“We have gathered here today after too many years to celebrate the lives and pay our respects to Tommy Daley and Lily Ho. Tommy was a wonderful son and brother. We now know that he was also a beloved husband, father, and grandfather. Lily was a cherished daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. I never had the privilege of meeting her, but I now know that she and her mother saved Tommy’s life. That makes her a hero. I am profoundly grateful that she was a member of our family. And that she and Tommy blessed us with Melinda and Thomas.”
I spent a moment talking about Tommy’s all-too-short life. The son. The brother. The football hero. The war hero. “He was also my hero. And my best friend.”
Tears were running down Big John’s cheeks. Pete’s eyes were closed as he rocked back and forth.
I let go of Rosie’s hand and put my arm around her. She hugged me and held me close.
I looked at the table with the two urns and the American flag. “Tommy and Lily, we know that you are in heaven with our Mom and Dad. We’re sorry that it took us so long to give you a proper sendoff, but we hope that we’ve done right by you today. We love both of you and we miss you terribly. We can’t bring you back, but now we can bring you home. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, may God bless you and look after you and all of those who love you. And may you rest in eternal peace.”
I looked over at Big John, who responded with an approving nod.
As we started to walk away, I turned back and looked at the stump of the old bamboo tree where my brother had been buried almost four decades earlier. I felt the lump in my throat when I whispered, “Happy birthday, Tommy.”
* * *
“What are you listening to?” Rosie asked.
I took off my earbuds and heard the roar of the 777. “Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’”
“Seems fitting.”
“I thought so. Where are we?”
“Somewhere between Guam and Hawaii.”
“How much longer?”
“Another six hours.” She reached over and took my hand. “You spoke beautifully.”
“Thank you.” I squeezed her hand. “The kids were good.”
“They’re good kids.”
“It was a long way to go for a memorial service for an uncle they’d never met.”
“They’ve heard a lot about your brother. And our Tommy wanted to know more about the guy he was named after.” She glanced at Big John, who was dozing in the seat across the aisle. “Is he okay?”
“Yeah.”
“He took it hard.”
“Tommy was his first nephew—and his favorite. My mom was his only sister. And my dad was his best friend.”
“I wish I had met your brother.”
“You would have liked him.”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
“Every day.”
“I wish your parents could have been here.”
“So do I.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Then Rosie—beautiful Rosie—smiled at me. “What’s the first thing you want to do when we get home?”
“I’d like to get a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake at Bill’s Place. It was Tommy’s favorite restaurant when we were kids.”
“Done. Anything else?”
I touched her cheek. “I’d like to spend more time with you.”
“Now that you’re working for me, that’s inevitable.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“We’ll need to be careful of our anti-nepotism rules.”
“We’ll work around them. Still glad you decided to become a politician?”
“So far. Ask me again in five years.”
“I will.”
“Do you think you can handle being head of the Felony Division without me?”
“Absolutely. And if I need your help, I know where to find you in your fancy new office down the hall.” I lowered my voice. “Thanks for helping with Thomas’s case. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It was fun to be back in court, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to be able to try any cases now that you’re a big-shot politician?”
“Maybe once or twice a year.” She touched my cheek. “What did you have in mind when you said that you wanted to spend more time with me?”
“Instead of staying at your place twice a week, I’d like to stay three times a week. If all goes well, we can think about increasing it to four days a week.”
She grinned. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“It’s a great idea.” I held her hand tightly. “I love you, Rosie.”
“I love you, too, Mike.”
THE END
A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thanks very much for reading this story. I hope you liked it. If you did, I hope you will check out my other books. In addition, I would appreciate it if you would let others know. In particular, I would be very grateful if you would tell your friends and help us spread the word by e-mail, Amazon, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. In addition, if you are inclined (and I hope you are), I hope you will consider posting an honest review on Amazon.
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Sheldon
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing stories is a collaborative process. I would like to thank many kind people who have been very generous with their time.
Thanks to my beautiful wife, Linda, who still reads all of my manuscripts and keeps me going when I’m stuck. You are a kind and generous soul and I am very grateful.
Thanks to our twin sons, Alan and Stephen, for your support and encouragement for so many books. I am more proud of you than you can imagine.
Thanks to my teachers, Katherine Forrest and Michael Nava, who told me that I should try to finish my first book. Thanks to the Every Other Thursday Night Writers Group: Bonnie DeClark, Meg Stiefvater, Anne Maczulak, Liz Hartka, Janet Wallace and Priscilla Royal. Thanks to Bill and Elaine Petrocelli, Kathryn Petrocelli, and Karen West at Book Passage.
Thanks to my friends and colleagues at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton (and your spouses and significant others). I can’t mention everybody, but I’d like to note those of you with whom I’ve worked the longest: Randy and Mary Short, Cheryl Holmes, Chris and Debbie Niels, Bob Thompson, Joan Story and Robert Kidd, Donna Andrews, Phil and Wendy Atkins-Pattenson, Julie and Jim Ebert, Geri Freeman and David Nickerson, Ed and Valerie Lozowicki, Bill and Barbara Manierre, Betsy McDaniel, Tom Nevins, Ron and Rita Ryland, Bob Stumpf, Mike Wilmar, Mathilde Kapuano, Guy Halgren, Aline Pearl, Jack Connolly, Ed Graziani, Julie Penney, and Larry Braun. A big thanks to Jane Gorsi for your incomparable editing skills.
A huge thanks to Vilaska Nguyen of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. If I ever get in trouble, I will call you first.
Thanks to Jerry and Dena Wald, Gary and Marla Goldstein, Ron and Betsy Rooth, Debbie and Seth Tanenbaum, Joan Lubamersky, Tom Bearrows and Holly Hirst, Julie Hart, Burt Rosenberg, Ted George, Phil Dito, Sister Karen Marie Franks, Brother Stan Sobczyk, Jim Schock, George Fong, Chuck and Nora Koslosky, Jack Goldthorpe, Christa Carter, Scott Pratt, Bob Dugoni, and John Lescroart. Thanks to Lauren, Gary and Debbie Fields.
Thanks to Tim and Kandi Durst, Bob and Cheryl Easter, and Larry DeBrock at the University of Illinois. Thanks to Kathleen Vanden Heuvel, Bob and Leslie Berring, and Jesse Choper at Boalt Law School.
Thanks as always to Ben, Michelle, Margie and Andy Siegel, Joe, Jan and Julia Garber, Roger and Sharon Fineberg, Jan Harris Sandler, Scott, Michelle, Kim and Sophie Harris, Stephanie and Stanley Coventry,
Cathy, Richard and Matthew Falco, and Julie Harris and Matthew, Aiden and Ari Stewart.
Excerpt from
THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR
A new mystery featuring Detective David Gold
1
“IT ISN’T OVER”
To the tourists strolling down Michigan Avenue on that hazy summer morning, he looked like a homeless blind man sitting on a urine-soaked cardboard in the doorway of the T-shirt shop across the street from the Art Institute.
Except he wasn’t homeless. And he wasn’t blind.
The waif-thin young man with the wispy beard and the sunglasses nervously fingered the prepaid cell phone buried inside the pocket of the dirt-encrusted overcoat he’d purchased at a Salvation Army thrift store two days earlier. Cheap, easy-to-program, and readily available, the throwaway phones were popular with everyone from globe-trotting corporate executives to budget-conscious college students. They required neither a contract nor a credit card and were virtually untraceable, making them the tool of choice among drug dealers and terrorists. With a few strokes on the Internet, a high school kid of reasonable intelligence and modest technological savvy could turn a cell phone into a detonator.
His lungs filled with fumes from the #14 CTA bus idling on the southwest corner of Michigan and Adams. At eight-forty-five on Monday morning, the thermometer already had topped ninety degrees, and there was no breeze in the not-so-Windy City.
Still a lot cooler than Baghdad. And considerably less dangerous—for now.
He was still in his twenties, but his battle-hardened face and the flecks of gray in his beard made him appear older. His intense eyes moved behind the dark glasses as he silently repeated the mantra his instructors had drilled into him from his first day of training: meticulous planning is the key to success. That explained the bulky raincoat, the soiled denim work pants, and the heavy boots, despite the intense heat. Repulsed by his stench and shoddy appearance, the passers-by kept their distance—just as he had planned it.
The annual summer carnival on Chicago’s grandest boulevard was in full bloom, but he barely noticed. Young couples sipped lattes from Starbucks cups as they pushed colorful baby strollers down the sidewalk. Stylishly-dressed tourists conversed in Spanish, French, Japanese, German, and Russian as they looked in the windows of the upscale stores. College kids in tank tops, T-shirts, and royal blue Cubs caps made their way toward Millennium Park. Lawyers, accountants, and brokers in charcoal business suits and subdued ties pressed smart phones to their ears as they strode deliberately into the Loop. Students from the Art Institute lugged bulky portfolios and painting supplies to their classes. Fast food employees, security guards, and construction workers walked alongside executives, retailers, and librarians.
The young man looked up Michigan Avenue at the Wrigley Building, the white jewel of the Magnificent Mile on the Chicago River, a half-mile north of where he was sitting. It was dwarfed by Donald Trump’s ninety-story monstrosity on the site of the old Sun-Times building. He turned his attention across the street to the Art Institute, the Beaux Arts masterpiece on the western edge of Grant Park. On those rare occasions when a Chicago team made the playoffs, the two bronze lions guarding the museum’s doors would be decorated in the team’s uniform.
He watched a dozen cops cordon off the steps of the museum. A tightly wound woman from the mayor’s office barked instructions to a group of sweaty city workers setting up a microphone beneath the limp flag of the City of Chicago hanging above the archway marked “Members’ Entrance.” He felt bile in his throat when the police chief and the head of the Chicago office of Homeland Security emerged from a black van. The chief had earned his stripes in Personnel. He was elevated to the top job because he was the former mayor’s best friend when they were kids on the Southwest Side. The DHS guy was an even bigger disaster. The retired investment banker lived in the North Shore suburb of Kenilworth, a leafy enclave of gated mansions along Lake Michigan. His sole law enforcement experience had been a brief tour of duty with the Kenilworth Police Commission. To his credit, there had been no terrorist attacks in the affluent hamlet on his watch.
The young man craved a cigarette as he glanced at the ’94 Camry he’d stolen two days earlier and parked in a handicapped space on Adams, just west of Michigan. He commended himself for taking a car with a blue placard and no alarm.
Attention to detail.
He looked down Michigan Avenue for the unmarked police unit carrying the guest of honor to the ceremony across the street. The security of America’s third largest city had been entrusted to a pencil-pushing cop and a pencil-necked political appointee. That needed to change. He would show everybody just how easy it would be for one man to shut down a major U.S. city.
* * *
“I’m glad it’s over,” Gold said.
“So is the entire City of Chicago,” his new partner replied.
Detective David Gold was sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked Crown Vic inching north on Lake Shore Drive alongside Soldier Field, just south of downtown Chicago’s signature skyline. The South Chicago native was sweating through the navy dress uniform that still fit him perfectly even though he’d worn it only a handful of times since he’d become Chicago’s youngest homicide detective ten years earlier. The overburdened air conditioner was losing the battle against the beating sun and the eighty-eight percent humidity that made the Second City such an inviting tourist destination in late July.
“How long will this take?” Gold had spent his entire life on the Southeast Side, but he spoke without a Chicago accent. If an interrogation called for a local touch, he could flatten his vowels and swallow his consonants to sound like his neighbors. He was also fluent in Spanish.
“Fifteen minutes,” his partner said. “You’re getting a Medal of Valor. It would be good form to accept it graciously.”
Gold nodded grudgingly. He felt a shooting pain in his left shoulder as they barreled over a pothole. At thirty-eight, his wiry body felt like the car’s overworked shock absorbers. His closely cropped hair was more gray than brown. He had a balky knee, a scar along his jaw line, and countless aches and pains from almost two decades of award-winning police work in the South Side’s toughest neighborhoods. “This is a photo op for the mayor and the chief,” he said.
“Welcome to Chicago.” Detective A.C. Battle was a burly African American in his late fifties whose melodious basso voice combined the dialects of his native Mississippi with the ghettos of Chicago’s South Side. He had grown up in the projects across the Dan Ryan Expressway from old Comiskey Park. The first Mayor Daley had built the Robert Taylor Homes in the fifties to house thirty thousand African Americans, many of whom—like Battle and his parents—had fled the Jim Crow South. It was also a blatant attempt to segregate them from the terrified white people in the mayor’s neighborhood west of the highway. The Taylor Homes devolved into a cesspool of poverty and violence until the second Mayor Daley finally ordered their demolition in the nineties. Before he was promoted to detective, Battle had spent twenty years patrolling the high-rise shooting galleries of his youth.
Battle looked up at the ornate columns of the iconic stadium where the not-so-monstrous Monsters of the Midway had plied their trade since they’d moved from Wrigley Field in 1971. In an ill-conceived remodel, a soaring ultra-modern bowl had been shoe-horned inside the historic shell, making it look like the Millennium Falcon had landed inside the Roman Coliseum. “Are you going to the Bears’ game next Saturday?”
“The exhibition games are a waste of time,” Gold said. His family had held season tickets since George Halas had stormed the sidelines and Sid Luckman had run the T-formation. Except during his four years at the U. of I. in Champaign, Gold hadn’t missed a regular season or playoff game in three decades.
Battle nodded. “Think the Cubs will make a move before the trading deadline?”
“Doubtful.” Gold had little patience for small talk, but he had met Battle for the first time twenty minutes earlier, and he kne
w they would be engaged in the mating ritual of new partners for several months. “You’re a Cubs guy?”
“’fraid so.”
Gold pushed out a melodramatic sigh. The long-standing animosity between the fans of Chicago’s baseball teams was as much a tradition as the St. Patrick’s Day parade and corruption in City Hall. Sox fans tended to be open and notorious about their contempt for their North Side counterparts. Cubs fans were a more civil bunch; they simply refused to acknowledge that there was a team south of Madison Street. “You’re a South Sider. How did this happen?”
“Ernie.”
Before Michael Jordan, Ernie Banks had been Chicago’s reigning sports idol. “Your guys haven’t won a World Series since 1908.”
“Every team can have a bad century. Besides, we have a nicer ballpark.”
Yes, you do. “That’s another reason the Cubs keep losing. It’s a quality control issue. Sox fans won’t pay for an inferior product.”
“You like new Sox Park?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Even though the White Sox had won the 2005 World Series after a brief eighty-eight year drought, Gold hadn’t forgiven his favorite team for replacing the crumbling old ball yard where Shoeless Joe Jackson had played with a soulless structure bearing the name of a cell phone company. His disdain for the park’s aesthetic shortcomings didn’t prevent him from picking up a few extra bucks working security on weekends. He was also grateful for the modern plumbing.
They turned onto McFetridge Drive, which ran between Soldier Field and the Field Museum of Natural History. In Green Bay, the roads adjacent to Lambeau Field were named after legendary coaches and players. In Chicago, the street next to the stadium where Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, and Walter Payton had played honored the longtime head of the Chicago Park District, who had doled out thousands of patronage jobs to his political cronies.
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