Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  “Well, bring Todd.”

  “My dad hates him.”

  “Your dad hates everybody.” The brunette turned the flower vase around, sizing up her finished arrangement. “So, you’re not gonna go see him after you get off work? You’re only here till three, aren’t you?”

  “Not! I have to work late every day this week. I can’t drive unless I get some new tires. They’re, like, almost bald.” The blonde stirred her hands in the air, perhaps trying to give an impression of a baldness so extreme you could skate on it.

  Kevin tapped on the glass counter. “Excuse me,” he said.

  The blonde stood up and blushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Hi! How can I help you?”

  “White ribbon. Ten-inch piece.”

  “Just ribbon?”

  Kevin nodded.

  The girl turned her head pertly to one side. “We have half-inch and inch wide.”

  “Half inch.”

  She went to the end of the counter, where a couple dozen ribbon spools were arrayed along a bar, and snipped a piece of the white. “That do ya?” she asked, holding it up.

  “Splendid,” said Kevin. As the girl passed to the register, he made note of the name on her ID badge. “Is this your birthday, Agnes?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” She gave him a fleeting glance.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she said. She took a moment to study the tax chart taped to the counter. “Comes to thirty-two cents. Three cents an inch, plus tax.”

  Kevin dug underneath his overalls and brought a four-inch thick wad of bills out of his jeans pocket—everything he had withdrawn from his bank account the day before. He rarely carried more than twenty dollars on him, and the sight of so much money in his hand seemed incongruous, almost to the point of laughter.

  “I can’t change that,” said Agnes, as Kevin handed a hundred dollar bill from the outside of the wad. “Don’t you have anything smaller?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t change it.”

  Kevin looked at Agnes, at her blue eyes and pale, peach-fuzz covered skin. She had a cockeyed smile, her lip curling higher on one side. She put so much zest into her smiling that she gave the impression it was a virtuoso skill to her, something she had made great strides at, but still hadn’t quite mastered. “That’s all right,” said Kevin, waving off a small plastic bag and picking up the ribbon. “Why don’t you keep the change?”

  “What?” She couldn’t have been more shocked it he had offered her a sip of Kahlua out of a hip flask. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Let me put it like this. How much extra will you make working late today?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty dollars? There’s a hundred. Keep the change for yourself, but promise me you’ll take off work at, what is it, three o’clock?”

  “Yeah, three.”

  “No one should have to work late on their seventeenth birthday, should they? Call Todd, and tell him you’re getting off at three, and that you have a couple of hours to do something wild and crazy before settling down to dinner with your parents at the Olive Garden. Tell him you have a hundred bucks to do it with.”

  “Are you, like, some kind of rich doctor or something?”

  Kevin smiled. “What does it matter who I am? Just promise me one thing. Be out of this hospital by three o’clock. Three-thirty at the latest. Absolutely no later than three-thirty.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Then have a happy birthday, Agnes,” he said as he headed toward the Pike. He felt very good about himself—almost intoxicated, indeed, with good feelings about himself, and the hundred dollars, and the seventeen-year-old pink-and-white carnation to whom he had just given the gift of life.

  * * *

  With the white ribbon tied to his ID badge, Kevin now looked exactly like one of the scores of searchers combing the hospital. On his way through the crowded hallway to room PL-171, he succeeded in getting past two security guards, one four-man search team, and one doctor with whom he had copublished a paper on essential tremor—all without attracting a second look. But when he approached PL-171 itself, he encountered a more difficult problem. Directly across from the door to the utility closet, Kathleen Brown and her film crew had encamped, complete with lights and reflectors, to interview a pair of workmen.

  The last thing he wanted was to show up on camera. He quickly ducked into a side-corridor, where he strolled about briefly before trying another pass. But the TV people showed no signs of moving on. His options were limited. He dared not linger out in the open. Scrubbing the mission was unacceptable. So he flipped up his collar and tried to push on through, keeping his back to the film crew, and trusting that a man in overalls entering a janitor’s closet would not attract attention.

  He was wrong. Before he had even reached the door, he heard Kathleen Brown call out, “Dr. O’Day! Is that you?”

  He paused in his tracks. Okay, it can’t be helped. Best thing is to act natural and get rid of her. “Uh, you … uh, yeah,” he said, looking back at her. “Just call me Kevin, okay? I don’t go in for that ‘doctor’ crap. Titles are for the intellectually insecure.”

  She crossed the corridor toward him. “Any updates on how Jamie Winslow is getting on? Is the SIPNI device working?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be telling me? Why aren’t you guys with the kid?”

  “They won’t let us in to see him.”

  “The hell with that. Talk to a guy named Brower. He runs the NICU. Give him a flattering close-up on TV and he’ll let you into his wife’s panty drawer.”

  “Thanks. Actually, I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to tell you how impressed I was by your interview this morning. That computer of yours—Thor? Is that its name?”

  He looked at her incredulously. “Odin.”

  “Of course, Odin. Truly amazing! What would you think about doing a feature segment on Odin for Lifeline?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You must be very proud of your work. I mean, Odin is so lifelike. Creating it must have been a lot like giving birth.”

  She was so much like a pesky fly that he couldn’t resist taking a swipe at her. “Have you ever given birth, Kathy?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have kids, Kathy?”

  “Why, no.”

  “Then you really don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, do you?”

  “It’s … it’s just an expression.”

  Kevin noticed the little red light of the Betacam. “And why is that goddamned camera pointed at me? Why are you filming this?”

  Kathleen Brown turned to the cameraman. “Oh, Dutch! Really! Give us a little space here.”

  Dutch turned the camera off and let it slide down its strap so it pointed toward the floor.

  “Sorry about that,” said Kathleen Brown. “In our line of work we just take it for granted.”

  “Well, it pisses people off.”

  She nodded sympathetically. “Listen, was that your wife in the operating room?”

  Kevin was surprised. What does she want with Ali? “I, uh … Yeah, that was my wife.”

  “You two seem so different from each other. Have you been married long?”

  “Awhile.”

  She stepped forward, almost brushing against him, and threw her chest out, giving him a clear view of her cleavage. Her voice turned soft and sultry. “Do you think she would mind if you and I had drinks together sometime? To talk about Lifeline.”

  Hell, now she’s coming on to me. Fuck, she’s actually trying to sex me up. “Look, I need to get going. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Is it about the bomb?”

  Bingo! That’s what she’s after. Why didn’t she ask about it in the first place? “I, uh … I can’t talk about that.”

  “Do you know what they took out of the Endocrinology Clinic lobby? Was that a real bomb? I’ve heard that it wasn’t really functional.”

  Kevin notic
ed the red light of the camera again. Although Dutch still had it hanging by his hip, it had somehow wound up being pointed at him. “So, uh … you know about that, huh?”

  Kathleen Brown nodded and gave a self-congratulating smile.

  “Come here.” Kevin put his arm around Kathleen Brown’s shoulder and pulled her several paces down the corridor, keeping both their backs turned toward Dutch. Kevin could smell her hairspray and the talc of her facial makeup. He knew, too, that she had been out for a smoke not more than a few minutes before, and that she had had onions for lunch. “You’re wasting your time staking out the hallways like this. These plumbers don’t know anything.”

  “On the contrary, they’ve been very—”

  “You do know that there’s been an arrest in the case, don’t you?”

  “An arrest? Who? When?”

  “I’m not allowed to say.” Kevin drew a zipper line across his lips. “But they’re holding him right here, in the hospital. Take your crew down to the E.R and have a look-see. They have a lock-up room there, which as we speak is being guarded by a whole regiment of the Chicago P.D.”

  “Is it the bomber?”

  “Hey, I’ve risked my ass to tell you this much. You have to connect the dots yourself.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” In her eyes, he could see that she was already halfway down the hall. He was nothing more to her now than the spent rind of an orange that had been sucked dry.

  “Save it. We can talk about it all later … when we have those drinks.”

  “Right, right.” She turned to her crew, who had already pulled up their cables and lights. “Come on, guys. Let’s check out Emergency.”

  Kevin watched as Kathleen Brown and her crew scurried down the Pike. The idea of her coming on to him was revolting. It wasn’t anything about her physically. She had a pert, trim bod and a smart face under all that makeup—he hadn’t failed to notice that, even if she didn’t have the sex appeal of Ali’s shadow on a rainy day. But she hadn’t even bothered to check whether he was interested. She had just forced herself on him, as if he were some dumb trout that couldn’t tell the difference between a live worm on a hook and a piece of shiny plastic.

  She had no idea, of course, that she had a major role to play in his plans. For now, he just wanted her out of the way. But later, when the time was ripe, he and Odin would give Kathleen Brown everything she coveted — fire, smoke, and high drama. Danger was her aphrodisiac. When that moment came, she and her cameras would throw over SIPNI altogether for a much hotter date with Project Vesuvius. The glory of SIPNI—the glory that had been stolen from him—would be reduced to an asterisk, a footnote to the prodigies of the day.

  * * *

  Kevin waited until Kathleen Brown and her crew had disappeared into the elevator, and then gave one last look at the surveillance camera a few yards down the corridor. Odin would lose sight of him once he entered the closet. Their only communication would be the blinking closet light that would tell him the relay was working. He held his hand on the doorknob until he could feel the electronic lock releasing at Odin’s command. Then, after checking both sides of the Pike to make sure that no one else was watching, he opened the door and slipped inside.

  Room PL-171 was a small closet, about five feet wide and eight feet deep, that stored cleaning supplies, a floor polisher and an assortment of mops, vacuums and brooms. Kevin had used it two weeks before, and, knowing his way around, he quickly secured the door by overturning a large wringer bucket against it and jamming a mop handle between the bucket and the far wall. He then threaded his way through the jumble of equipment to the access panel at the rear of the closet. Using a screwdriver from his bag, he removed the panel and set it on the floor against the wall. Through the two-by-two-foot access window he aimed a flashlight down a shiny, aluminum-walled air shaft until he could see a small rectangular projection about twenty feet below. That was the relay. He had taped over the small green light that normally advertised its location. Since he couldn’t use the flashlight going down, on account of the risk that it might be seen through the grating below, he would have to fix the distance in his mind now, and keep track of it during the descent by sheer muscle memory.

  He put on a nylon web body harness, clipped an aluminum figure eight to it, and threaded a sixty-foot length of nine millimeter nylon low-stretch rope through the small and large holes of the figure eight. He passed the free end of the rope under his crotch and around his thigh before taking it up in his left hand. That and the doubling of the rope through the figure eight would give him plenty of control on the descent. In the tight space of the air shaft he wouldn’t need a backup line. He also clipped an extra carabiner to his harness, with a short piece of rope that would act as a safety line for the relay box, once he got it free.

  Since there was no anchor at hand sturdy enough to hold his body weight, he took out a couple of short lengths of inch-and-a-half nylon webbing and lashed together two broomsticks—a wooden one that would not sag under his weight and a plastic one that would not snap. Together, he knew, they would be more than twice as strong as either alone. Setting them athwart the access window, he tied the fixed end of his rappel line to them. Then he crouched in a handstand and backed into the air shaft feet-first.

  The air shaft was thirty inches wide, allowing just enough room to admit his shoulders, and to raise or lower one hand at a time past his chest. He let himself down inch by inch, braking the rope tight against the figure eight, taking care not to bump against the the walls of the air shaft or to snag himself on the sharp joint flanges that he encountered every six feet. As he descended, there was a warm current of air from below that he could feel against his ankles, but his body blocked its passage, leaving his face to sweat in the stagnant air above.

  About sixteen or seventeen feet below his starting point, Kevin at last felt the toes of his Nikes strike the upper face of the relay box. He knew that he was now directly behind the back wall of Harry Lewton’s office. Sucking in his stomach to make room, he payed out another four feet of rope and slid downward until he could feel the relay box pressing against his abdomen. At that point he stopped and clinched the belay with a butterfly knot. Just below the transmitter box, there was a faint light coming from a grating. He knew that this opened at floor level under a console behind Harry Lewton’s desk. He had no direct line of sight through it into the office—there were only shadows passing back and forth in the little patch of light. But he could hear several men’s voices clearly.

  Among these was a thin, reedy voice that he knew could only belong to Special Agent Lee. Lee was ticked off. “Terry, you let that get out of hand,” he said. “Thanks to you, our biggest lead is now in a pissing match with death. He’s going to prove to you that he’s a man to be reckoned with, if it means taking down this whole hospital.”

  “I just put a little pressure on him,” said a smooth, baritone voice—evidently that of the African-American Scopes.

  “Counterproductive,” said Lee. “Fanatics like this just dig in deeper under pressure. You have to lure them gently, exploiting their need for self-aggrandizement.”

  A third voice, raspy but bullish, interjected itself. Kevin figured it belonged to Captain Avery from the Chicago P.D. “These smug bastards are all cowards at heart,” said Avery. “They’ll crack if you squeeze ’em hard enough. Even that big Al-Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed caved in when they got rough on him.”

  “Hmm, did he?” said Lee. “Well, this isn’t Pakistan. It isn’t even the basement of a Chicago precinct station. Al-Sharawi’s being held under a Federal warrant, which means we have to follow Federal guidelines.”

  “Why don’t we talk to Washington?” said Scopes. “Tell them time is running out. We tried the regular channels, but haven’t gotten anything useful from him.”

  After a short pause Lee answered. “Regrettably, I have to agree with you, considering how you’ve mucked things up at this point. As much as I’d prefer to use a psychological app
roach, we now have, what, a little more than four and a half hours left on Mr. Lewton’s clock? Let’s send an update to the Justice Department. See if they’re willing to authorize a special interrogation protocol.”

  “Special … what?” A fourth voice came through the grate, slightly garbled, but from the decided H-sound in the word “what?” Kevin knew that it could only have come from the Texan, Harry Lewton himself.

  Avery gave the answer. “Special interrogation protocol,” he said with a patronizing tone. “Heavy petting, in layman’s terms.”

  “You mean torture,” said Harry.

  Lee snapped back as though someone had poked him with a hatpin. “The FBI doesn’t torture anyone.”

  “That’s just plain-out dumb,” said Harry. “We have the perfect leverage already. Bring in his sister. He’ll spill more in his first How d’e do? with her than you’d get out of a whole afternoon with a rubber truncheon or a tub of water.”

  “That’s very naïve of you, Mr. Lewton,” said Lee. “Dr. O’Day is a person of interest to this investigation, and it would be unacceptable to allow any contact between her and Al-Sharawi.”

  “Surely you don’t still consider her a suspect,” said Harry.

  “Her presence here can hardly be a coincidence,” said Lee.

  There was a sound of a chair swiveling hard on its roller wheels, and then Harry’s voice was heard again. “Didn’t you watch her during the interrogation? What could possibly be her motive?”

  “Well, you have me there,” said Lee. “I can’t quite put my finger on it. She doesn’t seem to be a fanatic. Nor does she need four hundred thousand dollars. In fact, her bank records show that she lives on a small fraction of her salary. However, my ignorance of her motive doesn’t clear her of suspicion. If anything, it makes her even more of a … curiosity.”

  There was another long pause. Then Scopes spoke up. “Maybe this Al-Sharawi guy’s got some kind of hold over her. Threatened her. Blackmailed her. She certainly went white when you mentioned his name.”