“When I got older. When I grew up. Why didn’t you ever try to contact me?”
“I meant to. I always meant to.”
I wiped my cheeks.
“I have to go now.”
“Please stay.”
I looked at him.
“Forty years, Wilbur. You missed out on my entire life.”
“I can’t tell you how hard it’s been. At least you thought I was dead. I knew you were alive. I’ve spent more time thinking about you than most fathers actually spend with their children. Every morning I’d wake up and think about calling you, about talking to you.”
“But you didn’t call.” The tears were really coming now. “I found out you were alive, and I came. You knew I was alive, and never came.”
“Jacqueline . . .”
I whispered, “I wouldn’t have cared that you were gay.”
“Please stay . . .”
“Good-bye, Wilbur.”
I walked out of his tidy little house, went to my car, and cried the entire way to the hospital.
Latham was asleep when I arrived. I held his hand and thanked the universe that he was most certainly heterosexual and decided that when we got married, I wanted to have my reception at Chateau Élan because the staff was certainly dedicated.
And when the wedding was over, I’d send Wilbur a picture of me in my dress and write See what else you missed on the back.
CHAPTER 35
THE DOORBELL WOKE ME UP. It was still strange to hear a doorbell, having spent my entire adult life in apartments. I peeked at the digital, noted it was almost nine a.m., and calculated that I’d gotten a full eight hours of sleep. After leaving the hospital late last night, I picked up a frozen pizza and a six-pack of Goose Island IPA and finished both of them, then ordered a bunch of crap from HSN that I didn’t need. If memory served, one of the items was a vacuum cleaner that could suck up a bowling ball. This was incredibly important, as most homes in North America are just filthy with bowling balls.
Another doorbell ring. I peeled myself out of bed, wincing because everything hurt, including my head. I had on one of Latham’s T-shirts, big enough to come down to my knees, and I deemed that suitable as greeting wear. That is, until I looked through the peephole and saw who was at the door.
“Hurry up, Jackie! I gotta use the can!”
Harry McGlade. Dressed in the traditional Harry outfit of an expensive suit, wrinkled beyond belief, and a Bogart hat. I rolled my eyes. I’d forgotten today was PoliceFest. Maybe if I didn’t answer, he’d go away.
“I know you’re in there. Your car is parked in the driveway. Open up or I’ll piss in your mailbox.”
I had no doubt he’d do it too. I opened the door.
“Jesus, Jackie, I just spent an hour on the expressway with an Ultra-Mega Big Gulp. My bladder is so full, it’s putting pressure on my heart. Where’s the bathroom?”
“Straight back, to the right,” I told him. “Don’t touch anything. Especially the towels.”
I went into the bedroom and changed into some baggy button-fly Yanuk jeans, Nikes, and an oversized Gap golf shirt. Rather than futz with my hair, I opted for a Cubs baseball cap, pulling my ponytail through the hole in the back. I probably could have used a shower, but I was afraid to leave McGlade unattended in my home for any period of time.
After washing my face and carefully brushing my teeth—my lower lip was still sore—I found McGlade in the kitchen. Every cabinet was open, and he was poking through a Tupperware container, transferring a handful of something to his mouth.
“These are all you have to eat in this entire house,” he said between bites, “and I think they’re spoiled.”
“Really? I just bought them last week.”
“They taste like ass.”
“The cat likes them.”
He stared at the cat treats and frowned.
“This is cat food?”
“Yeah.”
“Liver and onion?” he ventured.
“Liver and tuna.”
He set the container down on the counter. “You got any mints?”
“No. Sorry.”
“How about floss?”
“Bathroom cabinet.”
He scurried off. I sniffed the treats, shuddered, and put them back in the cabinet. Then I closed all the other cabinet doors, poured a large glass of water, and drank it while silently dreading PoliceFest. Last year it had been held in Indiana, and I’d gone with Herb and his wife at their insistence. It was a crowded, hot, loud event, with carnival rides, face painting, pricey beer and hot dogs, and a lot of macho boxing and shooting contests. I snagged second place in one of the shooting contests, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed myself.
Harry returned, scowling.
“Were you telling the truth about the cat treats?” he asked.
“No.”
He seemed relieved. “They’re not for cats?”
“Yes, they are. But they’re not fresh. I bought them a year ago, and my cat hates them.”
I heard a humming sound, and noted that McGlade had clenched his robotic hand into a fist. While he was annoyed, I hit him with more bad news.
“I’m driving.”
“No way. I’m a guy. We can’t let chicks drive. It’s a form of castration.”
“Well, pick up your balls. We’re leaving.”
I double-checked to make sure Mr. Friskers had food and water, and then walked past Harry and out the front door. He tagged along behind me like a puppy.
“I wanna drive.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Did you see my Vette? It’s fast.”
“I bet.”
“Why can’t I drive?”
“Because I’m driving.”
I got behind the wheel, and Harry sat next to me.
“Your car sucks.”
“I know.”
“Can I park the Vette in your garage?”
“Garage door is broken.”
“Your house sucks.”
“I know.”
I pulled out of the driveway, and Harry began to mess with my radio. Better the radio than listening to him talk. Unfortunately, he switched it off after only listening to three bars of “Freebird” by Skynard.
“Your radio sucks.”
“Let’s try being quiet for a while, okay?”
He lasted a whole two minutes.
“I’ve started to write poetry,” Harry said.
Lord help me.
“That’s nice.”
“It helps me deal, you know, with the pain.”
“VD?” I asked.
“Of losing my hand. There isn’t much physical pain anymore. It’s on permanently. They did a bone graft. Carbon fibers. Want to see where it’s attached?”
“No.”
He showed me anyway, peeling up the latex covering, pointing to his wrist where the scar tissue met the prosthesis. It wasn’t as ugly as I imagined.
“Gotta keep rubbing antiperspirant around the edges, because the latex gets hot and I sweat like crazy. Inside the hand, along with the mechanical parts, are myoelectric sensors, attached to my nerves and muscles. If I concentrate on open”—I heard a mechanical whir, and Harry’s thumb and fingers separated—“and close, the fingers move. Only three of the fingers are actually robotic. The ring finger and the pinky just go along for the ride. It’s pretty strong, though. See?”
McGlade gripped my dashboard with the prosthesis, and his fingers punched right through.
“Harry!”
“Don’t worry. I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
I looked at the damage, realized it was no big loss, and turned onto I-190, passing O’Hare and heading for Skokie. Harry was mercifully quiet for a few seconds.
“So, do you want to hear some of my poetry?”
“No.”
“A short one.”
“No.”
“It’s really short.”
“I don’t care how short it is, I don’t want to
hear it.”
A few seconds ticked by.
“Want to see my new phone?”
“No.”
He tugged it out of his wrinkly blazer just the same.
“It’s a phone, a camera, a PDA, and it can even surf the Internet.”
“Have you been tested for ADD?” I asked.
He pressed a few buttons, and a loud feminine moan came from the device.
“This is a good Web site. BubbleBooty.com. It costs twenty bucks a month, but you get free fifteen-second previews of all their movies. So who needs to join?”
More moaning, and then the sound of a donkey braying.
“Or check this out.”
He stuck the camera in my face, and there was a blinding flash.
“Jesus, McGlade!”
“High rez, 1500 dpi. Look at that clarity. I can count the pores on your nose. Well, I could, if I had all day.”
“It’s quiet time again,” I said. “Let’s see if we can be quiet for the whole rest of the ride, okay?”
Quiet time lasted less than a minute.
“Just like the old days, isn’t it, Jackie? Cruising down the highway. Me and you. Young cops with bad attitudes. We had some fun times, didn’t we?”
“Not really.”
I watched peripherally as Harry tried to adjust the air-conditioning vent using his prosthesis, and snapped it right off. He pondered it for a moment, checked to see if I noticed, and then hid it under his seat.
“I don’t regret quitting the force.”
“You didn’t quit. You were kicked off.”
“I don’t miss it. It’s not like PI work. Someone hires me to do a job, I get paid, they’re grateful. Not like being a cop. Too many people hate you. Like all the traps in that house the other night. Someone had to really hate the department to set all that up. I heard it was a cop’s house too.”
Something itched at the back of my head, but I couldn’t quite scratch it.
“This guy has killed a lot of cops,” I admitted. I thought about Sardina, and Roxy, and the two Cicero officers. Plus all of the incidental police officer poisonings; three died at the Sammy’s, and twelve more became sick eating at various locations around the city. Hell, the Chemist even spread his toxins at the German deli only a block away from . . .
“The one-five.”
“You say something?” Harry asked. He was using his prosthesis to touch himself in a private place.
“Can you not fondle yourself in my front seat?”
“Just making a minor adjustment. It’s kind of strange, because it feels like someone else’s hand.”
“Shut up for a minute.”
“Why?”
“I’m thinking. Just be quiet.”
“I was being quiet. You’re the one who started talking.”
“Harry, shut the hell up.”
“Boy, you’re bitchy. Don’t they have hormones for after menopause?”
I tuned him out, concentrating on all of the restaurants and grocery stores the Chemist had poisoned. As I ticked them off, one by one, I realized that there had been a pattern all along.
“Each store was within a block of a police station.”
“Huh?” McGlade had gone back to adjusting himself.
“The police. The Chemist was targeting the police all along. Even the wedding—Captain Bains’s son. Why the hell didn’t I see it before?”
“Because you’re functionally retarded?” Harry offered. “Going senile? Have Alzheimer’s disease? Personally, I wouldn’t mind Alzheimer’s. You buy one magazine, and you’re entertained for the rest of your life.”
I drew in a sharp breath, having one of those rare moments where everything suddenly came together. If the Chemist truly wanted to hurt some cops, he needed to strike where there was a large concentration of us in a small area.
“PoliceFest,” I whispered.
More than twenty thousand cops, plus another twenty thousand family members and visitors, all in the same place at the same time.
“I think I broke your radio,” Harry said, handing me a knob with his rubber hand.
I jammed down the accelerator. While it wasn’t enough to pin us to our seats, I was pushing eighty soon enough.
“What the hell are you doing, Jackie?”
“I’m praying,” I told him. “Praying that I’m wrong.”
CHAPTER 36
THE VILLAGE OF SKOKIE covered roughly ten square miles. It was one of Chicago’s larger suburbs, with a population of over sixty thousand, bordering the city on the north side.
I was burning some serious rubber, edging the car up into the nineties, and then I had to stop very quickly. Traffic had gone from open to insane. The Touhy ramp off of I-94 was backed up for at least a mile, bumper to bumper. All because of PoliceFest.
“McGlade, grab my cherry—”
I regretted saying it as soon as it breached my lips, but before I could qualify it he’d already answered, “I think I’m about thirty-five years too late for that, Jackie.”
“The red and blue light, smart-ass. In the backseat, on the floor.”
He fished around for it and set it on his lap.
“They still use these things?”
“The classics are still the best. Plug it in and stick it to the roof.”
McGlade put the cord into my cigarette lighter, and it turned on and began to spin, flashing colors.
“My key chain light is brighter than this stupid thing.”
“Just put it on the roof.”
“What is that? Is that a suction cup?”
“The roof, McGlade!”
I hit the gas and pulled onto the shoulder, spraying gravel. McGlade leaned out the window and attached the cherry to the top of my car. When he finished, he sat back down and buckled his seat belt.
“Where’s the siren?” he asked.
“No siren.”
McGlade seemed to consider it.
“Want me to stick my head out the window and go woo-woo-woo?”
I hopped back onto the street, buzzed through the red light, and swung east onto Touhy, missing a pickup truck by a good two feet.
“Did you pull down the little lever on the suction cup?” I asked, swerving to avoid the SUV ahead of me.
“There was a lever?”
I tapped my brakes, and the cherry bounced off my hood and onto the sidewalk, where it hit a mailbox and splintered into a million little red and blue pieces.
“Hell.” I frowned. “That thing was vintage.”
“Don’t worry about it. You can hire a midget to sit on your roof and hold a lava lamp. You’d get the same effect.”
I passed a Jeep, hit the horn, and took a right onto Lincoln.
“How old is this car?” McGlade asked. “It’s a model made before airbags, isn’t it?”
“Just go limp at impact. It’s the same thing.”
I heard a whirring sound, and chanced a look. McGlade had locked his hand onto the door grip. I smiled, and pinned the speedometer.
“McGlade, what street is the festival on?”
“Pratt and Central Park Avenue. You could drop me off wherever, though. Up here is fine. Or here. Or at that nail salon. I was thinking about doing my nails.”
I zipped past the nail salon, breezed through a yellow light, and hung a left onto Pratt. Then I hit the brakes.
Yellow sawhorses blocked off the street, a thick wall of people milling around behind them. Thousands of people.
“Parking is going to be a bitch,” Harry said.
He was right. And because a lot of these folks were cops, all of the hydrants were already taken. I stopped in the middle of the street, dug my ankle holster—complete with AMT—out of my purse, and put my leg up onto the steering wheel to strap it on. Naturally, McGlade had to comment on this.
“You’re pretty flexible for an old chick. Can you put your foot behind your head? I dated this girl once. Well, not really dated.”
I grabbed my purse, hopped out of the c
ar, and waded into the crowd. It was elbow to elbow, a carnival that seemed to go on forever, complete with music and rides and plenty of food. Besides the prerequisite amount of coptosterone, there were also plenty of women and children, and every third person was eating or drinking something. Beer. Lemonade. Corn on the cob. Hot dogs. Nachos. If the Chemist was going to unleash his toxins at this event, a lot of people would die.
I pushed my way up to a popcorn vendor and asked who was in charge. He had no idea, but offered me a program. I folded out the map and studied the gigantic layout. The information booth was dead center. I moved as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all. I literally had to force my way through people, enduring a slew of unhappy stares and a few off-color remarks.
“So what’s the rush anyway?” Harry had somehow caught up and was right behind me. “You think this poison guy is going to try something?”
“I don’t know. There’s a good chance he did something. This guy hates cops, and here’s a chance to kill a bunch at once.”
“Think he did something to the soft pretzels?”
“I don’t know.”
McGlade shoved a large pretzel under my nose.
“Take a bite, tell me if it’s safe.”
I knocked it aside, pushed over to the edge of the crowd, and walked along the perimeter, which was much quicker.
“Lots of people,” McGlade said. He’d risked it; his mouth was full of pretzel. “Whaddaya think? Thirty thousand? Forty? Be tough to poison this many people.”
Harry had a point. So many different vendors, it would be an impossible feat to hit all of them, or even half of them. If I wanted to kill a bunch of people here, how would I do it? Gas? I spied a helium tank being used to fill balloons. I also noted a cooling-off station, which sprayed a fine mist of cool water onto people who walked beneath it. The problem with either was speed. The poison would have to be slow-acting, so as many people as possible could become infected before panic made the rest flee, or instantaneous, getting as many people as possible at once.
“How about a crop duster?” McGlade said. “He could swoop down, trailing gas.”
Harry pretended his fake hand was an airplane and made zooming sounds as he flew it around. I double-checked the map, decided that this was the midpoint, and forced myself back into the masses. The information booth was appropriately crowded, and I marched to the front of the line and said, “Who’s in charge?”
Dirty Martini Page 19