Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  Ed said, “Call the Cook County sheriff and demand at least ten prisoner transfer buses, more if you can get ’em.”

  “I talked to an Arturo Mendoza. He never did give me an adequate explanation.”

  “Call the sheriff. Get as many buses as you can. Then turn on the goddamn TV.”

  “I have received a call from the sheriff’s department. They have promised us their full cooperation.”

  “What does that mean? How many buses, have they promised, specifically?”

  “Three.”

  “We need more.”

  “It is my understanding that we are simply transporting the inmates to the holding cells at the Cook County facilities at Twenty-sixth and California. It may require two trips, three at the most. Three buses will be adequate.”

  Ed stopped and put a hand on the warden’s shoulder. Ed said gently, “I’m not telling you how to do your job, but we’re gonna need more buses.” Sam recognized the good-cop, wise-older-brother tone. “Sure, we could pack everybody in here on a couple of buses, haul ’em down there and dump ’em, but there’s a lot of variables in this situation. We haven’t been able to talk to anybody down there yet, and so we’re not taking anything for granted. What happens if we get down there and find out that there’s no room? What then? You gonna leave eighty inmates locked on one bus with nowhere to go?”

  The warden licked his lips and finally nodded. “I’ll call them back, see what I can arrange.”

  He showed them into a briefing room, filled with guards. Most of the guards were watching the press conferences on TV. The cameras had just cut from the president outside the White House to the mayor at City Hall, who began to outline the details of the evacuation. The warden introduced Ed and Sam and explained to his men, “As many of you are aware, recent developments in the Loop have necessitated the evacuation of Chicago’s entire downtown area. CPD has seen fit to send us Detectives Jones and Johnson to oversee the transfer of every prisoner inside the MCC.”

  The warden let that sink in. He turned to Ed and Sam. “Well, then. How can we help?”

  Ed said, “First off, how many inmates are we talking about?”

  “I believe the current population is five hundred and twenty-seven, both male and female. We’ll confirm that number, of course.”

  “Where are they?”

  The warden pulled down a large cross-sectional diagram of the prison and settled into the role of tour guide. “The MCC is a transition facility; that is, this is a way station for inmates who have been found guilty and are awaiting the details of their sentencing. Almost all of the inmates are waiting for further court hearings or to be transferred to a more permanent home. The average length of incarceration, at least within the MCC, is less than six months. We also feature a state-of the-art hospital, and anywhere from five to ten percent of our population have been transferred from other prisons within Illinois to receive treatment.”

  He pointed to the diagram. The building had a triangle footprint, giving the guards clear sight lines for each narrow floor. “No prisoners are ever housed beneath the tenth floor. That gives us seventeen floors to utilize, and we have found it works to both our advantage and the inmates’ safety to spread them out, housing as few inmates as possible per floor. We pride ourselves on keeping our guests calm and comfortable.”

  “Good. That’s our key,” Ed said and caught Sam’s eye.

  The transitory nature of the prison made their jobs easier. The detectives realized that because inmates did not stay at the prison for any significant length of time, the institutionalized tribes that flourished wherever prisoners would spend decades behind bars, in crews bound by race or gang or belief, had failed to find a foothold. In a typical maximum-security prison, many of the inmates were facing life sentences, and had the time to establish structured organizations, forming hierarchies, protecting their tribe, as well as coordinating clever, vicious attacks against other gangs or the guards.

  “Best way to avoid problems,” Ed said. “Keep everybody comfortable, but off-balance. I don’t want them to know what is going to happening next.”

  Sam said, “We don’t want to give them a chance to get friendly with each other. If these boys ever got organized, they could overpower a bus without much trouble, and then we’ve got a mobile hostage situation on our hands.”

  Ed addressed the entire room. “Understand this. Safety and security are our only responsibilities. There are only two things you are to communicate to the inmates. One, a state of emergency exists, and two, they are being transferred to a different location for their own safety. That is it. Don’t tell them anything else.”

  “Except,” Sam said.

  Ed said, “Except that a policy of zero tolerance has been implemented. If anyone steps out of line, guards will be shooting to kill.”

  Ed and Sam watched as the guards had to fight their delight and hide their satisfied, victorious grins at finally being able to bolster their careers with a stamp of authority. Ed glanced at Sam. Sam closed his eyes and gave an imperceptible nod. The guards had been exposed to the institutionalized violence for too long, with no outlet, no way of turning the fear loose in a meaningful manner, no way of exorcising the demons that grew and multiplied in the dark in a place like this. In fact, letting off this kind of steam was frowned upon, and sometimes, it was flat-out illegal. Shooting ranges could only provide so much relief. It was like drinking near beer for an alcoholic.

  Eventually, something had to give.

  The guards were going to be a problem.

  Sam could smell violence in the air, like a lightning storm on the horizon.

  CHAPTER 58

  12:39 PM

  August 14

  “That’s not the suit you’re wearing tonight, I hope.” Phil’s first words.

  “No. It’s the suit I’m wearing right now,” Lee said. “The good ones are at the office.” Phil’s condescending attitude was getting tougher to swallow. “Never thought you’d be worrying about men’s fashion.”

  “This might be the most important press conference of our lives. I’m worrying about everything.”

  Bryan accelerated and shot down the side street to Upper Wacker. Phil explained, “All the interior roads are blocked. Right now, the only streets open to get into the Loop are Clark and Congress.”

  “Shit. These people are serious.”

  “You have no fucking idea.”

  Bryan turned left on Clark, where they were met by staggered walls of sandbags and four soldiers, all carrying assault rifles and wearing surgical masks. They inspected Phil’s ID and checked their list. They came back and looked at Lee’s ID as well as Bryan’s. It must have checked out, because the soldiers waved them through.

  “So listen, please, no jokes, okay? Don’t try to be funny,” Phil said.

  “Why not? Nothing wrong with my sense of humor.” Lee tried to dismiss the whole thing.

  Phil shook his head. “Absolutely not. Even those dago pricks only laugh to be polite, and they laugh at everything. You? You’re about as funny as a case of the clap.”

  Bryan weaved through the sandbags and followed Clark down to City Hall. Lee glanced at the open plaza to the left, by the Daley Center, and was astonished to see that the giant Picasso sculpture was gone. He finally spotted it, lying on its side in the intersection of Dearborn and Washington, acting as a kind of barricade.

  Phil caught his stunned expression and said, “They took it down because they wanted room to land the helicopters.”

  Lee actually liked the sculpture, the way it had some sort of invisible tether to the heavens, as if it was some sort of pet from someone above. Lee thought it was a bad omen, this desecration of a Chicago landmark. But Phil was pissing him off, so Lee didn’t say anything. Bryan dropped them off in front of City Hall on the Cook County side. More soldiers checked their IDs once again.

  Inside, they were directed upstairs to a large briefing room. The room had been built like an amphitheater, with de
scending rows of seats and tables curving around a central stage. A soldier directed Lee and Phil to one of the smooth tables with low lamps near the back. Some high-ranking official was down in the center, using a laser pointer to highlight areas of maps of the Loop and the subway system projected on the screens behind him.

  The official, some major or general or something—Lee wasn’t too clear on these things—was laying out plans in a dry, almost disinterested tone. He was tall, with dark, vigorous eyebrows that didn’t match the gray, lifeless hair that had been cut close to his scalp. “Phase two is nearly complete, a total relocation of civilians to a neutral zone where they can be properly examined before being released into the public at large. Phase three preliminaries are complete and are ready to implement immediately. As we proceed with these two phases, phase four and five are being prepped.” He gestured at the map. “Every bridge, with the sole exception of the Congress Street Bridge, has been raised. The river has been irradiated with a compound that will . . . inhibit life.”

  The officer traced the boundaries of the quarantine zone with his laser pointer. “The subway tunnels have been neutralized.” Lee figured this was code for blowing the shit out of the things. He sniggered.

  Phil refused to look at him.

  Lee got the hint. Play along. Don’t make waves. And above all, don’t draw any attention to yourself. Fine. Lee decided to play along. For now.

  “To repeat, every bridge has been raised, except for Congress, and that will be raised within the hour. The river has been treated. No rat will survive the swim. And here”—the red dot swept along Roosevelt Avenue—“a continuous firebreak has been established, stretching from the Chicago River to Lake Shore Drive. We have squads spread out along Roosevelt Avenue, equipped with both .50 caliber firepower and flamethrowers.” He checked his watch. “In less than thirty minutes, the only access to downtown Chicago, in or out, will be restricted to this one lane of Lake Shore Drive.” The red dot seared into a spot just to the left of the Field Museum.

  Some other senior official asked, “What about the lakefront?”

  The major or general or whatever smiled. “The CDC has informed us that a cutting-edge medical and military vessel will be in place in the next several hours. Until then, the Coast Guard has agreed to help patrol the waters.” He surveyed his audience. “Trust me, gentlemen. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can escape the quarantine zone. This city will be locked down tighter than Fort Knox.”

  He turned back to the map. “We are directing most of our forces down into the Blue Line subway stations, specifically Jackson Street Station. Platoons are gaining access to the underground through the post office and the Monadnock building. They will be spreading throughout the tunnels, forming an offensive that will be dispersing both fire and a lethal pesticide. This will provide an effective foundation, killing any infected rats, as well as any and all bugs with vapor chemicals that will reach into any crevice, any crack, any place where the bugs hide, and kill them.”

  He added as an afterthought, “And if it is deemed necessary, the solution within the Chicago River can be set on fire.”

  The speech had risen to a crescendo, and if this had been a political platform, that would be the cue to leap to your feet and start clapping like crazy. But since this was the military, the speaker took comfort in the total silence. He waited just as long as it would have taken for the applause to die down, and said, “Squads are currently conducting building-to-building searches, but this process takes time and manpower. Both of which we are in sore need of, I don’t need to remind you.”

  Then he got into some math and started using words like, “kill ratio” and “projected casualties” and “dispersal rate” and Lee, too familiar with boring fucking governmental meetings, tuned him out immediately. Since his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he took stock of the room.

  Every emergency department in the city was there, along with soldiers. Damn near everybody was taking copious notes. The general, or whatever the hell he was up front, finally finished coordinating the underground sweeps with, “Remember, flush ’em out, get ’em up to the surface, where the burn crews will flash-fire ’em. Any questions?”

  Phil gave Lee a sour look, as if telling him to keep quiet.

  “Right, then,” the general or whatever said. “You all have your assignments. I suggest you don’t waste any time moving into position. This operation will start precisely at fifteen hundred hours. No exceptions, gentlemen.”

  The soldiers at all of the low tables gathered their notes and guns and filed out, leaving Lee and Phil alone with the projected maps of the Loop. Even the general left. Lee’s patience lasted almost fifteen seconds. “Okay. Now what? Where the fuck is this guy?”

  A cold, deliberate voice came from behind them, deep in the shadows of one of the alcoves that dotted the wall. “I wanted to say . . . thank you, for your cooperation in detaining two of your employees.”

  Lee whipped his head around to find Dr. Reischtal. The doctor’s tiny glasses caught the reflection of the maps down in front and gave him the appearance of eyes that flashed with white fire. He was wearing an orange hazmat suit, and even though he didn’t have the face mask covering his head, the outfit still made Lee nervous.

  “Sure. Anytime,” Lee said. “How, uh, can we help you?”

  “I understand you are the man to speak with, if you have . . . special needs. Mr. Shea here”—Dr. Reischtal indicated Phil—“has kindly offered to further our business arrangement, by admitting that you, his nephew no less, are in a rarefied position to help government employees such as myself find quiet places to store some of the unpleasant consequences of my job description.”

  “Maybe,” Lee said.

  “Then perhaps you might be of some assistance. For the right price, of course. I have already negotiated a most generous donation to your reelection fund with your uncle, so if you are unhappy with your share, you can take it up with him.”

  Phil started nodding his head when Dr. Reischtal mentioned the fund, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger in the universal sign of “okay.” He shook his head when Dr. Reischtal said the word “unhappy.”

  Lee nodded.

  Dr. Reischtal stood quite still. “I have heard of a quiet, private disposal site under the downtown area.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I have heard that this space is accessible by eighteen-wheeled semi trailer trucks. It is my understanding that you know of a route that could provide access.”

  “I know of all kinds of dump sites. What I need to know is what you’re dumping.”

  “I shall require access to this site.”

  “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “Perhaps your uncle can satisfy your curiosity.”

  Lee didn’t look at Phil. “That’s not his job. You want to go under downtown, that’s my job.” Lee finally figured it out. “Okay. Okay. Maybe you could give me a better idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

  “I don’t see how that should concern you.”

  “If I’m deciding where to put something, I need to know some details. Like, how many?”

  “How many . . . what?”

  “How many trucks? How many loads? Three? Four? Five? Are you going to need special equipment to deliver the troublesome cargo? Or is it something that a couple of guys can manage? I need to know how much, you understand. Things like, is the product biodegradable? Would it benefit from close proximity to say, corrosive chemicals, which failed to find their way out of the city?”

  “Perhaps as little as five. Perhaps as many as twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five what?”

  “Twenty-five tanker trucks.”

  Lee was impressed. “Whoa. Twenty-five loads. Shit. Okay. How long are you going to spread it out? You know, most of these guys, they drop off a load in February, maybe another in March. How do you want to space things out?”

  “This will be a one time trip. Twenty-five trucks. Together.” Dr.
Reischtal turned to the door. “Spaced around and under downtown Chicago.”

  Lee thought of the long tunnel and the explosion. “When?”

  “Perhaps days. Perhaps hours.”

  Phil waved Lee over. He grasped Lee’s shoulder and bent him close. “Listen to me very carefully. You want to take what he’s offering. Please.”

  Lee said, “If this asshole wants to come on my home turf here—”

  “Shut up for five seconds and listen. If you want to have any kind of career at this at all, for the love of Christ shut the fuck up and listen.”

  Lee swallowed his next sentence.

  Phil tapped his chest. “It’s an easy choice. You handle this right, and by God, in ten years, you’re gonna be fucking president.”

  The sheriff’s department would only provide three buses. No more.

  “Fuck me,” Sam said and spit his gum into the gutter. He’d gone out to check everything out, just to make sure that they wouldn’t be putting federal prisoners on any kind of transport that might prove to be unstable and problematic. He stood at the curb as the three buses drove the wrong way down Clark and lined up along the curb. “Where’s the rest?” he asked the first driver.

  The driver shrugged. “All I know is they sent me here. You got a problem, call the sheriff. I drive the bus. That’s all.”

  The two other drivers all said the same thing. Sam pulled out his cell and called Ed. “Hate to say it, but this is gonna be all we got.”

  Ed, watching the buses on closed circuit video monitors inside the main office, said, “Looks like we got the short end of the stick. Hold tight for a minute. I’ll call Arturo, see if I can’t get some answers.”

  Sam didn’t bother to answer. He relayed the message to the drivers, who all sat snug ensconced inside a bulletproof plastic cocoon. This way, if the prisoners ever managed to gain the upper hand over the guards, they couldn’t reach the bus drivers. When Sam delivered the news, each of the three drivers shrugged and shook out a folded newspaper over the giant steering wheel, settling down for a long wait. These guys didn’t give two shits about the situation. The union only said they had to drive the bus, and nothing else.