The smart move would have been to take my own advice. Flag a cab, hook up with Rachel and the pup, lay low, and watch the whole thing unfold from a distance. Instead, I headed west. I’d bought a burner phone after I left my apartment and used it to leave Rachel a message and the number. Then I tried Rita Alvarez, but got no answer. So I shut the phone down and walked.
The news had been getting increasingly grim. At noon, WGN reported a possible Legionnaires’ outbreak on the West Side. Then E. coli. Or bad water. By midafternoon, it was an unfolding health crisis, with at least ten dead, another dozen sick, and Cook County Hospital at the epicenter. Still no mention of a bioweapon, but they were warming to the idea. Wilson had spoken with reporters for the first time about an hour ago outside Cook. I was a half block from the place when I pulled out the card the mayor had given me and dialed up Mark Rissman.
“It’s Kelly. I need to talk to him.”
“He’s busy.”
“Tell him I spoke with Danielson today. He gave me a piece of paper with the mayor’s name on it, and an address.”
I read off the address.
A pause. “Why would the mayor care?”
“Just give him the message. And get back to me.”
Twenty minutes later, my phone chirped. Ten minutes after that, a car picked me up. I slipped into the backseat. Rissman was beside me. Vince Rodriguez was driving.
“Pull up here.”
Rissman pointed to a high-rise of maybe a dozen stories called Colonial Tower. Colonial was one of Wilson’s TIF adventures. A high-end development built ten years back with taxpayer dollars by the mayor’s patronage pals. Now the slush fund was dry, the cronies in jail, and Colonial cast in the role of ghost town. I looked up at the smooth black monolith, its windows reflecting back the night in a kaleidoscope of whites, reds, and greens.
“What’s he doing in there?” I said.
Rissman responded by making a move to get out of the car. When I didn’t try to stop him, he stopped himself. “What are you trying to implicate the mayor in?”
“What makes you think I’m trying to implicate him in anything?”
“What’s at the address you gave me?”
“You know what’s there.”
“It’s a grocery store.”
“Owned by a Korean named Lee. There was also a double homicide there last night.”
Rissman glanced toward the front seat, but Rodriguez didn’t flinch. “And what would any of that have to do with the mayor? Or the situation on the West Side?”
“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me.”
Rissman’s eyes sketched his contempt in sharp, quick strokes. “You’re not smart enough for this, Kelly.”
“Stupidity has always been my strength.”
The mayor’s man reached for the latch again. This time he got out of the car, shoved his hands in his pockets, and trudged toward the Colonial’s revolving doors. Rodriguez raised his eyes to the rearview mirror.
“Is it enough to ruin my career? Or is your heart set on getting me a cell next to yours?”
“Come on,” I said. “The mayor’s gonna love us.”
CHAPTER 32
Room 1406 was the penthouse in the Colonial Tower complex. Rissman pulled out a key card and slid it through a slot by the door. The first room was a foyer, shut off from the rest of the suite by a thick plastic sheet that ran floor to ceiling with a zippered entrance cut into one side. A machine similar to the one I’d seen in the subway breathed away in one corner, its hoses running like viscera through the plastic wall and deeper into the unit.
“That’s a HEPA filtration device,” I said. “Helps to create a negative pressure environment.” Rodriguez looked like he wanted to open a window and let me take the express, fourteen stories down.
“Wait here.” Rissman slid the zipper open and disappeared inside the bubble. After a minute or so, he returned.
“Kelly alone. And don’t touch anything.”
We walked through a second layer of polyurethane and into a bedroom with a wall full of floor-to-ceiling windows. In one corner of the room were a camera on a tripod and a spray of television lights, set up around a shiny wooden chair and artificial fireplace. In the other corner was the mayor of Chicago, sitting on a sofa, clad from head to toe in a white mask and NBC suit.
“Kelly, sit down.”
Wilson’s face was covered by a shaded visor, which, truth be told, was very much an improvement. He gestured with a gloved hand, and I took a seat.
“Can’t drink a Diet Coke in these things.” Wilson pointed to a can of soda and glass full of ice on the table in front of him. “Who the fuck designs something so you can’t drink a Diet Coke?”
I looked behind me to see if Rissman might have a response. That’s when I realized I was alone.
“He’ll be back in a second,” Wilson said. “Here he is now.”
Rissman slipped back into the room and gave his boss a thumbs-up.
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wilson grunted and pulled off the mask. His face looked like a boiled piece of Sunday beef, with imprints from the mask running down both cheeks. The mayor grabbed the can of Diet Coke and drank.
“Fucking thing’s hot as hell, too.”
“Why did you take it off?” I said.
Wilson nodded toward Rissman. “They set up some sort of biosensor bullshit. Mark checks them every hour. Makes sure the room is clean.”
“If the room’s clean, why wear the suit in the first place?”
“Why?”
I nodded.
“ ’Cuz I’m not an asshole. That’s why.”
“You like to have a backup plan?”
“You know someone like me who doesn’t?”
“I don’t know anyone like you, Mr. Mayor.”
“Fucking right.”
There was a knock on the door. A woman with a countenance that was just short of desperate stuck her head in. She carried a tray full of square sponges, brown brushes, and flesh-colored powders.
“Mr. Mayor, I need to do your face.”
Wilson checked his watch. “What time are we on, Mark?”
“Not sure yet, sir.”
“Half hour, Renee.” Wilson waved the door shut.
“Got a press conference?” I said.
“You know we do.” Wilson stood up and stripped off the rest of his protective gear. Rissman hung it all up in a closet. The mayor wore a white T-shirt underneath.
“Who’s running the show?” I said.
“Who do you think?” The mayor waved impatiently at Rissman who pulled a dress shirt and dark blue business suit out of the closet. Wilson stripped down to a plaid pair of boxers and a very large belly. He looked around the room, arms akimbo, daring anyone to notice. When no one did, the mayor of Chicago began to get dressed.
“Feds will go first,” Wilson said, picking up a light blue tie from a selection laid out on the bed, then switching to red.
“First?” I said.
“Officials from the federal government will speak from the Dirksen Building,” Rissman said. “They’ll outline the dimensions of the problem. Then the mayor will speak live.”
“From here?” I gestured to the lights and stick-on fireplace.
Wilson tugged at the Windsor knot he’d created and rubbed the creases out of his face. “I’ll speak to Chicago from the frontlines. Show them there’s nothing to fear.”
“I assume you’re not going on in your space suit over there?”
“Funny guy.” Wilson stepped away from the mirror and sat down on the couch. “Let’s talk about what you found in the Korean’s cellar.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
Wilson glanced up at Rissman. “Ten thousand?”
“About,” Rissman said.
“Ten thousand body bags. Sitting in the basement of a drug dealer. A day before a bioweapon is released in my city.”
There was a knock at the door. Rissman told whoe
ver it was to go away.
“What are you suggesting?” I said.
“Why don’t you tell me how you knew about the cellar?”
“All due respect, why should I tell you anything?”
I could hear Rissman’s silent scream from across the room. Wilson barely stirred.
“Danielson got himself killed in your apartment today.” The mayor’s voice rustled now, deep in the weeds.
“I know. I was there.”
“Feds might like to talk to you about that.”
“That’s not your style, Mr. Mayor.”
“Don’t make that mistake, son.”
I nodded to a phone on a table by the window. “Make the call.”
Wilson rubbed two fingers together in protest. “Fair enough.” He poured what was left of his Diet Coke from can to glass and watched the bubbles bubble. Then he drained the glass.
“We need to track down the bags, Kelly. And whoever was behind them.”
“I’m thinking you might not want that.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I shrugged and pretended to look out the window. Wilson glanced at Rissman, who closed the door behind him as he left.
“You want something?” Wilson said.
I shook my head. The mayor got himself another Diet Coke from a small refrigerator. “I used to love sugar. Now they tell me I might be diabetic. I ask ‘What does that mean?’ Either I am, or I’m not. So they tell me I’m not. But no more sugar. Just in case I am. ‘When will you know for sure?’ I say. They tell me they’ll know when I’m dead and they get to cut me open. Fucking doctors.” Wilson put the can back in the fridge and pulled out a Mountain Dew.
“You study the classics in school?” I said.
“Priests force-fed me three years.” Wilson took a sip of his Dew and belched.
“You ever read Sophocles’s Oedipus?”
“I’m not interested in humping my mother, if that’s where you’re headed.”
“Oedipus’s downfall was precipitated by his insatiable need to discover the truth. Coupled with an arrogant belief that no matter what he discovered, Oedipus could handle it. Fix the problem.”
“English, Kelly?”
“There’s a chance you might be involved.”
“In what?”
“The body bags.”
“Me?”
“Your office.”
“How?”
“Maybe you don’t want to know.”
“I want to know.”
“You asked what led me to Lee’s grocery store.”
“Yeah.”
“I was working a case. Actually, an old standby. Corruption in Chicago politics. I don’t have a name for you yet, but someone downtown is running no-bid medical supply contracts for county business.”
“With this Korean?”
“He was in the middle of it, yes.”
“And you think the body bags were part of that?”
“Right now, I don’t know what to think.”
“It’s bullshit.”
I took out the piece of paper Danielson had given me and slipped it across the table.
“Danielson gave me an address today. Right before he put a gun in his mouth. He thought it might be a lead on who released the weapon.”
Wilson looked at the note but didn’t touch it.
“The paper’s got your name on it, Mr. Mayor. The name of the Korean’s trucking company, Silver Line, and his address. The same address I was given on the medical supply scam. Same address I was at last night. Same address where I found the body bags and a stack of gangbangers looking for their dope.”
Wilson peeled his eyes off the note. “What do you want from me?”
“Why would someone drop your name to Danielson?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“What I do know?” Wilson chuckled at the notion. “Your fucking head would explode. Listen, do people in my office cut corners sometimes? Who doesn’t?”
“When I look at City Hall, I tend to think biblical. Greed, Envy, Lust, Gluttony. Maybe a double helping of Gluttony.”
“No one’s going to release a weapon like that just to make some cash selling body bags.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But if someone happened to know about the release, they might try to make a quick buck.”
There was another knock on the door. Renee stuck her head in.
“Give us another minute,” the mayor said.
Renee left. Wilson walked himself to the windows. The black sprawl of the West Side lay below, outlined in soft sketches of pink. “From up here, the place cleans up pretty well.”
“When do the fences go up?” I said.
The mayor turned, voice and eyebrows rising in tandem. “You know about that?”
“Quarantine fences. Sealing off three sections of the West Side and an area of Oak Park. Including the building we’re sitting in.”
We both looked around the room, suddenly the more sinister for its location.
“We’ll go on air once they start,” Wilson said. “Feds think they’ll have most of the fences finished by dawn.”
“You have any say in that?”
The mayor shook his head. “For the last five hours, the area’s been operating under martial law.”
“You gonna use that term in your dog-and-pony show?”
“Hell, no.”
“I went on the city’s Web site today, Mr. Mayor. You have one page of information on biological and chemical weapons. The gist of it is this: cover your nose and mouth; wash your hands with soap and water; watch TV.”
“You think any of us like this?”
I let my eyes travel back to the windows. I could see the lights and hear the steady thump of a chopper in the night. “Can I still get out of here?”
“Leave it for tomorrow. We’ll get you out.”
“Who’s we?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Wilson got up and moved to the door. “I’ve got the top two floors in this place. Find a hole and climb in. Watch some TV. Once we get started, I’m gonna be the only thing on.”
“Good luck.”
“No shit. And, Kelly?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Come tomorrow, do what you have to. If the bags come back to this office, give me the courtesy of a call before the feds. I’ll do the right thing.”
“Can I believe that, Mr. Mayor?”
“You think I love my city?”
“Actually, I do.”
“All right, then. Now get out of here and let me lead.”
QUARANTINE
Some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost precaution. By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when any one felt himself sickening, for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder; besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other.
THUCYDIDES, HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR,
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 33
They waited until dark to bring in the fences. Workers dressed in NBC suits unloaded trucks and took crowbars to crates. They dug posts and unrolled lengths of steel mesh. Two layers of fencing went up, with twenty yards of space in between. Each was topped with a double strand of concertina wire, the outer fence also covered over with sheets of reinforced wood so no one could see in. Or out.
The barriers were constructed under the silent and subtle protection of Chicago police, who diverted traffic, and federal agents, who dealt with any “problems” along the perimeter. Under an emergency federal order, all television and cell phone signals inside the
“protected zones” were jammed at 11:00 p.m., replaced by a message telling citizens the outage was a planned one and “limited service” would be restored by seven the next morning. Washington also hit its Internet kill switch, shutting down ISP providers inside the affected areas.
Just before midnight, the government posted soldiers at the front doors to Cook County Hospital, Rush Medical Center, and Mount Sinai Hospital. Twenty minutes after the soldiers showed up, the staff at Cook walked out. The doctors and nurses told officials they wouldn’t go back into the ER until they got NBC suits, just like the guys with the guns. For half of the staff, it wouldn’t matter. They were already infected.
A mixture of Homeland Security, FBI, and military filtered into the streets. Clad in NBC suits and carrying automatic weapons, they shut down all major intersections and closed whatever was still open—mostly bars and restaurants, gas stations, convenience and liquor stores. They herded people back to their homes, arresting anyone who gave them trouble and arranging “temporary shelter” for those who were stranded in a restricted area.
Reactions ran the gamut. Some people screamed at the hooded figures with guns. Others fainted. Three went into cardiac arrest. On the West Side, bangers and wannabes alike broke out windows and took what they wanted while they could. In Oak Park, people grabbed for their cell phones—a primal urge, apparently, both to share their outrage and record it. Overall, however, regular folks mostly went along. That surprised Washington, but the reality was when a cop in an NBC suit pointed a gun and told you to stay inside, you did exactly that. Until someone told you different.
CHAPTER 34
Three miles east of the rising fence lines, Missy Davis’s night already had “suck” written all over it. Missy went to Vassar, summa cum laude, fifth in her class, should have been first. Yale Law School wanted her. Or at least they’d sent her a letter. So did Stanford and the University of Chicago. She settled on Northwestern and a master’s in journalism. It was supposed to be a Christiane Amanpour redux, or some Anglo-Saxon version of such. It wasn’t supposed to be the overnight assignment desk. She ripped another piece of copy off the printer and trudged it across Channel Six’s newsroom.
We All Fall Down Page 13
