“And you were drinking?”
Her eyes crept up to mine. “You know how it is. Strategy sessions over dinner, head to the bar afterward. You’re working the whole time, but, yeah, there were a lot of late nights. Thing is, Kevin hired a PI to tail me.”
I whistled. Lawson nodded.
“No kidding. He got me on tape at some places on Rush. Pul ed the bar tabs. Stuff like that. His attorney sent me the whole package one night. Told me it was al going into a custody motion. They’d paint me as a drunk, whether I was or not.”
“And you caved?”
“No choice. That kind of thing gets into a public hearing and the Bureau’s done with you. Especial y a woman. So I gave him what he wanted.”
“How about your girl?”
“Her name’s Melanie.” Lawson’s face puckered around the edges. She wanted that second drink now, but there was nothing for it. “I saw her once a month for the first couple of years. Then Kevin got remarried. They had their own child. Now I don’t see her so much anymore. Sad thing is, I mind it less and less.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Lawson tapped her fingers lightly on the table. “Thanks.”
I took another sip of beer. “You ever wonder if it’s worth it?”
“You ever wonder that when you carried a shield?”
I shook my head.
“Of course you didn’t. Nobody ever does. The job is the job and always wil be. Thing is to make sure you got your bases covered.” Lawson shrugged. “I left myself vulnerable. I paid the price.”
“And you don’t plan on making that mistake again?”
CHAPTER 29
I found Rachel inside an examining room at Northwestern Memorial. She was lying on a gurney and staring up at the ceiling while another woman shone a light in her eyes.
“They’re green and they’re gorgeous,” I said.
The woman snapped off her light and was about to cal security when the judge intervened.
“Ignore him,” Rachel said. “He’s my boyfriend.”
Trumpets didn’t exactly sound as the last sentence rol ed off her tongue, and I thought I might have been better served muttering non sequiturs with the old-timer at the bar.
“Family and friends are not al owed back here,” the woman with the light said. I glanced at her name tag: JAIME SINGER, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN.
“Sorry,” I said. “How long do you think she’l be?”
The apology seemed to buy me some rope. Jaime even smiled as Rachel sat up.
“Actual y, we’re just about done.” The doc turned to her patient. “Your X-rays show no damage and it doesn’t look like you sustained any sort of concussion. The cut on your head isn’t deep enough for stitches, so we’l just stick with the butterflies. You stil have a headache?”
Rachel shrugged. “It’s getting better.”
Jaime took out a pad of paper and began to scribble. “I’m going to give you something for the pain. Then maybe Lancelot here can give you a ride home.”
Jaime and Rachel looked at me and laughed. I didn’t get it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Then Jaime was gone. And we were alone.
“You okay?” I said.
“A little sore, a little light-headed, but I’m fine. What are you doing down here?”
I shrugged. “Came to get you.”
She sighed and held out her arms. I pul ed her close.
“What happened at the lakefront?” she said.
“We can talk about it later.”
Rachel nodded into my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Rach.”
She looked up. “For what?”
“This. What we talked about this morning. Everything.”
She shook her head. “This wasn’t what I was talking about. What happened to me today could have happened to anyone. In fact, it did happen to a whole bunch of other people. Except much worse. And none of them even knew you.”
She was right, but that didn’t touch the hol ow inside, the fear that flared every time I saw the emptiness in Katherine Lawson’s eyes and wondered when it might again be mine. I folded my arms around Rachel, trying to capture what lay between us, trying to keep it safe.
“I love you, Rach.”
She drew me down and kissed me hard. “You better, pal. Now take me home. Hospitals give me the creeps.”
We fil ed her prescription at the hospital pharmacy and caught a cab north. On the drive home, she tucked the top of her head against my cheek and immediately fel asleep. I sat quietly, listening to the cabbie talk on his cel and watching the headlights drift past.
CHAPTER 30
Nelson sat in a jet-black Chevy, engine idling, watching the front door to the graystone. He’d dumped the rifle he used to kil Robles in Lake Michigan. Then he’d slipped onto Lake Shore Drive, where he’d mingled with the bewildered, the bloody, and the freshly dead before disappearing into the neighborhood.
Now he pul ed a long knife from a towel on his lap. His mind cast back to the day Robles told him about the black case and the lightbulbs. His dead friend had taken them because it was 1998 and it was just that easy. The army was giving him the shove, why not make them sweat a little? Robles didn’t know exactly what the bulbs contained, just that he’d been given the job of guarding them, four hours a day, for three months inside a bioweapons lab at Maryland’s Fort Detrick. That was enough for Nelson. He took the case from his friend. Then he did some digging, and turned up
“Terror 2000.”
Issued in 1998, the Pentagon’s classified report outlined potential terrorist threats to the United States. Prominent among them was something cal ed the “subway scenario”: an attack involving the introduction of lightbulbs fil ed with weaponized anthrax into a major urban subway system. The Pentagon was so concerned about such an attack, it authorized the lab at Fort Detrick to conduct experiments on its feasibility. The testing went on for five years, from 1993 through ’97. According to “Terror 2000,” some scientists loaded their lightbulbs with anthrax that had been genetical y modified to be harmless. Others, however, insisted on the real thing for their tests. Nelson wasn’t sure which brand of bulb his friend had lifted from the lab. He was rooting for the latter, but didn’t real y give a fuck. The lightbulbs were in place. When they fel, they fel. And Chicago would learn to live with the consequences.
Meanwhile, there were choices to be made and smal er, more personal bits of pain to inflict. A green and white Checker pul ed up to the graystone. There were two people in the back, but only one got out. It was Kel y’s judge. She had a bandage on her head and kept her gaze to the ground as she disappeared into her building. Nelson waited for the cab to pul away. Then he slipped the knife under his jacket, eased out of the car, and walked toward her front door.
CHAPTER 31
I directed the cab north. Rachel had invited me to stay at her place, but I knew the day would hit hard once she got inside. So I told her to sleep in and cal me tomorrow. I needed some sleep myself. And my dog could use some dinner. Or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, a nightcap seemed like it might make everything go down a whole lot easier.
I slipped in the door of the Hidden Shamrock at a little before nine, pushed past a knot of people, and headed to the back room. There was a scattering of patrons at some tables and four or five more lounging on soft couches arranged around a fireplace that looked like a living room. I skipped al of that and headed for the bar. If I’m going to drink, I want to sit on a straight-backed chair with a row of heads on either side. If I want to sit on a soft couch, I go home. That’s where soft couches belong.
A bartender I didn’t recognize floated over and skidded a beer mat my way. “What wil it be there, partner?”
He was an Irishman. That much I knew straight off. His hair was spiked blond with silver tips. He had a lightning bolt tattooed on his hand and danced a bit in his shoes as he stood.
“Give me a Booker’s neat,” I said.
“Booker’s nea
t, over.” He turned, grabbed a glass, and spun back to the bar. “So what’s shaking there, sir? Out for a little, you know?”
Large blue eyes rimmed in red rol ed to the left, toward a couple of women perched at the end of the bar.
“I know those two. Mama.” He gave out a hoo-haw like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, dropped some whiskey into the glass, and pushed it my way. “If you want to be getting the ride, there’s the ticket, boyo.”
I took a sip and watched myself age in a bar mirror. The Irishman, apparently, required no response and kept talking.
“Name’s Des. The right honorable Desmond Walsh.”
I passed along my vitals.
“They’re al talking about that shit this afternoon,” Des said, lifting a foot and planting it alongside the speed rack.
“Lake Shore Drive?”
He nodded. “Couple of firemen came in. Told us it was an awful fucking wreck.”
I sat some more with my drink.
“Heard they kil ed the cunt,” Des said.
“Real y?”
“Coppers blew the fucker’s head off. Too good for him, you ask me.”
“How do you know they got him?”
Des nodded toward a bank of TVs showing the Bul s game. “Mayor’s gonna be on tonight. Give us the old play-by-play.”
“Thank God for Mayor Wilson, hey?”
“Thank God for them coppers. That boy was never gonna see the inside of a cel. Not in this town.”
A waitress beckoned and Des wiggled his way back down the bar. The Irishman was right. Chicago wanted some blood spil ed and they didn’t want to wait. Wilson understood that. So did Lawson. So did the media. They’d give people their dog-and-pony show and a head to stick on a pike. If I didn’t want to partake, that was fine. But the show would go on.
I took another sip of whiskey and again considered the merits of the bar mirror on the wal. On one side of it was a charcoal sketch of Brendan Behan and an il ustration of an Irish patriot I didn’t recognize getting his neck stretched by the British. On the other side was a Blues Brothers poster and what looked like an old railway schedule in a cheap brown frame.
“Des.”
The bartender was earnestly chatting up the waitress rather than pouring the drink she’d ordered. He grabbed the bottle of Booker’s on his way back and topped me off. It was the third drink I’d seen him give away in ten minutes and I wondered, not for the first time, how the Shamrock kept its doors open.
“That picture.” I nodded to the railway schedule. “Could I take a look?”
Des pul ed the thing off the wal. “Wabash Railway, 1923.” The Irishman looked up at me. “Don’t know a fucking thing about it.”
He laughed like a lunatic and made his way back to the waitress, giggling about the useless shit Yanks stick on wal s. I took a closer look at the old schedule. What had caught my eye was the logo: WABASH RAILWAY in Old English script over a yel ow background. Underneath it a black train belched smoke and steamed down a set of tracks. The design wasn’t identical to the cardboard cutout someone had left on my doorstep, but it wasn’t far off either. I flipped open my cel and punched in a number.
“Mr. Kel y, how are you?”
“Okay, Hubert. What’s up?”
“The news is saying someone shot up Lake Shore Drive today. Then you guys shot and kil ed him.”
“And you’re thinking our case is solved?”
“Is it?”
“Keep going. There’s at least two bad guys and only one of them is dead.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, how’s it going?”
“Slow. I got some data running on the current investigation. Checking everything against your personal history.”
“What about Jim Doherty’s files?”
“Just cracked them a few hours ago. Got some odds and ends popping up.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing special.”
“What do you have, Hubert?”
“Background stuff, mostly. Weird connections. For example, did you know there were two train crashes almost identical to yours? One in Des Moines in 1978. Another just outside St. Louis, three months before Chicago.”
“Commuter crashes?”
“No, these were freight trains. No one hurt, but similar sorts of accidents, one train hitting a second and then accelerating after the initial col ision.”
“That is pretty random.”
“There’s more. Both of the freight train crashes were investigated by the NTSB. They determined that an engine-override device made by an old company cal ed Transco malfunctioned, causing the first train to accelerate unexpectedly. In both cases the failure turned a minor incident into a major accident.”
“I stil don’t see much of a connection to Chicago.”
CHAPTER 32
The kettle began to hum, lightly at first, then a high-pitched, insistent whistle. Rachel Swenson walked into the kitchen, switching off the knob for the gas and running her hands across the counter toward the jar of tea bags. She didn’t want to take the pil s they’d given her unless she had to. A cup of tea and an early night in bed would do just fine. She reached for a mug in the cabinet and thought about Michael Kel y, unshaven, arms folded, gun on his hip, slouched in the doorway of the hospital’s examining room like he owned the place, which, in his mind, he probably did. Michael could be rough around the edges, but he was warm, and he was real. She loved feeling safe when he held her, and despised the danger that gave breath to that need for protection. Rachel sighed, grabbed a mug, and turned back toward the stove. A cool breeze plucked at the back of her neck. The image of an open window flashed through her mind; a premonition tiptoed up her spine. She turned again and he was there, inside her home, closing a hand over her mouth and slipping a needle under her skin.
Somewhere far off, her mug crashed from counter to floor. Then she was looking up and he was over her. She saw the edge of a knife and tried to speak, but the words tumbled away. Michael’s face flashed through her mind again and she felt indescribably sad at what felt like his passing. Then she fel, too, amazingly far, until, final y, she was alone, hiding in the blinding white.
CABRINI-GREEN
CHAPTER 33
Rachel Swenson woke up in the dark, sitting on a cold floor with one wrist handcuffed to what she guessed was a pipe. She held up a hand in front of her, but couldn’t see it. Then she listened. There was the sound of traffic, maybe a car horn, but it was distant, muffled. Closer, she could hear the drip of water. Final y, the scratch of a footstep. First one, fol owed by a second.
She felt along the ground for a weapon, but found nothing. So she bal ed her free hand into a fist and waited. The scratching stopped. She lifted her head. The breathing was quick and near. Something clicked, and light splashed onto her face. Then a hand covered her mouth. Another pinned her against the wal. She opened her eyes and saw a young black boy smiling back. Behind him, a second face surfaced. Not much older. He was smiling, too.
“You gonna scream, lady?” The first boy’s voice was soft, an edge glittering underneath.
“She’s al hooked up to the pipe.” The second wrenched Rachel’s shackled wrist. She winced, but didn’t cry. One of them slapped his hands against the wal s while the other hopped around in front of her. She could almost see the thoughts speeding between them, the frenzy building. Two kids, about to step into their adult lives.
The second came close again and crouched.
“Don’t,” she said. He tore her blouse to the waist and punched her hard on the jaw. She hit her head against the wal and slumped awkwardly to the floor.
The first was on top of her, tearing at the rest of her clothes. Then he was gone, thrown into a corner by his friend. The dominant one would go first. His pants were already half undone. He pul ed at his zipper and came closer. She was on her back, vision blurred in one eye and bleeding from the mouth.
“We gonna do what we do.” The kid pointed behind him. “Both of us g
onna hit it. So just let it be.”
“No.” She didn’t know where that word came from or why. But she knew she was good with it. The boy cocked his head and wrinkled his nose. “That what you want?”
She shook her head and didn’t know what she meant. The boy disappeared for a moment. He returned holding a brick.
“You want to feel it or no?”
This time she opened her mouth to scream. The boy lifted his brick and the world went gray.
CHAPTER 34
Maybe you did shoot him and you just don’t know it.”
“Fuck you, Rodriguez.”
The detective grinned and kicked his feet up onto his desk. It was 6:30 in the morning and we were holed up inside Area 3 on Chicago’s North Side. A recap of Mayor Wilson’s press conference from the night before played on a TV in the corner. I looked idly for Katherine Lawson, but couldn’t find her in the cluster of suck-ups standing behind His Honor.
“What do you want from me?” Rodriguez said and clasped his hands behind his head. “I don’t know who kil ed the guy.”
“Question is: Do you care?”
“It’s the feds, Kel y. Besides, I got a stack of fresh murders piled up and getting colder by the minute.” Rodriguez gestured toward the tube. “If the mayor says one of the good guys took him out, who am I to argue?”
“What else did you work up?” I said.
“Case is closed. Bad guy shot in the head.”
“What did you find?”
Rodriguez sighed and pul ed his feet to the floor. Then he opened up a file and slipped on a pair of glasses.
“When did you start wearing glasses?”
The Third Rail mk-3 Page 10
