Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers)

by William F. Brown

  Greenway stared into Scalese’s cold, dark eyes and began to sweat. “Look, Anthony, were on the same side here. We’re partners. I’m not going to do anything to upset things.”

  “Wrong! You already did, Doc.” Scalese cut him off, grabbing him by the lapel and pulling him closer. “You don’t seem to understand. There’s a lot at stake here, millions, and the people I work for take things like that deadly serious. You ain’t supposed to be goin’ around killin’ people or tryin’ to get rid of bodies. That’s my job, remember? You’re supposed to stick to the hip and knee replacements, the padded bills at the clinics and nursing homes, and push the meds. I’m here to handle ‘security.’ ”

  “I know, I know, Tony,” Greenway kept trying to back away, but Scalese tightened his grip on his lapel, and stayed up in his face.

  “Mr. D ain’t gonna be happy when he hears about this,” Scalese told him.

  “Look, uh… Who says he has to?”

  Scalese laughed. “Who says he has to? Don’t go diggin’ yourself in deeper than you already are, Doc. You said you got everything under control. Okay, what’d you do with the Purdue broad? Where did you put her body?”

  Greenway shrank back. “In… uh, in the third floor mechanical room.”

  “The third floor mechanical room?” Scalese laughed derisively at him and shook his head. Finally, he let go of the lapel on Greenway’s suit coat. “You really are a piece of work, Doc,” he said as he closed the stiletto and dropped it in his pocket.

  “I wrapped her in a plastic sheet the painters left and stuffed her behind the air handler. I was going to get rid of her tonight, after the janitors left.”

  “In a plastic sheet the painters left? Yeah, you got things under control, all right.”

  “It was only temporary. Most of the staff's already gone. No one was going to find her up there. I was going to get rid of her later tonight, but then I got that call from Bentley.”

  “So, it’s a good thing they didn’t search the building, like that guy Burke wanted them to do, isn’t it?”

  “That was never going to happen.”

  “No, because you ‘took care of everything,’ ” Scalese snorted.

  “All right!” Greenway lost his temper. “You think you’re the ‘big expert’ on getting rid of bodies. You handle it! After the janitors left, I was going to put her body in her car and dump it over on the West Side. If you’ve got a better idea, why don’t you do it.”

  “I will; and you don’t need to tell me how to get rid of a stiff, Doc. But the next time you need somethin’ done like that, call me first — and there better not be a next time, because I’m getting tired of cleaning up your messes.”

  Greenway studied him for a moment before a thin smile crossed his lips. “Okay, Tony, how much do you want?”

  “How much? Oh, let’s say, fifty ‘large,’ ” Scalese answered and watched Greenway’s smile fade. “You can always do it yourself, of course; but if I do it, there won’t be no blowback. Mr. D don’t want no more waves and he don’t want to hear no more stories.”

  “You aren’t too subtle, but I get the message, Anthony,” Greenway began to recover his confidence. “Fifty thousand? I can do that… I assume that will buy your complete discretion?”

  “My complete discretion? Oh, no, that’s only for the body. If you want it to stay between you and me, you better make it a hundred.”

  Now, Greenway’s smile was completely gone. “A hundred? All right, Tony, “no problema,” as ‘your people’ would say. A hundred ‘large’ it is, and now I own you.”

  Scalese looked at him and laughed even harder now. “You own me? You got balls, Doc, I’ll give you that much. You got balls, all right… but next time, keep ’em in your pants.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  While the offices of Consolidated Health Care were in a modern, three-story, blue-glass building in a beautifully landscaped office park in a trendy suburb west of O’Hare, Toler TeleCom’s offices ran more to the dumpy and practical. They were located in a boring, two-story, thirty-year-old-brick office-warehouse in an area of Schaumburg behind the big Motorola plant that featured more of the same. The company offices filled the front half of the building, while their warehouse, equipment storage, and trucks occupied the rear half. Each of the two buildings projected exactly the image that their owners wanted for their companies.

  The morning after his O’Hare Airport fiasco, Bob Burke arrived at the Toler TeleCom offices a few minutes after 8:00, much later than usual, more hung over, and psychologically black and blue from having asked, “You moron, what were you thinking!” over and over again to himself in the mirror. Still, he knew that the best cure for a flood of self-doubt and self-pity was to jump right into the deep end and start swimming.

  Yesterday’s business suit was gone, replaced with faded blue jeans, a button-down Oxford cloth shirt, an old tweed sports coat, and a pair of well-worn Asics running shoes. As he walked through the front door and across the small lobby, he gave a hurried nod to Margie Thomas. She had been the company’s receptionist, “gatekeeper,” and corporate pit bull since Ed Toler founded it. She and Angie Toler never got along, due to one perceived slight or another, and Angie retaliated by trying to get the bean counters to cut the position and replace her with a tasteful little sign and a buzzer. Ed Toler told them “no” a long time ago, but that did not stop Angie from continuing to try. To Ed, a smart receptionist was the company’s public face, its first line of defense, and invaluable. That was one of the many things that Ed got right.

  Margie watched him over the top of her glasses. “Casual Tuesday?” she muttered under her breath. “I must’ve missed the memo.”

  Ignoring the comment, he trudged on into the company’s administrative offices and took the first quick right past the desk of Maryanne Simpson, his Executive Assistant and Ed’s long before that. Whether in government or business, most managers put their own offices in a distant corner, usually at the end of the longest hallway, around a few corners, and well out of sight from virtually everyone. That type of “boss cave” was exactly what Ed Toler refused to have. He put his own office, Maryanne’s, and the main conference room up front in the center of the larger space, where all the main hallways intersected. Like the other managers’ offices, the corridor door walls were glass, and his door was rarely closed. “How else can you know what’s going on?” Ed said. “I want to see what my people are doing, and more importantly, I want them to see what I’m doing. I can’t think of running this place any other way.” Neither could Bob.

  As he tried to slip past Maryanne’s desk and through the door to his office, she looked up and snapped her gum at him. Like a warning shot across the bow of a ship, that was her usual way of getting people’s attention. “You’ve got visitors,” she warned, glancing toward his closed office door. He frowned, knowing she understood his standing order about no visitors before 9:00 a.m. She returned his unhappy look and shrugged, “The little one didn’t give me much choice. He is a pushy bastard, as you’ll see. And don’t ask, I’ve already taken them coffee, twice.”

  Bob opened his office door and stepped inside, where he found two men waiting for him. One was his old “pal” from O’Hare, Chicago Police Department Lieutenant Ernie Travers. The other was someone he recognized from local TV news — a small, fastidious little man in a conservative blue suit, turtle-shell glasses, and a bow tie. He was Peter O’Malley, the US Attorney for Northern Illinois. The image Bob recalled was of the man behind a bank of microphones on the steps of the Federal Courthouse — presumably behind a short lectern or standing on a very thick phone book. This morning, however, O’Malley was sitting stiffly upright in Burke’s chair, behind Bob’s desk, looking like it was “bring your kid to the office day.” Ignoring the fact that Bob had just walked in in, O’Malley continued flipping through the pages of Bob’s desk calendar. Maryanne was very particular about how she sorted and stacked papers, correspondence, and telephone notes on her boss’s desk
when he was out, and it was obvious that her neat piles had been mussed and rummaged through. Figures, Bob thought. That was why nosey, mouthy little jerks usually became standup comics or lawyers.

  Bob chose to ignore the provocation, for the moment, anyway. He set his briefcase on his round conference table and looked over at Travers. “Hi Ernie,” he said. “Long time no see.”

  The big police Lieutenant was as far away from O’Malley as the small office would allow. He stood by the sidewall, arms folded across his chest, eyeing the gallery of photos and plaques hanging there. Most were standard company PR stuff that Ed Toler left behind. There were shots of a few of their big jobs, of Ed shaking hands with customers, of key staff, and various plaques and awards that the company received over the years, but those weren’t the photos Ernie Travers was looking at. Almost lost in the dense sea of color were two framed ones along the far edge, which were of Bob Burke in the Army. The others were full of bright colors, but the scenes in these two appeared beige on dusty, dull beige. The top one dated from the first Iraq war — the good one. Travers looked closer and saw a young, smiling Lieutenant Robert Burke kneeling in the center of two or three dozen laughing, grinning American soldiers in full battle dress. Behind them sat two big M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers, an Abrams tank, and an empty, rock-strewn desert. It was an interesting shot, but the other photo drew Travers’ attention even more. It was of a smaller group of eight heavily armed men — American Special Ops soldiers, he immediately guessed — set against a craggy, snowcapped mountain range. They wore scraggly beards, baggy pants, shawls, and the flat “pakol” hats that the native Afghans wore. To a man, they looked older and more scarred and battle-worn than the other group. Their smiles appeared thin and forced, but the eager young men in the first photo had won their war. They had kicked ass in a matter of days and would soon be on their way home from their first and only tour. On the other hand, the men in the other photo were on their second, third, or even fourth tours, trapped in a war that ground on and on and ended up kicking everyone’s ass. Travers leaned closer and studied the small man in the center. He leaned on a long-barreled Barrett M-83 sniper rifle, and above his beard and mustache, Travers recognized Bob Burke’s hard, black eyes.

  “Interesting,” Travers commented.

  Burke frowned. “Those two were my wife’s idea, not mine.”

  “No surprise there.”

  He and Angie argued about them many times. “They are exactly what you need to impress your customers and get things off on the right foot, Bobby,” she insisted. “You should put up more, plus all the medals and flags. You know what I mean.” He did, but he didn’t agree. With her, he rarely did. “They only impress the wrong people,” he told her until he finally gave up arguing. With Angie, he learned to pick his battles, which he rarely won anyway. Besides, he could take them down later, when she wasn’t around. Unfortunately, she anticipated that move and took the precaution of mounting them to the wall with heavy-duty butterfly dry-wall screws. Smart girl, as usual. To get rid of them, he would need to tear half the wall down.

  Travers’s eyes met Burke’s for an instant and Bob saw the man’s embarrassment, not over the photographs, but for being there in the first place and for the man sitting behind Bob’s desk. Travers motioned toward the first photo from Iraq, “I remember you said you were a Ranger in Iraq, and Mech Infantry?”

  “Seventh Cav,” Bob acknowledged with a slight nod of the head.

  “Yeah?” Travers turned and smiled. “I ran the MP stockade right behind you guys. We were the ones stuck with all those prisoners you left behind in the dust. What a mess.”

  “War always is.”

  “This other one doesn’t exactly look like the Army drill team at Fort Myer. What? Afghanistan? Special Ops?” Travers looked at him and asked, but all he got in return was an embarrassed shrug. “I know, I know. If you told me, you’d have to kill me,” Travers laughed.

  “Oh, Major Burke doesn’t need to be that coy around us, does he?” O’Malley finally spoke up, not bothering to look up from the papers on the desk. “I read your 201 File.”

  “And anything else you can get your hands on,” Bob turned his hard, humorless eyes on the little man. “Now, get the hell out of my chair.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know who I am…”

  “And perhaps I don’t give a rat’s ass if I do, Mister O’Malley. If you don’t close my calendar and get the hell away from my desk, you’ll be lying outside in the grass after I toss you through the window. You got that?”

  O’Malley looked up at him for a moment, apparently surprised, but he slowly got to his feet and closed the cover of the desk calendar. “To quote your friend, Travers, ‘interesting.’ ” O’Malley then walked around to the front of Bob’s desk and plopped in one of the guest chairs, while Bob went the other way around and retook his own desk chair. “As I was saying,” O’Malley continued without skipping a beat, “I read your personnel file, or at least I tried — West Point and twelve years of extremely distinguished, highly-decorated service that anyone would be proud of. Unfortunately, all of the good stuff appears to be redacted. Imagine that. Over the years, I’ve examined more than my share of Army personnel files. I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never seen one with so many black lines and deletions.”

  “Really? I had no idea, Mister O’Malley; I was but a simple soldier, doing my duty,” he answered, straight-faced. “But if you don’t like the redacts, maybe you should call the Attorney General in Washington. I’m sure he can get you a clean copy.”

  “I did,” O’Malley chuckled. “That’s what he sent me.”

  Bob tried not to smile. The office door opened and Maryanne Simpson walked in carrying a large cup of coffee, an urn, and two extra-strength aspirin, which she handed Burke. They exchanged knowing glances as he swallowed the aspirin dry. “Another refill, gentlemen?” she asked. They both shook their heads, so she quickly retreated and closed the door behind her.

  Bob finally looked across at O’Malley. “All right, tell me what you want.”

  “To the point — I like that. As you apparently know, I am the US Attorney for Northern Illinois. My jurisdiction covers half the state plus parts of Wisconsin and Indiana. While it appears you have some very unique skills and training, I assume you did not go to law school, did you, Mister Burke?”

  “No, while you were doing that, I was doing that,” Bob nodded toward the two photos on the wall, “and getting myself redacted, of course.” He smiled, thinking Angie might have been right for once, about the photographs anyway.

  “I guess I deserved that, didn’t I?” O’Malley replied. “And I apologize if I came on a bit strong. The job of a US Attorney is to investigate and enforce Federal law within his jurisdiction. That covers a multitude of sins, literally, including graft, official corruption, income tax evasion, organized crime, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, tampering with Federal witnesses, and occasionally even murder, which, unfortunately, is what brings me to your office this morning, Bob… you don’t mind my calling you Bob, do you?”

  “Tell you what,” Bob answered as he took another sip of coffee. “Let’s leave it Mister Burke and Mister O’Malley. We aren’t friends, and you aren’t going to be here very long.”

  “We can play it your way, if that’s what you want… Mister Burke. I understand you were involved in an incident over at Consolidated Health Care last night. Lieutenant Travers filled me in on the details. He said some good things about you, so I asked him to introduce me.” O’Malley picked up his briefcase, and laid it across his knees. As he did, Burke glanced at Travers, who gave him a helpless shrug in return. O’Malley pulled out a set of glossy photographic prints, which he began laying individually across the front edge of Burke’s desk, one at a time, for dramatic effect.

  Bob leaned forward and took a quick look. There were six photographs. They were headshots of women, brunettes and one dishwater blonde, all in their twenties or thirties. Three were formal portrait or stud
io shots in color, perhaps from a high school or college yearbook. The next two were also in color, but casual snapshots. One was slightly out of focus. It showed a woman holding a can of beer over her head, dancing in a crowded bar, while the other was of a younger brunette in a bikini at the beach. The last photograph was a stark, black-and-white police mug shot of a disheveled brunette, front view and side, holding a placard in front of her with a booking number. Bob looked closely at each face, figuring they were the real reason O’Malley came to see him this morning, but he said nothing.

  “Do you recognize any of those women,” the US Attorney asked.

  Bob reached out and touched one of the portrait shots. “This one,” he immediately answered. “And this one,” he added as he pointed to the woman in the bikini at the beach. “It’s the same woman, the one I saw Greenway strangling on the rooftop yesterday.” O’Malley’s eyes lit up as if he had won the lottery. “However, before you wet your pants, it was getting dark and I was looking down through an airplane window as we flew by. Her hair is a lot shorter in this picture, and Greenway was on top of her, leaning forward, and partly blocking my view. That might cause you some problems with a good defense attorney.”

  “Let me worry about that,” O’Malley dismissed the concern with a wave of his hand. “First impressions are usually the right ones, and you sound very positive.”

  “Oh, I am. I’ll never forget her eyes. Things like that stay with you.”