We All Fall Down (22 page)

CHAPTER 60

If you ever wondered what it was like to walk onto the canvas of Edward Hopper’s
Nighthawks
, I’d suggest the Palace Grill on the corner of Madison and Loomis at a little after 5:00 a.m. Two cops, one fat, the other fatter, sat at one end of the long counter. Each had a newspaper, a plate of eggs, and coffee. At the other end was an old man, wrapped in an overcoat and peering into a bowl of oatmeal. Behind the counter was a skin-and-bones cook, standing guard over an empty grill, waiting for the breakfast crowd and a little conversation. I took a seat at a table in an area that looked like it was closed off. The counterman didn’t look my way, so I wandered up and ordered a coffee. He had just filled my cup when his ears stood up like a pointer’s in full flush. I didn’t need to turn to know who had just walked in.

The mayor went right for the table I had already staked out. The two cops took one look, got up, and left. The counterman pushed my coffee almost into my lap and ran to serve the mayor all the flapjacks he could eat. I gave the two of them a minute and then joined Wilson.

“You like this place?” I said.

“I come here now and then. Usually right after it opens. Thanks, Lenny.”

The counterman slipped the mayor’s joe onto the table and disappeared in a haze of grease. The mayor dumped sugar into his coffee and stirred as he talked.

“They were lucky. Just on the edge of a quarantine zone. Saw a good surge in business from all the cops working the perimeter.”

“Someone’s gotta make a buck.”

Wilson raised his eyebrows but let the comment pass. “Where you been hiding?”

“Never mind,” I said. “How’s everything holding together?”

Wilson shrugged. “You think I know? One minute we got dead people everywhere. Then it just stops. No more dead. No more sick. Now the feds tell me they‘re pulling down the fences.”

“You wonder how all that happened?”

“You think I got to be mayor by asking dumb questions?”

“You just take the bows.” I nudged the morning
Sun-Times
across the table. Wilson’s picture was on the front page.

“And I take the lumps, asshole. It’s the job. Now tell me what is it that can’t wait until the sun comes up?”

“You know this guy?”

Wilson looked at a photo of Peter Gilmore but didn’t touch it. “No. Should I?”

“He’s responsible for the release.”

Wilson took a second look at the photo, then back up to me. “Who is he? And why are we talking about this in the Palace?”

“I promised I’d give you a heads-up.”

“Only if my office was involved.”

I spread my hands, palms up, and sat back. Wilson swung a look around the diner.

I stood up. “Maybe you want a pat down?”

Wilson gestured me back into the booth. His face looked like a wall of old plaster, cracked from too much heat and trailing long threads of asbestos everywhere.

“When are you going to the feds?” he said.

“I’m not.”

A pause. “What’s my involvement?”

It wasn’t the sort of thing any politician wanted to ask. Certainly not if your name is followed by the title “Mayor of Chicago.” And definitely not if it involved the deaths of a few hundred Chicagoans.

“I can’t lay it all out,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not resolved yet.”

“And you’re going to resolve it yourself?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

Wilson tapped a finger beside Gilmore’s picture. “Who is he?”

“Peter Gilmore. Former CIA.” A lift of mayoral chin at that. “Specially trained in the handling and release of chemical and biological weapons.”

“Who hired him?” Wilson said.

I shook my head.

“Why?”

Another shake of the head.

“I thought you told me this concerns my office.”

“It does. Just not directly.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I think, Your Honor, that might very well be up to you.”

Lenny was orbiting at the edge of the universe with a plate of toast. Wilson waved him in. Lenny dropped off his order, freshened everyone’s coffee, and scampered away. Wilson pushed the toast aside, tapped his fingertips together, and waited.

“Mark Rissman,” I said.

“He’s picking me up here in a half hour.”

“Rita Alvarez has been investigating him for a year.”

“I hope you’re not telling me the pathogen release was put together by that puke?”

“No.”

“No shit. So why are we talking about him?”

“Rissman’s the guy from your office who was working with the Korean. Steering medical supply contracts and getting kickbacks.”

The mayor furrowed his considerable brow until he looked a little bit like Leonid Brezhnev. “You telling me Rissman was the guy who ordered the bags?”

I laid a finger on the photo. “Peter Gilmore was on the other end of the hospital scam. He worked the body bag order with Lee as a side deal. One that would have made both of them some quick cash.” I pushed some paperwork across the table. “These are documents from Gilmore’s computer. Alvarez’s legwork pretty much confirms Rissman wasn’t involved. At least initially.”

“So Rissman didn’t know about the body bags?”

“Not until we found them in Lee’s cellar. Then Rissman must have put it together.”

“And knew Gilmore was implicated in the pathogen release,” Wilson said.

“That’s when Rissman decided to drop the anonymous note to Danielson, fingering you.”

Wilson squeezed his eyes together while his nose sucked up most of the air in the room. “He set me up to take the fall.”

I was going to ask how it felt but let the moment pass.

“There was a file on Gilmore’s computer titled ‘City Hall,’ ” I said and slipped a flash drive onto the table. It disappeared into the mayor’s hairy fist. “There are also some photos.”

I took out a folder. Inside were photos from the mayor’s suite in the Colonial. Himself, clad head to toe in his NBC suit. Another with the protective mask off, drinking a Diet Coke, smiling. A third as Renee put on makeup. In the background were the camera and the fireplace setup from which he addressed the city during the crisis.

“After the tip to Danielson didn’t work, Rissman went to Gilmore himself and cut a deal. He’d keep quiet about the bags if Gilmore would help to take you down after the crisis was over. That’s what the photos were for.”

Wilson flipped through the pictures. “He thinks these would have taken me out?”

“That’s not all. In return for his silence, Rissman wanted Gilmore to create a paper trail that would link you to the body bags. Gilmore had all the paperwork. The Korean was dead. It would have been easy enough to drop it all in Doll’s lap.”

“And the weasel grabs my chair. Where’s the documentation on the bags?”

“It’s on the flash drive. Hard copies are in the folder.”

Wilson held up one of the photos. “Are there any more of these?”

“That’s all I have. One more thing. Gilmore was going to kill Rissman. Then blackmail you with the photos himself. At least that seemed to be on his to-do list.”

“But Gilmore’s gone?”

“Yes, Gilmore’s gone.”

A pause. “And you don’t think Rissman knows who Gilmore worked for on the pathogen release?”

“I know he doesn’t. But I do.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna take care of it.”

Wilson spread his thick fingers. “And all of this?”

“I can keep Rissman out of it. Or I can turn him over to the feds.”

“If you did that, then I’d go down.”

“There’s no evidence you knew what Rissman was up to.”

“I didn’t. But politically—”

“You’d be fucked, Mr. Mayor.”

Wilson took a sip of his coffee. “What do you want?”

“Cover in case what I do today goes south.”

“What kind of cover?”

“I want my friends protected. Rodriguez, Rita Alvarez. And Rachel Swenson. Especially Rachel.”

“From who?”

“If I fail, you’ll know.”

“And if I don’t agree?”

I shrugged. “We see what happens.”

Wilson dropped the flash drive into his pocket. “You got a deal.”

I got up to go. The mayor stopped me with a hand.

“Want to tell me what you have planned for today?”

“Want to tell me what you have planned for Rissman?”

“Fair enough.”

I left the diner, sticking the mayor of Chicago with the bill. And that was a first.

CHAPTER 61

The West Side was still closed to local traffic, so I went as far as I could on the Ike. A handful of people were parked on the side of the road. They had coffee and cameras with long lenses. I had a flat bottle of Knob Creek in a paper bag. I pulled it out of the glove compartment and twisted off the cap. My eye followed the angle of the sun as it sliced up the highway. I thought about Wilson and felt the quicksand under my feet. Then I looked down at the bottle. Neat, square, and more than willing to help me dig the hole a little deeper. I shoved it back into the bag. Then I turned off the car and got out.

A middle-aged man was dressed in jeans, a black peacoat, and gloves with no fingers. He had a Sox hat on backward and was looking through the viewfinder of a Canon.

“What are you shooting?” I said. He answered without taking his eye from the camera.

“The fences. They’re taking them down.” The man got his shot and stepped back. “Want to take a look?”

The lens was marvelous, the early morning light saturated with a rosy dust rising off the street. Five men worked along a fence line. Two wore heavy gloves and cut away curlings of concertina wire. The other three rolled up a length of fencing and carried it to a waiting truck. Behind them, a run of bare poles marched across the flat landscape. A soldier with a rifle watched. None of the workers wore NBC suits. The soldier was dressed in full protective gear.

“The regular media is focusing on the main gates,” the man said. “Government started taking them down last night. But I like it here.”

“What have you seen?”

“People going in on foot. Started first thing this morning.”

“Residents?”

The man chuckled as I handed him back the camera. “Real estate. I had coffee with a guy. Irishman named Flynn. Had a paper bag full of hondos. Said he had two hundred on him.”

“Two hundred thousand?”

The man nodded and reached into his camera bag for a lens. “Said he was gonna buy up a couple blocks’ worth of graystones near Garfield Park. Cash on the barrel. Had lists of owners, blank deeds, powers of attorney. Everything he needed.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Tell me about it. Said he could get stuff for next to nothing. Hell, they’ll still be pulling bodies out of the basement, and this guy will be moving in.”

My new friend wiped the lens clean with a soft cloth and snapped it on.

“What do you do with them?” I said and nodded at the camera.

“The photos? I take them for myself. Sometimes, I’ll sell a shot to the papers.”

“Nice.”

“History,” the man said. “Every bit of this is history. The most underreported event in the annals of modern journalism. Very few pictures. No video I know of that wasn’t shot by the government. No one to bear witness.”

“Just the people who lived through it.”

“That’s right. And who believes that shit?”

The man popped off a couple shots of a news chopper drifting overhead, then returned to the fence line. I watched for another ten minutes, not sure why I was there and knowing I needed to be somewhere else. Then I shook the photographer’s hand. He offered to send me some prints if I was interested. I told him I was and gave him my card.

CHAPTER 62

“How far out are you?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.” I curled past Buckingham Fountain onto Columbus Drive and took a sip of black coffee.

“Where were you?”

“Just wanted to take a look at the West Side. They’re pulling down the fences.”

“Don’t trust Doll on this, Kelly.”

“He’ll do his part.”

“Right up until the time he shoots you in the back.”

“It’s the only way. Besides, I got a backup plan.” I merged onto Lake Shore Drive. Soldier Field loomed on my left.

“You don’t want me to come down?”

“I told you. We’re better off this way.”

“Call me when it’s done.” Vince Rodriguez cut the line. I flipped my cell shut and turned up the radio. I didn’t recognize the song, but it sounded about right. I exited the Drive at Fifty-third Street.

CDA’s parking lot had three cars in it. The lobby was empty, an elevator waiting. I hit a button for the third floor. They were working together in one of the facility’s labs. I walked in a little after eight.

“Michael?” A nervous smile fluttered around Molly Carrolton’s lips but couldn’t find a place to settle.

“Did you think Gilmore had killed me?” I said. “Maybe we killed each other and some Good Samaritan came along and cleaned up the mess? Or maybe I just packed up and left town after I’d finished?”

“How did you get in here?” The face of the man who spoke graced the cover of the current issue of
Newsweek.
The magazine had dubbed Jon Stoddard “America’s Leading ‘BioWarrior.’ ”

“Name’s Michael Kelly.”

“I know who you are. And I know you’re trespassing on a private laboratory facility.”

“Piss off, Jon.”

Stoddard stood up and motioned to Molly. “Security.”

Molly flashed me a final, pleading look and reached for a phone on the wall. I knocked it out of her hand. Stoddard surprised me by taking a swing. I put him down easy with a right. Molly was moving. I let her make it to the door before I showed her the gun.

“It’s locked, Molly. And I’ve taken care of security. Now, why don’t we all sit down? And maybe you can come out of this in one piece.”

She sat. They both did.

“Peter Gilmore was greedy,” I said. “That was your first mistake. He was running a hospital supply scam you knew nothing about. When he realized what you had planned for the West Side, he decided to make a quick buck. Ordered up a few thousand body bags to sell on the black market. That left a trail for me to follow.”

“Are you suggesting this lab was somehow involved in the pathogen release?” Stoddard’s voice was strained through a handkerchief, pressed against his mouth and wet with blood.

“I’m suggesting this lab orchestrated the entire event.”

“That’s insane,” Stoddard said and ran his tongue across a swelling lip. “Anyone who did that would risk a global pandemic.”

“You engineered the bug with a kill switch, Jon.” Stoddard’s eye jerked in its socket, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. “Ellen Brazile told me every lab has its own signature. Including yours. She dug out the switch, recognized the genetic string for what it was, and thought she knew where the architecture came from. That’s why she disappeared from your lab. She was scared.”

Molly jumped back in. “Michael, if you killed Gilmore, those are circumstances that can be explained. And we’re certainly in a position to help.”

I ignored her. “The bug was a knockoff of Minor Roar. You tweaked its virulence and designed it to be active for three to five days. After that, the thing shut itself down. The release was always controlled. It’s just that no one realized it. No one except the people in this room.” I turned back to Molly. “You should have killed Gilmore before I did. That was your second mistake.”

I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and pushed them over.

“I don’t smoke, Michael.”

“And there’s no smoking allowed anywhere in this building,” Stoddard said.

“The cigarette I gave you. The one you extracted Gilmore’s DNA from.”

“What about it?” Molly said.

“I pulled it from this pack and smoked it myself. Gilmore never touched it.”

Molly’s face shone with a pale intensity that seemed to suck the rest of the light from the room. Stoddard’s voice, when it came, rattled like a tin roof in the wind.

“I think we’re done here, Mr. Kelly.”

“You never ran any tests,” I said. “Instead, you saw an opportunity to set me up. So you fed me Gilmore’s name. Fed me information that positioned him as a buddy of Danielson. Then you fed me the address. And Gilmore was waiting to kill me. What you didn’t count on was this.”

I tossed the shirt Ellen had given me onto the table. Stoddard picked it up.

“For what it’s worth, the thing worked pretty well. I was grazed in the shoulder, but the big one, the chest shot, never got through. I got the drop on Gilmore. And then I had his computer.”

I pulled out the laptop and slipped it onto the counter. They both ignored it.

“I ran the DNA on your cigarette,” Molly said. “The data is in our files.”

“You phonied it up.”

“You really believe that?”

“After you were hit by a sniper on the train, I wondered if you might not be legit. The truth is, Gilmore was trying to kill me. He just blew the shot. Even with the vest on, it took some guts to sit there and set me up. I’ll give you that. But the more I dug, the more I was convinced. The bug came from CDA. From you or Ellen. The only ones with the know-how and opportunity. The problem, of course, was which one.”

“So you gave me the cigarette?”

“Think of it as a line in the water.”

“And I bit.”

“Yeah, you did.” I pointed to the laptop no one wanted to take a look at. “Gilmore documented his end of things. Insurance, in case things went sour with his client.”

Molly idly touched a couple of keys on a keyboard. “And who’s gonna believe anything Mr. Gilmore has to say? Or the man who killed him?”

I gestured with the gun. “Good point.”

“We definitely want a lawyer,” Stoddard said, appealing to whoever wasn’t in the room.

I looked over. “You won’t need one.”

Then I pulled out an NBC mask and tugged it on.