Wake Me When It's Over

by Cheryl A Head

  “Maybe manpower,” Don said.

  Routledge shook his head no. “I can’t promise that. There’d have to be overt evidence of a pending attack.”

  Charlie’s sixth sense nagged at her. “What if, there’s no real threat to the auto show, but it’s a dry run for the Super Bowl?”

  “Now that’s an interesting question,” Gil said.

  “A city like Detroit rarely hosts two back-to-back, high-profile international events. An infiltration of the auto show would be a way for someone, or some group with sinister intentions, to learn the city, test transportation options, build, buy or rent space for equipment and people, recruit staff, and embed operatives. Could that be the case?” Charlie asked.

  Routledge wasn’t buying it. “Like I said, the chatter doesn’t support that. If we find something definite that spells out a threat to the auto show or points to your theory, we’ll shift gears. That being said, the death of this Chenglei character is certainly a smoking gun, and we’re relieved you all are involved in following the leads.”

  Routledge excused himself, leaving Tony Canterra to arrange the mechanism for sharing information between DHS and the Mack Partners. Later, Tony escorted them to the front lobby, and as Don and Gil moved toward the exit, he touched Charlie’s elbow to slow her stride.

  “So, how are you doing?”

  “I’m doing well. I have no regrets about leaving the agency, and the partnership with Don and Gil has worked out even better than I thought.”

  “Any regrets about us?” Tony lowered his voice and glanced at Agent Morales, who was paying attention to them.

  “You know it wouldn’t have worked out, Tony. I can’t settle down with any man. I was upfront with you about that, wasn’t I?”

  “You were. But sometimes I think about us. You still look good, Charlie.”

  “You look good, too. You’re the best-looking white man I ever dated.” Charlie laughed. “Look, can you tell me anything about this Super Bowl threat?”

  “No. Not really. The FBI picked up email and Facebook chatter. They’re taking it seriously, and they’ve asked us to help. Most of the detail hasn’t yet trickled down to my pay grade.”

  “You’ll let me know if we need to duck, won’t you?”

  “I’ll try to tell you everything I can.” Tony paused and pushed both hands into his pockets. He stared at Charlie earnestly. “Look, are you seeing anyone now?”

  “Yes. I’m in a serious relationship. Happy New Year, Tony.”

  “Happy New Year to you, too.”

  Tony watched Charlie walk to the front entrance. Her heeled boots clicked along the marble floor, and her jacket swayed with the rhythm of her gait. After she’d gone, he continued staring at the glass door until he felt Morales’s stare.

  “Everything going well this evening, Agent Morales?”

  “No problems to report, sir. Except, I didn’t retrieve Ms. Mack’s visitor pass.”

  “Where to?” Don asked as he pulled out of the DHS parking lot.

  “We may as well go back to Cobo. We can start going through the personnel files and get organized for the staff meetings,” Charlie said. “Jeez, how soon before we have some heat?”

  “Give it a minute and I’ll turn on the blower. It would only be cold air now,” Don said. “What are we going to eat?”

  “We’ll get some food on the way in,” Charlie said.

  “We’re not too far from Buddy’s you know,” Don said.

  “Okay, pizza it is. I already knew nutrition would go to hell during this case,” Charlie complained.

  “Judy just emailed. We have late check-in status at the Woodward Hotel,” Gil said from the back seat. “Apparently, she was able to get a block of rooms for us, and most of the freelancers.”

  “Okay, email her that we’re heading back with deep-dish and salad.”

  “Will you be seeing Mandy to convince her to help us with Heinrich?” Gil asked, punching on his BlackBerry.

  “No, but I’ll get her on the phone.”

  “Hi. I wondered if you’d have time to call,” Mandy said

  “We just left DHS, and now Don and Gil are ordering pizza from Buddy’s.”

  “Ooh. That sounds good. I’m having a not-so-fresh iceberg lettuce salad with seven chunks of chicken breast in one of those plastic containers. The best part is the sleeve of honey-mustard dressing.”

  “Yummy. Where are you?”

  “The Woodward Hotel. I checked in a couple of hours ago. I’m on patrol with Hoyt Timbermann at ten o’clock.”

  “I’m staying at the Woodward too, but who knows when I’ll get there. We’re on our way back to Cobo after we get the pizza. I called to ask you something.”

  “You want my room number?”

  “Ha-ha. Yes, eventually. But look, we may need you to cozy up to Heinrich. We want to know what he’s thinking, and he was obviously smitten with you.”

  There was a pause. Charlie had never formally worked on a case with Mandy. It wasn’t fun to be in a position where she had to weigh her personal interests against the interests of a case. If Mandy weren’t her lover, she wouldn’t have a moment’s hesitation asking her to use feminine wiles to get information. Now, Charlie couldn’t help hoping Mandy would be outraged at the suggestion.

  “Oh, sorry. I had a huge piece of lettuce in my mouth. Sure, I’ll find out what he’s up to. I got a call from his office this afternoon inviting me to have breakfast with him. I said ‘no,’ but if you need me to play him, I’ll call back and accept the invitation.”

  “Thanks,” Charlie said without much appreciation. “It’d be helpful to the case.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. nothing. I saw Tony Canterra tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah. How’s he? Still good-looking?”

  “Yep. But he’s not you.”

  “I know, and don’t you forget it. Happy New Year, baby.”

  “I’ll be tied up all week on this case, Mom. So, if you call and I don’t pick up, don’t worry. If there’s an emergency, let Gloria know, okay?”

  Charlie looked up when she heard the knock at the car window, and she pushed the unlock button. Don and Gil ripped at the car doors, and tumbled into the Buick’s warmth. The car quickly filled with the smells of cheese and pepperoni.

  “I’ve got to go now, Mom. I love you, and I’m sorry we can’t spend New Year’s Day together. Bye.”

  “How’s your mother doing?” Don asked.

  “Okay, but she doesn’t venture out alone much. She still talks about those guys who robbed her.”

  “I’m sure it’s a traumatic memory for her,” Gil said.

  Don pulled into the Saturday evening traffic heading east on Michigan Avenue. There was more volume than usual as people traveled to New Year’s Eve festivities, including a Red Wings game. The dashboard readout said the temperature was thirty-five degrees, but the wind chill said otherwise.

  “Mandy is in,” Charlie informed her partners. “Cynthia had already called her for a breakfast meeting with Heinrich to discuss ideas for working closer together.” Charlie formed quotation marks with her fingers to emphasize the last words. “She initially declined, but she’s calling back to accept the invitation.”

  “That’s good. Right?” Don asked.

  “Sure. It’s great.”

  While the Mack team devoured two six-square, deep-dish pizzas, green salads and soft drinks, they discussed the work still to be done. Don and Gil departed Cobo at ten to check into their hotel rooms, and Charlie and Judy sat at the table with shoes off. Over the two years they’d worked together, they’d become friends, and Charlie sometimes sought out Judy’s advice, which was always grounded in common sense.

  “Maybe we should set up a cot here in the conference room so you, or I, can be here all the time,” Judy suggested.

  “You trying to get a break from the husband and kids?”

  “Not really. I told them not to expect to see me much this week. They’re all old e
nough to fend for themselves, and I’ll call them at midnight to wish in the New Year. How’s Ernestine doing?”

  “She’s a bit less interested in the world these days, and that worries me.”

  “Who’s keeping an eye on her this week?”

  “Gloria, who works at the front desk. But Mom doesn’t feel she needs anybody to check in on her and, besides, she thinks Gloria is too nosy.”

  The two women chuckled and shook their heads in unison. Then Judy slid into her shoes, and Charlie donned hers.

  “Are you worried about Mandy playing up to Heinrich?” Judy asked. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were. He’s clown creepy.”

  “Mandy can handle herself.”

  “I know. But you don’t mind?”

  Charlie didn’t answer the question, so Judy padded around the table gathering plates, cups, and food containers to dump into a trash bag she’d retrieved from a cabinet. “It’s good to have a small refrigerator and microwave. That’s Cynthia’s doing. She’s been very accommodating of every request I’ve made.”

  “She does seem to want to help,” Charlie agreed.

  “Well, it’s getting close to midnight. We may as well just take one car to the hotel.”

  “Right.”

  They turned off the conference room lights and exited the suite, into the dim hallway. Several staffers were seated in the glass room staring at the monitors, and light spilled from Cynthia Fitzgerald’s office, but Spectrum Security was otherwise closed for business.

  “I like to keep my private life, private,” Charlie said out of the blue. “That’s why I haven’t said much about Mandy.” Charlie swiped her key card at the outer door and held it open for Judy.

  “I understand.”

  They moved to the elevator and watched the red blinking camera over the Spectrum door. Charlie turned to face the elevator. “Mandy and I have agreed to be in an exclusive relationship.”

  “That’s great, Charlie. Now maybe you won’t be so lonely.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “Has Ernestine met her?”

  “Yes, a few months ago. She likes Mandy and thinks she’s good for me.”

  “I do too. She’s full of fighting spirit.”

  The chime on the elevator sounded, and the door opened to Hoyt Timbermann hurrying out.

  “I was just coming to see you,” he said to Charlie. “Are you leaving?”

  “Yes. Is there a problem?”

  “No. I just have a question for you.”

  “Come on; ride up with us, Hoyt,” Charlie said, blocking the closing door.

  “I wanted to verify with you that Mandy Porter can leave her shift a bit early. She says you’ve given her another assignment?”

  “Oh, sorry, Hoyt. I should have told you about that. Can you get one of the others to come in early?”

  “Sure, that’s easy to do.”

  Cynthia watched the three enter the elevator, and the door close. She picked up her phone and punched a few numbers. Heinrich was a despicable man but he was her boss, and he’d made it clear her job was to keep the Mack team at arm’s length from Spectrum business. She wasn’t sure what he was up to, but the off-the-calendar meetings, the secret files he kept locked in the wall safe, and the calls to and from the extra mobile phone he carried suggested he was keeping secrets.

  “Tom, I’m leaving now. Everything looking good?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, Ms. Fitzgerald, except the patrols by those investigators. There’s a lot of action at the loading dock tonight, but our man down there hasn’t reported any problems.”

  “Okay, Tom. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Cynthia gathered a couple of files, moved to the closet, and pushed the button on the video recorder.

  Chapter 4

  Sunday, January 1, 2006

  Auto Show: 7 days

  Charlie called Judy’s room at 6 a.m. to get a time for the ride back to Cobo, but Judy was already awake and dressed.

  “Who could sleep with the drunks rolling into their rooms all night long?”

  “Yep. I forgot how crazy it is on New Year’s Eve if you’re not drinking along with everyone else.”

  “Would you mind if I went home for a few hours this morning? Gary’s complaining that he doesn’t know what he’ll make for dinner if he’s on his own for the full week. So, I thought I’d go home and prepare a few meals he can freeze.”

  “No problem. I’ll meet you in the lobby in five minutes and take you to your car.”

  The hotel lobby showed the wear and tear of New Year’s Eve revelers. Confetti was strewn around the floor and on the three sofas. The desk clerk from the night before was still on duty, and was making the rounds of the room picking up plastic glasses and party favors. He held a pair of panties at arm’s length before dropping them into his trash bag.

  “Tough night?” Charlie asked the clerk.

  “You don’t know the half of it, ma’am. I had to mop up vomit a couple of times last night, our security guy went to the hospital for stitches after a guest hit him with a bottle, and the police were here twice. But we won’t really have the full story until the housekeeping staff arrives,” the man said, shaking his head.

  Charlie watched Judy get into her car in the underground garage at Cobo, then moved the Corvette to a parking space close to the elevators. When she pushed through the door of the temporary office, Don was doing a sweep for electronics, and Gil sat at his desk cradling his head in crossed arms.

  “Good morning. You two are in early,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah. You know that old adage about the things you do on New Year’s Day are the things you’ll do all year? Well, I hope that’s not true,” Don said.

  “Except for the part about making money all year. I can handle that,” Charlie said.

  “Where’s Novak?” Don asked.

  “She went home for a few hours to cook for Gary and the kids. She’ll be back later.”

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Not well. Too many partygoers.”

  Gil sat up and rubbed his hand through his hair. He was unshaved and his eyes were red. “I need some coffee.”

  “I’ll make the coffee,” Charlie said. “And not because I’m the woman in the room. I need some, too.”

  “We got here about five,” Gil said, yawning. “There was some guy in the hall on my floor who begged his wife all night to forgive him.”

  “I don’t remember ever being that young and stupid,” Don said.

  His two partners stared at him, until he was forced to add: “I know I probably was. But, I just don’t remember it.”

  “You bring your colored notes?” Gil asked.

  “You know me too well,” Charlie said, measuring for six cups of coffee.

  Charlie had developed a personal process for her brain-storming, using three-inch color Post-it notes. There were usually two sets of notes, red notes with questions and green with facts and data. For the auto show investigation, she’d added a third color, blue, for conjectures. Gil was particularly helpful with the conjectures because he was imaginative. Don was more literal, and helped the process with solid questions framed in bias and gut feelings. Charlie’s gift was in being able to connect the dots.

  Don loved controlling the white board, and they went at it for several hours. At 10:30, Judy arrived with breakfast sandwiches from McDonalds, and a load of hash browns.

  “Okay,” Charlie said, looking at the board filled with green, red, and blue sticky notes. “What have we got?”

  “There sure aren’t a lot of green notes,” Don said, taking a bite from his second sandwich.

  “And the ones we have are more assumptions than facts,” Charlie said. “I’m hoping we’ll have more hard data to work with after we meet the managers and review staff files.”

  “I have another green note we can add,” Don said. “Heinrich is a pain in the ass that won’t go away.”

  “Can we look at the conjectures?” Gil ask
ed, ignoring Don’s remark. “Let’s move them off the board.”

  It went on like that for a while. At noon, the freelancers for the midday patrols dropped by the office, so Judy ordered in Domino’s pizza. At 3:00 p.m., Charlie suggested they break from the brainstorming.

  “Sometimes it helps to shift to another task, use a different set of muscles, and then an idea will just hit you. That happens to me all the time.”

  “I’d like to take a look behind some of the doors we saw with Pressley yesterday,” Don said. “He said the infrastructure guts were in there.”

  “Good idea,” Charlie said. “According to the blueprints, one of those rooms holds a panel of circuit breakers as large as this conference room.”

  “I’ll grab one of the golf carts. You coming, Acosta?” Don asked.

  “No. We haven’t done a perimeter check today, so I’ll get the car and cruise through the neighboring streets, and drive by the loading dock and parking garages to see what I can see.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Don said.

  “Okay. Let’s meet back here around six,” Charlie said.

  Don steered a golf cart along the service circulation area behind the ground level meeting rooms. In the passenger seat was a stack of Cobo blueprints. This corridor was off-limits to all but authorized personnel, and on a Sunday the only sounds were of surging water and electricity. Don stopped the cart in front of a door marked “Mechanical Room. Authorized Entry Only.” Another cart was parked twelve yards ahead. Don’s Spectrum ID, on a chain around his neck, was tucked into his shirt pocket. He placed the ID on the card reader until he heard the click, pushed the door open, and stepped into a massive room with giant boilers humming. A metal catwalk traversed the ceiling, and two lifts were parked in the corner. There was an array of panel boxes, cast-iron pipes, and wheel-shaped shut-off valves along the wall. Warning signs and fire extinguishers were prominent every hundred feet.

  He stepped farther into the chamber and followed a path marked by fluorescent paint and pedestrian walking signs that ended at an office. The door was ajar, and half-drawn mini blinds showed a lighted interior. Don paused at the entrance. An engineer Don had seen when Ty guided the team through Cobo’s levels, sat on a stool in front of a panel board. Don knocked. The man turned at the sound, but wasn’t startled.