High Chicago Page 23

  We parked on Randolph, a short walk or fast run from the site. We divvied up the guns: a Glock for Ryan, the Beretta for me, a Baby Eagle with a polymer frame for Jenn.

  “It’s lightweight,” Ryan said when he gave it to her. “Not that I mean anything sexist by that.”

  “You better not,” she said. “You’re already in my bad books for the thigh grab.”

  “Has more to do with your shooting experience, or lack of it. It’s twenty-seven ounces but shoots like a much bigger gun.”

  “No matter what you talk about, Ryan, it still sounds like dick talk to me.”

  I swear I thought I saw him blush. “How come you can talk to me like that,” he asked, “but anything I say to you I get shit for?”

  “It’s a woman’s world, Ryan,” she said. “We’re just letting you live in it.”

  “One fucking generation,” he complained. “That’s all it took. Like the Cold War—boom, suddenly it’s over and everyone’s asking what the fuck happened. Wasn’t thirty, forty years ago, a man knew his place and a woman knew hers. The old-timers didn’t hear about it every time they put their hand on a woman’s leg, unless it was someone else’s woman.”

  “Kids,” I said. “We have a criminal trespass to plan here.”

  “I’m a dead man,” Avi said miserably.

  We got out of the car and formed a tight huddle alongside the hoarding, moving along to the entrance where the trailer was. “Whatever we do from here,” Ryan said, “we do it fast and quiet. Decisive. You’re not sure what to do, look to me. Don’t pull your gun unless you have to. It’ll cut down the chances of shooting one of us. There’s already a round in the chamber, so you won’t have to rack the slide. Just keep the safeties on till I say otherwise. We good?”

  I looked at Jenn. She looked back. We nodded at Ryan.

  “Just remember what we’re here for. We want to nail this fucker and anyone who’s with him and we want to sleep in our own beds tonight.”

  “Please God,” Avi said.

  “Jenn,” Ryan said. “You’re up.”

  She leaned over, grabbed his sleeve and kissed him on the cheek, then walked toward the site entrance.

  “What the hell she do that for?” he said. “She trying to throw me off my game?”

  “She likes you,” I said.

  “Yeah? Suppose I’d done that to her?”

  “You’d be counting your molars.”

  “Man, what a fucked-up world this is. Am I right?”

  “No argument here,” Avi said.

  —

  Jenn knows she’s gay. I know she’s gay. Even Ryan had grudgingly accepted this “tragic fucking waste,” as he put it.

  The poor schlub in the trailer did not know this. It proved to be his undoing. Jenn ran up to the gate and waved frantically at him. Her breasts—or the Magnificent Ambersons, as she sometimes calls them—were pressed up against the fencing in a way that made them all the more fetching. The guard leaned out of a window and looked at her—them—his brain shutting down as his blood flow reversed itself to nourish his other head.

  Jenn was doing her best horror-movie heroine shtick—looking frantically behind her, rattling the fence and calling for help.

  The guard came out of the trailer. He was a portly sixty-year-old with a day’s growth of beard and a belly that hid most of his belt. The perfect guy to have around to make sure no one stole a brick or some tools. But in his mind’s eye, I’d have bet, he was a strapping young swain who was going to rescue this maiden from whatever trouble she was in, then nuzzle the Ambersons as the curtain fell. He came to the gate and said, “Trouble, Miss?”

  “I think someone’s following me,” Jenn said, her eyes wide, her lips wet and parted. I almost jumped in to help her myself.

  “He’s old,” she said—not wanting to scare off the guard, who was hardly a paragon of studliness—“but he’s still giving me the creeps.”

  He breathed in deeply, trying to move his bulk from his gut to his chest, trying to look like a hero and coming off more like a pigeon. “Want me to call the cops?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Do you think we need to? Maybe if he just saw you … or maybe if I could wait inside with you until he goes away.”

  “I’m not supposed to—”

  “Please,” she said. “It’s cold out here.” The evidence of that was mighty clear. The guard stared at her nipples like he was trying to memorize them. “I won’t touch anything I’m not supposed to,” Jenn said. “I promise.”

  “Well,” he said, looking back at the deserted site, then at the Ambersons, then quickly up to Jenn’s wide blue eyes. “Maybe just for a minute.”

  He had a heavy ring of keys hooked to his belt with a retractable chain. He pulled them away and unlocked a heavy padlock. As soon as he rolled the gate open, Ryan moved in and stuck his Glock in the guard’s ear. He handed the guard a pair of swim goggles whose lenses had been covered over with hockey tape.

  “Slip these on,” he said.

  The guard’s weight sagged back to his belt. “A set-up,” he sighed. “I should have known.”

  Ryan said, “You think?”

  Avi and Jenn went to wait by the elevator and keep watch for any cars turning into the site. We took the guard, whose name tag said he was Henry, into the trailer. I locked the door and closed the blinds over the only window. Ryan took Henry’s elbow and steered him behind a service counter that had been built at one end. He told Henry to kneel and put his hands behind his back. Henry looked like he was going to die of a heart attack before making it to the ground.

  “If I was going to shoot you,” Ryan said, “would I bother tying your hands?” He pushed his foot lightly into Henry’s knees and they gave way, and he sank rather gently to the floor. Ryan got skate laces out of his backpack and bound Henry’s wrists.

  “We’re going to make a phone call now,” Ryan said.

  Since he had already heard Ryan’s voice, I kept quiet.

  “Who do you call in an emergency?” Ryan asked.

  “Mr. Curry. Francis Curry.”

  “From which phone?”

  “Mine. On the table there.”

  “You’re going to call that number and tell Mr. Curry a strange black woman in a hotel uniform showed up at the site and demanded a meeting with Simon Birk, immediately, or she’s going to the police and tell them about this morning.”

  “A strange black woman. You don’t want me to say African-American? That’s what they tell me I’m supposed to use.”

  “Just tell him she wants to see Simon Birk. Alone. And she wants double her fee, in cash. Got that?”

  “Double. In cash.”

  “If he asks what she looks like, you say tall with lots of freckles.” Those were the main details I’d remembered and given Ryan.

  “Tall, freckles.”

  “And a hotel uniform,” Ryan said. “Like a chambermaid, don’t forget that.”

  “Okay.”

  “If he asks to talk to her, you say she took the hoist up to the top of the building. You tried to stop her but she pulled a knife on you. Got that?”

  “Okay.”

  “Say it,” Ryan ordered.

  “A woman came to the gate—”

  “What woman?”

  “Tall, with freckles.”

  “And?”

  “And a knife.”

  “Okay, Henry,” Ryan said evenly. “You got those goggles on, which is good for your overall prospects. But if you didn’t have them on and you could see the look I’m giving you now? This is a look, Henry, that has brought a hundred deadbeats, snitches, tough guys, bikers and other unfortunate souls to their knees. So believe me when I tell you that if you say anything other than what I told you, anything cute, your blood will spill and your life will end right here.”

  “I don’t want that,” Henry said.

  “Course you don’t. So make it short and keep it sweet.”

  Henry turned in a fine performance as Night
Security Guard #1. With Ryan standing over him, listening in on the cocked receiver, he stuck to Ryan’s script. Didn’t deviate or elaborate or say anything that sounded coded. Kept most of the fright out of his voice.

  “Yessir,” he finally said. “Forced her way past me and went right to the top, it looks like.” Listened, nodded, said “Uh-huh” twice. Then, “Really?”

  Ryan gave me a thumbs-up.

  “If you say so,” Henry said. “If you’re sure, Mr. Curry. You know I wouldn’t on anyone else’s … Okay, good night then.”

  Ryan ended the call and turned the phone off. He said, “Mr. Curry told Henry to go home, take the rest of the night off, still get paid the full shift.”

  Ryan told Henry to lie on his side. He tied the man’s ankles together with a skate lace then stretched a strong elastic, the kind used to hold hockey shin pads on, around Henry’s shins. He knotted a third hockey lace between the bound wrists and ankles. Henry wasn’t uncomfortable but nor could he move an inch.

  Ryan opened a side pocket of the backpack and took out a pair of conical earplugs and slipped them into Henry’s ears. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ve never been used.” Then he looked around the trailer and found a set of headphone-sized hearing protectors and slipped them over Henry’s ears.

  “He wouldn’t hear an explosion,” Ryan said.

  Ryan unclipped the keys from Henry’s belt and flipped them to me. He produced a roll of duct tape and wrapped two lengths around Henry’s mouth. Henry was now out of sight, out of mind, out of human contact.

  “Check this out,” I said. On a table next to Henry’s half-done Sun-Times puzzle and Thermos were two walkie-talkies set in chargers. The green lights were steady: two fully charged units.

  I handed one to Ryan, who pressed the talk button and said, “Breaker, breaker.” It came through loud and clear on my unit. “You try,” he said. “Leg breaker, leg breaker. Over.” “Very funny. Over. Get the fuck out. Over.” He unscrewed the bulbs that lit the trailer and closed and locked the door behind him, settling into the shadows to wait for Curry and Birk. I walked to the elevator, wondering where Ryan had dumped the woman’s body. In the Chicago River, in a hockey bag weighted with stones or bowling balls from the Sports Authority? Down in the caisson of an unfinished building, a ton of concrete and rebar for her headstone?

  I tried to resist the images coming to mind; there might be other bodies to dispose of before the night was through.

  CHAPTER 46

  The top of the Birkshire Millennium Skyline was not my favourite place in Chicago. Then again, neither was Millennium Park, Daley Plaza, Avi’s den or my bathroom at the Hilton, so the competition wasn’t that stiff.

  It was colder and windier than it had been the previous night. The first of November in Chicago: batten down the hatches. Jenn had her hands thrust deep in the pockets of a navy peacoat. Avi looked like he was sweating and shivering at the same time. I had a sudden flashback of him at Har Milah: always sweaty, even at four in the morning when we started work to get in our hours before the hot sun came up. Beads forming on his forehead, running down around his eyes, his shirt darkening as sweat ran down his chest and back, his hands damp whenever we shook, even if he’d already wiped them on the back of his pants. I hoped his palms didn’t get so clammy now that he dropped his recorder like a bar of soap. Like us, it wouldn’t survive a fall from this height.

  “You know what you’re going to do?” Jenn asked me.

  “I have an idea.”

  “That’s it?”

  The walkie-talkie crackled and Ryan’s voice said, “They’re here.” So I didn’t have to answer.

  We looked down and saw headlights sweeping the street far below us, pulling to the curb outside the gate. I got out my field glasses and saw Birk get out of the passenger side. He looked at the dark trailer then nodded at Curry, who got out of the car and locked it with a fob. So it was just the two of them. Birk waited for Curry to roll the gate open—always leaving the heavy lifting to someone else—and close it behind them. They were walking toward the elevator when Ryan slipped out of the darkness and trained his Glock on them. Ryan spoke, then Curry and Birk both took off their jackets and let them fall to the ground. Curry took his gun out of its holster and handed it to Ryan butt first. Ryan gestured with the gun and Curry pulled up his pant legs one at a time. Nothing there. Ryan said something and Curry leaned against the trailer as though he were about to be frisked. Then the gun moved to Birk and he too pulled up his pant legs, showing pale legs above black socks.

  When Ryan was satisfied, he pointed toward the elevator with his gun hand. Birk bent down to pick up his jacket but Ryan levelled the gun at him and shook his head. Birk gestured in complaint; Ryan’s foot lashed out and caught him in the chest, sending him sprawling into the dirt. Curry held out his hand and helped Birk to his feet and then the three of them headed to the elevator, two in shirt sleeves, only one gesturing in complaint.

  Ryan’s voice came over the walkie-talkie: “How’d this turd ever make a billion? Over.”

  “Bring him up and we’ll ask.”

  When the hoist arrived at ground level, Ryan made them get in first. He pointed downward with the gun, making them sit, then got in and started the car on its long, slow ascent. Watching the descending counterweight reminded me of my forced climb down. My hands clenched involuntarily, and painfully, at the memory, but I reminded myself that Birk had a lot more to answer for than that.

  “Where do you want me?” Avi asked.

  “What’s the range on your recorder?”

  “Normally very good. It has a zoom mike for meetings. But with this wind …”

  “I don’t want them to see you yet. Just stay in the shadow of the centre block for now.”

  “Here okay?” He was moving to his right when he stepped on a sheet of plywood that had been placed over a gap in the flooring. It sagged under his weight. “Whoa!” he cried, jumping back onto the firmer corrugated surface. “Did you see that? That almost broke under me.”

  “Relax, Avi,” I said. “I’m sure workmen step on it all the time. It just gives a little.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just pick a spot and stay still, okay? You’ll be fine. You ready?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m ready.”

  The elevator doors opened and Ryan backed out. Birk and Curry were both sitting on the floor of the car, hands behind their heads. Ryan pointed the gun at them and said, “Up.”

  They got up.

  “Out,” he said, pointing behind him with a little bow, palm up, as though welcoming them to Giulio’s.

  CHAPTER 47

  Simon Birk stared long and hard at me, then at Jenn and back at me. Curry gave me the merest glance. If he was surprised that I was still alive, he didn’t show it. He took in Jenn’s presence, then turned his attention back to Dante Ryan, the man he needed to watch, eyes on his gun hand, looking for an opening, a move to make.

  Birk said, “Where’s Charlaine?”

  “She won’t be joining us,” I said.

  “I told you she was unsuitable,” Birk said to Curry, like she was a maid who had put away foggy stemware.

  “Do it yourself next time,” Curry said.

  “And you are Ms. Raudsepp, am I right?” Birk said. He held out his hand. She never moved or took her eyes off his. He slowly dropped the hand that had shaken a hundred thousand other hands, a hand that had rarely if ever been rejected.

  Jenn said, “You’re even shorter than you look on TV.”

  I handed Jenn one of the walkie-talkies and the keys to the trailer. “Go back to ground level,” I said. “Keep an eye on Henry and call us if anyone shows up.”

  Ryan said, “Tell Henry if he makes trouble, I’ll come down and hold his nose till he dies.”

  She got into the elevator and pulled the door shut and the car began to slide down.

  Curry said, “Where’s the third man?”

  “What third man?” I said. There was
no way he could see Avi from where he was.

  “Your friend the lawyer. The one who looks like he’s about to piss himself.”

  “You know the fellow,” Birk cut in. “The one you had dinner with Thursday.” Letting me know he knew more than he was supposed to. “Why don’t you come out, Mr. Stern? For a lawyer, I have to say, you’re not giving Geller very good advice.”

  Avi stepped forward, his eyes down, carefully avoiding the plywood patching he’d stepped on before.

  Birk said, “Now we know everyone but your gunman.”

  “You really want to know me?” Ryan said.

  “This is no party,” I said to Birk.

  “What then?” He was rubbing his arms to stay warm in the harsh wind.

  “We’re going to hear your confession.”

  “Really? And what am I confessing to?”

  “Murder, attempted murder and fraud.”

  “Or what? You’ll behead me while screaming in Arabic?”

  “You had three people killed that I know of. You tried to kill me three times, you and your people, and you fucking well watched while someone beat your wife into a coma, just so you could steal your own artwork and cash in on the insurance.”

  “Pure fantasy,” he replied. “All of it. That’s all anyone will say.”

  I turned to Curry. His odd waxy face was expressionless in the dim light. “If he goes down,” I said, “you’re going down even harder. Are you willing to do all the time for his crimes?”

  “You’re a civilian,” he said. “You have zero authority here. I don’t have to say a word to you.”

  Ryan stepped forward and raked Curry across the face with the barrel of his Glock. Blood spurted from a gash in Curry’s cheek as he stumbled backward against the elevator doors, his features twisted into a snarl. A line of blood snaked down the hollow under the cut cheek. With his hairless dome and protruding ears, he looked like a vampire after a messy feast. “You may not have to say anything,” Ryan said softly. “But you might want to.”