Trigger City (24 page)

I
woke up in a hospital room.
Warm afternoon light streamed through the windows. A handsome nurse with long silver hair stood at my bedside.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello.” My voice came out sounding scratchy.

She passed me a large Styrofoam cup and I sucked water through the bendy straw. There was an IV line in the back of my right hand. My left arm below the elbow was in a cast.

“Tell me your name and date of birth,” she said.

I did.

“Good. Do you know what day this is?”

“Thursday, unless I've been unconscious longer than I think.”

She nodded. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Car accident.”

“Very good.”

I squinted her nametag: Dr. Martin. Not a nurse. Sexist assumption.

The nametag also said: Rush Medical Center.

Damn.

I swallowed. “Is Jill Browning on duty?”

Dr. Martin pressed a button and the top of the bed began to rise, putting me in a slightly reclined sitting position.

“She was. But she became distressed, we had to send her home.” She glanced at the bedside monitor, wrote something on a clipboard. “Apparently she's very fond of you. We've given her a few days off.”

“So what's the damage?” I said.

“To your body? Not too bad, all things considered. Moderate concussion, you may experience headaches, perhaps mood swings for a few days. Simple fracture of the left wrist—it'll heal. Some bruising from the seat belt, some kidney bruising, and you may pass blood in your urine for a day or two. You'll have aches and pains for a while, but you'll be all right.”

My head felt fuzzy. I said, “My head feels fuzzy.”

“That'll pass.”

“When do I get out of here?”

“Now, actually.” She pulled the tape off of my hand and removed the IV needle, taped a small square of gauze over the hole. “There are a couple of policemen waiting to see you. After you're done with them, press your call button and a nurse will help you with your clothes.”

“Thanks.”

She started for the door, stopped. “Mr. Dudgeon, Jill has many friends at this hospital. We don't like to see her in pain.”

“I don't, either.”

“Then take better care of yourself.”

She left the room.

A minute later, the door opened and two cops came in, approached the bed. I blinked at them, brought them into focus.

Not cops.

“Alphabet Soup,” I said.

“What?” said the taller one. The one who always did the talking.

“You guys have names?” I said. “Because I'm sick of thinking of you as
the taller one
and
the shorter one
. You're practically the same
height. It's confusing, and my head is fuzzy. They don't even have to be real names, just—”

“I'm Dave,” said the taller one. “This is Anthony.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“We're going to take you home.”

“What about the cops? Don't they need to speak with me?”

Dave smiled. “There won't be any cops,” he said. “It's all taken care of.”

 

But they didn't take me home. Not right away.

They took me to Chinatown.

We rode there in silence, pulled to a stop in front of a fire hydrant on Cermak Road. Dave and Anthony got out of the car. Anthony opened the back door and helped me out and I walked gingerly with them to the entrance of a Chinese restaurant.

The sign in the door said
CLOSED
and the blinds were drawn shut. Dave held a cell phone to his mouth and pressed a button and it beeped like a walkie-talkie.

“We're here,” he said.

The door opened and we stepped inside the dimly lit restaurant. Along the left wall was a row of booths, tables to the right.

The man who let us in closed the door and locked it and stood in place.

We walked forward. Amy and Theresa Zhang sat at the back of the room. Vince sat with them. There was a woman standing like a sentry next to the table.

In a booth near the front of the room, Special Agent Holborn sat with a sour look on his face. Dave and Anthony walked me to the booth and I sat with Holborn. They went back and stood with the guy by the front door.

“Hello, Ray,” said Holborn. Subdued. “Glad you didn't die.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Want to tell me what's going on?”

Holborn blew out a breath. “It's complicated.”

“Of course it is,” I said.

He fixed me with a look that held as much weariness as anger. “Don't say
I told you so
.”

“I won't.”

“There are…” He glanced at the Alphabet Soup guys without any affection, looked back at me. “There are issues of national security involved here.”

“Of course there are,” I said.

“My hands are tied.”

“Not the call you were hoping for.”

“No. But I got Amy and her daughter into the program. That's something.”

“That's a lot,” I said.

“Because of you, they're going to live.”

“Because of you, too,” I said.

“But that's all. There won't be any investigation.”

“Typhon, the Multiheaded Beast,” I said.

Holborn nodded, “I'm afraid so.”

“Well, thanks for telling me.”

“I did my best.”

“I know you did.”

Dave stepped to the booth, said, “Time to wrap it up.”

“You want to say good-bye to Amy?” said Holborn.

I walked to the back of the room. Amy stood from the table and we took a long look at each other. I put my arms around her. She hugged me back, hugged me as tight as she could, pressed her face against my chest.

“Thank you, Ray. Thank you,” was all she said. Then she started to cry.

I kissed the top of her head and stroked her hair and held her tight.

And I realized that I was crying, too.

D
ave and Anthony drove me home,
walked me up to my apartment, and saw me safely inside.

“What now?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Dave. “It never happened.”

“Grant and Sten.”

He shook his head. “Read the paper tomorrow.”

“So that's it?”

“That's it. Get some sleep, forget all about it. Like I said, it never happened.”

They were out the door thirty seconds when I grabbed the phone, dialed my grandfather's number in Georgia.

He answered on the second ring.

“Pop, you okay?”

“Surely am.” There was a pause on the line. “Your friend Tim Dellitt came back. I took him fishing.”

“What?”

“Yup. Terrible thing, though. We were about five miles out. He slipped on the gunwale, hit his head, went overboard. Never came up again.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. First time I lost a customer in forty years. Just a tragic accident.”

“Wow.”

“Your old grandpa didn't forget everything he learned in Korea. Question is, how are you?”

“I'm fine, Pop. Thanks. Just…tired.”

“Get you some sleep then. We'll talk later.”

 

I slept for a long time, without dreaming. Woke up around noon the next day. Put on a pot of coffee and opened the newspaper.

And there it was.

Joseph Grant, CEO of Hawk River, suffered a massive heart attack in his hotel room in Washington, D.C., yesterday afternoon. The hotel doctor pronounced him dead at the scene.

Last night, Chicago police responded to a 911 call from a Bridgeport home. The caller identified himself as Blake Sten and told the dispatcher he was going to kill himself. When officers arrived at the scene, they forced the door and found Sten dead of a self-inflicted gunshot. There was a note indicating that he was despondent over the earlier death of his longtime friend and mentor, Joseph Grant.

Typhon strikes again.

 

I watched Chicago streak by and felt the same rush of anticipation that I'd always felt as a kid riding the El to Wrigley. I listened to the train's rumble-rattle music and realized that I was feeling better about myself than I had in a while.

I'd been hired to find the truth of Joan Richmond's death and I'd found it. It was a bad truth, and it was a truth I was powerless to change. But I'd found it.

Of course you never really know the whole truth. I'd never know what happened to the missing pages of Joan's diary, or what was on
them. I'd never know how complicit our government had been with China's involvement in Darfur.

And I was only able to stand by and watch as Typhon the Multiheaded Beast swept in to protect the status quo, and swept the evidence back into the darkest corners of the intelligence community.
Like it never happened.

But I hadn't set out to change the world.

And along the way, I'd met a remarkable woman who was in deep trouble—and I'd helped her out of it. Helped her start a new life with her daughter.

That was enough for me. It had to be.

 

I got off the El at Belmont, walked a few blocks east, and stood in front of the yellow brick apartment building with two stone lions at the courtyard entrance.

Dr. Martin's words echoed in my head.

She said, “Take better care of yourself.”

I would.

Inside my pocket was a little blue box and inside the box was my grandmother's engagement ring. My grandfather had given it to me when I moved to Chicago to go to college.

He said, “When you meet the right girl, you'll know.”

I knew.

I
owe many thanks to many people.

To Barbara and Murray Chercover, for being exceptional parents, friends, and first readers.

To my agents, Denise Marcil and Michael Congdon, for their ongoing belief and guidance.

To my editor, Lyssa Keusch, for her terrific editorial insight, and to Tom Egner, Amy Halperin, Danielle Bartlett, Buzzy Porter, Johnathan Wilber, May Chen, and the entire team at William Morrow/ HarperCollins.

To Lt. Robert Biebel, Sgt. Eugene Mullins, Kristina Schuler, Monique Bond, and Pat Camden at the Chicago Police Department.

To Special Agents Frank Bochte and Ross Rice at the FBI.

To Manic Dave, Grits, L.J., and especially Maddoggie for pulling back the curtain and offering me a glimpse inside the world of the modern mercenary.

To Jon Jordan, Ruth Jordan, and Jennifer Jordan (Sly & the Family Jordan)…for so many kindnesses, too extensive to cover in this space.

To Ken Bruen for massive doses of public support and private encouragement, and for keeping me at least partially sane. Partially.
Whoa…pot, kettle, black.

To Dianne Bazos, Judy Bobalik, Jake Burns, Holly Chercover, Eric Cherry, Lee Child, Jane Cornett, Crimespree Magazine, The Real Ray Dudgeon, Barry Eisler, Russell H. Ewert, Paul Guyot, Libby Hellmann, Jane and Knut Holmsen, Alison Janssen, Eugene Jarecki, Rick Kogan, Joe Konrath, Ben LeRoy, Deborah Liebow, Paul Magder, Eric Murphy, Annie Neyfakh, Sara Paretsky, Doug Patteson, Otto Penzler, Todd Robinson, Sandra Ruttan, Marcus Sakey, Gordon and Heather and Jessica Schmidt, Michael D. Sullivan, Terry Young, Stella and Rocky Z.

To the end-of-the-bar gang at Jake's Pub—next round's on me.

To Marian Misters and JD Singh, Richard Katz, Robin and Jamie Agnew, Jim Huang, Augie Aleksy, Mike Bursaw, Pat Frovarp and Gary Schulze, CPL Commissioner Mary Dempsey, Annie Tully, Penny Halle, Linda Schehl, and the many other booksellers and librarians who've been so kind to me on my travels.

To my very good friends and fellow bloggers at www.theoutfit collective.com—Barbara D'Amato, Michael Allen Dymmoch, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Kevin Guilfoile, Sara Paretsky, and Marcus Sakey…and my friends at www.killeryear.com…and the many good folks at rec.arts.mystery.

And finally (but most importantly) to Martine…gorilla my dreams.