Brainy-BOOM!

by Wally Duff

  Uh-oh.

  “Where is she going?” I asked.

  “They found the bugs before she said anything about that,” Frankie said.

  “I obviously don’t know her destination,” I said, “but the hospital foundation owns a private jet that she has access to. Fertig used to fly in it to South America. It was parked at the Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling and probably still is.”

  “With her money, she can afford multiple travel options,” Linda countered.

  “She can, but if she’s in a hurry, I think she’ll access the easiest and quickest one. Hang on and I’ll prove it.”

  From my previous trip to the Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling while working on a story, I had their phone number in my contacts. I called the main desk.

  “John speaking.”

  “This is Diane Warren,” I said. “Is my plane ready?”

  “Ms. Horrigan, your secretary, called,” he said. “Your plane will be on the flight line ready for your departure in two hours.”

  “That is unacceptable. I am on my way. Do you want me to waste my time sitting with strangers while I have to wait for your people to do what should only take one hour?”

  “We will clear out the executive lounge, and no one will disturb you while you wait. I hope that’s acceptable.”

  “Hardly, but it seems I don’t have a choice. Have a chilled bottle of Dom ready when I get there.”

  I disconnected before he could reply.

  “Well done,” David said. “You make a wonderful diva.”

  “She can fly away and that’s it?” Rick said. “This can’t be happening.”

  “She’ll probably fly to a country that doesn’t have extradition,” Linda said.

  “What about the civil cases?” I asked. “What about the people the faux supplements made sick?”

  “Once she leaves, they’re screwed,” Linda said. “They’ll never collect a dime.”

  122

  I had a terrific story to write, but it was slipping through my fingers.

  “You’re not gonna let this one go, are you?” Frankie asked.

  “I can’t,” I said. “People have been intentionally harmed. The public needs to know what Diane did, and I’m going to tell them. That may be Fertig’s patients’ only chance for survival.”

  “You need to confront her to get her side of it — if she’ll give it to you before you write the story,” Linda said.

  “You’re right, and hopefully I will write it.”

  “How you gonna do this?” Frankie asked.

  “I went through this before, when we guessed that Fertig was going to flee the country in his big jet. It can fly several thousand miles without needing to refuel. Like the guy at the desk told me, it’ll take them at least an hour to preflight a plane that size and another hour to file the flight plans and get a takeoff slot. I’m going home to take off this makeup and wash my face. Then I’m going to change into my power suit to interview her.”

  “Might need backup,” Frankie said. “Me and the boys’ll tag along bein’s we’ve been in this from the get go.”

  “Count David and me in,” Rick said.

  “I hate to miss this, but my nanny is off today,” Linda said. “Molly is watching my kids, and she’s probably nuts by now so I have to pick them up. Call me when it’s over.”

  “I’m in the same boat,” Cas said. “Sorry.”

  “Tell Molly I’ll pick up Macy and Kerry when this is over,” I said.

  Alan stared at the wall and then turned around and walked over to the door into his house. Lori punched in the code and opened the door for him. He entered and she closed the door behind him. He had done his job.

  Now I have to do mine.

  123

  Frankie drove his black Mercedes. I was in the passenger seat. David and Rick were in the back. We were on our way to Wheeling.

  “Gosh, this car is beautiful,” I said. “I noticed it says BRABUS on the front logo. What’s that all about?”

  “A German company modifies the Mercedes AMG GT 63S. They get a little more speed out of it.”

  He stepped on the accelerator to emphasize his point. My head snapped back in the seat as we rocketed forward.

  “It’ll do zero to sixty in 2.9,” he continued.

  Comparing my mommy van to this howling monster reminded me of the tortoise and the hare.

  “I probably wouldn’t drive it to Whole Foods,” I said.

  He laughed and slowed down. We were going over 120 mph, and I couldn’t tell we were traveling that fast.

  I glanced out the rear window. A black Escalade was catching up to us.

  “Luca and Enzo?” I asked.

  “And Alberto. He’s good at close-up work. Figured we might need him if her bodyguards crowd you.”

  “Comforting to know,” I said, as I leaned back into the soft black leather seats.

  Twenty minutes later, we parked in the front lot of Chicago Executive Aviation and waited. On the tarmac was a white Gulfstream G550. A gas truck parked next to the plane. Several people wearing baggy gray coveralls with a logo on the front left chest pocket bustled around the plane. We were too far away for me to read the logo.

  “There’s Fertig’s plane,” I said, pointing at it as they attached the gas hoses.

  “You sure?” Frankie asked.

  “The tail number is 915 RF. It’s Fertig’s.”

  “God, I wish I had a tail number,” David said. “But I would pick a more exotic number and certainly not in block letters.”

  A black Tahoe SUV followed by a black Mercedes-Maybach sedan pulled up to the front door. Four men wearing cheap blue blazers, white shirts with blue ties, and gray pants simultaneously hopped out of the four doors of the SUV. They had ear buds in their ears. They slammed the doors and then circled the Maybach.

  A man wearing a similar cheap blue blazer got out of the passenger side and opened the back door. He leaned inside and assisted Diane Warren out. The driver jumped out and joined the other five men. They spread out with three on each side of her, and they bracketed her as she walked inside.

  She wore a designer dress at the hospital. Now she was in a designer pantsuit covered by a stroller-length, black mink coat with a sable collar. Her version of casual is different from mine.

  124

  Five minutes later, two of Diane’s men came out and drove the SUV and Maybach into the reserved parking area. They parked and walked to the front door of the building. They stood on each side of the front door, their coats open and guns easily visible on their hips.

  “Waitin’ for us,” Frankie said.

  “It sure seems like it,” I said.

  “I make six guys, those two outside and four more inside,” he said.

  “Diane won’t allow any of them to be in the executive lounge with her,” Rick said.

  “I agree,” Frankie said. “It’s not the way she rolls.”

  “Tina, did you say you’ve been here before?” Rick asked.

  “I was here with Janet and Tony when we were chasing Fertig.”

  “You been inside?” Frankie asked.

  “We met the Wheeling police in the executive lounge.”

  “Any other ways in or out?” Rick asked.

  “One door on the north side that goes out to the tarmac.”

  Frankie put the Mercedes in gear and pulled toward the other end of the building where we could see that door. Two more security guards flanked it.

  “Two men at this back entrance,” Rick said. “Two more at the front and the last two at the door to the lounge where Diane will be sipping champagne.”

  “All we need to do is cull the herd,” David said.

  “Cowboy talk?” I asked.

  “David grew up on a ranch in Montana,” Rick said.

  “I still have a pair of darling cowboy boots, which I wear when my parents visit,” David said.

  “Hat, too?” Frankie asked.

  “Oh, for sure,” he said. “One
has a divine magenta ostrich plume. It’s to die for.”

  A short woman wearing the same baggy, gray coveralls as the other workers descended down the stairs from the Gulfstream. She walked toward the building. She was close enough that I could read “Chicago Executive Aviation” stenciled on the left chest pocket of the coveralls. The guards at the back door let her enter without stopping her.

  “We had more time, my boys coulda’ made up suits like that for us,” Frankie said. “Make it easier to get inside.”

  He turned around and parked in our original location in front of the building. He made a call on his cell phone. He spoke in Italian for a couple of minutes and then closed the phone.

  “Alberto will deal with the guys in front first so they don’t alert the other four. Then Luca and Enzo gonna take care of the two goons at the entrance on the north side.”

  A short man got out of the Escalade.

  “Alberto?” I asked.

  “Gonna talk to the guys at the door,” he said.

  “He’s kind of tiny.”

  “That’s why he works up close. You ready to roll?”

  “I am.”

  “Rick?”

  “Semper Fi, dude,” he said, as he pulled out a Glock 22.

  “David? You in?”

  “He’ll stay with the car,” Rick said, remembering David’s trauma with Sullivan’s murder.

  “Okay, when we go in, get in the driver’s seat and keep the engine running,” Frankie said to David. “If we need to blow outta here in a hurry, you drive.”

  “Exciting,” David said, bravely. “My heart is going pitter-pat.”

  Frankie pulled out a .44 magnum and screwed on a silencer. He tossed one to Rick who attached it to his Glock.

  “As soon as Alberto does his thing, be ready to roll,” Frankie said. “Tina, you wait out here until one of us signals for you to come in. Then do what you gotta do with Diane and we’ll split when you’re done.”

  125

  Alberto walked toward the two men. They reached into their coats and pulled out their guns. They held them at their sides as he approached. They dwarfed him when he stood directly in front of them.

  Frankie powered the windows down, enabling us to hear what was being said.

  “You work here?” the man on the left side of the front door said.

  “They can’t afford me,” Alberto said.

  “Then beat it, shorty,” the other man said. “This place is closed until the boss takes off.”

  “Sorry,” Alberto said. “She can’t take off until we talk to her.”

  “That ain’t happening,” the first man said.

  “Then we have a fundamental problem here,” Alberto said.

  “Hit the bricks, pal,” the second man said, as he raised his gun and pointed it at Alberto’s chest.

  Alberto grabbed the man’s wrist with his right hand and twisted it counterclockwise, levering his left arm under the guy’s elbow. The bone-snapping sound of the guard’s elbow breaking was accompanied by the clunk of his gun hitting the cement.

  The other guard raised his gun, but Alberto destroyed the man’s left knee with a vicious sidekick to the outside of the joint. He collapsed, screaming and holding his knee. The first man remained standing, staring down in disbelief at his newly deformed arm.

  Alberto hit him in the throat with a quick strike of his open palm and then followed it with a roundhouse kick to his groin. The second man struggled to get up, but Alberto hit him on the side of the head with a closed fist. The man went down and began twitching.

  Alberto waved us forward.

  126

  Frankie and Rick jumped out of the Mercedes. They raced to the front door of the building and went in. Enzo and Luca hopped out of their vehicle and ran around the building to the door on the north side. Enzo had an Uzi and Luca his lupara. The sawed-off shotgun was a perfect weapon for close work in tight spaces.

  My hands were sweating as I got out and stood next to Frankie’s car. I watched as Alberto used plastic ties to bind up the two men. He stood up, assessed his work, and went inside.

  He came out five minutes later and beckoned to me.

  “Come in,” he said, as he opened the door. “It’s all good.”

  He was calm, but my pulse was racing. I recognized the woman behind the desk from my previous visit. Rick stood in front of her with his gun at his side. Frankie walked down the hall toward us with the last two guards. Their hands were secured behind their backs with plastic ties.

  “These are the two who were guarding the door to the lounge,” Frankie said. “My boys disabled the other two at the north end. You’re good to go.”

  “Any problems?” I asked.

  “Not so far,” he said, as he pushed the guards forward, “and there won’t be, right guys?”

  The guards didn’t say anything.

  Something didn’t seem right, but with my heart pounding in my chest and adrenaline pumping through my system, it was hard to concentrate.

  I walked down the hall, turned to my left, and went another twenty feet to the executive lounge. My hand was shaking as I reached for the door handle. I decided not to knock.

  Diane’s back was toward me. She sat on a tan, cloth-covered couch staring out at her plane through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in front of her. There was a glass of champagne on the table next to her. The room air was stale, and I smelled furniture polish.

  I cleared my throat. She didn’t respond.

  “Diane, I want to give you an opportunity to tell your side of this story before it goes to print,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  I walked forward. “I am going to write this story whether you comment or not.”

  I felt heat creeping up my neck.

  Damnit.

  Stepping around the couch, I confronted her. Her makeup was perfect as always, and her eyes were open but she wasn’t blinking. Her lips were compressed into a thin line and her nostrils appeared deformed.

  “Diane?” I said, as I nudged her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t move.

  “What happened to your nose?” I asked.

  Her nostrils were pinched together. I held my hand under them but there wasn’t any airflow. With my right index finger I pulled on her left cheek, trying to bring her nostril back into normal position. It didn’t move. Neither did the right one. I used both hands but her nostrils were firmly stuck together.

  Her skin temperature felt the same as the fish in the coolers at the Paulina Meat Market. I tried to pry her mouth open, but her lips were stuck to each other and I couldn’t move them. I checked her neck for a pulse, but there wasn’t one.

  I stood up and studied her face. Her mouth and nose had been glued shut, making it impossible for her to breathe.

  Something cold touched my neck. A jolt of electricity made my head explode in a shower of multicolored lights. I felt all the muscles in my body spasm and then the lights went out.

  127

  “What happened?” I asked when I came to.

  “I’m thinkin’ a Taser,” Frankie said. “Couple of red marks on your neck.”

  I struggled to push myself up off the carpet, but I couldn’t support my body weight with my arms. Rick and Frankie lifted me up. I had trouble standing, so they helped me to the couch where Diane had been sitting.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “We gave you fifteen minutes, and when you didn’t come out, we came in and found you on the floor,” Rick said.

  “Where is Diane’s body?” I asked.

  No one said anything.

  “Guys, where is she?”

  “No one was in here when we came in,” Frankie said.

  “Diane was sitting on this couch and she wasn’t breathing. Someone had glued her nose and mouth shut.”

  “Probably superglue,” Frankie said.

  “Hard to believe she would let a person do that to her without resist
ing,” Rick said.

  “I’m thinkin’ the killer used the Taser on her, then applied the superglue while she was out,” Frankie said.