Dirty Martini

by J. A. Konrath

  “The red ones are the ignition wires, the brown one is the starter wire. Strip the brown one and touch it to the reds.”

  “Stripping is kind of a problem one-handed. Porky had to strip the other ones, and he almost got stuck.”

  “Let me give it a try,” Davidson offered.

  “Sure. We won’t have to grease your hips first.”

  McGlade scooted over. Davidson removed the folding knife clipped to her belt, bent under the steering wheel, and five seconds later the truck coughed and roared to life.

  “The steering column is still locked,” she said. “You won’t be able to turn unless you break the mechanism. It’s in the ignition.”

  “That I can do,” McGlade said. He held his claw over the key switch and said, “Close.” His hand crunched down on the mechanism and cracked it off.

  “Can you drive a truck?” I asked Davidson.

  Her shoulders slumped. “I’m here with my kids. I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t look too sorry, but I really couldn’t blame her. I thanked her for the help and watched her jog off. Herb checked his watch.

  “I’ll meet you there, Jack. My car is parked about three blocks away. I have to get moving.”

  “Good luck,” I told him.

  He nodded, and then hurried into the crowd.

  “Don’t run!” McGlade called after him. “Don’t risk the heart attack!”

  I ran around to the passenger side, grabbed the side bar, and swung myself up in the seat. I considered putting on my seat belt, and decided there was no point when I had forty thousand pounds of high explosive five feet behind me. Harry closed his door, adjusted his seat, then played around with his side mirror. He glanced over at mine.

  “Jackie, can you tilt your mirror forward just a bit?”

  I cranked down the window, reached for the mirror, and froze. There, plain as day, was a perfect latent fingerprint, gracing the lower right-hand corner of the mirror glass. The Chemist’s? He’d been fanatical about not leaving prints, but had he gotten a little careless? Especially since he figured the truck would be obliterated in the explosion?

  “Jackie, the mirror.”

  I held the back and nudged it forward an inch.

  “Is that better?”

  “I have no idea. Your big gray head is in the way.”

  “Just get moving, McGlade.” I fished through my purse, looking for my eye shadow.

  “Sure. Get moving. Okay. Let’s see. Gas . . . bring up the RPM . . . clutch . . . neutral . . . neutral . . . dammit, Jackie, help me get this into neutral.”

  He was trying to use his fake hand, and his claw kept sliding off the shifter ball knob.

  “Where is it?”

  “The middle.”

  I fought with the stick and popped it into the center.

  “Okay, I’m hitting the clutch, put it into first.”

  I did, and the truck jerked and then began to groan and shudder without actually moving.

  “Oops, I’m doing something wrong.”

  The truck wasn’t moving, but the engine revved into the red zone and the cab began to bounce.

  “McGlade, it’s probably not a good thing to shake up the bomb.”

  “I’m thinking . . . Hold on . . .”

  “Harry—”

  “Shit! The trailer hand brake.” He gripped another stick, pulled it back, and the truck lurched forward. “My bad.”

  He drove us off the patch of dirt and down the path Murray had cleared, into the throng of people. I found my eye shadow and dabbed the applicator into the purple powder. I was lightly dusting the latent print on the mirror when a tremendous piercing sound shook the floorboards, almost causing me to drop my brush and wet myself. It was McGlade, tugging on the pull cord for the horn.

  “Dammit, Harry, I thought we blew up.”

  “These people need to get out of my way.”

  I peered out the front window and saw a man in a wheelchair in our path, twenty yards ahead.

  “Watch out for the disabled guy.”

  “I see him.”

  We closed to within ten yards.

  “You’re heading right for him.”

  “He needs to move.”

  Five yards. McGlade blared the horn again.

  “HARRY!”

  We bumped the man, and he went careening off to the side at a very high speed.

  “Jesus, McGlade! You hit him!”

  “He should have moved faster.”

  “He was handicapped!”

  “It’s not like I did anything to make his life any worse. He already couldn’t walk.”

  My cell phone buzzed, and I picked it up.

  “Daniels.”

  “Jim Czajkowski told me to call you. I’m Dalton Forrester from Northside Treatment. You’re bringing a bomb to my plant?”

  “That’s the idea, Dalton.”

  “We supply close to two hundred thousand homes and businesses with fresh water. If you blow up the facility, they could be without water for weeks.”

  “Simple math, Dalton. People without any water is a better deal than water without any people. Have you evacuated your staff?”

  “Yeah. I was the last one to leave. I’m heading home to my family, five miles away. Is that far enough?”

  “It should be. What’s the best place to drop off this payload?”

  “It’s a truck, right? Avoid the settling tanks. Those are the round ones. They aren’t very deep, and there is skimming machinery that you could get stuck on. You should sink it in one of the aeration pools. They’re square, about an acre wide, twenty feet deep. That’s where the microorganisms eat all the organic solids. When you turn into the plant off of Howard, go left, to the west. And good luck getting here—the roads are all blocked off.”

  Czajkowski moved fast. I thanked Dalton, hung up, and went back to dusting. McGlade hit the horn again, and I heard someone scream.

  “Old lady,” Harry said. “I think I missed her. Mostly.”

  “McGlade, you need to—”

  “Turning onto Pratt. It’s going to be tight. Hold on.”

  The truck smacked into two parked cars—sending them off into opposite directions as if they were toys—jumping the curb and screeching onto the asphalt, beelining for an office building straight ahead. McGlade wrestled with the steering wheel, and we kissed the brick wall, pulled past, and then straightened out onto the street.

  “Okay, I’m going to turn onto Hamlin. Get ready to shift. Ready?”

  I had turned my attention back to the latent on the mirror. The eye shadow wasn’t fingerprint powder, but it had done a fair job clinging to the oils and making the ridges stand out.

  “Jackie! You with me?”

  “Yeah, Harry. Say when.”

  “Okay, gas . . . clutch . . . neutral . . . shit!”

  Ahead of us on Hamlin was a gridlock of cars, none of them moving.

  McGlade hit the brakes, and the tires squealed, but the truck groaned and didn’t slow down.

  “The hand brake!” he yelled, his claw bouncing off the stick.

  I looked out the side window and watched, horrified, as the trailer kicked out to the side and the truck began to jackknife.

  CHAPTER 39

  6 MINUTES

  SERGEANT HERB BENEDICT, gun in hand, jogs up the sidewalk, past one idling car after another. His own car is pinned between three others, impossible to drive. The streets are jammed, and nothing is moving. It’s like all of Skokie has become a giant parking lot.

  He’s looking for a car, any car, that isn’t trapped, but even the intersections are completely congested. A hundred horns are sounding off around him, coupled with angry shouts. He’s still two miles away from the treatment plant, and if he doesn’t find a vehicle quickly, Jack and McGlade are going to die. In McGlade’s case, it’s no big loss. But Jack is like a sister.

  Switching to Robbery had been the hardest thing Herb had ever done. He felt like he was betraying, and ab
andoning, his best friend. He had hoped that Jack would recognize how ridiculously dangerous their job had become, and would follow him. But she didn’t.

  She keeps on risking her life for the Job, Herb thought, and here I am, yet again, running toward danger rather than away from it, to try and save her life.

  An engine, behind him. He stops and turns, sees a car has gotten sick of the traffic and driven onto the sidewalk. Something older and sporty, a Challenger or a GTO. Perfect. Herb tucks his 9mm into his hip holster and holds up his badge. He can commandeer this car and—

  The car accelerates. The driver either doesn’t see him or doesn’t care. Herb yells, but his voice isn’t audible above all of the honking. He realizes the car is going to hit him, and he tries to step to the side.

  At the last possible moment, the car swerves right, but it isn’t fast enough, and the back end clips Herb and sends him spinning into a storefront window. He bounces off the glass and slams onto the pavement, where he lies, unmoving, in a growing pool of blood.

  CHAPTER 40

  5 MINUTES

  “PUT IT IN GEAR!” McGlade screamed, an octave higher than his normal voice. I helped him tug the shifter into second, and the cab shook and then jolted forward. Behind us, the trailer rocked from side to side, but quickly straightened out. This saved us from jackknifing, but didn’t save us from the line of cars fifty yards ahead and closing.

  He tugged the wheel to the right, forcing the truck up onto the carefully maintained lawn of an office complex. Harry continued to turn, winding up behind the building in the back parking lot, heading straight for a fence.

  “McGlade . . .”

  “Don’t worry. I do this all the time in Grand Theft Auto.”

  “That’s a video game.”

  “Pac-Man is a video game. GTA is a way of life.”

  The semi plowed through the fence with almost no resistance, and then we were in a factory loading area.

  “Gear down on three. One . . . two . . . three.”

  I helped him shift into first, and the truck slowed down, allowing McGlade to navigate a sharp turn. We bounced over a curb and wound up on Morse going east. I looked at the countdown clock and felt ill. We were still over a mile away from the treatment plant and heading in the wrong direction.

  “Train tracks ahead,” Harry said. “I have an idea.”

  McGlade swung the truck left, and we ran parallel to the tracks on the gravel. There was a slight grade, maybe five percent, but the truck didn’t tip.

  “Let’s go to second . . . now.”

  The truck picked up speed, and I listened to the RPMs and was able to gauge when to put it into third, and then fourth. The ride was bumpy, and tilted, but we were making good time, and there were no cars blocking our way. McGlade hummed the song “Convoy,” off-key. I once again turned my attention to the latent on the mirror.

  “Gimme your phone,” I told him.

  “My new one? Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “It’s in my right pants pocket. Help yourself.”

  I reached for his lap, then hesitated. It was like willfully sticking your hand into a mousetrap. Not having any other choice, I slipped a finger in, shuddering.

  “It’s at the bottom. Reach around for it.”

  I was about to go deeper when I realized the obvious.

  “How could you put anything in your right pocket with a mechanical hand?”

  He smiled, sheepish.

  “Caught me. It’s in my jacket.”

  I muttered asshole under my breath and quickly found the high-tech phone in his jacket.

  “How do I use the camera?”

  “Go to the menu first.”

  I stared at the device, which looked slightly more complicated than the helm of a nuclear submarine.

  “Is this a touch screen?”

  “There’s a menu button in the center of the keypad.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “It looks like the menu button. It says menu on it.”

  “There are six thousand buttons.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “Harry, keep your eyes on the—”

  The wheels caught on the tracks and hopped them, jerking the whole truck to the right. We hit one railroad tie after another in rapid succession, each feeling like it would rip us apart.

  “Downshift!” McGlade screamed, while he reached lefty for the hand brake. I fought the ball knob into neutral, then tried to steady the wheel as we slowed down, and finally stalled.

  I checked my mirror, and miraculously the trailer was still attached.

  “Look.” Harry tore the phone from my hand and pressed something. “There’s the damn menu button. Happy now?”

  “I’d be happier if we got moving. We’ve only got—”

  A whistle cut me off. It was followed by a familiar ding ding ding sound, coming from the intersection up ahead.

  “No way,” Harry said. “No fucking way.”

  I squinted into the distance and saw the small black dot of a train.

  CHAPTER 41

  4 MINUTES

  “START THE TRUCK, MCGLADE.”

  “You think?”

  I cursed myself for not telling Jim to also stop all train traffic, but hindsight is always 20/20. Harry stuck his butt in my face and bent under the steering column, fussing with the wires.

  “It was brown, right?”

  “Yeah, touch the brown to the red.”

  “It’s too dark. They’re all brown. Hold on.”

  He dug into his pocket—his left one—and removed a set of keys.

  “Damn. My key chain light is out.”

  “Open the door, McGlade. Get some sunlight in here.”

  “This thing had a five-year warranty.”

  “McGlade!”

  He opened his door and climbed onto the foot stand. I chanced a look at the oncoming train. I’m not a good judge of distance, but I estimated that we had roughly thirty seconds before impact. I had an irrational urge to jump out of the cab and run for it. Or maybe it wasn’t irrational. It was, however, pointless. Frightened as I was, I wouldn’t be able to run a mile in thirty seconds.

  I wondered if anything poignant should be playing through my head, about my life or my past or my dreams, but the only thing I could focus on was the fingerprint. If I died, I wanted the Chemist caught. I fumbled with the phone menu until I found the camera selection, and then I held it up to latent, using the WYSIWYG screen to make sure I framed it well.

  “I’m touching the wires. Nothing is happening.”

  Another train whistle, louder and deeper.

  “Are we in second gear?” McGlade asked.

  I clicked the picture, then hit menu to access e-mail.

  “Jackie! Put it in second!”

  I looked up at the train. Real close now. I could see it was Metra—a commuter—probably loaded with people. I grabbed the shifter, but it didn’t move.

  “The clutch, McGlade!”

  He hit the clutch with his hand, I popped it into second gear, and the truck roared to life. We had maybe ten seconds before the big bang. I heard a painful screeching of the train hitting the brakes, McGlade pulled himself up behind the wheel and revved the engine, and we shifted into first. The truck jerked forward, Harry hit the gas, and he muscled it over the tracks and down the incline, toward the street. The train squealed past.

  “No problem,” he said, turning onto St. Louis Drive. “That missed us by at least six seconds.”

  I tasted copper. I’d bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood.

  St. Louis was free of cars, and it was a straight shot to the treatment plant, only a few blocks ahead.

  “Your fat partner better be there.”

  “He’ll be there.”

  I finished typing in Hajek’s e-mail address, which I remembered from the other day, and sent him the fingerprint picture with a note saying Chemist. Then I called Herb. A recording answered.

 
“The cellular customer you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please try your call again later.”

  I tried again. Same result. Third time wasn’t any different. I checked the clock. A little over two minutes left.

  Not enough time for us to get away.

  If Harry left now, maybe he could find another car to escape the blast in time, or some kind of shelter like a basement.

  “You need to get out, McGlade.”

  “Get out of what?”

  “The truck. I can’t get in touch with Herb. If all the streets are as backed up as Hamlin, he’s not going to be there on time.”

  Harry looked at me.

  “So we just leave the truck here, in the street?”

  “No.” I swallowed. “I’m taking it to the plant by myself.”

  “Gotcha. Nice knowing you, Jackie.”

  He swung open his door.

  Two seconds passed. Five. But he didn’t leap out.

  “Dammit, Harry, get the hell out of here.”

  I shoved him. He didn’t budge.

  “Harry! Go!”

  McGlade closed the door.

  “Fatso will show up. I can’t stand that guy, but he’ll find a way.”

  “What if he doesn’t? Don’t you want to live?”

  McGlade drummed his fingers across the top of the steering wheel.

  “Remember the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Where they both run out of the building to face the entire Bolivian army, and then the movie freeze-frames because you know they’re both going to die?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Wasn’t that the coolest?”

  I understood what he was saying, and found myself getting a little choked up. “It was pretty cool, Harry.”

  McGlade turned to me, and winked.

  “Last stop just ahead, Butch.”

  Harry turned right onto Howard Street, and we faced the sprawling sewage treatment complex. At least half a mile long, and maybe three-quarters of a mile wide, on a big patch of very green land.

  We hung a left onto the access road, passing two towering brick buildings connected by a massive black air pipe, which stretched over our heads and into the distance like a monorail. The entrance was surrounded by trees, probably planted there to disguise the community eyesore. They should have planted flowers instead. The smell of sewage and waste overpowered us when we pulled onto Howard, and steadily increased the closer we got. Ripe was a good word. Revolting was even better.