generals aren’t on the front lines—they’re not involved in the hand-to-hand combat, but they see the aftermath. They see the bodies strewn across the battlefield. Ike wasn’t storming the beaches himself on D-Day, but you can be goddamned certain he knew the consequences … and you can be goddamned certain he took them to heart.”

  Weeks thought a moment and replied, “I think you’re comparing apples and oranges.”

  “Comparing apples and oranges. For the love of Christ, don’t get Cordov started on idioms—the man’ll never shut up,” Callum said. “Look, we’ve talked about this before. Here’s what we’re attempting to achieve,” Callum said, holding the tranquilizer gun above his head. “And here’s our starting point.” Callum then lowered the gun to below his waist. “If we hope to achieve our objectives, we’re going to get dirt under our fingernails. That’s a given. You don’t think the Daleys tossed a few in the volcano for the greater good? You’re not the first man to sit in that chair and get dirt under his nails … and you sure as hell won’t be the last.”

  Mayor Weeks stared down at his dress shoes and said nothing.

  “This is a minor blip on the radar; a hiccup. For fuck’s sake, Carter, you know our policies are working. We’re taking out the trash—getting guns and gangbangers and turf wars and all that other shit off the street—which is what the voters want anyway, and you can’t put a number on the lives we’ll save. Even in the short run, it’ll far outweigh whatever happens here today.” Callum added, “We get the kill rate down to three hundred—hell, anything below four—and we’re talking dynasty, Carter … we could even be talking a presidential run.”

  Weeks said nothing.

  “Your father—God bless him—could explain it much better, but I’ve been around since the dinosaurs and, ultimately, it comes down to this—you either run Chicago … or Chicago runs you.” Superintendent Callum glanced down at his watch. “We’re going to have to deal with your pangs of conscience later, son. It’s time for you to get the dog man.”

  CHAPTER 29

  “So, you’re the little yipper that started this great war?”

  Mayor Weeks had met us in the elevator atrium, crouched down, and held a couple fingers under Vira’s nose for her to sniff.

  “Not so much started as she’s trying to end it,” I said of my golden retriever.

  “Just paraphrasing something a local boy who’d made good once said.”

  “Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, right?”

  “Impressive, Mr. Reid. Our canine trainer knows his history,” Weeks said as we shook hands.

  I shrugged. “We studied Harriet in high school. I think I got a C.”

  “Sounds like you excel in other avenues,” the mayor said, pointing at Vira.

  “It came naturally,” I replied. “How was your meeting with Dave?”

  “Dave?”

  “Officer Wabiszewski.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Dave’s a good guy.”

  “Not a flake?”

  “Not even a small one.”

  The mayor led Vira and me down a corridor away from the main reception lobby, mumbling something about a back entrance to his office and sending his staff away to secure some privacy for our undisclosed meeting with Chicago’s leading G-Man. Weeks seemed a bit distracted. I could only imagine what had been bouncing about in his brain since his initial morning meeting with Kippy a few days earlier.

  “So, when did you first realize you wanted to be mayor of Chicago?” I asked as we took one more turn into another back hallway. I wanted to break the awkward silence that had engulfed us, but, instead, I’d likely stuck my foot in my mouth.

  Weeks paused and turned toward me. “Truth is, I wanted to be a tennis pro.”

  I recalled the background discussions I’d had with Kippy and Wabs. “Didn’t you take state?”

  “I was great in high school and pretty darned good in college,” Weeks replied. “But light-years away from good enough to take it to the next level. I’d be lucky to return any serve from one of those tour boys.” Weeks looked at me. “Do you play?”

  “I can hold my own in ping-pong.”

  “Sacrilege,” the mayor said and, whether he was joking or not, we walked the remainder of the way to his office in silence.

  * * *

  “This is my outer reception area.”

  “Wow—you could land a helicopter in here.”

  “I’m not sure Shelly would approve of that.”

  Apparently, someone named Shelly Talcott was the mayor’s secretary or administrative assistant or personal bouncer or some combination of the above. Evidently, she ruled this cavernous room with an iron fist. Ms. Talcott and the others on the mayor’s immediate staff had been sent away for a long lunch with instructions not to return until after two o’clock or work the remainder of the day from home like so many employees are wired in to do these days.

  Weeks swung open his office door. I was busy looking out of Talcott’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the traffic below and didn’t become aware of Vira’s occurrence until I heard a singular whine—a soft cry, like a breaking heart must sound, if it had a sound—and glanced down. My dog stared straight into the mayor’s office, shivering as though we stood naked in the freezing cold, but then her spasm was over. Vira looked up at me with alarm in her gaze and released another soft cry.

  The mayor and I locked eyes.

  Vira didn’t budge. She stood frozen to the carpet, but her leash allowed me room to maneuver from my perch at Talcott’s window to stand in front of Weeks. And it allowed me to stare beyond him, to peek into his empty office.

  “Where’s Wabs?” I asked.

  “He went to the bathroom.”

  I spotted two partially open doors on the far side of Weeks’s office.

  “Wabs?” I called out loud; and then, louder still, “Wabs?”

  “Keep it down,” Weeks said. “He’s using the hallway restroom, for Christ’s sake. He’s giving us some time to get acquainted.”

  Vira began growling behind me, low and steady. Her warning mode.

  “How’s he supposed to get back in?” I said. “You’ve got the keys?”

  “He’ll knock on the door.”

  Vira continued growling, same low pitch.

  “From way back there?” I motioned with my arm beyond Talcott’s reception area, to the hallway leading to the back door.

  “Look, calm down, would you?” the mayor said, pointing inside his chambers. “Officer Wabiszewski will wait until you and I are done, so just take your dog and have a seat for crying out loud. I’ll get us some coffee.”

  Vira stayed in high alert, cautioning me, still glued to the floor—her every muscle taut as she continued staring inside Weeks’s office.

  I peeked beyond the mayor again; I looked at the chairs across from his desk, where Weeks still pointed, and then glanced about the rest of the room. The hair on the back of my neck stood. No lights were on in ei
ther of the side rooms, and the two half-open doors gave off an ominous sensation, the jaws of a crocodile in search of prey … and a single IKEA box sat in a far corner of the room.

  Vira’s snarl stayed in warning mode; her eyes glued to the IKEA box.

  I looked at the mayor. His face was pale, a line of sweat across his forehead, and he stared back at me with alarm in both eyes. Vira’s snarl continued, but she now stood at my feet. Weeks stepped backward into his office; Vira and I stood in the doorframe.

  “What’s in the box?” I asked in a whisper though I suspected I already knew.

  “Just have a seat,” the mayor said, his voice trembling.

  “What’s in the box?” I asked again.

  We stared at each other a long moment.

  “Take a seat for Christ’s sake.” The mayor’s voice was now stern. He’d reverted back into a man accustomed to getting his way. He grabbed at my forearm in an attempt to guide me toward a guest chair.

  Not smart for Weeks to lay a hand on me under these circumstances.

  Vira leaped.

  And Weeks stumbled backward into his office, Vira’s jaws appended to the wrist of the hand that had touched me. Weeks backed into his window as Vira dropped off him. She kept him cornered—like a raccoon—barking and snapping in front of him as Weeks held his bleeding wrist with his other hand, his face a mask of terror.

  A flash of movement in my periphery and I spun my head. One of the open doors now filled with Police Superintendent Gerald Callum aiming some kind of gun our way. Filling the other doorway was Callum’s driver—Man-mountain—dangling a length of cord.

  “Vira!” I screamed as Callum pulled the trigger.

  She was at my side in a flash. I thought the gun must have misfired, a dud, as there’d been no explosion. Callum’s mouth dropped open and I snuck a glance at the mayor. A thick dart stuck out from Mayor Weeks’s lower thigh, just above his kneecap, where Vira had been a heartbeat earlier. Weeks’s eyelids drooped as he leaned back against the window and then slumped to the floor.