The Architect of Revenge: A September 11th Novel (14 page)

It was no trick this time. His handshake was sincere.

“I know Tony would have mentioned the bond of trust. The same goes for you and me. That’s how we work.”

Morgan’s whole body still smarted from the formal introduction.

“When we’re done, you will become a machine that moves with deadly precision. Lesson two is tomorrow. Here. Same time,” said Isaac. “By way of fair warning…cut off that little pony tail of yours. Or I’ll use it to break your neck.”

On a cold Sunday in October, Morgan ran the Chicago Marathon. He hadn’t registered—he wouldn’t have, of course—but he still planned to run the entire twenty-six miles. Morgan’s grueling apprenticeship was no different from becoming a surgeon, consuming every second he lived. Maximizing his stamina remained of paramount importance, and north of the Mason-Dixon nobody would pay attention to a Middle Eastern-looking man inside a crowd of runners.

In the early morning, he rode the L downtown and waited several hundred yards upstream from where the marathon would start, joining the bulge of runners after the sprinters pulled ahead.

Until the final miles, Morgan held a determined pace. When Lake Point Tower loomed in the distance, his tempo quickened and he dashed forward of the pack. Morgan saw a local TV reporter direct her camera operator at him, so he covered his face and peeled into the crowd of cheering bystanders to slip away.

“Queenie, did you see that?” Ross Merrimac sprang to his feet from his easy chair.

“See what? I’m cooking dinner.”

“I think I just saw Wes on TV,” he said.

“Do tell…” Shandra came out from the kitchen. “Where?”

“I was watching the news…and I saw him…running in the marathon.” He scratched his head. “Least I think it could have been him. His body was muscled and his skin was really dark.”

“What? You don’t think black people run marathons?”

“No! It was Wes! I saw him!”

“Why do you think he’d show up at the marathon? You don’t drop out of touch with everyone just to train. You didn’t have a margarita, did you?”

Shandra hadn’t smelled any liquor on his breath, but she knew he snuck one now and then. And when she found out, she chastised him.

“No, Queenie, I haven’t been drinking,” Merrimac said with disgust, becoming sick to his stomach as he again relived Morgan’s disappearance.

It had been five months since Morgan’s resignation letter arrived, and the last time Merrimac had heard anything. The surgeon’s departure had created serious havoc for the transplant service—a predicament Merrimac was resolving. Nevertheless, he still worried about his friend. Morgan had seemingly vanished, yet today he showed up running the Chicago Marathon? That wasn’t right.

Shandra came to his side while her husband changed channels. “You said his townhouse was empty months ago…”

“Maybe we’ll see him again on another replay,” Merrimac said, only half listening.

“You could check with the marathon people,” his wife suggested.

“Good idea,” Merrimac said while scrolling through the channels. Until now he had held out hope that Morgan had disappeared to get the help he needed. But seeing him on TV made Merrimac realize he had rationalized the months away.

He called the race organizers on Monday. When Morgan’s name wasn’t listed, Merrimac went to the TV station. After reviewing the raw footage several times, the technician printed out the best image, and Merrimac took it to the local police precinct.

“You say you haven’t talked to him in months…and now all you got is this picture?” said the detective, eyeing the image and shaking his head. “Did you…like…talk to his family? That’d be simple enough, don’t you think? I mean, you don’t need a detective
to tell you that.”

“His only family was his mother, and she died at the beginning of the year.”

“That’s some sorry shit probably going’ on here, Doc.” The man leaned back in his chair, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and bumped one up before looking at the physician sitting across the desk. “Do you mind?”

“Go right ahead,” said Merrimac. He wouldn’t have even noticed.

“Screw it. I’ll wait,” said the detective, sticking the white roll behind his ear. “So. Morgan’s mom—that’s his name, right?”

Merrimac nodded.

“She dies. Who’s doing the estate?”

“Probably Morgan’s attorney,” said Merrimac.

“Numb-nut lawyers…We bust our humps breaking a case, and those slimebags get them off. Ought to lock those assholes in the same cell as the perps…” He looked at the surgeon and said, “Cheap way to fix
their
hemorrhoids, right, Doc?”

“I think so…” replied Merrimac, hoping anything he said might encourage the detective to consider the matter more seriously.

“Did you talk to him?”

“I tried.” Merrimac knew it had been a while ago.

“His attorney won’t tell you shit, of course.”

“That about covers it,” answered Merrimac. “He gave me his PO Box, told me to write a letter.”

“So…let me like…be clear on this,” said the detective. “This doctor friend was supposed to see a shrink and didn’t, you get a letter that says
fuck you
…and now you think you seen him running? So…because he didn’t check in with
you
, he’s missing?”

The detective rubbed his eyes. “With a PO Box and an attorney, he’s not missing. You just can’t find him, if you know what I mean.” The detective pointed at the picture. “Sounds to me like he doesn’t give a shit about you.”

“If that isn’t him in the picture…could he be dead maybe?” Until that moment Merrimac hadn’t thought that likelihood possible.

“Need a body,” said the officer. “Tell you what. We’ll check it out… Pass it to
Missing Persons
if I don’t find nothing.” The detective concluded with, “I’ll get back to you.”

Merrimac sat alone in his office wondering if he should call Jane Bonwitt. She had called months ago looking for information when she found Morgan leaving his townhouse.

“Wes,” he said out loud, “I’m doing this for you…”

He sighed and picked up the phone. From past dealings with her, he knew to start talking right away.

“Jane, I think I saw Wes on TV running the marathon...so I went to the police. They really didn’t help...said he wasn’t missing…but also said they would look into it. I doubt they will. Have you heard from Wes?”

Her response took several minutes. “Oh, my! Let me remember…Okay…After I saw Wes at his townhouse—he looked really hairy—and men were there who took out all the furniture! All the things he bought from me! Then he took the picture Cay gave him from their first night—she looked so beautiful! What a cute couple! Then Wes got in his car and drove off! He wouldn’t talk to me! So I followed him to O’Hare, that’s where I lost him…”

Good God!
thought Merrimac.
How does she talk without breathing?

“Jane—” he tried to interrupt.

“Then his townhouse sold—a real estate friend of mine told me—so I talked to the new owners and they said the whole thing was handled by Wes’s attorney. So they gave me that number and I called him. He said Wes has no phone number, just a
post office box
, and I’m supposed to send him a letter! So I did, several over the past months! What unmitigated gall that lawyer has! I’m Wes’s friend! I warned him the head of the Illinois Bar was a—”

“Jane”—Merrimac engaged the ploy physicians often used—“There goes my beeper. They’re paging me to surgery. Sounds like it’s urgent.”

“Oh, can’t you wait? There’s more. Only take a minute.”

“Hurry, Jane.”

“I didn’t get a call or letter—nothing! So I’ve been driving to Berwyn, past all those yellow brick bungalows, row after row, and sitting in the post office parking lot for hours with my Mercedes running, waiting for him to come, and he never has! So I don’t know where Wes is. I miss him. I miss Cay too. It’s all so terrible.”

“We all miss them,” Merrimac interjected. “I don’t know what to do to find him.”

“You know what I’m going to do?” Bonwitt declared.

Uh-oh.
Just when he thought he was getting rid of her.

“I’m going to find him myself! I’ll hire a private investigator.”

“Good idea. Let me know,” Merrimac said, realizing the only way to compete with her was to never stop talking. “Janie, I’ve really got an emergency and need to run. Bye.”

He’d wait a moment.

“Thank you for talking with me, Ross.”

Merrimac hung up. “God almighty! Sweet savior come to me! Wes…maybe you should stay lost!”

May 2003

“C
ome on, you jerks…” Fred Brosinski barked at the radio.

The White Socks had struck out in the third inning. Well, they may be down on their luck, but finally
he
had the perfect job—getting paid since November to wait outside a post office for a black BMW, listening to sports and laying down bets on the ponies.

What did he care? The big woman with the mushroom-cloud hair and toxic perfume never flinched when she wrote the check while sitting at her polished desk with a view of the lakefront. It was the largest retainer the private investigator had ever received.

“I’m told you are the best,”
Bonwitt said before the ink dried.
“My friends—”

“You heard right,”
he agreed, quickly learning to interrupt.

“Is this enough money to make Dr. Morgan your priority? Because cost is no object.”

“When it’s somebody you care about”
—he was amazed he didn’t laugh—“
it shouldn’t be.”
He tried not to look too long at the amount.
“This should be enough…to get me started.”

The first thing the Chicago-detective-turned-private-investigator did was swap a bottle of gin at the motor vehicle department for a favor. He learned the BMW was still registered to Morgan at the Lincoln Park address, with its city sticker renewed for two years.

A quick hello to the new townhouse owners confirmed they’d never seen the BMW or met Morgan, so the car had to be parked somewhere else. Finding it at random would be impossible. Unless Morgan got a ticket—a mistake Brosinski thought improbable—the bureaucratic morass in Chicago would take forever to discover the car was no longer at that address.

So Brosinski did what Bonwitt had, and idled outside the Berwyn post office waiting for Morgan to pick up his mail. With his expenses paid well beyond their true costs, Bonwitt’s money filled his pockets. He even paid his part-time secretary to stop by so he could run to the bathroom in a nearby bank or drive half a block to get gas. He paid her extra for that, of course—and for other, more personal accommodations—but today her child was sick and home from school, so he was stuck with an expanding bladder.

A Sox pop fly ended the next inning.

“Is this fuckin’ guy ever goin’ to get his fuckin’ mail?”

Parked across the street from the Berwyn post office, he shifted his corpulent backside in the seat of the dingy green Laredo with threadbare tires and stuck his hairy hand out the window to ash his cigar.

“I’m so fuckin’ sick of sitting my ass here, day and fuckin’ night.” It had been the same routine for months. “Thank the fuckin’ saints it ain’t hot yet.”

Smoking the cigar down to a stump, he ate another doughnut. Every other day he bought a dozen and kept them next to him for the local police if they pulled up. With a flip of his badge and a Dunkin’ Donut, they’d talk sports and leave, reassuring him they’d call if they saw a black BMW. They never did.

“Shit.” Brosinski had to take a leak. “Too much coffee.”

He looked in the back then felt under the driver’s seat.

“Shit.”

No bottles. He shook his thermos. It was almost empty. He unscrewed the lid, gulped the last few ounces of coffee, and spread the newspaper over his lap. After unzipping his pants, he held the thermos low between his legs and with a relaxed smug looked out the window.

“Oh, fuck!”

The bottle dropped to the floor, the urine spilling on the front mat.

“Shit!”

A black BMW turned from a side street and parked in a diagonal space in front of the post office.

“Fuckin’ A!”

The license plate belonged to Morgan. He waited for his mark to get out of the car and go inside.

With the newspaper still covering his fly, Brosinski jammed the Laredo into drive and backed into the street ahead of three moving cars, forcing himself over to the left turn lane. Forcing a U-turn into oncoming traffic, he parked on the passenger’s side of the BMW and zipped up his pants.

Brosinski kept looking around as he turned on a billfold-sized GPS tracking device and opened his car door.

He crouched down so his left hand could stick the magnetized little box to the BMW’s undercarriage.

He pulled himself inside, closed the door, and backed out. As he slowly drove away, he used his rearview mirror to track a dark-haired, bearded man carrying several white envelopes to the car.

Brosinski laughed. “We are fucking Siamese twins now!”

Morgan did a fast scan of the periphery, noting vehicle movement and pedestrians. His attention was directed to a green SUV with tinted windows, which seemed to be moving more slowly than the accelerated pace of traffic. He watched the vehicle until it was out of sight.

He drove to the storage locker and bicycled home in his usual random pattern so he couldn’t be followed.

That afternoon, the GPS led Brosinski to the storage facility, but neither Morgan nor the BMW was anywhere to be seen. The PI went into the office to talk to the agent.

“Did you see if my buddy parked his BMW? He was gonna lend that baby to me tonight. My lady friend says I’ll get lucky if she can have a ride.”

“Not supposed to talk about clients,” was the reply.

“Oh, come on, friend!” Ten dollars appeared. “Just tell me where my buddy parked it. He ain’t answering his phone and forgot to tell me. See?” Brosinski said, dangling his keys with the Jeep logo hidden. “Got his keys.”

The man took the money. “Locked up. Can only bust in if the owner says it’s okay, like if they lose a key.”

“Can you tell me when he left here?”

“Don’t know. Been working inside all day,” the agent said. “Give me your number and I’ll give it to the manager. That work for you?”

“Right-o,” said Brosinski. He wrote down a fictitious name and, after the area code, seven random numbers. “Thanks,” he said, glad he only lost ten dollars.

“Son of a bitch!” Brosinski shouted, looking over his secretary’s shoulder at his computer.

He had missed the GPS alert that the BMW had moved, and was now parked on the Midway of the University of Chicago.

“I need to go,” he said as his secretary began wrestling with her halter top. She had come into the office with her hair a different color, wearing tight shorts and her tits falling out. It was all the advertisement he needed. His desk was the most immediate firm surface available.

Scrambling through the pouring rain without an umbrella, Brosinski raced to the spot where he had illegally parked, turned over the engine, and sped toward the campus.

“Well, Morgan,” he said, listening to the wipers chafe back and forth, “guess the threat of a little bad weather put your pampered candy ass back in the seat of that fancy car.”

This was the break Brosinski needed. Bonwitt insisted on proof he was getting closer to discovering where Morgan was living. More important to Brosinski—he wanted the easy money to keep coming.

The closer he got to campus, the harder it rained.

“Hope this fuckin’ shit stops. I need a clear shot of your mug without sticking my camera up your nose.”

He spotted the BMW parked near the crosswalk that led to the library. He drove past, came around on the opposing street, and stopped the Laredo across the open field about three hundred feet away. The telephoto lens would reach that far without a problem and provide the pictures he needed to clearly identify Morgan.

“If it just stops fuckin’ raining,” he said, lighting a cigar.

Brosinski waited all day. Disappointed there were few coeds he could take pictures of, he thought he’d go to Oak Street Beach on Memorial Day to get some shots of the season’s first bikinis.

“If it doesn’t fuckin’ rain,” he added.

Morgan’s watch chirped.

He’d had enough studying for a while. The rest of the material could wait until later.

When he finished, he put his laptop and folders in the black backpack, took a drink of water from the fountain, and headed down the stairs to the main entrance.

Morgan paused on the steps. The rain had stopped, making visibility sharper.

“Know your world…”
Tony’s words echoed in his head.
“Separate the unusual from the normal chaos.”

In the periphery of his vision, his attention covertly appraised a distant green contour.

“Remember,”
Tony had said again and again,
“coincidences don’t happen…”

With his backpack in hand, he walked down the steps and continued on the path that ran through the gardens toward his car.

Through the camera Brosinski watched his progress.

“Thank you for finally getting your fuckin’ ass out here.” He started taking pictures. “You look like an Arab fuck.” The lens kept clicking. “The fat woman will love these,” he chortled. “How ‘bout a big smile for her?”

Morgan opened the trunk with his key and took out his bicycle. Brosinski watched him pull out the front tire and lock it into the forks.

“Now you’re fuckin’ going bike riding?” he said.

Morgan placed the backpack in the trunk and closed it. He mounted the bicycle and rode away.

“Shit…” Even though he knew he’d have to wait, Brosinski smiled. “I know you ain’t leaving that hottie car here overnight.”

Fifteen minutes later, he saw Morgan return and dismount, leaving the bike on the grass while he opened his car trunk. The camera clicked away.