Boom-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  “I did.”

  “Was his name Lorenz?”

  He clicked his keyboard. “It was. Why do you want to know?”

  My hands shook as I held the phone to my ear. Carter had confirmed what I’d heard the FBI agents say.

  Lorenz and, most likely, Donna, are dead.

  “Lorenz is, or I guess now was, our new neighbor.”

  “What?!”

  “He’d moved into Lyndell Newens’ house. She rented it to him.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “I’ve seen him walking past our house.”

  I hadn’t directly answered his question, a technique I’d learned when I was a talking head for the Post on CNBC. It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the entire truth. He was upset by the news that Lorenz was our neighbor, and he didn’t notice.

  “Since I’m close, do you want me to work the story?” I asked.

  “I’ve already assigned a reporter to the scene.”

  “Good luck. With Chicago traffic, your reporter might not get here until midnight.”

  “It’s too dangerous for you to go there.”

  “Hey, I know what you can do. You can log onto Twitter and find out what’s going on. It’ll be quicker and save your reporter the drive out here.”

  “Tina, please do not go to the scene!”

  I hung up.

  A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

  81

  I called Molly and asked her to watch Kerry a little longer so I could work the scene of the tragedy. By the time I arrived at Lorenz’s office, bystanders had already lined the far side of North Paulina Street. Two fire trucks, an EMT unit, and several police cars had parked haphazardly in both lanes with lights flashing and portable radios blaring.

  As I watched, a Chicago CSI van arrived on the scene and screeched to a stop. I moved closer.

  “What happened?” I asked the cop who appeared to be in charge of crowd control.

  “Can’t say, ma’am,” he said. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  The stink of soot and ashes mixed with the pleasant fragrance from shattered mouthwash and hand sanitizer bottles hung in the air.

  Not again.

  I closed my eyes and tried to prevent an attack.

  There’s no bomb here.

  I tried to tell that to my PTSD-addled brain. It took several seconds, but I was able to gain control enough to open my eyes.

  The front door had been blown out along with the shattered front office windows. The adjoining offices on each side had suffered minimal damage.

  Several people around me took pictures with their cell phones and sent them into cyberspace. The rest looked like they tweeted what they were watching in real time.

  This is why newspapers are dying.

  Three TV vans had parked a block away. Cameramen shot videos, but there were no onsite TV reporters working on camera.

  A brown Ford Crown Vic pulled up. Detective Tony Infantino popped out of the driver’s side. A female cop jumped out of the passenger side. They put on latex gloves and green paper booties before they stepped over the blackened front door and entered the office.

  Detectives?

  Carter said the explosion was an accident. My brain whirled. Lorenz was an FBI agent. If the FBI hadn’t alerted the Chicago police they were working a case right in the cops’ own backyard, the locals would be extremely upset they hadn’t been informed about what was going down.

  And that was my bargaining chip to learn more details about the story that might resurrect my career.

  82

  Twenty minutes later, Tony stepped over the fragments of the blown-out door and out into the crowded street. He put on his sunglasses and gave the scene his once-over cop look, stopping when he caught me watching him. He stared back for a few seconds and then stomped over to me.

  “A problem?” I asked sweetly.

  “Don’t start with the happy horseshit,” he said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  I kept quiet.

  “Dentist named Greg Lorenz lived next door to you, right?” he continued.

  “Lived, as in the past tense?”

  “You got it. He just died…” he jerked his thumb toward Lorenz’s office, “…in there with a woman.”

  “Died? How?”

  “Nitrous oxide blew up.”

  “Huh? An accident?”

  “That’s the story we’re releasing.”

  “Then it’s not an accident?”

  He opened his mouth to answer but stopped. “Can’t tell you about an ongoing investigation.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “How?”

  “I live next door and watch what’s going on.”

  “And?”

  I held up my hand. “Only if you promise me an exclusive on the story.”

  He took off his sunglasses. “Okay, deal. Give it to me.”

  “Lorenz worked undercover for the FBI.”

  “You gotta be... How do you know that?”

  “His FBI pals sterilized his house less than an hour after the explosion in this dental office.”

  Not about to tell you how I know this.

  He twirled his sunglasses around in his hands. “It was the C4.”

  “That’s what killed Lorenz and the girl?”

  “No... I mean, yeah, C4 probably did kill them, but that’s not why the FBI is working this. It was the C4 residue on your stolen trash that I gave to our lab guys.”

  Uh-oh.

  83

  My neck muscles began to tighten up. “Why didn’t you tell me there was C4 on the trash samples I gave you?”

  “You didn’t specifically ask,” Tony said.

  Got me there.

  “Okay, but why did you send it to the FBI?”

  “Lab guys discovered traces of C4 the same day you gave me that trash. After 9/11, whenever our lab guys find any bomb residue, they have to ship the tested material to the FBI lab in D.C. They forwarded it the same night. Feds called me the next morning. I had to give you up as the source of the trash.”

  The memory of my encounter with C4 made my head begin to throb.

  “I was blown up by a bomb made of C4.”

  “Heard about it from a reporter on the police desk. What, four, five years ago?”

  “Five. I was almost killed.”

  “Dude said you got fired because of it.”

  Not going to respond to that.

  “I don’t remember getting a card or flowers from you while I was in the hospital.”

  “You survived. End of story.”

  How glad am I we broke up?

  “Do you know much about C4?” I asked.

  “Stable, but needs a detonator to set it off. You know, boom-Boom.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “C4 can’t blow up by itself. There has to be a detonator exploding next to it to set it off. Little boom followed by a big boom.”

  Now, I remember!

  I was back standing in the hallway next to the men’s bathroom in the Arlington Women’s Clinic. I’d heard a thunderous explosion before I was knocked unconscious for several days. But milliseconds before the big blast, there had first been a smaller explosion, which, until this second, I’d ignored. Tony was right: small boom, big boom, the detonator and then the C4.

  “It can be molded into about any shape,” he continued. “And it can be traced like a fingerprint using a chemical substance called DMDNB.”

  “That detail might come in handy.”

  He yawned. “Might, might not.”

  We stood in silence.

  “But anyway, thanks for promptly analyzing the trash,” I said. “Your debt is paid.”

  “Better be. Had to call in a couple of favors to get it done.”

  “Did you give the feds al-Turk’s name and the other three sets of fingerprints?”

  “How dumb do you think I am? Not gonna let them steal my case.”

  �
�Did you run al-Turk’s name?”

  “Yep.”

  “But you didn’t come up with much, right?”

  “His record’s clean.”

  “Your guys didn’t find Lorenz’s home computer’s hard drive, did they?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He had one in his office.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Meet me at my house in ten minutes. I have a clue that might give you the answer.”

  84

  Ten minutes later, Tony double-parked on the street in front of Lorenz’s house. His female partner went inside. He climbed up my front steps. I ushered him into the kitchen.

  He glanced around. “Where’s the kid?”

  “At a friend’s.”

  “Where’s she usually sit?”

  I pointed at the chair with her booster seat. “Right there. Why?”

  “Don’t wanna get glop on my pants.”

  He sat down in another chair. I handed him the sandwich bag containing the toilet paper I’d retrieved from its hiding place in the laundry room.

  “This is from one of the men who took the hard drive from the dentist’s computer,” I said. “They entered Lorenz’s house just before the FBI did. I swabbed this sample from the bathroom sink after they left and before the FBI arrived.”

  Tony glared at me. “You saw the perps? You freaking kidding me? These guys just blew two people up. They’re not playing Ping-Pong here. You wanna live through this then tell me what’s really goin’ on.”

  At least he hadn’t used the “D” word; I heard enough of it from Carter. And I hated to admit it, but Tony was right. I needed his help and protection.

  “Mr. al-Turk, the man whose fingerprints you identified from the trash I stole, lives right there,” I said pointing out our front window at his house across the street. “He moved in about a month ago.”

  Tony glanced at the house and held up the sandwich bag. “This DNA from him?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw that man’s face. All I’m sure of is that he speaks Arabic. The other people with him in Lorenz’s house did too. I don’t know if al-Turk was even there.”

  He stretched back in the chair. “Sweets, all you have is one guy named al-Turk, who, by the way, has a clean record and C4 residue on his trash.”

  I held up my hands. “But...”

  “...and an unknown number of perps who broke into Lorenz’s house and speak Arabic. Not enough to build a case. If C4 residue is the only evidence you have, be hard to convince the captain to spend money on these DNA tests you want.”

  “There’s a little more. A friend and I have been using GPS devices to track both of the vehicles al-Turk has in his garage.”

  He pondered that a few seconds. “Two cars? One driver.”

  “Yes.”

  “Both cars move around at the same time?”

  “They do.”

  “Kinda hard for one guy to do that.”

  “I agree, but I can’t prove who the other driver or drivers are. All I know is that there are four beds in al-Turk’s house.”

  “Do four people live there?”

  “I don’t have any documented proof of that.”

  “Where do the vehicles go?”

  “A mosque, the Twenties, Whole Foods, and a couple of Middle Eastern restaurants in the area.”

  “The Twenties? Strip joint near West Belmont and North Halsted?”

  Why am I not surprised you know where it is?

  “If you’d worked a little harder on your research on al-Turk, you would’ve discovered his name is on the liquor license for the Twenties.”

  Because you didn’t do your job, buster.

  85

  I knew a lot about al-Turk, and Tony was waiting for me to tell him all of it.

  “I ran a financial background analysis on al-Turk,” I said.

  Tony took out his small spiral notebook and a pen. “His money fronting all of this?”

  “Probably not. I lost the money trail at a merchant bank in Luxembourg. And the female victim worked at the Twenties.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “She a stripper?”

  “She is.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Donna Allen.”

  He made a notation in his book. “How do you know this?”

  “She worked out with us at XSport. I recognized her when I saw her stripping at the Twenties.”

  He raised his eyebrows and gave me a disdainful smirk. “You at a strip club? Don’t see it.”

  “I do what I need to do to research a story.”

  He stared at me. I stared back.

  “Two cars never go anywhere else?”

  The sarcastic tone of his voice was starting to get on my nerves.

  “As far as I can tell, they don’t.”

  “Al-Turk Italian?”

  “Hardly. Why?”

  “Protection rackets. Mob uses C4 to convince storeowners they need protection by blowing up their stores. They’re using it on the South Side by teaming up with a couple of the black gangs.”

  “A strange marriage.”

  “Scary one, too, but they have competitors. Any Mexicans involved?”

  “Why do you want to know? All the evidence indicates that al-Turk is Muslim.”

  “Mexican cartels — especially from the Sinaloa district — are in the protection business along with selling drugs.”

  “The protection racket I understand, but why do they need C4 to sell drugs?”

  “To blow up their competitors.”

  Blow up? C4?

  I remembered my reporting days in Afghanistan and the bombings I had covered. My stomach began to churn.

  “Tony, what if al-Turk is a terrorist?”

  86

  “Dude could be a terrorist, but he or his men would have to scout out potential locations to do surveillance of the targets,” Tony said.

  “I agree,” I said.

  His cop interrogation voice surfaced. “You said the two cars keep driving to the same places.”

  “I did.”

  “If he or his pals are terrorists, they would have to drive around to work their targets. And if they’re in the protection business, they would spend a lot of time on the road to harass the vics.”

  “And they’re not.”

  “So you say… And there’s another thing. Why the hell is this al-Turk guy living in the middle of your peaceful Chicago neighborhood?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing ever since I discovered he owns the Twenties.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s say he’s involved with drugs.”

  “Okay.”

  “A strip club is a perfect place to launder money.”

  He glanced at his watch and motioned for me to hurry up.

  “He moves to our neighborhood where no one expects to find a bad guy.”

  He waved his hand again. And then yawned.

  Jerk-off.

  “He sets up an ongoing operation to sell a steady supply of product to local dealers.”

  “Where does he buy the raw product?”

  “I was embedded in Afghanistan with the marines. One of the stories I wrote was about the pipeline of drugs from there to the U.S.”

  He threw his notebook on the table. “I know all that crap.”

  I need to convince you.

  “In New York City, Al-Turk had partial ownership in an import/export company called Business Ventures. It did business in the Middle East. Not much of a stretch to assume that his imports could be raw heroin.”

  “How does he receive and deliver his drugs?”

  At least you’re now listening.

  “He doesn’t. I think the suppliers and buyers come to him.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “When he first moved in, I watched two men unloading boxes from a truck into his garage. Maybe he continues to use the alley for other deliveries.”

  “Not following.”


  “Suppose a supplier drives into al-Turk’s alley and parks by his garage like the guys I saw unloading moving boxes. But instead of moving boxes, the guy brings raw drugs to al-Turk’s garage.”

  “You think that’s where he stores the product?”

  “Yes, until he later takes it inside and cuts it down.”

  Tony yawned again.

  “And when he’s done, he moves it back to the garage for street sale. The buyer does the same thing as the supplier. He drives down the alley and stops. Al-Turk opens the garage door and puts the product in the buyer’s car.”

  He made a notation in his notebook. “Deal wouldn’t take more than thirty seconds.”

  “No neighbors would see it happen unless they were in the alley at exactly the same time.”

  “If you’re right, then that’s why Lorenz was offed.”

  What?

  87

  “When Lorenz began visiting the Twenties, al-Turk might have suspected the dentist was an undercover agent of some kind,” Tony said. “When he found out for sure, he or his guys blew Lorenz up to stop the investigation and be an example to local dealers he isn’t scared of a federal agent.”

  “Do you think the girl was collateral damage?”

  “Only thing that makes sense.”

  “But if al-Turk’s a drug dealer, why is the FBI running this and not the DEA?”

  “Best guess is the FBI initiated the investigation because of the C4 on the trash, and they aren’t about to give it up after spending money setting Lorenz up undercover.”