Terminal (20 page)

I
t took longer than it usually does, but she finally climbed in the backseat, holding the Prof’s two hundred in both hands, like a cross to ward off vampires.

We dropped her off. If the program could talk her into staying, Tway-Z was going to be one girl short…which should empty his stable. If not, we could find her again.

And then she would lead us to what I’m always looking for.

M
ichelle was dressing me for my frontal assault on Reedy when her cell phone trilled.

“That’s—”

“I know, honey,” I said, shrugging off her apologetic face.

She stepped out of the room to take the call. When she came back, I read her heightened color like it was Caller ID.

“You have to—?”

“Not until…later. And I can get Terry to come and pick me up, baby. Don’t fuss.”

In all the years since they first connected, this was the first time the Mole had ever called that Michelle hadn’t asked—hell,
demanded
—that I get her out to his place, personally and pronto.

I let it go. She tossed a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit into the corner like it was a dust rag, yammering, “Classic doesn’t mean ancient, you idiot.”

I wasn’t enough of an idiot to say anything.

“And we can’t have tomorrow’s look, either,” she rolled on. “You’re supposed to be…?”

“A problem-solver.”

“Yes. But not a thug. And not a con man, either. What we want to show is
expertise,
understand?”

I didn’t say anything. What would be the point?

“Not just expertise,
successful
expertise. You’re not some criminal who stumbled across a piece of information in a bar. You’re a professional. A spider, at the center of a web. When the web trembles, you know you’ve got something, so you go and take a look. Most of the time, it’s garbage. But when it’s gold, you know the spot price. The going rate.

“So what we’re after is dignified, baby. Not mortician-dignified, okay? Calm, self-assured, confident.”

“You can
dress
to be that?”

“Oh, you can dress to be anything,” my little sister said, dismissing any argument with an airy wave of her hand. “But the best that does is get you in the door. After that…”

I took a deep breath.

“And nobody’s better at it than you, baby,” she said, fiercely. “Nobody.”

M
y wheels dressed the part, too. The graphite Mercedes E500 sedan was a generic in the parking lot of the bronze glass building, which only a discreet brass plaque identified as the home of QuisitionDevelOp Enterprises, LLC.

The security guard at the green-veined black marble desk had the resentfully dull eyes of a retired cop who hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea that his authority had been handed in with his badge. His eyes took me in, figured me for someone it wouldn’t be a safe idea to get all TV-show with. I might have a mug-shot face, but Michelle was right—the outfit spoke louder. To this fool, anyway.

“Sir?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Reedy.”

“And you are—?”

“My name is Thornton,” I said, smiling. “And, no, Mr. Reedy is not expecting me. I’m an old friend. I was in the area, and thought I’d take a shot at inviting him to lunch.”

“I’m not sure he’s even in the building, sir. I’m sure you understand—”

“That Mr. Reedy uses a private entrance? Or that there’s a helipad on the roof?” I cut him off, smiling again.

“You got that right.” He chuckled. “Well, let me call up and see.”

I stepped back, deliberately showing respect for the delicacy of his position. He was on the phone for way longer than he should have taken.

“Yeah,” he said, gesturing for me to approach. “Just like I figured. Mr. Reedy’s not in. In fact, he’s not even in the country at the moment. If you want to leave your card, though, I’ll make sure they—”

I was already handing him a card. Delicately engraved on off-white vellum, it identified me as:

Donald R. C. Thornton

Nothing else was on the card except a 212 number in the lower left-hand corner, and “By Appointment Only” in the lower right.

I
knew they had me on video from the time I walked in the door, but didn’t expect the black Dodge Magnum wagon to be in my rearview mirror so quick.

I drove like I had no idea I was being followed. Motored sedately down to Bronxville, where I used the Mole’s code-grabber to remote-open the door to a three-car attached garage standing a covered archway’s distance from a fieldstone home whose owner was at work. His wife and kids were visiting her mother in Pepper Pike, Ohio—he was going to join them that weekend.

I went out the open back window of the garage, drab green mechanic’s coveralls over my suit. The stage actor’s cheek-altering clay, black mustache, and red-rose “tattoo” decal on my right hand were all sitting in my pocket.

Michelle would turn my hair back to its natural steel gray from the jet black they’d have on their videotape, and cut it, too. I’d be three inches shorter without the lifts. And a good long soak would remove the acetate from the pads of my fingers and thumbs.

I was through a short patch of woods—half an acre was a big piece of property in that neighborhood—and into the Honda EV while the two guys in the Magnum were still waiting for instructions.

The electric car didn’t make a sound as I moved off. That’s me: green is what I live for.

I don’t know how the guy who owned the house was going to explain the stolen Mercedes in his garage to the men who would be coming to call, but I knew he could pass a polygraph that it was all a mystery to him.

I
left the Honda in an underground garage just over the border, keys in the ignition. I exited via the freight elevator to the loading dock. The Roadrunner—now a bilious yellow with Mopar-heresy red bumblebee stripes around its rear end—was waiting.

The Honda was probably gone before I was; that place is always full of thieves. Max had been waiting within striking distance, but it took Clarence a couple of minutes to come down from the roof.

I dropped them both off at the flophouse first, not wanting to introduce the dogs to strangers. The pits enjoyed the random assortment of deli sandwiches I tossed out. As I was converting the Roadrunner back to its original camouflage, the orca-blotched female sat next to me…pretty close.

She’d already had her special bribe, so I didn’t think this was about food. The battle-scarred male watched as I knelt and cooed to the girl, but he didn’t move.

The distance between us shrank as she approached, bouncing in the way pits do when they’re making up their minds. When she got close enough to nail me, I risked a gentle pat on her wedge of a skull. She sat, as if in response to a command. I scratched her behind the right ear.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” I said, softly.

She gave me a look, then trotted away to join the others.

“F
ucking amateur probably got the mark’s guard up,” the Prof said when I’d run down the past few hours. “Tapping that baby-killer like he was a fucking maple tree.”

“I do not understand,” Clarence said, his face alive—not from puzzlement, but with the joy of learning something from his father.

“Blackmail is a one-stop shop,” the little man told him. “Hit and run, son. One jack, and you never go back. Even if the well ain’t dry, you
still
fly, understand?”

“So because this…person kept going back to him, over and over again…?”

“Could just be corporate,” I said. “Who’s got the kind of serious money our guy’s holding without putting some protection in place? Figure he hears the name—the one I used with the security guy in front—and he grabs me on video, live feed. Doesn’t recognize me, but he knows I’m not Thornton, so he figures he better find out who that weasel may have sold him to. Good luck with that.”

“Sure,” the Prof said, sourly. “But it didn’t get us in the door.”

“He’s got the card I left. When the trace goes dead, how’s he
not
going to call? A man like him, information is plutonium. Worth a fortune in the right hands, blow you off the planet in the wrong ones.”

Max held up three fingers. Pulled the middle one back toward his palm.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s still two left, but Reedy’s the only guy we can actually connect to Thornton. Besides, he’s probably already gotten word to the others.”

“And if he don’t call…?”

“I don’t have a Plan B, Prof. But that doesn’t mean we can’t—”

One of the cloned cell phones I keep in individual charging cradles made a sound I recognized. I walked into another room, pulled it loose and opened the channel. Said, “Uh,” which is all anyone was going to get until I knew who I was talking to.

“You get more Paleo every day.” Michelle, her voice even waspier than her waist.

“Huh?”

“Well, it
must
have not come off, or I
know
you would have requested my presence by now.”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“I’m sorry, baby. But there’s more than one—”

“Yeah,” I said, again. I know my little sister loves me, but some things you just don’t need to hear more than once.

T
here’s parts of Chicago I’ve always loved, ever since the first time I went there. Just a kid, picking up a package for some guys in Brooklyn. Had to go to this fleabag hotel in Uptown—they called it “Hillbilly Harlem” then—and wait for a man with a blue-and-yellow flight bag. They said he’d be there between ten and noon, but couldn’t be sure what day he’d show. The nights were mine.

I was so young and dumb then. Hell, I’d once taped a plastic bottle to the front end of a revolver and thought I had a silencer. Now, when I have to work quiet, I use one of Clarence’s custom-built semi-autos, the magazine packed with hand-loaded poison tips, the casings cast to luminesce in the dark, so I can pick up my brass without a flashlight.

I didn’t know Chicago, but I didn’t want to be inside that dirty little room at night, so I roamed.

The blues bars of Chicago in the sixties were merciless. Anyone who thinks Darwin got it wrong should have been there, down in the crucible. If you wanted to try, you looked for a nod from the leader, climbed up on the tiny little stage, plugged in, and took your shot.

If you could bring it, they’d let you know. If you couldn’t, you had to go.

“Good enough” was never good enough in those joints. Either you killed the crowd, or the crowd killed you. For every Buddy Guy, the West Side produced a thousand who didn’t make the cut.

“Magic Sam” wasn’t a stage name; it was a title, earned in the ring. I don’t mean some two-bit “belt,” handed out like a rigged-bid contract by one of those licensed-to-steal “sanctioning bodies” who rule boxing today. No, Magic Sam won his title in matches where the crowd picks the winners.

His signature song was “Sweet Home Chicago.” A Robert Johnson original, transplanted but still rooted in Delta soil. Like Sam himself. But “I Found a New Love” was always my favorite.

I loved the city’s architecture, too. Supposedly, the whole town is built of stone because no wood construction was allowed after the Great Fire. But the first time I saw the Robert Taylor Homes on the South Side, I saw the future of America.
Miles
of housing project, sixteen stories high, overlooking the Dan Ryan Expressway, the outside walkways covered in chicken wire so the inmates could look out from their cages on the world passing them by. It became its own world. Gangland. Just like the planners planned.

The Robert Taylor Homes are gone now. The inmates have been relocated…to where they were intended to spend their adult lives since birth.

This time, I could have driven—it’s only about a twelve-hour trip, with all kinds of disinterested motels between Ohio and Indiana.

But this was a hit-and-run. I’d sent a message and given it a few days to work its way through to the guy I asked to do something for me. I knew better than to think he’d talk on any phone. All I needed was five minutes with him, alone. Plus, I owed Claw some speed after he did the job inside the rich old freak’s house on just my word.

O’Hare is famous for a lot of things, but on-time landings isn’t one of them. I walked through the terminal’s glowing tunnels on my way to the CTA line. That was another reason I hadn’t driven: where I was going, I wouldn’t need a car. Paper is a fingerprint—you can’t go through life without touching anything, but you avoid it whenever you get the chance.

As I approached the airport exit, a young woman came toward me, towing one of those wheeled suitcases behind her. As we passed each other, she smiled. Not flirting—an anxiety reaction to any man who looked like me. A momentary “please don’t hurt me” flash in her too-wide eyes.

I knew some humans who would get aroused by that look. Just as the Prof knew the truth about why I’d come all this way just to draw to a gut-shot straight.

T
he receptionist took the name we agreed I was always going to use, said, “Someone will be out to get you in a minute, sir.”

The “someone” was wearing a skirt tighter than spray paint and four-inch strappy stilettos instead of business pumps. She walked ahead of me, letting me know that the man I was there to see was getting his money’s worth. And that he hadn’t learned anything from the last time he did.

I’d had to clean up that mess for him—that was the favor he owed me.

“I could only get something off the radar on one of them,” was his greeting. He didn’t get up from behind his free-form desk, or offer to shake hands. Didn’t even invite me to have a seat.

I watched his eyes.

He looked away from mine.

“Reggie Bender is leveraged.”

I made a “So?” gesture.

“Yeah,” he said. “Doesn’t mean anything, all by itself. But he’s got some very heavy plays going in nonprecious metals. And he borrowed against his own holdings to go that deep. If copper jumps, he’s in mega-bucks. If it goes the other way, he could have to sell off some big pieces. Moneymaking pieces.”

I spread my arms, palms turned to the ceiling.

“Who knows?” he answered my unspoken question. “Maybe got word of something. Maybe he’s gone all Hunt brothers—remember what those loons tried to do with silver?—and wants to corner the market so he can set the price. He doesn’t need the money, and the risk
looks
stupid, but…”

I made a fist, extended the little finger and the thumb, held it to my ear.

“I don’t have a direct line for him,” the man behind the desk said. “But I can certainly get him
on
the line; he’d return my call. You want me to tell him he should speak to…whoever?”

I shook my head “no.”

“Would a home address help?”

I gave him the same answer.

“He doesn’t have the kind of…interests I do,” the man who owed me offered.

I made my wrist limp, asking the obvious question.

“No. I don’t mean that. It’s just that he’s a straight arrow. Wife, four kids. Church. Doesn’t get out much. Or around. Far as I could find out, anyway…without making anyone curious. Sorry. I wish I could have been more help.”

I made a “no big deal” gesture, walked out, took the elevator down forty-eight floors, walked to the El, and caught the three o’clock to LaGuardia.