Absolute Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Under the weak glow of the old-world styled lamppost, Detective Chen pulled forth the stolen note she'd palmed from the box, a cryptic note from mother to son as it turned out, but an eerie, even chilling note at the same time. As Chen read it, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt her skin crawl as if a sudden cold rash of creeping satanic fingertips scraped over her soul. She gasped, glanced all around, over her shoulder, half certain that the son of the infamous Matthew Matisak must have the eyes and instincts of a tiger, that he could not only pierce the night with his vision but her very mind, to know what she held in her hand, and to kill her for it.

  “My God... it's him... gotta be the one the APB's out on, the creep that rips people's backs open for their spines, and he and I are the only two people on the planet who know who... who he is.”

  Tanith Chen had never felt so vulnerable or so absolutely alone in her territory before. She feared, even as good as she was, she'd be no match for this cunning madman.

  Still he'd kept going, moving north toward the lights of Michigan Avenue, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Water Tower Place. He'd be swallowed up in the crowds. She had to follow, to again catch sight of him, and she had to get backup. She folded and put away the note and the police sketch, noticing that her hands shook. Her fingers struggled with the keypad on her cell phone. As she called for help, she began tearing away her baggy, oversized clothing, dropping it as she went to rid herself of the disguise he would spot. At the same time, her feet moved her fluidly toward Michigan Avenue in the direction the son of Matisak had taken. She'd lost sight of him, and having to pass by hedges, she feared he knew what she was thinking and who she was, and that he might, at any moment, dart out at her. Fleeting thoughts of how great it would be to have the Spine Thief collared by an Asian Chicago policewoman flitted through her mind as well.

  And the note she had plucked from the box and folded away. What about that? This was hardcore evidence. It must not be lost or damaged or ruined by her fingerprints or perspiration any further. It needed to be under glass and studied by the experts chasing this guy. It needed FBI attention. This whole damn night needed FBI attention.

  Her call to her partner for help went through. Looking now like a jogger, all her makeup peeled away, wearing only sweatpants and T-shirt—a bit chilled by the mix of cool air and stumbling onto the biggest case of her career, Tanith Chen tried consciously to slow both her mind and her breathing. It didn't work. She breathlessly told her partner what she had, standing now at the perimeter of the park in the shadow of the Drake Hotel, traffic noise causing her to shout into the mouthpiece.

  “Where is he now?” asked her partner, Gene Kelley.

  She looked all round her. He was nowhere in sight. She had to admit this to Gene. As she did so, she wondered if the killer had somehow doubled-back and faded into the green blackness of the park foliage. Or had he stepped up his pace, going north on the Magnificent Mile?

  Gene promised a shitload of backup, so they could cordon off the entire area for six blocks. But Tanith cautioned any sirens, and any big show of force. “You'd just alert him to the fact we're on to him.”

  “How can you be on to him if you don't know where the fuck he is?” countered Kelley.

  “Given the nature of the beast, innocent lives could be put at risk if you come rushing in like the cavalry, Gene. Look, I think he went south on Michigan. I'm going to do what I can to get and keep a visual on him. But no helicopters or guys rappelling down on the avenue unless they can stay out of his sight.”

  “You go cautiously, Slick.”

  “I talked to him, Gene. He's a cool customer. Didn't spook, but then he was convinced I was Barney the Street-Wise salesman. He had no idea who I was.”

  “We've all got his likeness now. You were out when it was disseminated. We all know what the guy looks like.”

  “So do I... now.” She spotted him in the crowd ahead. She'd jogged, stopping only to talk to Gene. “My God, I got a visual on him!”

  “Where's he headed?”

  “I dunno. The Tribune tower maybe?”

  “What, to give himself up?”“Could be.”

  “Keep your eyes on him.”

  “Wait... where'd he go? Shit... disappeared like smoke. Stepped into a shop doorway or down a side street.”

  “He may be on to you. Don't take another step. We're on our way.”

  Two squad cars converged on her location, followed by Gene's unmarked sedan used in backing her up in the park. All the uniformed cops spread out with the caveat to locate Giles Gahran, each with a photo in hand. Gene put a big arm around Tanith. “How's my lady love, Slick?” He'd begun using the nickname shortly after their first partnering.

  “Slick is just fine, but damn I really wanted this guy.” She carefully pulled out the note she'd lifted from the unattended box. “You think the way I got hold of this it'll stand up in a court of law?” She held it out between thumb and forefinger, gingerly, when a Chicago gust stole it away, sending her chasing after it.

  “Fuck!” The document seemed as elusive as Gahran. It took Gene stomping on it, dirtying it badly, to stop it from completely blowing off.

  “You got hold of the FBI?” she asked.

  “They got word, yeah. All nine yards of it. Couple of their agents from Milwaukee've been canvassing and scouring the city for Gahran. Imagine it, Slick, this freak that rips out people's goddamn spines.”

  “So you tell 'em about the note?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the news that this guy is... or may be related to Mad Matthew Matisak, the creep caught here in Chicago like a decade ago and put away and escaped and finally brought down in New Orleans?”

  “I relayed all of it, Slick, all of it.”

  “Then why in hell aren't they all over this? Where the fuck are they?”

  “Apparently, they've run down an apartment house where he's staying. They're sitting on it.”

  “A stakeout?”

  “Waiting, yeah, for a damn warrant for search and seizure, all ready to make an arrest if and when he shows.”

  Another unmarked car arrived, and a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome FBI agent who introduced himself as Laughlin made long eye contact with Chen in her sweats. “You're the one with the weird story of having run into Giles Gahran, and is that the document you found?”

  She looked down at the soiled note, the stains now smeared across the ink lettering. Agent Laughlin said, “Looks like an old Underwood style typewriter. But our boys and girls at the lab'll know soon enough. They're trained on this kind of thing.”

  “Sorry about the mess we made of it,” she apologized.

  “Don't worry. We've managed around a lot worse.” He read the note and his face went ashen, two shades lighter.

  “You all right, Agent Laughlin?” she asked.

  “This is what I call the true nature of evil.”

  “A real Mommie Dearest story in it, that's for sure.”

  “Look... it appears you all have lost sight of him, and our best chance now is to catch him at the rental, and Petersaul and Cates have that covered, so... how 'bout if...”

  Gene instinctively read her body language that told him to disappear.

  “Yes, Agent?”

  “Well, I mean... have you had a bite? There's a great restaurant—Joe's Chicago just a couple blocks up back of the Marriott. Best of Chicago.”

  “Oh, yeah, great place across from the... yeah... I am famished after all that's happened.”

  “I'll get your stuff outta the park if none of the real bums have stolen it already,” Gene called to her. Gene signaled tothe uniforms moving from storefront to storefront on the most protected mile of real estate in the city that they were done here.

  The police presence disappeared as quickly as it had materialized.

  GILES Gahran had insisted he be allowed to take his box up on the enormous shining Ferris wheel with him. The operator argued that he'd be happy to set it asid
e and hold it in a safe place until his return. It took an additional twenty to show the man how seriously Giles wanted to take the box on the ride.

  “Look man, I got no metal detectors here. I can't know what the fuck is in that box. And never in life ever seeing a box like that. You say it's just photos and papers, stuff important only to you, but how am I to know you ain't got something, you know, sinister in the box. And even if you don't got something, you know, like that in there, I got people I gotta answer to and I need this job. You got no idea.”

  “Look,” Giles directed his eyes to the box. Giles shuffled his hand through all the papers. Just paper. Feel how light.”

  The operator waved him off. “Yeah... OK... I can see it ain't nothing but paper, but still the rule is nothing carried on, not even a friggin' umbrella even, not even if it looks like rain, you know, 'cause if something fell off, it's a damn instant projectile, you see my drift?”

  Giles slipped in another forty atop the twenty.

  The operator glanced around. Finally, he nodded, a cigar bobbing in his mouth. “OK, but you gotta promise to keep that thing from falling. It falls out, you could hurt somebody at such heights, you know. Don't matter how light it is.”

  Giles got aboard the car with the box. He'd had to again untie it to demonstrate its harmlessness to the fool, and now he could not place it on his lap because of the bar placed across his front. From his coat pocket, he pulled forth the Spigot—his father's blood-draining device—and replaced it in the box.

  “The wheel's so damn big, it only goes around once, you know? Don't want any complaints,” the operator said in a monotone that spoke of an eternal boredom. And so the ride began.

  The operator moved Giles and his cargo by increments as he let off others who had already made the trip to the top, carefully monitoring weight and balance as he did so. Giles's trip to the stars was stop-start, stop-start, not the smooth ride he'd expected, and it didn't allow for any sensation of flight to occur. Rather for Giles, the box of the gondola gave him the sensation of being inside the box he carried on with him.

  Finally, he arrived near the top of the mammoth arc. Held here as the operator far below now continued his endless quest of balance, counterweight, balance, counterweight, working now with people at Giles's extreme opposite as new arrivals boarded.

  Then the gondola lurched, and Giles's box slid from the seat beside him, spilling onto the footrest, clippings and photos threatening to spill over the side, along with the glass-and-metal contraption his father's patent papers had referred to as the Spigot.

  Giles knee-jerk response had him reach for the box, and in lurching forward, the gondola swung wildly beneath him, and one of the news clippings scuttled over the side. Unable to grab the box, the Spigot or the papers, his arm and body held in check by the bar, Giles watched the devilish wind whip in and dance around the papers, flirting with the papers as they continued to move snakelike from the spilled box. “Fuck, fuck, fucking hell! Is this how you want it, Mother? Is this what we've been waiting for?”

  People below began to see small newspaper clippings floating down to the midway at Navy Pier. People in the cars below him caught a few of the clippings in their cars, and they heard his swearing, although they could not see him. One man yelled up at him, “Shut your dirty mouth! I have little kids down here!”

  Giles finally pried loose the restraining bar but his foot kicked the box as if guided there by Mother, and the entire box, along with the Spigot, slid incrementally along the floorboard of the car. Giles went to his knees for the box, but the foot area refused to accommodate his size. As a result, his bulk shook the gondola badly. The operator had begun cursing sailor fashion at Giles to remain seated and to calm himself. People on the ground feared a suicide attempt in the making.

  Then he realized the note written by Mother to him overlaying the pictures and the clippings that told of the history of Mad Matthew Matisak was gone. He knew it had not been swept out of the gondola, but he could not see it anywhere with the paperwork.

  He finally got a firm hold of the box and the Spigot and returned to his seat, clutching both in his lap, rifling through the dense pile for any sign of Mother's departing note to him. It had simply vanished. But he had not seen it go out over the side.

  “The bum in the park. That old bastard... like some kind of prophet. It had to be him.”

  The wheel lurched forward and down, stopping at each gondola now as the operator began pulling people off as quickly as possible. Those pulled off began to form a small crowd at the base of the Ferris wheel, some angry, most confused, all of them looking up to where Giles sat waiting his turn to be removed from the wheel.

  “Lovely up here, isn't it, Mother? Just beautiful. Wonder what it would be like to end it all right here. To take the one-hundred-fifty-foot leap. You, me, Father here. What a spectacular splash we'd make. Surely, it will make my artwork go through the roof at Cafe Avanti, if they sell it before the cops can confiscate it.”

  He stood in the gondola, rocking it as he prepared to jump. But a dizziness from having had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours and the height conspired against any resolve he may have had. He plopped back onto the seat and, in a fit of rage at having lost his resolve to end this misery called life, began filling his hands with words of Father and tossing all the photos, clippings, sketches, court documents, paperback books and magazine articles and bubble-gum cards devoted to Matthew Matisak out over the side of his sinking ship.

  The papers floated down the length and breadth of the Ferris wheel like confetti now, growing larger as they meandered down and down. The first snowflake-like sheets and half sheets were now within grasp of the adults standing guard about their children below. In a moment, the midway floor around the wheel was littered with the debris of the box.

  Save for the Spigot, the box sat empty now, and it lay sad beside Giles as the operator pulled him roughly out of the gondola, angry and snatching at his clothes, whipping him to the ground and throwing the box at him, shouting, “And don't fucking ever come back!”

  The curious who could read stood about looking at the clippings and pictures they'd gathered up, and they stared from the newspaper stories and other stuff to Giles. He felt no pity or concern from this crowd, only confusion and fear and perhaps, if they guessed the truth, loathing.

  Giles handed the ornate box with its now rattling contents to a small smiling boy standing closest to him, his mother's arms draped about him in protective stance.

  “What's your name?” he asked the boy.

  Perhaps five or six, the handsome, happy little boy proudly shouted, “Kevin!”

  “Go ahead. You like the box? You keep it.”

  Little big-eyed Kevin looked up to his mother on high, craning his neck, for the OK. She nodded her approval.

  “Put your frogs and your play toys in it for me, Kevin. All the things that make you happy.”

  “I will... I will.”

  Giles got to his feet and shambled off, muttering, “The box'll like that, having a new owner with new stuff.”

  Giles heard the sound of sirens. Someone had called the cops.

  He must get away. Must blend into the crowd and rush, get some rest, try to clear his head now that he had divested himself, finally, of Father. What to do next? Where to go? What of his showing at the cafe? All seemed lost and confused now. But after a good night's rest... perhaps he could think clearly enough to find a way out, one that didn't involve a Ferris wheel and a failed attempt at leaping off it.

  “Maybe I can find the nerve to use this,” he said aloud to himself, fingering the .22-caliber gun he'd purchased earlier on the street. “A shoot-out with the cops. They're bound to kill me. They gotta fire on a man who opens up on a crowd like this.”

  He saw a small army of uniforms coming at him, and a number of plainclothes detectives as well. A door marked GARAGE opened on the enormous parking facility at Navy Pier. Giles weaved in and out of the aisles as police rush
ed the Ferris wheel, responding to a call about some nutcase dropping newspaper clippings from atop the wheel, all of which related to Mad Matthew Matisak.

  Giles held firm to the gun in his pocket, at the ready if he had a moment's opportunity to take advantage of the cops, to use them one final time. To go out under his own terms. But he waltzed from the garage unimpeded and down the darkened little street running alongside the inlet to the Chicago River where boats sat silent, some idling, waiting to board passengers.

  He grabbed on to a rope and climbed aboard one of the many cruise boats plying up and down the water, asking if he might exit at Irving Park.

  “Absolutely,” said the captain's mate who welcomed him aboard. “What sort of ruckus is going on at the midway?”

  “Not sure... some damn fool caused a big disturbance at the Ferris wheel, I think.”

  Giles found a seat on the boat and stared across the water. A waitress came to his table and asked what he'd like to drink.

  “Spinal fluid,” he said.

  She laughed a giggling, tinkling, feminine laugh. She had a southern accent. “Ho-whoa, now you are a funnin' me ain't-cha now? I been waitressin' from Georgia to here for six years, but I never heard that one. Bartender's gonna hafta dig out his drink manual for a Spinal Tap. Is it some new kinda Chicago drink?”

  “Yeah, tell your bartender to mix Johnnie Walker Red in equal parts with a tumbler of Absolut Vodka, J&B Scotch, gin, vermouth and three inches of white grape juice—and you got Spinal Fluid.”

  “I better write that down!” she joked back.

  The boat began to move away from the dock, the pull of the current wanting to take it opposite of its engines, but the engines revved and they were off to follow the coast of the lake first south toward the museums to see the magnificent multicolored Buckingham Fountain and the skyline of Chicago, for the photo-obsessed tourists, and then they would turn and do the shuttle run north.