by Dan O'Shea
“You said .22s?” Lynch asked
“Three to the back of the head,” said Perez.
“Awful lot of blood on the floor,” said Lynch.
“Pedicure,” said Pérez. “Your .22 buddy took off a couple of his toes with something before he plugged him.”
“Could see where that might be persuasive,” Lynch said “Any idea what he was after?”
“Last thing Lee printed out was this.” Perez handed Lynch a sheet. Jeanette Wilson’s name and address. Mr .22 had been a busy boy today.
Lynch nodded, looked up at Perez, who had a little grin on his face.
“What?” said Lynch.
“Jenks!” Perez called. A metrosexual-looking guy in civilian clothes walked over – flat-front pants, shirt in a you-can’t-buy-me-at-Penny’s shade of blue, some of those hipster, steel-framed glasses. “Show Lynch here what ol’ toeless had been up to.”
“Guy’s got a great set up,” said Jenks. He and Lynch were sitting at a wet bar across the basement from Lee’s office area, Jenks on a laptop at the end of a cable that ran over to the dead guy’s computer equipment. The crime scene techs were still busy with the body over there. “Highest speed wireless pipe I’ve ever seen. Would’ve been tough to crack it, except he had a pad in his desk with all his passwords in it. Stupid, but we all do it, right?”
“I just plug into my cable box,” said Lynch.
Jenks shrugged. “OK, so anyway, I start poking around, just looking at recent files, IP addresses, shit like that, and one of the things I get is this.” Jenks popped up a series of pictures of Hardin in Chicago: the traffic cam shot Lynch had seen on Columbus, Hardin in front of the Hyatt on Wacker, Hardin’s rental in the Grant Park Garage.
“Can you tell when he pulled those?” said Lynch.
“First one, the shot of the car? That was the morning after the Stein shooting.”
Couple days before we started looking for it, thought Lynch.
“You know how he got them?”
“Watch this,” said Jenks. He hammered at some keys. Kid had fast hands. A video feed popped open. Columbus Street – same angle as one of the Hardin shots they’d been using. It had to be the same camera, except on this screen the cars were moving, people were walking.
“Tell me that’s not live,” said Lynch.
“Oh,” said Jenks. “It’s live.”
CHAPTER 50
Husam al Din clicked off the television in his hotel room. The shootings in Downers Grove were quite the sensation on the local news stations, which identified the dead men as functionaries of the Hernandez drug cartel.
Strangely, neither Wilson nor Hardin were mentioned on any of the newscasts. The story was being pitched as some mysterious fall out among the Mexican cartels with considerable nervous handwringing about the violence that had been escalating in Mexico for the past several years spilling over onto America’s streets. Yet, surely by now the local police knew who Wilson was, knew where she lived, and knew that two cartel members had been killed immediately outside of her door. Surely witnesses had seen Wilson on the street, shooting a young man dead and leaving with Hardin. And surely they had also seen Hardin killing the driver of the large black vehicle. While neither those witnesses or, possibly, even the local authorities might know who Hardin is, they would have seen Wilson leaving with him.
Yet the news coverage included none of that. Which meant that the authorities were suppressing that information. Interesting.
Clearly, the DEA agent, Wilson, was allied with Hardin in some fashion. Al Din could think of no reason why. He had no immediate intelligence he could use to track either of them, but having two people to hunt instead of one doubled the odds of them being spotted. Al Din summarized the data he had on Wilson and e-mailed it to his Tokyo contact, along with her picture. He also instructed the man in Tokyo to research them both in order to uncover the nature of their relationship.
Meanwhile, al Din had another issue.
He had been close to Hardin twice. First, he had been interrupted by criminals working for the American mafia boss Corsco. Today, he had nearly been killed by criminals working for the Mexican drug lord Hernandez. Since both were also looking for Hardin, that made them his competitors.
While al Din had cut off one source of their intelligence, both organizations would be far more familiar with the area. Both would have many other sources of local information. Both had considerable manpower at their disposal.
From Lee, al Din knew that Hernandez wanted Hardin for vengeance. But he had no idea what Corsco’s interest was. It was always best to know one’s enemies. Corsco himself would be too difficult to approach, would have too much security. Al Din started Googling, looking for a weak link.
In many of the pictures attached to news stories about Corsco, he was accompanied by a short, overweight man identified as his attorney. The lawyer would be more approachable.
Al Din’s phone peeped. A daily alarm he had programmed in. He hit a number on his speed dial, waited for the tone that told him the call had connected, and then hung up. Then he started to research Gerry Ringwald.
CHAPTER 51
Hardin and Wilson had been driving the Honda north for better than six hours. Hardin figured a little space was what they needed right now. They’d also been listening to the radio. The Downers Grove shootout was getting some play, but their names were out of it so far, the whole thing going down as a drug turf battle.
It was almost 8pm and they were cruising a neighborhood in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Lots of bed and breakfasts up here. They figured, with the economy the way it was, nobody was going to get real picky about IDs with someone paying cash.
“That looks nice,” said Wilson, pointing at a big, dark green Victorian on the next corner.
“Always wanted to see Door County,” said Hardin.
“Secretary at work went her for her honeymoon, always going on about it,” Wilson said.
“Might be all the honeymoon we get.”
Wilson went quiet, Hardin catching a little swallow out of the corner of his eye.
“It is, isn’t it?” she said finally, sounding a little choked. “Our honeymoon?”
Hardin thought about it. No priest, no wedding, no I dos, but he couldn’t think of anything that could tie them closer than they already were.
“Yeah. I guess it is.”
He turned and smiled at her and she smiled back. First smile he’d seen from her that didn’t have a ghost behind it.
CHAPTER 52
“This Wilson throws a wrench in things,” said Hickman. “We don’t know what the deal with her and Hardin is yet, but Jablonski tells me she knew we were going to bag him.”
Bahram Lafitpour stirred his coffee. He, Hickman and Munroe were back at Lafitpour’s condo. They’d waited at Lafitpour’s office until 10pm, raid assets in place, just in case Hardin showed. He didn’t.
“So we have to assume that Hardin knows I betrayed him,” said Lafitpour.
Munroe nodded. “You worried he’s going to make a run at you?”
Lafitpour shook his head. “People have been making runs at me for thirty years. My security is excellent. Besides, Hardin isn’t an ideologue. He’s just trying to sell the diamonds. There is no margin in making a move on me. The question becomes whether we still have a play with him.”
“So we took a shot,” Munroe said. “He’s a big boy. He knows all about Plan Bs. And he still needs a buyer. Get word back to his contact that we’ll still play ball. Probably gonna cost us though.”
“We can’t make a deal with Hardin,” said Hickman. “We don’t just need the diamonds, we need him. We’ve promised his scalp to the Feds and the DEA, and I’ve already got the press rubbing the bottle on this. We don’t get a genie to pop out of it soon, they’re going to get pissed and start asking the wrong kind of questions.”
“Yeah,” said Munroe. “And with the Feds inside the tent, we started the clock on this thing. We got a couple of days at the outs
ide.” Looking at Hickman now. “This Wilson, she was with Hardin?”
“Yeah,” Hickman said.
“And she was at your briefing?”
“Yeah,” Hickman said.
“So she knows about al Din,” said Munroe.
“Yeah.”
“What do we know about her?” asked Lafitpour.
“Jablonski’s pulling apart her file. Should have word soon.”
Silence around the table for a moment, tension tightening.
“So,” said Lafitpour, “we need still need Hardin and the diamonds.”
“Don’t need him alive,” said Munroe.
Hickman and Lafitpour looked at him. Munroe wasn’t worried about Lafitpour, but this thing was getting sloppy and taking too long. Dead or alive, he needed it done, and dead was always faster and usually easier. Quiet around the table for a minute, Munroe watching Hickman’s face. They weren’t just talking about a little legal three-card Monte anymore, playing fast and loose with the facts to frame some bad guys. Now, killing people was on the table.
Finally, Hickman shrugged. “OK. But we still need to throw the Feds a bone. If they don’t get to make a bust on Hardin, they’re going to want something else.”
Munroe nodded, keeping his eyes on Hickman. It looked like he had the stomach for the job. “Let’s find Hardin and Wilson, make it sloppy, make it look like Hernandez. Give my guys five minutes with the crime scene and we can hang it on him solid. We let the Feds make the bust on Hernandez. Bigger name anyway. Everybody wins.”
“OK,” Hickman said again.
“That’s Plan B then. Bahram, get back to this Fouche, tell him we’re ready to go. Plan C is this – keep the money together and ready to move. Turns out we have to make a deal with Hardin, then we do.”
“Plan C?” Hickman asked. “How many plans are we going to need?”
“Someday when I know you better, ask me about Plan Q,” Munroe said.
Lafitpour chuckled like he was reliving a happy memory. “That poor bastard.”
Munroe had one more asset to line up. He called the phone he’d left with Tony Corsco.
“Jesus,” Corsco answered. “You know what time it is?”
“Time for you to answer the phone,” said Munroe. “You got anything on Hardin yet?”
“We’re working on it. I get anything, you’ll now first thing.”
“Let me update your orders a little. Intel’s still fine. I hear what you hear as soon as you hear it. But if Hardin happens to end up dead, let’s just say that’s fine, too.”
“You putting a contract on him?” Corsco asked.
“Contract is when somebody pays you,” Munroe said. “I’m just saying intel’s fine, but if that intel happens to be where to find his body, so much the better.”
CHAPTER 53
Brad Jablonski tossed a manila folder on Starshak’s desk. He’d already sent what he had over to Hickman. Now, he’d stopped by to update Chicago PD.
“Jeanette Wilson used to be Juanita Sandoval,” Jablonski said. “Right there in our HR files from when she signed up down in Texas. Maiden name and everything.”
“Sandoval as in the guy with Hardin back when he took out Hernandez’s kid brother?” Lynch asked.
“Yeah,” said Marks. “His sister.”
“This never bothered anybody?” Starshak asked.
Marks shrugged. “Should somebody have made the connection? Yeah, I guess. Thing is? It was all legit when she signed on. Changed her name when she married, then got a divorce. She came out of the Wichita PD, they vetted her then. Degree was out of Wichita State. We get a Hispanic female recruit, looks Mexican, talks Mexican, maybe we didn’t look at her teeth quite as hard as we could have. I mean, she should have said something. She’d be in deep shit for that if she wasn’t pretty much buried in shit already.”
“So she’s been after Hernandez all along?” Bernstein asked.
“Looks like,” said Marks. “She signed up in Texas, which is as close to him as she could get, and she was one hard-ass operator down there. No secret we run a lot of ops across the border, working with the Mexicans. She signed up for that first chance she got, and they loved her. I mean a female across the Rio Grande that could pass for native? That whole macho thing? Bad guys never even looked at her. Thing is, down there? Nowadays, pretty much every bust ends up in a fire fight, which is always a little exciting for the good guys because you never know when one of the people you went through the door with is going to switch teams and shoot you in the back. She had half a dozen kills in Mexico before she got so hot that the Federales said no mas and the brass decided we needed to move her away from the border.”
“Sounds like this Jones kid drew down on the wrong senorita,” Lynch said.
“Yeah,” said Jablonski.
“But she and Hardin go back,” said Lynch.
Jablonski nodded.
“I’m getting old,” said Starshak. “So lemme just recap here, make sure I’m keeping this straight. We got Hardin, who ain’t really Hardin, who ripped off some diamonds from Al Qaeda or maybe Hezbollah, and he wants to sell them. We got Mr .22, sword of whatever, who’s after Hardin and racking up a body count like he’s Chuck Norris. We got Wilson, who ain’t really Wilson, who’s after Hernandez. Hernandez has a hard on for Hardin. Hardin is with Wilson and maybe after Hernandez too, for all we know. Corsco’s got some kind of angle we can’t make out, except it involves Joe Hollywood, who is currently impersonating a houseplant up at Northwestern. We got some suits in from DC nobody knows, and Bernstein here thinks at least one of them is really from Tel Aviv. I missing anything here?”
“Well,” said Bernstein, “there’s that Lee guy, out in Aurora, who it turns out was watching our TV.”
“Right,” said Starshak. “There’s that. Thoughts?”
“Fucked up,” said Lynch.
Starshak got up, picked up the spray bottle off his credenza, and started spritzing the fern in his window.
“So you’re the one coordinating with Hickman on this,” he said to Jablonski. “Couple days ago you were gonna put out a BOLO on Hardin, now we’re sitting on our hands. Why aren’t you putting the full-court press on him and Wilson? Looks like they had to leave town in a hurry. She can’t use her ID, access her accounts, nothing. Hardin’s blown the Fox ID he was using, can’t go back to Hardin, can’t go back to Griffin. They’ve gotta be hiding somewhere. We get them on the wire, get their faces up on the tube, we probably get a line on them pretty quick.”
“That’s how I’d play it,” Jablonski said. “But Hickman doesn’t want to spook them. He says Hardin takes his diamonds and runs, we might never find them. Say he’s worried Al Qaeda will get their hands on them again, which would give the bad guys better than a hundred mil in operating capital. We leave Hardin and Wilson some room, maybe they make a play on Hernandez, maybe we find this al Din, maybe they try to make another sale we can track. If you push him on it, he starts making national security noises, playing the need to know card.”
“So now he’s worried about what the terrorists might be up to?” Starshak said. “Yesterday he couldn’t shut me up on that fast enough.”
“Hickman’s got some kind of angle he’s not telling us,” said Lynch. “Cause he’s not stupid and that doesn’t make sense.”
“What I figured,” said Jablonski.
After Jablonski left, Starshak, Lynch and Bernstein talked things over.
“Can’t just sit on our fucking hands,” Lynch said. “What about Corsco? He’s tied in here somewhere, and he’s still ducking us. I say it’s time to sit his ass down.”
Starshak nodded, reached for the phone, called Ringwald, told him to have Corsco in for an interview today or Starshak would get a subpoena and serve it on the mother fucker in his box at the opera. He hung up.
“What else?” he asked.
“With these need-to-know fed types in this, they’re gonna freeze us out,” said Lynch. “This crap from Hickman on the BOLOs, th
at’s just the start.”
“Agreed,” said Bernstein.
A pause in the conversation. “So what’s our move?” Starshak asked.
“So we focus on Saturday,” said Lynch.
“Why the African?” asked Starshak.
“This al Din fuck, he’s the one leaving bodies behind. And Saturday, that’s the one move he couldn’t have planned in advance. If he fucked up, he fucked up there. I’m going to go talk to Magnus again, see if I can shake something loose.”
CHAPTER 54
Kate Magnus was out front, working in the flower garden along the fence with a few of the residents when Lynch got to the shelter. As he pulled up, he saw a young black kid on the other side of the street wave back between a couple of the three-flats up that way and then turn and jog away from the street, cutting back between the buildings. Lookout, probably. Running a street market.
Magnus was wearing jeans today, what looked like a long-sleeve T-shirt of some kind under a cheap nylon windbreaker. Lynch didn’t think she spent much on clothes. Lynch didn’t think she gave a shit about that either. She stood up when she saw him, took off her work gloves, said something to one of the men working near her and walked over to meet Lynch at the gate.
“Detective,” she said. Neutral at least this time.
“Sister,” said Lynch, then, “Sorry, force of habit. Ms Magnus. You’ve got no idea what twelve years of Catholic school can do to you.”
He wasn’t sure, but that might have got him a little smile. “Sure I do,” she said. “Perhaps it will make things easier for everyone if you just call me Kate. What can I do for you?”
“Something’s come up with Membe’s case. I’ve got a picture of a man that might be connected. If he is, it would be from overseas. I’d like you to look at it, maybe show it to your residents.”
Magnus was quiet for a moment, looking at Lynch. “I thought Membe was just an innocent bystander. You said he was likely shot because he might have seen the man who killed Stein.”
