The Governor's Wife (17 page)

T
he bed was wide; the sheets fresh and cool. I watched as she unbuttoned my shirt. She took it off carefully, slipping it over the thick bandage.

“Does it hurt?” she whispered. I shook my head. She unwrapped the outer dressing, then the white pad underneath. I sat on the edge of the bed as she peeled off the final layer of gauze. She turned the hand gently and winced when she saw the run of stitches.

“I told you,” I said. “It looks worse than it is.”

She kissed my wrist, open palm, then each of my fingers. I lay back in bed. She brought in a pitcher of warm water and washed my hand. Then she found some fresh gauze and rewrapped it. I tried to speak, but she touched my lips with her finger and slipped away again. In the darkness, I heard a whisper of cotton, the rustle of silk. Then she was back, strong hands running down my chest and across my stomach, tugging at whatever clothes remained between us. She kissed me lightly at first, tracing the wounds on my face, licking
the skin dry. I watched as she slid up on top of me and leaned back in a column of blue light. She kept her eyes closed and began to work up and down, moving in slow circles, gripping first my shoulders, then leaning forward and bracing herself against the headboard. I matched her rhythm and felt myself fill her. She made a stirring sound in her throat. Neither of us made another until the end when she raked my skin with her nails and cried out softly. Then she was back beside me, breath tickling my cheek, heart drumming against my chest. I kissed the curve of her neck. She put two fingers to my lips and rolled over so her back was to me. Then she took my bandaged hand and drew it across her stomach. And that’s how we fell asleep.

T
here was movement somewhere in the apartment. I rolled over and felt for Karen. The bed was empty. The sheets, rumpled and warm. It was still night, and I looked down the short flight of stairs toward the living room, lined with bars of light from the street. She was standing by the windows, wrapped loosely in a robe. Shadows played across her face from the moving traffic below.

“Hey,” I said.

Karen started as if waking from a dream, then looked up and smiled. Slow and lazy. “Did I wake you?”

“I thought I heard something.” I began to get out of bed.

“Stay. I’m coming up.” She cinched the robe around her waist and walked softly toward the stairs. I watched her bend down in one motion and pick up a flat black purse sitting on a table. She kept both hands on the purse as she moved, more quickly now, across the room. The purse struck me as odd. The way she was carrying it, even stranger. As she hit the first step, her right hand slipped inside the purse. I caught
a glimpse of a gleaming white handle and dove for a couple of feet of floor between the wall and the bed. The first bullet burst the pillow my head had been lying on. The second buried itself in the wall above me. I hugged the rough weave of carpet. Karen kicked some blankets out of the way and moved deliberately around the bed. Then she was over me, the lower half of her face gouged by shadow, her eyes the color of machinery. Whoever Karen Simone was, she’d done this before and wouldn’t waste another bullet.

A hundred million thoughts buzzed through my brain, all pleading for attention, all demanding a reprieve. She laid the gun on my forehead and paused for half a breath. As it turned out, her final breath. The suppressed round knocked her neatly against the wall. Karen Simone landed faceup on the bed, a small hole drilled halfway between her temple and her ear. Ten feet away, a man with a rifle came up the short run of stairs. He was silhouetted by light from the living room and moved quickly to check for a pulse. Then Andrew Wallace crouched beside me and put a finger to his lips.

“She was going to kill you, Michael.” Wallace grabbed the black purse and threw it at me. Inside was a customized sleeve for the gun, as well as four different driver’s licenses and three passports. All of them had Karen’s picture and different names.

“Beacon put her into Ray’s office to get close to him. She was supposed to keep an eye on him during the trial, kill him if she thought he was going to cut a deal with the feds. When Ray disappeared with their money, they kept her in place hoping something would turn up.”

I looked at Karen, mouth open slightly, eyes already starting to cloud. Her right hand trailed off the bed. The .22-caliber pistol with the pearl-handle grip lay on the rug a few feet away. My thoughts wandered back to our night at Sterch’s—the smoke, her laughter, the beer. I thought about an e-mail
I’d told her about, from a former transportation writer for the
Trib
. A guy who wanted to meet with me. A guy who was helping me on a case. With that mention, I’d effectively signed Jack O’Donnell’s death warrant. And I was probably looking at his killer.

“We’ve got to move,” Wallace said. The erstwhile grad student turned ninja had camo black smeared down his cheeks and across his forehead.

“Why should I trust you?” I said.

“Because I’m the guy who’s gonna get us out of here. There are three more shooters outside. They were supposed to kill Karen after she called in that she’d finished you.” Wallace pulled a .40-caliber handgun out of his vest and nodded at the bandage on my hand. “Can you shoot?”

I took the gun and began to get dressed. Wallace kept an eye on the street from the living room. We went through the kitchen and crawled out a back door that led to a deck, a flight of stairs, and an alley. There was a car parked under a streetlight at the end of the alley. I peeked over the deck railing and saw two heads in the front seat.

“There’s two back here and one out front,” Wallace said. “Good news is they’re not nearly as dangerous as Karen.”

“Bad news is there’s three of them.”

“I’ll take out the driver. When I do, you head down the stairs. See if you can tag his buddy. I’ll go back through the apartment and get the guy out front. Okay?”

I nodded and crouched on the landing. Wallace laid the barrel of his rifle over the railing. He put his eye to the scope, paused a moment, then squeezed off a round. I was halfway down the stairs as the windshield exploded, ten yards away when the passenger’s door popped open. I put two rounds through it. A body rolled out onto the pavement. I put another round in him, waited a beat, then moved closer. The guy I’d put down was dead. The inside of the car, a spray of blood and
tissue. I picked up a gun that had bounced out of the car and put it in my pocket. A second windshield shattering told me Wallace had hit the third shooter. I ran toward the front of the building as Wallace came around a corner.

“Come on.”

We ran back the way I’d come, past the alley and down a couple of side streets. Wallace had a dark blue sedan tucked underneath a viaduct. Five minutes later, we were driving west on Diversey Avenue. Wallace wiped the black off his face and tossed his rifle under a tarp in the backseat. I still had the .40-cal.

“You probably have a lot of questions,” Wallace said.

“A few.”

“I’ll try to answer as many as I can, but you need to trust me.”

“We’ll see.”

Wallace pulled up to a light at Damen Avenue. The clock in front of a bank read 3:43. The intersection was empty. I could hear the first wail of sirens behind us.

“Do me a favor and toss the gun in the backseat,” Wallace said.

“There’s a twenty-four-hour pancake house called the Golden Nugget at Diversey and Western. Pull into the lot.”

“I don’t feel like pancakes, Michael. And those places are full of cops.”

I lifted the gun an inch. “Just pull in.”

I had Wallace drive to the very back of the lot and turn off the engine. A trucker came out of the restaurant with a toothpick wedged in his mouth. He started up his rig and rumbled into the night.

“I know about Beacon,” I said. “And I know about the money Ray took.”

“Then you know they want it back.”

“You worked for Ray?”

“For a long time.”

“What about Marie?”

“She didn’t know about me until recently. But she did help Ray escape. I was impressed as hell you put that together, by the way. I never would have given you those courthouse pictures if I knew what you were going to do with them.”

“Did you actually take them?”

“At Ray’s request. He thought they might come in handy someday.”

“Did Marie know about the money?”

Wallace shook his head. “At first, no.”

“And now?”

“Now she knows.”

“How was Ray able to rip off Beacon?”

“I set it up.”

“Talented guy. Why didn’t you and Ray just grab the cash and never look back?”

“Not as easy as it sounds. Besides, Marie was still here. She didn’t want to breathe the same air as him, but Ray loved her anyway. He wanted to make sure she was safe. Especially once he got sick.”

“Why hire me?”

“I told you. Ray knew Beacon would plant people close to him once he was indicted. First to make sure he didn’t flip. Then to pick up his scent once he’d skipped. Ray was convinced you were the guy to flush out any plant. He died about a month ago. I waited a couple of weeks, then sent out the e-mail hiring you.”

“And the texts?”

“It was critical that you harass Beacon. Keep ’em off balance and lure them out. I thought the texts might help things along. Honestly, it was the same idea behind having Ray’s body surface in the Ambassador. Just gave Beacon something else to think about.”

“So I was the bait, and Karen Simone took it.”

“Her background always bothered me. When she showed an interest in you, it got my attention. We broke her cover late this afternoon. I put a guy on your tail and, sure enough, she made a move.”

Karen flashed through my mind a final time—her face in the striped moonlight, hands locked together, gripping the bone-white handle of a .22-caliber pistol.

“Are you still following Ray’s plan?” I said.

“Ray was a good friend. So, yeah, I’m following the plan.”

“What’s next?”

“You put the gun in the backseat.”

I slipped it under the tarp alongside the rifle.

“And the one you have in your pocket.”

I took out the other gun and put it in the back. “Pretty good, Wallace.”

“Thank you. And I appreciate it.”

“Now what?”

Wallace pulled out a smartphone and hit a few buttons. “I’m transferring a hundred thousand dollars into your account.”

“Keep it.”

“Marie wants you to have it.” Wallace finished tapping on the phone and snapped it shut. “That’s it. Your part in this is finished.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not?”

I held up my bandaged hand. “For one thing, someone took a piece of my finger. I’d like to get a little payback. And then there’s Marie.”

“What about her?”

“Why is she driving out to the suburbs with a bag full of cash?”

Wallace paled a bit around the edges but quickly recovered. “Let it go, Michael.”

“I know about the highway accidents Beacon caused. What I figure is she’s trying to make things right with the victims by giving them some of the money. Maybe you agree with the idea. Maybe you don’t. What I don’t understand is why she has to deliver it herself.”

“That’s a personal decision.”

“Know what I think?”

“I don’t care.”

“I think she might be playing both sides of this. Her dead husband and her father.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Marie could be paying those victims because it’s the right thing to do. Or she could be working with her old man and paying them off to keep
quiet
about Beacon. Or she could just be in it for herself.”

“Marie was in this with Ray.”

“And now Ray’s conveniently dead. What if I told you Marie met with her father earlier today? Right after her trip to the suburbs?”

Wallace didn’t respond, but I could see the meeting with Bones had caught him off guard.

“Think it through, Wallace. If I’m right, you’d be the next logical candidate to go.”

“Where do you want me to drop you off?”

“You trust that family?”

“I trusted Ray. And I trust his wife. Most of all, I trust the money. And only I know exactly where it is. Now, where do you want to go?”

W
allace dropped me in front of the Hancock Building. I leaned through the window for a final word.

“Think about what I told you.”

“Marie’s disappearing tonight, Michael. With the money. Do yourself a favor and move on.”

“She’s got something else going on. Something neither of us knows about.”

“Your cash is in the account. Take a trip somewhere. You deserve it.”

Wallace rolled up the window. I watched him drive off, then walked east until I hit inner Lake Shore Drive. The sun was just lifting from the horizon, spilling a paint bucket full of pinks and purples across the corrugated surface of the lake. If I could have kept my eyes open, I might have felt inspired. As it was, I turned my back on the day and trudged back up Walton Place to the Knickerbocker Hotel. The receptionist didn’t give me a second look. Checking in at dawn apparently wasn’t that unusual at the Knickerbocker. I got a room on the
fourth floor, put out the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign, and crawled into bed.

Nine hours later, I woke up and stared at three tiny cracks in the hotel ceiling. It was a little after two in the afternoon, and I wondered who was looking for me. I powered up my phone and checked my messages. My dog walker had fed Mags and taken her out. That was it. I sent the walker a text asking if she could take Mags for the night. Then I got out of bed and stumbled over to the windows. The shades were dark green and pulled down tight. I lifted one and stared out at the façade of the Drake Hotel. Below me traffic honked its way up the street. I turned from the windows, rubbed my face, and noticed a cream-colored envelope slipped under the door.

Michael,

I’m sorry how things turned out. Andrew said you had a lot of questions. Unfortunately, the answers aren’t always as clear as we’d like. By the time you read this, I hope to be gone from the city for good. Please don’t try to follow. Andrew and I have plans for the money. Good plans. I get the feeling you don’t believe me. I guess I can’t blame you, but it’s just how things have to be. As for Beacon—leave them alone, and they’ll leave you alone. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do. Andrew has sent along details on the wire transfer in a separate e-mail. Please take the money and enjoy it.

Godspeed,

Marie

I stuck the note back in its envelope and went into the bathroom where I took a shower with my left hand hanging outside the curtain. Then I got dressed.

The hallway on the fourth floor of the Knickerbocker was empty. I took the elevator downstairs, strolled through the lobby, and out onto the sidewalk. I could have headed over to Marie Perry’s apartment and seen if she was still in town. I could have called Vince Rodriguez and tried to convince him to start arresting people. Or I could have gone to the bank and counted my money. My feet didn’t like any of those options, and I found myself walking down Huron Street. I stopped in front of Prentice Hospital and watched the cars come and go. Everyone in a hurry. I pushed through the revolving doors and went inside.

The tenth floor was deserted. I walked down the hall, past the NICU, to the Safe Haven office. The nurse at the front recognized me and buzzed me into the nursery. I gave her a wave and headed toward Vince’s pod. I had a feeling about what I might find when I got there, and I wasn’t wrong. The machines perched like dark angels around his empty crib. The menagerie of toys I’d brought was gone. I reached down into the trash and found the Post-it with Vince’s name on it. I smoothed it out, folded it up, and stuck it in my pocket. Then I sat in the chair I usually sat in and stared at the spot where the kid used to be, my eyes hunting for the outline of his body in the fresh bedding. But there was nothing there. Just another bed waiting for the next throwaway child. And a reminder I’d leave no footprints in the sand save my own.

Soft voices filtered in from the other end of the nursery. It sounded like the singsong drone of a prayer, and I walked toward it. A green curtain was half drawn. Inside four people held hands in a circle and chained together a litany of Hail Marys. As I approached, the circle opened to reveal an old man in the center. He cradled a naked baby in the enormous palm of one hand and kissed its forehead through the dying words
of an Our Father. The man’s face was cut from the stony cliffs of Connemara or Mayo. His hair was pure white; his eyes, liquid pools of grief. For just a moment, I was drowning in them. Then someone tugged at my shoulder and snapped the curtain shut. I turned to find Amanda Mason staring at me.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“I came to see Vince.”

“He’s gone.”

“I know.” I looked back at the curtain. The prayers continued behind it, voices rising and falling in a hypnotic rhythm.

“Their child just passed,” Amanda said. “We’re giving the family a moment.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you all right?”

I nodded. I’d seen a lot of death. Hell, I’d shot someone dead the night before. But I’d never felt anything quite like that. The limp, naked child. The circle of prayer. The man. His hands, thick and horned. His face.

“I’m fine, Amanda. Sorry, I didn’t realize…”

“They took Vince yesterday. I was going to call you, but I didn’t have a number.”

She had my number, but it didn’t really matter.

“Where is he?”

“He’ll be placed in a state-supervised facility until they find a permanent home.” Amanda’s voice had beaten a strategic retreat behind the high wall of hospital bureaucracy. I couldn’t half blame her.

“Thanks,” I said.

She touched the back of my hand. “He’ll be fine, Michael.”

“I know. I gotta run.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m good.”

I wasn’t good. Far from it. The hospital’s chapel was on the second floor. I found a bench at the back and wove together
a couple more Hail Marys. My thoughts circled back to the kid I’d named Vince. I’d done little more than sit in a nursery, smile into his eyes, and watch his heartbeat on a screen. A handful of moments. And yet the emptiness ate at me. The vulnerability shook me. I thought about the little family I’d stumbled on. The old man’s cupped palm, a child in its very center, limbs lifeless and dangling. I opened my eyes and sat up straight in the pew, thoughts and prayers scattering like so many marbles, rolling to and fro across the shiny wooden floor. An image formed in my mind, a picture. One I’d seen at least twice. And never understood until now.