by Ed Gorman
“Would you help me sit up, Doctor?”
It was a long trip to rest on my bottom. But once there I found that the pain subsided considerably. “How long have I been out?”
Dr. Ryan was a middle-aged woman with very soft blue eyes and a remarkably erotic mouth. She wore a blue cocktail dress cut just low enough to show the top of her freckled cleavage. The detective, who’d yet to give his name, was burly, surly, and suspicious.
“Do I need any stitches?”
The doctor was about to speak. The detective spoke first, over her. “No stitches, no concussion from what the doctor can see. The only blood was from your nose. We estimate that you weren’t on that sidewalk unconscious very long, because of the heavy foot traffic. Somebody saw you and cell-phoned the front desk. You’ve been here about ten minutes. The doctor doesn’t think you need an ambulance. I asked her to let me ask you a few questions. Does that catch us up to date to your satisfaction?”
The last question was sarcastic enough to bring a frown to the doctor’s wonderful mouth. “I’m not quite sure why you’re treating him this way, Detective Slattery, and I have to say I don’t like it. Somebody knocked him out. He doesn’t know who and he doesn’t know why. That seems reasonable.”
“Well, it sure wasn’t any mugger who knocked him out. Otherwise they’d have taken everything he had on him.”
My head was able to glance around the white room without undue pain. This was a real infirmary. I was on a comfortable examination table. The walls were lined with sparkling white glass-fronted cases filled with medicines and medical equipment of all kinds. No wonder I liked this hotel so much.
Dr. Ryan ignored him. “The only problem we had—and it wasn’t that much of a problem—was getting your nosebleed to stop. You got very little on you but the sidewalk is a mess. There’s no sign that you broke it or damaged it in any way. But the best course would be to send you to the ER, where they can X-ray your head and nose as well. That’s what I’d do if I were you. You could rest here for a while and then drive yourself to the hospital—it’s right nearby—or I could call for an ambulance.”
Slattery moved in. “We’ll need you to sign a statement.”
“It won’t be much of a statement. It’s what I told you. I was walking to my car when somebody hit me from behind.”
“And you can’t think of any enemy you might have who’d do something like that?”
“I’m a political consultant. We don’t usually resort to violence.”
“Political consultant? Who’s your man?”
“Nichols.”
“Figures. I’m a Lake man myself.”
I smiled at Dr. Ryan. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I was irritable from everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes. I said, “You’ve been riding my ass since I came to. You think there was some personal reason I was attacked. I don’t. I can’t rule it out, but I also can’t think of anybody who’d do it. I’ve basically given you my statement twice. I was walking out to my car and somebody hit me from behind and knocked me to the sidewalk. That’s all I know and that’s the sum and substance of my statement. And I don’t have anything to add. And I don’t plan on changing it one bit. So if you want me to stop down tomorrow morning and sign it, I’ll be happy to. How’s that?”
Amusement played in the gentle blue eyes of the good doctor. “For now, I want to turn the light off and let our patient here rest up a little. If that’s all right with you, Detective Slattery?”
He growled something I didn’t understand, nodded to Dr. Ryan, and left.
“Everywhere I go I make new friends.”
A pleasing smile. “You’re sensitive to what others think of you, I see. I guess I got a slightly different sense of the detective than you did.”
“He was just embarrassed by how much he admires me.”
“So that’s it.” She pointed to the door. “I’ll be out there for another half hour. I need to check messages and call a few hospitals. As I said, you can rest here or go to an ER.”
“Or do whatever I like?”
“Or do whatever you like with the understanding that I’d prefer you go to the ER and have a couple of X rays.”
“So it’s my responsibility.”
“Yes, it is. It’s your responsibility.”
“Then I guess I’ll go wash up and probably go upstairs to my room. By the way, shouldn’t you be at the dance?”
“I would’ve escaped even if you hadn’t had your problem. This is the awards part and it really gets dull.”
“I won’t tell them you said that.”
“Just be careful. Remember that.”
Ten minutes later I was in my room, washing up and changing clothes. The suit I’d been wearing was muddy in a few places and torn in one, under the arm. There were blood spatters on my right pants leg.
And then I remembered the gray pants leg that had been the last image I’d had before slipping into unconsciousness. Now that I was fully awake I recognized why the particular gray color and weave of the trouser leg had looked so familiar. It belonged to the uniform that the bellhops wore here. Red blazers, gray trousers. A bellhop had attacked me.
I wore a white crewneck sweater and jeans with a leather jacket and hiking boots. I figured I might be having some trouble tonight. I might as well dress for it. The Glock completed my attire for the evening.
The lobby was still crowded. The restaurant had a line of people waiting to get in and both lounges sounded full to overflowing. Either that or they had a handful of the noisiest drunks this side of the Mississippi River.
I started checking for the bellhop. There were four on duty at this hour. I was assuming that the blood would be easy to spot on his trouser leg. But the longer I looked, the more clearly I realized that as I was slipping away I was apt to see things that might not be there—yes, there’d been a lot of blood given the condition of my nose—but no, this didn’t necessarily mean that he’d gotten any on him. The other possibility was that yes, he’d gotten blood on his trouser leg but he had a spare pair of trousers in his locker and had already changed.
I sat with a paperback in a chair next to the glass elevator that worked nonstop. The most exclusive section of the hotel was the restaurant on the top floor. I’d looked at the prices. Only a lobbyist could afford them.
Who knew that I’d turn out to be the guy in all those TV private-eye shows who sat in the lobby pretending to read while actually scanning the people to find the guilty person? Well, we all had our spot in life.
He showed up about fifteen minutes into my stakeout. He got off one of the regular elevators and walked to the front desk. Even from here I could see spatters of something on his trouser leg. He was young, no more than twenty-five, with a headful of curly blond hair and an insolent smile. He was the guy who could fix you up with ladies, get you smack, even find you a cockfight to attend. You could see him on the cover of Pimp Monthly as “Our Man of the Year.”
I didn’t know where he was going and I didn’t care. I followed him. He didn’t become aware of me until he was in a narrow corridor. He suddenly started looking over his shoulder. But he was too late. In three steps I was right behind him, in four I had a handful of his hair, smashed his face into the wall, and gave him a kidney punch that stood him up straight and then folded him in half. His face was bloody from the wall slam. I grabbed his hair again and dragged him outside, where I stood him up straight again so I could give my knee a good target for his crotch. He instinctively tried to double up and grab his wounded area, but I wasn’t going to give him any indulgences. I threw him up against the wall and said, “Who hired you?”
His wild, frightened eyes grew even more frightened. He gaped around, trying to find some way of escape. But there wasn’t any escape possible.
“I want to know who hired you. If you don’t tell me in thirty seconds I start working on your ribs. You understand?”
<
br /> The night. Planes circling O’Hare. Giant trucks racing through the darkness. The dance music from inside the ballroom. The smells of fresh chilled air out here, and the stench of the bellhop having wet himself.
I hit him hard and square in the stomach. Blood began oozing from the corner of his mouth. His eyes told of defeat and shame. He said, the blood making it difficult to speak, “Just had a phone number. Never met her.”
“Her? You must’ve gotten her name?”
He shook his head. “No. Honest. I never got her name.”
He painfully explained the situation, grimacing every time one of his body parts sent a pain message to his brain. He’d been contacted by phone by a woman who told him that she wanted him to pick up a briefcase for her. She told him what the car looked like and what I looked like. She also told him that I would undoubtedly be watching from the sidewalk and that he was to come up behind me and knock me out. Nothing that would inflict serious damage. Just take me out for five to ten minutes. And so he had.
“But if I hit you too hard, I’m sorry.”
“You got the briefcase?”
He nodded. “It’s in my locker.”
“You open it?”
“She told me not to.”
“How are you supposed to get it to her?”
“I’m meeting her out in the parking lot in fifteen minutes. I give her the briefcase and she gives me a thousand dollars in hundreds.” He was getting much better at speaking with a mouthful of blood.
“Let’s go get the briefcase.”
“What?”
“You said you’ve got the briefcase in your locker. We’re going to go get it. You and I. Then we’re going to wait in the parking lot for her to show up.”
“I really need that thousand dollars, dude.”
He must have been feeling much stronger now. Calling somebody “dude” requires a certain amount of energy.
“We’ll make a trade. You lose your thousand dollars and I don’t turn you over to the cops. How’s that?”
He seemed to think about it, which suggested that he was a harder case than I’d guessed. I’d trade a thousand dollars to stay out of Cook County Jail for six months—his likely sentence—but he wanted that grand badly enough to actually consider risking life in a cell for a thousand dollars.
“Shit,” he said.
“What’s your name, by the way?”
“Tim Gaines.”
I took my hands from the bunched shirt I had pressed against his collarbone.
“I can’t afford no police record. They’d fire my ass here for sure. Insurance won’t cover hops if they’ve got a police record.”
“Sounds reasonable. Now let’s go get that briefcase.”
“I told my girlfriend we were going to Vegas on that money. I already had another fifteen hundred saved to put with it.”
“C’mon. Let’s go get the briefcase.”
Even in the newest hotel there are sections below that remind you of the catacombs. We went down two levels to a sub-subbasement, the effect unpleasant for a claustrophobe like me. I could smell the heat from the laundry and hear the boom and grind of different motors at work. The men’s locker room had a shower area and different kinds of aftershave. Picking up the briefcase was anticlimactic.
Back upstairs, we went outside. He took up a position at the curb as I’d instructed. I wanted the arriving car to be as close to me as possible. I’d wait until the vehicle pulled up and he’d started to approach it. Then I’d appear, run around the car to the driver’s side, and show the Glock. If the driver tried to pull away I’d shoot out the two tires on my side.
Gaines kept looking back at me. His nervousness started to make me anxious, too. All this had to be done quickly. Twice he walked off the curb, giving me the impression that he saw the car pulling up. But both times were false alarms. My armpits were soaked with sweat. Despite the cold I was in need of changing shirts.
Finally he made his move and it was the right one. A two-year-old Pontiac sedan pulled up and he immediately started walking toward it.
I let him reach the car and start talking to the driver before I sprinted out from the shadows and ducked down as I worked my way around the rear of the car and up to the driver’s window.
I already knew who I’d see. I’d ridden in this car many times during the campaign.
While she talked to him, I tapped on her window with my Glock. She turned to face me, looking alternately shocked, angry, and then hurt, as if I’d betrayed her in some way.
I opened the door and said, “Slide over, Laura. I’m driving.”
CHAPTER 28
“Where are you taking me?”
“We’re going to drive around and you’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on here.”
“I don’t want to tell you anything, Dev. And I don’t have to.”
“We could always go right to the police.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. They’d want to see the tape. And it would all be over for Nichols.”
“What the hell is this all about? Why did you pay Greaves to make that tape?”
“I already told you I don’t want to say anything. I’ll only talk to my lawyer, nobody else.”
“What the hell has Warren ever done to you?”
“He fired Wylie. And Phil never recovered. He’d been sober for six years but he started drinking again.” Pause. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“Be my guest. Use your cell. Call him. I’ll drive you over there and wait till you’re finished.”
“And then what?”
“Then I want you to tell me what this is all about. I think you owe the campaign that much.”
“I don’t owe the campaign anything.”
“What were you planning to do with the tape?”
“Send it to Jim Lake.”
“Great. That’s loyalty.”
“Yeah, Dev. The same kind of loyalty he showed to Phil.”
“Phil, Phil, Phil. I don’t get the connection here.”
“The connection was that I was in love with him.”
“Oh.”
“Even though he wasn’t in love with me. He saw me the way he would a sister. We even slept together but it didn’t help him.”
“Help him in what way?”
“Help him get over this other woman.”
“Anybody I know?”
“I’m calling David. You need to be quiet.”
The call didn’t last much more than a minute. He was awake, and no, it wasn’t too late. He’d put on some coffee for her. She knew the address. It was not far from Loyola University, a genteel two-story brick home with white shutters and a screened-in porch running the length of the front. I parked in the driveway and cut the lights.
“You’re just going to sit here?”
“I’m just going to sit here.”
“There’s no guarantee I’m going to tell you anything.”
“I realize that.”
“You could always take a cab back to your hotel.”
“And miss all the fun of sitting out here?”
“You don’t have any right to do this.”
“You know the worst thing about this is that you’re a stranger. I’m serious. I don’t know who you are. You’re this beautiful young woman and that part hasn’t changed. But everything else has. Especially your voice. I’ve never heard this kind of anger and hatred in your voice before. And the way you look at me. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to you that would make you hate me, too.”
“You took Phil’s place.”
“But I didn’t fire him, Laura. I only came on because there was a vacancy.”
“Maybe I’m being irrational about you. But I’m not being irrational about Warren.”
“I’m quitting the day after the election. Win or lose.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Very serious. I don’t hold Warren in any higher regard than you do. I’m sick of him and all his lies.”
“Well, then I owe you an apology.”
“You can make it up to me by telling me what’s going on.”
“I’ll see what my lawyer says.”
She started to turn toward her door, but I grabbed her wrist. “One more question.”
“Let go of me, Dev.”
“Did you kill Greaves?”
“Are you fucking insane, Dev? Do you think I go around killing people?”
I let go of her wrist.
And with that she was gone. The dome light flashed bright for a moment as she got out of the car. A glimpse of that lovely face, so troubled now.
She stayed for slightly more than ninety minutes. I listened to talk shows dealing with the coming election. The vampires were out, sucking the blood from any serious discussion with wild claims and accusations. Most of the cranks hated Warren. He was described variously as a socialist, a communist, a supporter of terrorism, a sissy, and a despiser of all that was good and true in this great land of ours. Lake, on the other hand, was described as a man we could count on when the Martians attacked. Or the Venusians. I couldn’t quite figure out which alien nation they had in mind.
Harsh wind sure made the lemony glow of the downstairs windows look awful cozy. Watching a late movie with a woman I was in love with, a drink or two, and then some comfortable sex before we fell asleep. All things possible. That would be my first priority after I walked away from Warren’s camp. Finding a woman. I was ready to resort to sandwich boards if need be. And on Michigan Avenue. In broad daylight.
She was a bit drunk when she came back to the car. And she had the hiccups to prove it.
“Everything’s going to hell,” she said. “I’ll probably be in prison a month from now. The thing I worry about most”—pause for a hiccup—“is my parents. I was the first person to graduate from college in my family. The Chinese”—pause for hiccup—“are proud people. Though sometimes you wouldn’t know it. All that bowing and”—pause for hiccup—“crap.”
“You fixed up Warren’s drink, too?”
“Yeah. It was actually”—pause—“easy.”
I drove slowly back to the hotel, listening to her tell me, between hiccups, what had transpired inside with her lawyer. He had told her that it was unlikely that Warren would bring the matter of taping him or extortion to the police given the nature of the tape. The police would assure him that the contents of the tape would forever be held in secret, but in this age of the media, “secret” was anything that lasted for more than forty-eight hours. But she was convinced that she was headed for prison despite all his reassurances, even when the lawyer said Warren couldn’t even go after her for the stiffed drink. He’d be worried that that too would lead somehow to the tape.
